PublishWhatYouFund releases its 2011 Aid Transparency Index

Last week PublishWhatYouFund (PWYF), the global campaign for aid transparency, released its 2011 Aid Transparency Index. This index rates the transparency of bilateral and multilateral donors against a set of 37 indicators at organisation, country and activity level. The assessment was done in collaboration with civil society organisations and donors were given the opportunity to react on the findings. The overall result of the assessment is, that some donors have made good progress on aid transparency, but not a single donor is rated in the top category of having a good level of transparency. The transparency of bilateral aid agencies in Germany for example, is rated as being poor.

At the OECD High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2008 in Accra donors had pledged unanimously to make aid more transparent, because, as the Accra Agenda for Action states, aid transparency is essential for aid effectiveness and lies at the heart of the Paris Declaration. The PWYF index illustrates that progress so far has been slow. There are also efforts under way to assess the transparency of non-governmental organisations. For example the Swiss NGO Aidrating has been publishing since 2009 a comparative assessment of the transparency of Swiss NGOs.