Aid Agency Accountability: Who's Your Sugar Daddy?

In a perfect world, aid agencies would be accountable first and foremost to those they help.  Also, in a perfect world, it would rain lemonade. And there would be unicorns.

Don't get me wrong, important steps have been taken.  Especially on the graphic-semantic front.  We tend not to exploit pictures of starving children.  (At least, not most of us.  Except occassionally Concern.)  We try to use terms like beneficiaries - or, even better, partners - to show that we're all in this together.

Yet at the end of the day, realities are realities.  And the reality is that you can't work if you don't have funding.  Which is why the findings from the 2008 HAP Humanitarian Accountability Report aren't particularly surprising.

In a survey of over 650 staff working for NGOs, the UN, donor agencies and research institutions, only 25% reported that humanitarian agencies were "highly" accountable to beneficiaries.  On the other hand, 74% reported that agencies were highly accountable to donors.

According to the report: "there remains an inescapable and consistent result from all four surveys [2005-2008]: that the pecking order for accountability is always towards institutional donors first and disaster survivors last."

It's too easy to cast stones.  (Except, ummmm, when it comes to the Concern Cure Starvation Appeal.  Or Nicholas Kristof.)  Humanitarian operations cost money.  Especially when you're trying to respond to a massive, complex emergency. It's difficult to feed and shelter hundreds of thousands or millions of people on good intentions alone.

And far too often, the money simply isn't there.  The UN has been able to raise only 25% of the funds it needs to help 2.5 million people displaced by the fighting in Pakistan.  NGOs are also struggling.  According to Oxfam's Humanitarian Director: "This is the worst funding crisis we've faced in over a decade for a major humanitarian emergency."

It's not just Pakistan.  As of late May, the UN had only received 39% of the funds it needs in Sri Lanka.  NGOs are also slashing budgets across the board.

Aid agencies are trying, and there has been some improvement on the accountability front - in 2005, only 8% of respondents said that agencies were highly accountable to beneficiaries.

But as long as aid agencies need money, and as long as money is in short supply, it's hardly surprising that accountability to donors trumps all.

PS - Hat tip to Katie Nguyen at Reuters AlertNet for initially reporting about the HAP survey.

[Photo from www.yourfunnystuff.com]