The International Aid Transparency Initiative

Transparency has been recognised by the international aid community as a key ingredient of effective aid. In 2005 representatives of donor and recipient countries and international institutions met in Paris for the High Level Meeting on Aid Effectiveness.

In 2005 representatives of donor countries, heads of multilateral and bilateral development institutions met at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Paris to follow up on the Millenium Development Goals decided at the Millenium Summit in New York in 2000. The Paris Declaration highlights five fields of action to improve the aid system and thus render aid more effective: Partner country ownership, alignment of aid processes, harmonisation of development assistance, managing for results and mutual accountability. While transparency of aid information is relevant to all five fields of action, the Paris Declaration also explicitly commits to more transparency.

Three years lafter the Paris Declaration, in September 2008, the third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness was held Accra, Ghana. The participants of this conference reaffirmed their commitment for the five fields of action decided upon in Paris and for more transparent aid. To advance the aid transparency agenda, the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) was launched in Accra.

At the Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness 16 donor representatives signed the IATI Accra Statement and commited themselves to concrete action to improve aid transparency.

In 2009 a global consultation process was organised by UNDP to assess information needs by partner countries and civil society organisations. At the same time a technical advisory group (TAG) worked on the technical challenges of making aid information more accessible. IATI will not create a new database but cooperate with existing efforts of the OECD and the World Bank to provide aid information.

Based on these consultations the IATI Steering Committee met in Paris on 30^th of November 2009 to decide on the type of information to be published by the donors.

For further information on structure, process and content of IATI please consult the IATI website.