An Introduction to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) for Humanitarian Actors

This background paper introduces humanitarian actors, particularly those organisations that have signed up to the Grand Bargain, to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard. It answers key questions about the purpose of IATI, how it works, who uses it, and how it relates to existing humanitarian financing tracking systems and platforms.

At the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016, a number of leading donor governments, multilateral and UN agencies and NGOs, agreed the ‘Grand Bargain: A Shared Commitment to Better Serve People in Need’, including a set of proposals and commitments to increase the transparency of humanitarian financing. Within commitments on transparency, IATI is identified as the basis for a common standard for publishing data on humanitarian funding.