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Author Archives: Administrator

Statement from CARE on Bruckner FOIA Request

AidWatch received the following statement from CARE regarding Till Bruckner’s AidWatch post on USAID and NGO transparency:

Statement from CARE (Aug. 30, 2010):

Contrary to what Till Bruckner suggested in a recent blog, CARE did not withhold information in response to his FOIA request to USAID regarding certain projects in the Republic of Georgia. Our records indicate that CARE never received the request from USAID to review CARE’s budget information before USAID provided it

Posted in Accountability & transparency, Aid debates | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Africans do not want or need Britain’s development aid

Editor’s note: This letter was published in the Telegraph (UK) on 22 Aug 2010 with the title given above for this post.

SIR – The parlous state of the public finances in Britain provides the perfect opportunity for British taxpayers to end their half-century-long experiment with “development aid”, which has, since its inception, stunted growth and subsidised bad governance in Africa.

As Africans, we urge the generous-spirited British to reconsider an aid

Posted in Aid debates, Financing development | Tagged , , , , | 39 Comments

Transparency International clarifies the debate, deplores attacks on Till Bruckner

Editor’s note: Transparency International Georgia submitted this contribution to the debate originally sparked by Till Bruckner’s post The accidental NGO and USAID transparency test.

We at TI Georgia have closely followed this debate about whether and to what extent USAID and its NGO contractors should make their budgets public. Till Bruckner began his quest for answers while he was working with us in 2008-09, although his pursuit of the NGO budgets via FOIA requests…

Posted in Accountability & transparency | 7 Comments

NGO Transparency: Counterpart International to release budget

Editor’s note: Aid Watch received the following statement from Counterpart International in response to a request for comment on Till Bruckner’s post The accidental NGO and USAID transparency test.

We have checked our records regarding Mr. Bruckner’s FOIA request to USAID for information about our Georgia program budget. Our server logs indicate that USAID’s attempt in June to contact us about this FOIA request was unsuccessful because the message was sent to two former Counterpart…

Posted in Accountability & transparency | 4 Comments

Response from Mercy Corps on Transparency

Editor’s note: Aid Watch received the following from Mercy Corps in response to a request for comment on Till Bruckner’s post The accidental NGO and USAID transparency test. We have reproduced the Mercy Corps response here in full:

Till Bruckner’s posts on NGO accountability raise interesting questions – and it is unfortunate that the discussion has devolved into insinuations about NGO motives rather than an open discussion of what constitutes meaningful accountability in aid work.  While…

Posted in Accountability & transparency | 11 Comments

World Vision responds on transparency

Editor’s note: we are posting the following note received in its entirety from World Vision.

World Vision Statement

In response to the Aid Watch post: The Accidental NGO and USAID Transparency Test

World Vision has investigated allegations posted on August 18, 2010 by Till Bruckner, a guest blogger.  The blog post charges WV and other NGOs with lack of transparency in responding to Bruckner’s request to the U.S. Agency For International Development (USAID) under the…

Posted in Accountability & transparency | 14 Comments

NGO Response: CNFA Reaffirms Commitment to Transparency

Editor’s note: We emailed every organization mentioned in Till Bruckner’s recent blog post, The accidental NGO and USAID Transparency Test to ask for their comment. CNFA sent us a response (also posted on their website) this afternoon, which we are reproducing here in full:

Transparency and accountability are core values of CNFA. Our programs are designed to be cost-effective – producing maximum output for the least cost. CNFA is fully accountable to our clients,…

Posted in Accountability & transparency | 8 Comments

Fun with serious data

See the full size chart and make new ones here.

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Easterly appointed to Eliot Spitzer Chair in Gender Empowerment

The NYT revealed today a new way to launder contributions to Congress for purposes of influencing legislation. Corporate lobbyists help fund a chair or research institute at a university, naming it after the Congressperson they want to influence.

This naturally excited the fundraising department of Aid Watch. We welcome suggestions from readers on which corporate lobbies we could suck up to for funding and which politicians can be bought honored with these funds.…

Posted in Satire/ parodies | Tagged , | 11 Comments

FT: Celebrities urge G8 to make new unkept promises to keep previous unkept promises

Oh how we wish it would be otherwise! What will it take?

Alan Beattie writes on the G8 in the FT:

It stretches the most elastic mind to envisage the collective wrath of Scarlett Johansson, Annie Lennox, Bill Nighy, Kristin Davis and Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan, but it descended on the heads of the Group of Eight this weekend.

The obsolescence of the G8 has long been discussed during interminable and inconclusive international

Posted in Aid policies and approaches, Badvocacy and celebs, Grand plans/ aid targets, International organizational behavior, Political economy | Tagged , , , , , | 14 Comments