Accountability: Harmonizing Donor Practices

Many bilateral donors increasingly understand the importance of acting jointly. This can be seen in the support for multilateral agencies, or for different funding vehicles such as Sector Wide Approaches or Multi Donor Trust Funds, but also in the commitment to common principles, including accountability, to enhance the effectiveness of international development assistance they provide. Yet beyond the commitment to common principles such in the Paris Declaration, to what extent have major donors actually equipped themselves in terms of policies and management systems to realise the principles they recognise in practice? Is there any discernible trend that shows the numerous bi- and multilateral signatories are effectively building up their capability to be accountable, and if yes, is it in any way ‘harmonised', for instance through systematic learning from each other? And what about those donors and major actors in development aid which, while observers of the Paris process, are not part of the commitment: are private foundations which increasingly feed into development funding building up their capabilities to be accountable, and on the basis of what principles ought they be working? The paper reports on One World Trust research on the capability of global organisations to be accountable to their stakeholders based on an assessment of their policy and management systems. It explores whether good practice principles of accountability are realised by key actors in bi- and multilateral development aid, as committed to in the Paris declaration, but also how actors fare from other sectors.