Graph 4: Donor generosity compared to HRI final scores

Fair share and generosity of donors

The HRI uses the concept of “fair-share” in calculating some indicators. This implies that donors funding to appeals and pooled funds should be in proportion to their GDP compared to the overall OECD/DAC group. The “optimum” value for a donor’s funding is based on the size of the country’s economy so that the burden is shared equitably among donors. As Graph 2 shows, the absolute volume of aid or the size and capacity of a donor is not necessarily a good predictor of the quality of its aid. However, there is a clear relationship between a donor’s humanitarian assistance as a proportion of its GNI and the donor’s HRI scores. More generous donors – those that invest a higher percentage of their GNI for humanitarian assistance, and thus carry more of their “fair share” – tend to score higher overall in the HRI, including in non-financial indicators such as adherence to good practice and international humanitarian law.

5. Issues and challenges

Politicisation and instrumentalisation of aid

The HRI’s report findings reveal a major and escalating concern; the politicisation and instrumentalisation of aid efforts. Local and international humanitarian actors’ capacity to deliver aid in a neutral, impartial and independent way is being increasingly challenged amid a complex interplay between competing national and international political, military, security or development concerns. Access to affected populations is under threat, the security of humanitarian workers is at risk and affected people are not receiving the protection and assistance they need and deserve.

The politicisation and instrumentalisation of aid can take many different forms. OECD/OECD/DAC donor governments may:

• link their support for humanitarian assistance to political, military or anti-terrorism objectives

• prioritise state-building and economic development to the detriment of meeting immediate humanitarian needs

• uncritically fund and support recipient governments’ agendas even when state actors are wholly or partly responsible for humanitarian crises

• use aid as an instrument to build goodwill or to meet domestic concerns.

DARA notes that many governments and non-state actors in crisis-affected countries themselves also politicise crises and manipulate the international aid response. Increasingly, they:

• deny the existence of a humanitarian crisis or manipulate assessments of the extent of needs

• misuse discourse around national sovereignty, the War on Terror or the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness to limit external scrutiny of the humanitarian situation

• impose unreasonable restrictions on international aid agencies and limit their access

• use (and abuse) civilian populations and access to humanitarian assistance as part of conflict tactics.

Neutrality and impartiality of aid compromised

Donors’ humanitarian assistance must be independent of political, economic or security concerns

One of the key principles that donors committed to was respecting the principle that humanitarian assistance should be neutral and impartial, and independent of political, economic or security concerns. Yet many donors are disregarding this fundamental principle of Good Humanitarian Donorship and making aid contingent on other objectives.

For example:

• In Afghanistan, the use of military forces to deliver humanitarian assistance and win “hearts and minds” has put humanitarian organisations at risk of being targeted.

• In Somalia, US anti-terrorism legislation has restricted aid agencies working in areas controlled by Al-Shahaab, a group linked to Al-Qaeda, making it difficult for aid agencies – even those not funded by the US – to deliver aid. Many hundreds of thousands of crisis-affected people are thus denied aid they need.

• In oPt, donor prohibitions on contact with Hamas hampers effective aid delivery.

• In Sudan, donor attention on Darfur has meant needs in other parts of the country are under-funded. The International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar Bashir has further politicised the humanitarian crisis and fostered mistrust of humanitarian organisations.

• In Colombia, government efforts to discourage international attention to the humanitarian crisis by focusing on trade, development and military cooperation has further compromised humanitarian space and capacity to respond to displacement. Donors have been generally uncritical.

• In Zimbabwe, a government ban on NGO activities prevented a timely response to a cholera outbreak. The initial unwillingness by the government to acknowledge the severity of the cholera outbreak delayed the response and raised the death toll. Many donors and response organisations seemed risk-averse, unwilling to challenge the government.

Continued challenges for access and protection

I

Access to affected populations is under threat, the security of humanitarian workers is at risk and affected people are not receiving the protection and assistance they need and deserve.

n several crises failure to sufficiently prioritise protection combined with unwillingness of some donors to forcibly advocate for access of humanitarian personnel means that vulnerable populations remain at risk.

Findings from the HRI field missions provide several examples:

• In the DRC, mass rapes by militias have raised concerns about the ability of the UN peacekeeping mission to provide effective protection to civilians and also about donor willingness to invest in security sector reform to enable the DRC military and police to do so.

• In the CAR, a UN peacekeeping mission has helped to provide some security for humanitarian operations in the north-east but armed groups and bandits have made access to other areas risky for humanitarian agencies.

