Increasing accountability of WASH donors

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To mark World Water Day (22 March), we've launched our first WASHwatch Donor Profiles! Why donors?

Since 2012 WASHwatch has been working to bring together information from across the WASH sector in our aim to provide a one stop hub for water, sanitation and hygiene to increase accountability within the sector. We have provided a platform to collate WASH data at a country, regional and global level. However by not including donors in this platform, we have been missing a key element in the sector. Our donor profiles will aim to provide the information needed to hold donors to account and therefore increase accountability for all actors within the WASH sector as a whole.

What are the donor profiles?

The donor profiles present the following information:

1. Statistics

  • Donor statistics including: general finance flows, WASH finance flows, WASH finance flows by system and WASH finance flows by channels.

  • Domestic statistics including: water and sanitation access figures.

  • Top WASH official development assistance (ODA) Recipient Countries information.

2. Donor Coordination Mechanisms including: government departments responsible for international aid, and national civil society organisations (CSO) coalitions working in domestic advocacy for international aid.

3. Donor Policies and Strategy including: any key documents on organisational strategy highlighting mentions of WASH and WASH-specific strategy produced by the government department responsible for international aid.

4. Donor Monitoring Mechanisms: External documents evaluating the donor's performance both overall and specifically with regards to WASH. Includes:

  • DAC Peer Reviews – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
  • GLAAS ESA Reports
  • SEEK Development Donor Tracker
  • Aid Transparency Index
  • Commitment to Development Index, Centre for Global Development
  • Other country focused reports produced by domestic CSO coalitions.

5. Declarations and Commitments including: whether donors have met the commitment of using 0.07% of gross national income to ODA.

6. Donor Comparison: There is a tool to enable you to directly compare donors' statistics and commitments to each other. For example: Development Assistance Countries.

Which donors are being profiled?

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States of America.

Our first wave of donor profiles have focused on bilateral donor countries that report to OECD to ensure that the figures are comparable. Over the next few months we will be developing multilateral donor profiles.

How can I contribute?

WASHwatch is a collaborative platform and as such we encourage contributors. Please share with us any suitable data, analysis or comments to be added to the website via [email protected]