Mike Jennings isn’t the only one concerned (and blogging) about accountability. Chris Blattman is peeved about excessive administration costs in humanitarian aid: 17% is an unfortunate expense but a rather common rate for administration, and even low by many standards. It’s a requirement driven not so much by the multilateral donors, but a consequence of [...]
Posts Tagged ‘accountability’
12 Feb
Time to call in the lawyers?
Mike Jennings suggests homeless Haitians should be able to sue international NGOs for leaving them in temporary tented camps for so long, and not providing more permanent housing. You do not have to know anything about Haiti (I don’t!) to see how this would be a spectacularly bad idea. We can start off with a [...]
13 Oct
The Converse of Accountability
A few years ago a donor asked us (informally) whether we would be prepared to partner up with another local NGO that they were also considering supporting in order to reduce their transaction costs. (An illusory goal – in effect they were asking to pass their transaction costs on to us.) We wanted the donor’s [...]
19 Jul
The Charges against Big Aid
Terence, the Waylaid Dialectic, tears a couple of fair sized strips off Jonathan Starr’s self-righteous polemic about Big Aid. Terence’s points are well made, but I think not the whole story. For a start, stripping away the pomposity, Starr is surely right when he says Big Aid has an accountability problem. As I and many [...]
18 May
CI screws up
I couldn’t ignore the big scandal about Conservation International’s apparent willingness to greenwash the biggest arms company in the world. That this story should break just after my post In defence of BINGOs is unfortunate. Greenwashery? The scandal raises many issues, but let’s start with the notion of greenwashing. The allegation is that a seat [...]
26 Feb
Aid efficiency & focusing on the important things
(with apologies to DR who doesn’t make the rules) Informal chat with a Donor Representative (DR), 2009 MJ Presumably the NGO projects will be much more efficient than the government ones. DR Yes, we expect that. But they won’t be the most efficient. MJ Oh? Who will be the most efficient? DR The private sector. [...]
16 Nov
Donor befuddlement: half measures & contradictory aims
Two posts recently have brought to my attention how far donors still have to go in designing a more adaptable and hence effective and efficient aid system. Half Measures First, Lindsay Morgan (of Dispatches) wrote a piece about performance-based contracting for health services in Southern Sudan. Those with a serious interest should read the whole [...]
28 Oct
How do conservation NGOs respond to criticism?
I am pleased to present my first guest post. The author is as anxious to conceal their identity as I am mine. I’ll call them GL. I will post my own thoughts in response shortly. We are all well aware of the growing body of critiques of conservation in the developing world – MJ’s earlier [...]
16 Sep
Accountable to who?
Accountability is a big thing in development these days. Mostly this is in relation to governments (national and local) in developing countries who have a habit of appearing not always to act in the best interests of their citizens. However, the development sector has enough free thinking types to detect the whiff of hypocrisy when [...]
15 Sep
Accountable to Accountants?
There has been quite a discussion of NGO accountability recently in the blogosphere kicked off by Till Bruckner’s guest post on Aid Watch about NGO budgets in Georgia. Aid Watch subsequently posted a series of replies from the NGOs involved, and Scott Gilmore jumped in with his two cents. Caveman Tom summarised the whole to [...]