• In Somalia, donors funded only 28 percent of funds requested for protection activities. Few donors are actively engaged in advocating for safe humanitarian access. Due to security concerns many organisations are managing operations remotely, making it difficult to actively support protection with a physical presence in the field. Some donors hampered humanitarian access by paying ransoms without coordinating with other humanitarian actors.

• In Sri Lanka, the government’s tight control over access to military-run camps for those displaced by the conflict with the Tamil Tigers has created near insuperable constraints to meeting protection and assistance needs, with little concerted or coordinated action or advocacy by donor governments to address this.

• In Afghanistan, donors are blamed by many for being silent about violations of human rights by state actors and their supporters and, and for not advocating for the rights of women and children.

• In oPt, the EC was praised for advocating for access and protection and security of humanitarian workers. However, many other donors advocated at the political level for the lifting of the blockade only if it related to the projects they were funding. Donors did not speak out with one common voice, demanding that the Israeli authorities provide unrestricted access for all humanitarian goods and workers.

• In Pakistan, protection was not prioritised by donors, nor was the implementation of IHL. Lack of free access for humanitarian actors has been a recurring difficulty since displacement in north-western Pakistan began in 2007.

• In Yemen, donors were criticised for failing to advocate more proactively for protection. Some respondents described donors as gender blind when it comes to protection. Many NGOs are afraid that they might be expelled from the country if they are too outspoken.

Aid not being distributed according to needs

A

Donor governments’ aid should be distributed in accordance to and in proportion to needs.

nother key part of the GHD principles is that aid should be distributed in accordance to and in proportion to needs. Donors are still not living up to their commitments to distribute aid in accordance to needs, partly due to political concerns, but also due to difficulties in assessing needs objectively and consistently.

For example:

• In Afghanistan, the inability to access conflict zones means that needs assessments are either done by proxy or generally estimated. Aid tends to be focused on areas where donor governments already have a presence, leaving needs in less-publicised areas unmet.

• In the Philippines, donors largely accepted apparently inflated government assessments of needs after cyclones. Donors prioritised food aid, leaving gaps in critical areas like shelter. Meanwhile, the government under-estimated or under-reported the extent of humanitarian needs arising from the unresolved internal conflict in southern Mindanao.

• In Indonesia, two earthquakes, one in West Sumatra and the other in West Java, received hugely different levels of response. A wide range of donors and agencies conducted their own needs assessments with differing formats and templates.

• In the DRC, donors are disproportionately funding eastern conflict areas, leaving equally impoverished areas without adequate humanitarian aid.

• In Haiti, accurate and reliable needs assessments were delayed, and not always used by donors, who in some cases were influenced by the massive media coverage of the earthquake. For example, the IASC rapid needs assessment did not appear to be known or used by many humanitarian actors. The prioritisation of costly foreign search and rescue teams at the expense of meeting other immediate needs was also questioned by some organisations.

Prevention, preparedness and linking relief to development (LRRD)

Despite many expressions of commitment donors and the UN system are still not investing in building local community capacity to prevent and minimise the effects of disasters and conflicts or to enhance capacity of local actors to respond quickly to new challenges. Examples from the HRI’s field research show that:

• In Indonesia, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, very few donors support large-scale disaster risk reduction (DRR) programmes as an integrated part of the response to ongoing crises. There is a general trend for donor governments to separate DRR from emergency response needs.

• In Pakistan, donor governments generally performed poorly in terms of supporting conflict and disaster prevention. During the military offensive against the Taliban, their often uncritical support of the Pakistani Army meant they did little to prevent further displacement and violence.

• In Haiti, despite a long-standing international presence in the country, and the recent experiences dealing four back-to-back hurricanes in 2008, capacity-building efforts to strengthen preparedness, prevention and response capacities of vulnerable communities and local authorities appear have had little impact. As an example, internationally funded civil protection bodies such as the DPR and UPC were largely absent or sidelined in the immediate response. There is great concern that the pledges made by donor governments to support long-term recovery may not be honoured.

Timeliness and flexibility of funding

T

Too many donors have inflexible funding and excessive earmarking that affects the ability of agencies to adapt to changing needs.

he GHD principles call for timely, predictable and flexible funding to allow humanitarian organisations to better plan and to provide assistance rapidly and when it is needed at different stages of the response. DARA found that less than 10 of the 23 OECD/DAC donors committed and disbursed more than 40 percent of their funding within three months of the launch of an appeal for a chronic emergency, making it difficult for aid agencies to plan programming effectively.

