United Nations
AID TRANSPARENCY ANALYSIS
The 2014 ATI assesses three UN agencies: the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA).
In addition to the three UN agencies included in the Index, the following agencies have begun publishing to the IATI Standard:
- UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) since October 2011
- UN-HABITAT since September 2012
- UN Capital Development Fund since October 2012
- UN Women since November 2012
- World Food Programme since June 2013
- UN Population Fund (UNFPA) since July 2013
- International Fund for Agricultural Development since July 2014
Humanitarian aid reported to the Financial Tracking Service (FTS) is also published to IATI. Several prominent members of the 32-strong UN Development Group have not yet publicly committed to publishing to IATI. This includes the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The International Labour Organisation was expected to publish in 2013, but is yet to do so. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has recently started a project to improve its aid transparency but has not yet published a schedule.
The UNDP in partnership with UN-HABITAT, has convened workshops for UN agencies to increase awareness of aid transparency within the UN system and to discuss opportunities for greater coherence in publishing and presenting information of the UN’s development assistance. A UN Working Group on Transparency has also been set up in an effort to leverage the collective work of the UN on IATI and reduce the barrier of entry for UN agencies that have not yet engaged in the initiative.
The performance of all three UN agencies assessed in the 2014 ATI is above average, with UNDP ranked first and with a 25 point lead over UNICEF, ranked 14th, which in turn leads OCHA by 23 percentage points. Both UNDP and UNICEF have made significant progress since the release of the 2013 ATI. OCHA’s performance remains in the fair category, at a similar level to 2013, although it is engaging with IATI through the working group on humanitarian flows.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- UN agencies that have started publishing information to the IATI Standard should improve the quality of their publication, to include more comprehensive information on their activities and all added-value fields of IATI.
- They should coordinate with each other and share lessons via the UN Working Group on Transparency to ensure consistent and comprehensive publication of all development flows provided by the UN.
- UN agencies should use their IATI data in their programming and coordination processes and promote the access and use of this information at country level.