Report - Ahead of the Crowd? The process of implementing the Paris Declaration

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, endorsed in March 2005, is now recognized as a landmark international agreement aimed at improving the quality of aid and its impact on development. It lays out a road-map of practical commitments, organised around five key principles of effective aid:

• Ownership by countries
• Alignment with countries' strategies, systems and procedures
• Harmonisation of donors' actions
• Managing for results, and
• Mutual accountability

Each has a set of indicators of achievement. The Declaration also has built-in provisions for regular monitoring and independent evaluation of how the commitments are being carried out.

This report synthesizes the results of the first evaluation of the early implementation of the Paris Declaration, from March 2005 to late 2007. It comprises extensive assessments in eight countries, together with 'lighter' studies on eleven development partner or 'donor' agencies, focussing at the headquarters level. Participation by all countries and agencies was voluntary. An international management group managed the evaluation and received guidance from a reference group drawn from 31 countries and institutions. Since it is an early evaluation, it focuses on ways of improving and enhancing implementation, rather than giving any definitive judgment about effectiveness.

This evaluation complements a parallel monitoring process. The Monitoring Surveys are intended to monitor what is happening with respect to implementation against selected indicators, while this evaluation is intended to shed light on why and how things are happening as they are. In spite of a number of limitations, which are acknowledged in the report, the evaluation results make a significant contribution to that aim.

The evaluation questions

The evaluation has focused on answering three central questions:

• What important trends or events are emerging in the early implementation of the Paris Declaration?
• What major influences are affecting the behaviour of countries and their development partners in relation to implementing their Paris commitments?
• Its implementation so far leading toward the Declaration's five commitments of ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results and mutual accountability? If so, how and why? If not, why not?