Too many donors have inflexible funding and excessive earmarking that affects the ability of agencies to adapt to changing needs. Some donor governments have invested in pooled funds such as the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) so that UN agencies had access to rapid, timely and flexible funding to meet priority needs. However, even these pooled funds, while an improvement, have been criticised by many actors in the HRI field research. For example:

• In Somalia, donors such as Australia, Finland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden were commended for flexibility to fill funding gaps, while others imposed too many restrictions and conditions on aid that it hampered an effective response. In addition, many donors were reluctant to fund extra overhead costs and provide contingency funds required in this difficult operating context.

• In Indonesia, funding from the CERF took six weeks to arrive at the scene after the earthquake had destroyed large tracts of Padang – a delay that was simply too long to address the emergency at hand. Organisations working on earthquake relief also found the CERF to be less flexible than other funding sources. The Emergency Response Fund (ERF), on the other hand, was considered to be an effective multilateral funding response mechanism. However, ERF grants were provided almost exclusively to UN agencies and not to other operational humanitarian actors.

• In Zimbabwe, UN agencies were given preferential treatment and received 93 percent of the contributions from pooled funds like the CERF, while international NGOs only received seven percent. One of the biggest criticisms levelled at the CERF by many INGOs is that it does not coordinate well enough, or directly support the work of, many local or international NGOs, even though they are often the quickest responders to emergencies.

• In Afghanistan, CERF funds did not always go for emergency responses but instead for the purpose of sustaining normal, ongoing UN operations. This is a violation of its intended purpose, to fill immediate funding needs.

Supporting humanitarian reform and coordination

Progress towards implementing humanitarian reforms remains slow

Progress towards implementing humanitarian reforms remains slow. Several issues consistently emerged in HRI interviews, including a perceived lack of leadership by senior UN officials such as the Resident Coordinators, and by donor governments to address issues around politicisation, access and protection; mixed performance of clusters and coordination mechanisms, and failure to engage with NGOs, and in particular, local actors.

For example:

• In Zimbabwe, many humanitarian organisations felt the UN Resident Coordinator/Humanitarian Coordinator was too closely aligned with the government, subordinating humanitarian concerns to other interests. A formal complaint was made by NGOs and UN agencies about the coordinator’s performance, leading to a tense and mistrustful relationship between the RC/HC and the humanitarian community.

• In Colombia, many NGOs considered the RC/HC as too passive, unwilling to forcefully challenge the government in its propaganda to deny the existence of an armed conflict and the applicability of IHL or advocate vocally against government measures that jeopardise neutral, impartial humanitarian action.

• In Haiti, the massive amount of actors in the field, many inexperienced in humanitarian response, and high turnover of staff made coordination next to impossible in the first phase of the emergency. Coordination with the different military present in the operation was also a real challenge, despite existing guidelines agreed to by donor governments.

• In the Philippines, the capacity of clusters and even their legitimacy was thrown into question by competition with a parallel cluster system used by the government to address the same needs.

• In Afghanistan, clusters suffered from problems with management, staff turnover, and regularity of meetings. Progress was hampered due to the predominance of military and security coordination instead of humanitarian coordination. Tensions between NGOs and UN agencies have damaged and undermined cluster effectiveness and created an atmosphere of resentment and distrust between actors.

• In Haiti, clusters lacked strong political leadership, essential in the prevailing complicated working environment. Many meetings are held in hard to access venues and in English, creating barriers to engagement and participation of Haitian government and NGO actors.

Lack of learning and accountability:

D

Accountability to affected populations is largely missing from the government aid policies and national debates on improving accountability in humanitarian action.

espite the importance of accountability in the GHD declaration, accountability to affected populations (and to the humanitarian agencies that donors fund) is largely missing from the government aid policies and national debates on improving accountability in humanitarian action. A cursory review of policies and procedures of the 23 different donor governments assessed in the HRI shows that while accountability (or similar concepts) are mentioned by the majority of donors, virtually none make any direct mention of any specific commitment – or responsibility – to meet the needs and priorities of the people that their aid intends to help.

The majority of senior representatives of donor agencies and humanitarian organisations are not fully aware of or familiar with the GHD principles. This makes it difficult for donor representatives at the field level to know what their governments are committed to. For representatives of humanitarian organisations is also makes it difficult to know what they can expect from donors in terms of good practice or whether it is feasible to try to hold their donors accountable for applying the principles and good practices they have committed to.

