Given their political role, what are the responsibilities of donors in the intricate relationships in the humanitarian sector? In this article, reflections on the duties of donors in relation to other stakeholders and the effectiveness of the funded projects will be formulated.
Over the past decade, the issue of accountability has found increased attention in the humanitarian landscape.
As stated in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (OECD, 2005), to be considered effective, aid requires that actors commit to each other’s implementations through broad-based consultative processes and that donors respect national leadership and help strengthen their capacity to exercise it. The same Declaration states that donors should focus on supporting internal processes that include beneficiaries: they should support the emergence and development of formal, transparent decision-making processes that are accountable to interests and needs.
One must consider the role and power that funders play within the sector: as the main source of economic resources, stakeholders expect them to ensure action denying more funds when the humanitarian system is not functioning well.
So, considering above, the question arises: are donors less or more accountable than other stakeholders?
Firstly, while each single organisation should focus on meeting beneficiaries’ needs at the lowest possible cost (i.e., be efficient), donors have an obligation to make sure that they are achieving the greatest possible impact with the funds which they have available (i.e., be effective). This means not only selecting the best projects, but also making sure that proposals target the areas and populations with the greatest need. Funding second- or third-priority operations can reduce effectiveness as fundings are diverted to the detriment of those most severely affected. Therefore, donors must use all means at their disposal to ensure they have enough data and information to make informed decisions about where and how to allocate funds.
Clear, then, that donor leverage can also be used to address system-wide problems. Despite this, unfortunately, funders are not yet pulling their weight. They need to further harmonize their standards and approaches to use their position more effectively. In the past years, they have also attempted to self-regulate through the Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) initiative, under which they have adopted a set of standards and operating principles. Despite some progress, Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) research found that “implementation efforts have not been significant or systematic enough to stimulate widespread changes in donor behavior.” Only a very weak monitoring framework has been put in place, and consistent adherence to the principles remains a challenge for donor personnel. To ensure quality and accountability, donors need to have systems in place that reward high-impact operations, punish low quality, and link measurement of the impact of a funded operation to how well the donor staff in charge of that grant performed oversight during implementation. There is, however, an attribution problem because high-impact operations depend on many factors beyond the control of the donor and its staff.
One of the main obstacles is the strong dependence of cooperation agencies on the politics of their own nations: the funding plans of agencies such as USAID, ECHO, etc. are influenced by political and economic interests dictated by governmental agendas. However, this obstacle can be overcome if you consider that the very source of the funds is taxes. Taxpayer opinion can therefore be a powerful tool in guiding funding choices.
Moreover, donors and aid agencies are accountable to themselves, through self-regulation, and to external actors, including nonoperating agencies, host governments, taxpayers, and the media. Open criticism of donor behavior from within the aid system is very rare, as few grantees are willing to bite the hand that feeds them.
Donors must find ways to use their leverage wisely and responsibly. Laissez-faire giving, or worse yet, allocating funds to enhance a donor’s image or gain public approval, makes donors complicit in supporting system-wide underperformance. Donors can and should use their collective potential to urge faster change and better performance. While they should listen to their partners before allocating money, allowing them as much operational independence as possible, donors should exercise the quality control necessary to ensure the most effective use of funds for those most in need of humanitarian aid. The researchers Eyben and Ferguson identified a number of steps are recommended to increase donor governments’ accountability to poor people:
It is clear that donors occupy a key position in the chain of responsibility. They have the power and the authority to insist that executive agencies aim for high-quality performance, push politically for the humanitarian space, remind national governments of their responsibility to protect their citizens, and push for better accountability within the humanitarian system as a whole. And they themselves must be held accountable. However, donors cannot be held to be less or more responsible than other stakeholders: each of them has mechanisms and tools to ensure and enforce the quality of the intervention and, above all, to make each actor responsible for their actions.
