Members of the UK International Search and Rescue team working in heavy snow, in the earthquake and tsunami-shattered residential streets of Kamaishi, in north-east Japan.
License: Creative Commons
Credit: Ed Hawkesworth/DFID
Source: Flickr
License: Creative Commons
Credit: rockcohen
Source: Flickr
As a wave of austerity unfolds across Europe, donors are under increasing pressure to demonstrate accountability, value for money and effectiveness of aid budgets. Following the assessment of the EU as part of the UK Department for International Development’s Multilateral Aid Review, the EU aid programme has undergone a further review in the UK by the House of Commons International Development Committee (IDC), the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, a peer review by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and an evaluation by the Dutch Government (still to be published). The Independent Commission for Aid Impact is also lining up to evaluate the EU. Meanwhile, negotiations over the EU’s next multi-year budget period are already well under way, and will set budget ceilings and priorities for development activities from 2014 until 2020.
We are delighted to bring together experts conducting these assessments to debate the following questions:
Places are limited, if you are unable to register but would like to attend please email Siân Herbert on: s.herbert@odi.org.uk
Back at the first RioEarth Summitin 1992, the civil society organisations in attendance counted an unusual group among their number. Amid the assorted staffers and activists from environmental and development NGOs, there was a handful of campaigners who had a very different relationship with the Earth: representatives of an astronauts' organisation. Their reason for being there? Having seen the planet from space, they'd learned to view it from a different angle.
This private round-table on aid effectiveness focused on a study for the EU which quantifies the benefits of measures to improve aid effectiveness. Panellists from the European Commission, the University of Gothenburg and ODI took in the event.
In this seminar, Fred Carden, director of the Evaluation Unit at the International Development Research Centre, Canada; John Hoddinott, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute; and John Young, deputy director at the Overseas Development Institute, UK, discuss the need for assessing policy influence, share their experiences, and talk about the challenges of this process.