Graph 5: Familiarity with the Good Humanitarian Donorship declaration

Donor scores for indicators around learning and accountability are amongst the overall lowest average scores in the index. While most donor governments insist that partners apply learning, and quality standards in programming, support and follow-up is inconsistent. For example, the HRI field surveys show that humanitarian organisations consistently report that donors do not support them in implementing evaluation findings and recommendations. Similarly, engagement of crisis-affected populations in programme design, implementation and monitoring have long been recognised as a good humanitarian practice, and means to build and strengthen local capacity to prevent, prepare for and respond to potential crises.

DARA teams found that the majority of donors do not require, monitor or actively promote beneficiary engagement with their partners.

For example:

• In Haiti, the enormous number of evaluations of previous crises, along with the multitude of evaluations currently underway, appear to have had little influence in terms of applying lessons learned, particularly around building and sustaining local capacity for prevention, preparedness and response.

• In Somalia, some donors were praised for their insistence on maintaining standards such as monitoring, beneficiary involvement and incorporating recommendations from previous evaluations, but the lack of physical presence makes implementation of evlauation recommendations difficult.

• In Afghanistan, despite the fact that donors expect agencies to be accountable and provide accurate information on their activities, the UN and the Afghan government have criticised donors’ spending for a lack of transparency. Tracking aid funding invested in Afghanistan is a huge and persistent problem.

• In Colombia, efforts to increase accountability towards beneficiaries and awareness of quality and accountability initiatives in the humanitarian sector were largely absent from the discourse of both donors and humanitarian organisations.

6. Conclusions and recommendations

Providing humanitarian assistance responsibly and in ways that show maximum results for people affected by crisis remains a major challenge. OECD/DAC donor governments have restated commitments to applying GHD principles and practices. HRI 2010 findings show, donors still need practical orientation and guidance to apply the concepts of GHD in the way that they fund and support humanitarian action. Donors are still not acting in a coordinated and coherent manner when it comes to applying core concepts of good practice. While each individual member of the GHD group of donors has strengths, the sum of the parts does not necessarily add up to a better whole. This reinforces the need for instruments like the HRI to provide an independent review of donor governments’ performance and accountability against their commitments in the GHD declaration.

The growing politicisation of aid has serious implications for people affected by crisis. It hampers efforts of humanitarian organisations to access populations and provide protection and assistance. It puts crisis-affected people and humanitarian workers at risk by undermining the perception that the sole objective of humanitarian assistance is to impartially prevent and alleviate suffering, based on needs alone. Donors must look at means of ensuring their aid policies are not undermined by other interests and that other areas of government understand and respect the need for neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian action. A more concerted effort is needed by donors to promote and uphold IHL and humanitarian principles. This may entail criticising a fellow donor. They should not shy away from doing so, for this is an inherent aspect of the GHD principles they have signed up to.

After many years of acknowledging the importance of risk reduction, prevention and preparedness and recovery, it is discouraging to note the continued lack of donor government investment. Donors wanting to support ambitious reforms of the humanitarian system must promote dialogue on how to use resources efficiently and focus on needs of people affected by crisis. Leadership is needed, and donors can demonstrate this by working together to ensure that the system works for the benefits of crisis-affected populations. A first step would be for donors to place accountability towards affected populations at the centre of their funding and decision-making processes as well as the core of their relationships with partners.

HRI 2010 evidence suggests that donors need to:

• ensure that aid is prioritised and allocated on the basis of the needs of civilian populations, not on political, economic or military objectives

• invest significantly more resources and political will in conflict and disaster prevention and risk reduction, including addressing climate change vulnerability

• work together and with other actors, particularly local authorities and civil society, to scale-up efforts to reform the humanitarian system and improve aid effectiveness

• prioritise protection of civilians and facilitate safe humanitarian access so that crisis-affected populations are not put at risk of harm and receive the support and assistance they need to survive and recover from a crisis

• significantly increase transparency around their funding and support for humanitarian action, and improve their accountability to help ensure that aid efforts have the greatest possible benefit for crisis-affected populations.

DARA will continue to work closely with donors and partners to utilise HRI findings as an entry point for discussions on how to make aid more effective, transparent and accountable. As part of our determination to make the HRI ever more effective, we welcome suggestions from our colleagues in donor governments and the wider humanitarian community.

Recommendations

Pillar 1: Responding to needs

Key finding: Increasing politicisation and instrumentalisation of humanitarian assistance means millions of people are not getting the aid they need.

What can donor governments do to address these issues?

