December 7, 2010

Source: ReliefWeb

07 Dec 2010

Source: alertnet // Olesya Dmitracova

LONDON (AlertNet) – The United States came second to last in the Humanitarian Response Index 2010, which ranked 19 rich countries and the European Commission on the effectiveness of their aid efforts.

Only Italy fared worse than the United States, one of the world’s largest donors of humanitarian aid.

“The 19th-ranked United States does not perform as well as it could,” said the authors of the report, published by non-profit organisation DARA on Tuesday.

“It scores below average in such critical areas as perceived impartiality of its aid and its independence from other interests, earmarking, aid conditionality and flexibility of funding.”

The index is based on funding data and responses from 475 top humanitarian officials and more than 75 donor representatives, as well as local authorities, civil society and beneficiaries of aid, interviewed between November 2009 and last June.

The participants in 14 countries embroiled in crises were asked how well donors are applying good practice in the emergencies and the donors were then rated against a number of standards, including responding appropriately to needs, preventing disasters and working with aid agencies.

The 14 countries studied were Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, the occupied Palestinian territories, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Yemen, Haiti and Zimbabwe.

In 2009 donors provided more than $11.5 billion to respond to the needs of people affected by conflicts and natural disasters, the report said.

2010 DONOR RANKINGS

1. Denmark

2. Ireland

3. New Zealand

4. Norway

5. Sweden

6. European Commission

7. Switzerland

8. Britain

9. Netherlands

10. Luxembourg

11. Finland

12. Canada

13. Australia

14. Germany

15. France

16. Japan

17. Spain

18. Belgium

19. United States

20. Italy