Women and aid effectiveness

What is aid effectiveness?

In order to achieve development goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals, governments across the world have committed to making sure that there is ‘more and better’ aid for international development work and that this aid makes real improvements to people’s lives on the ground.

Principles of aid effectiveness

In order to do this, there has been an ongoing conversation with international governments, civil society and other actors, on how to make aid more effective.

Since a meeting in Paris in 2005, known as the High Level Form on Aid Effectiveness in Paris, there have been a number of principles that governments have committed to adhering to when they give overseas development aid. These principles have developed over time.

In 2008 there was another meeting in Accra, Ghana where governments and international organisations signed up to the Accra Agenda for Action. This was an important meeting because it highlighted the need for gender equality and civil society involvement to be a vital consideration when aid is delivered.

Next steps

In November 2011, there will be another high level meeting in Seoul to discuss what the international community has learnt from their experiences and to talk about what the next steps are. We know that aid is working but we want to make sure that it is working for women as well as men.

What Womankind is doing

We are working with our partners WiLDAF in Ghana to project >to carry out research on whether the aid effectiveness commitments are being adhered to, and what more can be done to make sure that aid delivers real change for women.

For more information on aid effectiveness, see betteraid and awid.