Donor governments can support neutral impartial humanitarian action and needs-based approaches to their funding and support by:

• Allocating humanitarian assistance on the basis of needs alone and ensuring that humanitarian assistance is not subordinated to other priorities or objectives. To do this, governments should support ongoing efforts to develop more integrated and objective needs assessments tools and methodologies. This may also require donors to revise their policies and procedures to ensure that funding and decision-making processes are based on clear, transparent and publically accessible criteria.

• Ensuring government’s foreign, trade and development policies complement and reinforce the independence, neutrality and impartiality of both donor government agencies and the humanitarian organisations they fund. Donor governments should explicitly ensure that in cases of a crisis, neutral, impartial humanitarian action should take precedence over all other concerns. This requires governments to integrate and increase awareness of, and respect for, humanitarian principles into other policy areas.

• Advocating more forcefully in situations where governments (either donors or host countries) and other parties are not respecting neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian action. Better coordination at the field and headquarter level can ensure that donors governments can use their access, influence and collective voice with host governments to more effectively address issues of access and protection and remind states of their obligations to respect IHL. Donors should consider other high-level mechanisms to monitor and take collective action in cases when donor governments’ crisis responses contravene the spirit and intent of the GHD principles.

• Disseminating and applying the Guidelines on the Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets in Disaster Relief (the Oslo guidelines) and reviewing donors’ visibility requirements to ensure that humanitarian organisations are clearly distinguished from non-humanitarian actors. In a climate of growing mistrust and misunderstandings about the objectives of humanitarian action, donor governments should review the guidelines for collaboration between their military and humanitarian actors. Governments should also consider reviewing how they give visibility to their humanitarian assistance – including such requirements as “branding” with donors logos and national flags – to help reinforce that humanitarian aid and personnel are independent from governments.

• Reviewing and reducing unnecessary aid conditionality and other donor requirements to ensure that humanitarian organisations have sufficient flexibility and independence to carry out their work effectively. While governments should be concerned that their aid funding is not used for non-humanitarian purposes, legitimate, professional humanitarian organisations have developed working procedures that preserve their independence and impartiality and ensure quality and accountability in the use and distribution of resources. Donors should therefore review and reduce any restrictions that could hamper access and the provision of assistance and protection to affected populations.

Pillar 2: Prevention, risk reduction and recovery

Key inding: A lack of political commitment and investment in conflict and disaster prevention, preparedness and risk reduction threatens to intensify the impact of future humanitarian crises.

What can donor governments do to address these issues?

The continued lack of attention and investment by donors in risk reduction, prevention and preparedness strategies means that millions of people are unnecessarily affected by crisis each year. Governments can contribute to redressing this by:

• Ensuring that beneficiary participation and “ownership” of humanitarian programmes are integrated as a requirement into a donor’s funding decisions, monitoring and reporting. Despite the emphasis in the GHD principles on beneficiary engagement in programming, surprisingly few donors make this a requirement for funding, monitoring and reporting.

• Allocating a percentage of humanitarian assistance funding to conflict and disaster risk reduction and preparedness and for local capacity building. Some donor governments already dedicate part of their humanitarian budgets to these areas, while others see this falling within the realm of development cooperation. Regardless of the funding model, donors could establish clearer and more transparent criteria to show how they will support this. They could consider integrating risk reduction and capacity building as an explicit requirement for partners that they fund and obliging partners to include local capacity building as an outcome of their humanitarian activities.

• Investing in greater capacity building and contingency planning for local actors and the wider humanitarian system. Donor governments need to prepare for a future of increased and changing humanitarian needs. The humanitarian system is hardly able to cope with existing needs and is ill prepared to anticipate and prepare for future needs. This is why an investment in preparedness, response and risk reduction at the local level and with governments in vulnerable countries is so important. Donors should set aside funding to strengthen the capacity of all components of the humanitarian system, particularly local actors.

Pillar 3: Working with humanitarian partners

Key finding: Slow progress in reforming the humanitarian system means that aid efforts are not as efficient or effective as they should be.

What can donor governments do to address these issues?

Strengthening and improving the effectiveness of the humanitarian system is essential to meet current and future needs effectively and have greater impact for people affected by crisis. Donor governments can support greater effectiveness and efficiency in the humanitarian system by:

• Continuing to actively promote reforms of the international humanitarian system, not just UN reform. Donors can continue to sponsor reviews and evaluations of efforts so far, such as the reviews of CERF and clusters. They must ensure that these mechanisms are accessible to more actors, particularly national NGOs and, when appropriate, national authorities. Donors can also invest in looking for new, innovative approaches to emerging issues and challenges.

