Seneste eksempel er den største tilsagnskonference i FNs historie, der førte til højtidelige løfter om halvanden milliard dollars i humanitær bistand til Syrien, men to måneder efter er langt de fleste penge ikke kommet fra de donorer, der afgav løfterne.
DUBAI, 29 March 2013 (IRIN): Humanitarian and development actors should develop a method to hold politicians to account for aid pledges (løfter), UK Minister of State for International Development (udviklingsminister) Alan Duncan said.
“A promise is only a promise until it is in the bank,” he told IRIN, addng:
“It is exciting to get headline pledges, but it is important to make sure that money translates on the ground (også findes i virkeligheden).”
Duncan shared his idea at the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development (DIHAD) conference this week, telling participants:
“One thing that would help the whole system would be the establishment of a universally accepted process under which any pledge to spend money was registered, measured, monitored and implemented”.
“Because if a politician wins the floors by making a promise, then he must be made to follow it through with the concrete action that was promised.”
The aid community has an increasing number of systems to track how money is spent, but it has few systems to track pledges.
Get it in writing
One model, Alan Duncan said, is the World Bank pledging process used in Yemen last year.
Here states, collectively promising 8 billion US dollar in two pledging conferences, signed on paper how much they had pledged and what the money would go towards, “so that they can be held to account.”
The brain child of the idea was Wael Zakout, who manages the World Bank’s work in Yemen.
With government support, he has created a system whereby donors will meet with government officials every three months – with media present – to report on four sets of figures:
* the original pledge;
* the amount that has been programmed (the number of projects to be financed and their amount);
* the amount in approved programmes, where a project agreement has been signed between the donor and the government; and
* the amount of money already disbursed (udbetalt).
(The Yemeni government is also developing a more detailed database to track projects.)
The first such meeting was held in February and ended with a listing of those donors who had not delivered on their promises, which was then presented to the Friends of Yemen meeting of foreign ministers.
“We are using name-and-shame. That has been very effective”, Zakout told IRIN.
“In the past, the countries pledge and do not deliver and, somehow, nothing happens,” he said.
Only a fraction of the money arrives
In 2006, for example, donors pledged 4 billion dollar to Yemen, much of which never materialized.
“With the new approach the pledges will not be forgotten”, Wael Zakout noted, adding:
“I do hope this will become an example for the international community in other contexts.”
Donor transparency groups say that aid pledges are almost never fully realized.
Only a fraction of the 9 billion dollar pledged to the Haiti earthquake recovery reportedly ever made it.
In late January, the international community pledged more than 1,5 billion dollar in humanitarian aid to Syria, yet UN response plans requiring the same dollar figure remain only 30 percent funded.
Other promises in recent years, described by the anti-poverty group ONE as “welcome but vague”, include:
* a 50 billion dollar increase in global official development assistance (ODA) promised at the Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005;
* 60 billion dollar for health ODA (statslig udviklingsbistand) promised at the Heiligendamm G8 Summit in 2007;
* 20 billion dollar for agriculture and food security committed at the 2009 L’Aquila G8 Summit; and
* 100 billion dollar for climate finance promised at the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009.
Agreed principles
Læs videre på
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97752/Holding-politicians-to-account-for-aid-pledges
