Preventing Corruption in Humanitarian Assistance

Author(s)
Maxwell, D., Walker, P., Church, C., Harvey, P., Savage, K., Bailey, S., Hees, R., and Alendorf, M.L.
Publication language
English
Pages
42pp
Date published
01 Jul 2008
Type
Research, reports and studies
Keywords
Accountability and Participation, Accountability to affected populations (AAP), Development & humanitarian aid, Monitoring
Organisations
Tufts University
This report describes research on the problem of corruption in humanitarian assistance,
carried out in 2007 and 2008 by the Feinstein International Center of Tufts University (FIC)
in collaboration with the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) at the Overseas Development
Institute in London (ODI) and the sponsoring organization, Transparency International (TI).
Seven major international humanitarian NGOs volunteered to be part of the project and
allowed researchers access to their headquarters staff and documentation along with similar
access to field programs in seven crisis affected countries.
 
The research does not try to assess the degree of corruption in any one agency or country.
Rather it seeks to document perceptions of corruption in humanitarian operations, including
the context of humanitarian assistance, the risks and consequences of corruption, the
policies and practices to mitigate or manage corruption risks, and remaining gaps in
addressing corruption. This report provides some examples of prevalent corrupt practices
and the range of measures the cooperating agencies are using to counter the temptation of
corruption, guard operations against corruption and allow for its detection. It does not
attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of these measures in reducing corruption. But more
importantly, the research provides the basis for TI to develop a handbook of good practices
in managing corruption risk and combating corrupt practices in humanitarian assistance,
which will be issued in early 2009. This report is limited to the research findings.