‘Subscribe to IATI’s principles’, UNSG’s report tells humanitarian actors

A UN report setting out the agenda for the first World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in May, calls on humanitarian actors to ‘subscribe to IATI principles’.

The Secretary General’s report, entitled One Humanity: Shared Responsibility, published today says, ‘donors and national authorities need to improve transparency in reporting disbursement of funds and expenditures by national governments, donors, particularly new donors, and others’.

The report presents Ban Ki-Moon’s new Agenda for Humanity, which references IATI and seeks a commitment from all stakeholders at the WHS to use it ‘as a framework for action, change and mutual accountability’, stating a deadline for implementation over the next three years.

The endorsement of IATI in today’s report marks further progress in our work to improve global humanitarian assistance reporting. It follows last month’s ground-breaking recommendation from the UN High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing that called for ‘a specific time-bound commitment by the international community to provide open and transparent data, including on transaction costs, published on a single global platform—with IATI compatible data at its core’.

A commitment to publishing IATI data is vital to improving the operational effectiveness of humanitarian interventions by increasing access to timely data on humanitarian financing during crises.

In the run up to the WHS, IATI will be encouraging key actors to commit to reporting their humanitarian expenditure and activities to IATI. Our recent upgrade to version 2.02 makes the IATI Standard fit for purpose for the humanitarian community. The upgrade introduces new data fields, including a humanitarian marker, and these, combined with a commitment from donors to update their information on a daily basis in the rapid onset of emergencies, would enable access to real time IATI data to meet operational needs.