• Supporting and promoting more active leadership by the recently-appointed UN Emergency Relief Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinators. Donors can jointly advocate for better-qualified leadership in the humanitarian system by insisting on a merit and experience-based approach to finding candidates for senior leadership posts in humanitarian crises. They need to encourage the organisations that they fund to engage fully with the HC. At the same time, donors can channel the concerns of their partners to the highest level to ensure that the ERC takes action to resolve outstanding issues

• Looking for means to harmonise and improve needs assessments to achieve more objective allocations of resources to crises. Donor governments need to continue to support efforts for more accurate and reliable needs assessments as the best means to ensure resources are allocated in line with actual needs at the global and crisis level – and then use these mechanisms as the basis for transparent and objective decisions on where to allocate resources.

Pillar 4: Protection and International Law

Key finding: Continued gaps in the protection of civilians and safe humanitarian access means that vulnerable populations are at risk of harm.

What can donor governments do to address these issues?

Respect for IHL, protection of civilians and safe humanitarian access are vital to minimise the devastating consequences for the people affected by crises. Donor governments can support this by:

• Using every possible and appropriate means to advocate for the protection of civilians in situations of risk. Donor governments have been silent in too many crises. They have not spoken out with one voice in other situations where access and protection are issues. Donor governments can exert pressure on parties through the Security Council and other channels but also work through mechanisms like the office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict.

• Continuing to fund and support agencies with a dedicated mandate for protection, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and ensuring better cooperation and coordination of protection among all actors. Donors should not neglect the important role of NGOs and local civil society organisations in monitoring and responding to protection issues. They should invest in building their capacities at the same time as those of larger multilateral agencies. Donors can also promote the development and implementation of operational guidelines on protection within the humanitarian sector.

• Signing and ratifying international legal frameworks to protect and safeguard humanitarian personnel. Donors can demonstrate their commitment to improving access and protection by signing and ratifying legal frameworks such as the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel and support the development of other legal mechanisms that could contribute to better protection and assistance.

Pillar 5: Learning and accountability

Key findings: Donor governments are collectively failing to improve their transparency and “downward” accountability towards affected populations.

What can donor governments do to address these issues?

There is an important and legitimate need for governments to show their citizens how and where taxpayers’ money has been spent for humanitarian assistance and with what results. But donors also need to collectively address the issue of increasing transparency towards partners and stakeholders. Accountability towards beneficiaries should be the foundation for any discussion on aid effectiveness. Donor governments can support increased transparency, accountability and effectiveness by:

• Integrating concepts of downward accountability to beneficiaries into humanitarian assistance strategies, policies and procedures. Donors should integrate more explicit definitions of accountability to beneficiaries and their own responsibilities in monitoring and implementing accountability into their policy frameworks. This could include, for example, specific requirements in funding proposals and reporting requirements from partners to show how quality and accountability are integrated into programming, as well as mechanisms for donors to report back to partners and beneficiaries on how they have fulfilled their obligations.

• Ensuring that all relevant information on humanitarian funding, programming priorities and decisions is transparent and publically accessible. Donor governments can demonstrate their commitment to accountability by facilitating access to information for citizens and stakeholders. Appropriate and relevant information should be made available in formats that are easily understood by all stakeholders, including partners and affected populations.

• Committing to report consistently and to share information on funding pledges, commitments and disbursements to common international databases like OCHA’s FTS. In order to facilitate more effective planning and avoid duplication of effort, donor governments should report their humanitarian assistance in a timely fashion, using standardised reporting formats, as called for in the GHD principles. The data reported should be entirely consistent with data reported domestically or through other channels.

• Supporting and participating in initiatives to increase aid accountability and transparency. In addition to existing accountability fora such as ALNAP, donors can also support new initiatives on aid transparency, aid effectiveness and beneficiary accountability.

• Reviewing GHD approaches and indicators to update them and align more coherently with advances in the UN-led humanitarian reform process. The GHD was a significant breakthrough in promoting the collective responsibility and accountability of donor governments to ensure their aid contributes to more effective humanitarian action. However, the collective indicators agreed to by the GHD group do not capture the advances and complexities of the humanitarian system today. The GHD group is a powerful platform to advocate for positive changes in the system. Collectively, donors could take on more of a leadership role in promoting those changes, as they did when the GHD declaration was created.

1 See: http://www.goodhumanitariandonorship.org/gns/principles-good-practice-ghd/overview.aspx