Spain: New tool to evaluate humanitarian aid donors

A new benchmarking mechanism that looks at the performance of humanitarian aid donors has put Sweden in the lead. Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands follow closely.

Developed by DARA International, an evaluation agency based in Madrid, Spain, the Humanitarian Response Index (HRI) is the first of its kind to focus on the quality and quantity of humanitarian aid by individual members of the group of 23 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

The HRI study polled over 800 humanitarian actors in eight crisis-torn countries – Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, Haiti, Lebanon, Niger, Pakistan and Sudan.
Humanitarian agencies were asked whether: donors were sticking to the Stockholm Principles; their funding decisions were swayed by political, economic, military or other strategic considerations; they worked effectively with other humanitarian partners; how actively they were integrating their relief efforts with broader development objectives.

The countries have been appraised against the Principles and Good Practices of Humanitarian Donorship, endorsed in Stockholm in 2003 and considered a code of conduct for donors. The Stockholm Principles urge countries to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain human dignity, besides stressing the need for transparency and accountability in dispensing aid.

According to DARA, the HRI will help strengthen progress towards conformance with the Stockholm Principles and accountability, but above all provide an opportunity to assess individual donor performance, a feature that other evaluation mechanisms do not offer.

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