The Working Party on Aid Effectiveness

Ownership and Accountability

The Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) reaffirms the objective of strengthening partner countries’ ownership of their development strategies. It also broadens the concept beyond the executive to include engagement with parliament, political parties, local authorities, the media, academia, social partners and broader civil society.

Quality Mechanisms

Strengthening broad based ownership requires measures to develop the capacity of all stakeholders, combined with effective access to knowledge and information. Democratic ownership and accountability are like the two sides of one coin: one is a precondition to the other and vice-versa. In the same line of thought, the quality of mutual accountability mechanisms depends on the quality of domestic accountability in donor as well as partner countries.

Central Concepts
The nature of Ownership and Accountability is complex. However, they are central to the advancement of the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA), as amply demonstrated in the Accra Roundtables on country ownership, mutual accountability, as well as Civil Society Organisations and aid effectiveness.

Objectives:

• Accelerate progress in donors' and partners' implementation of AAA commitments as regards Ownership and Accountability.
• Facilitate and disseminate evidence based information on Ownership and Accountability.
• Strengthen international level and country level mechanisms for donor and partner countries to hold each other to account for meeting aid effectiveness commitments.
• Support the development of robust mutual accountability mechanisms at country level based on what works and what does not work.

More information about Ownership and Accountabilty:

Key Tasks and Deliverables

Modalities for Implementing the Tasks

» Mutual Accountability explained