UK multilateral Aid review just published

UK multilateral Aid review just published

On 1 March 2011 UKÂ’s International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell announced the key outcomes of two aid reviews [bi-lateral and multi-lateral] and set out the results that UK aid will deliver for the world’s poorest people over the next four years.

These ambitious reviews of DFID’s country programmes and funding to international organisations will make BritainÂ’s aid budget more focused and effective.

Source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Media-Room/News-Stories/2011/The-future-of-UK-aid/

Below is some information taken from a range of materials all available on the DFID website.

Multilateral Aid Review

The aim of the review was to ensure that the UK gets maximum value for money for UK aid through its contributions to multilateral organisations.

DFID currently funds more than 40 multilateral organisations to undertake a broad range of activities, such as leading the fight against HIV, malaria and TB, responding to natural disasters, providing large scale infrastructure, supporting children and women, and peacekeeping. These organisations are able to work in many more countries than the UK can reach on its own, and at a scale beyond any single country.

Source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/About-DFID/Who-we-work-with/Multilateral-agencies/Multilateral-Aid-Review/

Principles for UK aid funding

Where multilateral organisations are already demonstrating very good value for money for UK aid we will provide funding through them at levels that are appropriate to their objectives and our ambitions. Our funding to these organisations will not be without strings attached. There is always room for improvement and we will still require strong commitments to even better performance.

We have already announced funding increases to IDA and UNICEF. We stand ready to boost significantly our funding to GAVI, GFATM, the Private Infrastructure Development Group (the PIDG) and the Asian Development Fund. Exact amounts will be agreed in the following months as we negotiate and agree their commitments to results and reform.

For the sixteen organisations that offer good value for money we will, on the whole, take a more conservative approach reflecting our judgement that we can get better value for money by funding the best performing organisations. In some cases we may promise increased funding linked to evidence of results or significant improvements in performance.

Nine organisations were assessed as adequate and nine as poor. Where these organisations are potentially important to UK development objectives but under performing we will monitor their performance closely and respond to improvements when we are confident that they offer value for money. Equally where multilateral organisations fail to improve we will reconsider our support.

We are placing four organisations in “special measures” and demanding they improve their performance as a matter of absolute urgency. These organisations are UNESCO, FAO, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the International Organisation for Migration. In four other cases the contribution to UK development objectives is so poor that DFID will withdraw our core funding altogether. These four are UN-HABITAT, ILO, UNIDO and UNISDR.

Source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/MAR/Taking_forward.pdf