August 25, 2010 | 6:00 AM | By

Transparency: World Vision bad, Mercy Corps good

FILED UNDER: Basics, Politics, development, Mercy Corps, transparency, USAID, World Vision

And USAID Confused?

That, at least, appears to be the assessment of one Till Bruckner, a former Transparency International aid monitor in Georgia (the country in the Caucasus, not the Peach State).

In brief, Bruckner’s complaint stems from a Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) he made to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) asking for detailed descriptions of the budget and finances of ten NGOs active in U.S.-sponsored development projects in Georgia.

Redacted

Flickr, by Austin Kleon

Redacted Information

As a journalist who has had lots of frustrating experiences with FOIAs and trying to get answers from government agencies, I had to chuckle when reading Bruckner’s exasperated comments about waiting 14 months only to receive highly redacted copies of the information. I feel his pain.

The story begins, at least for most of us, with Bruckner’s post on AidWatch in which he singles out two locally familiar humanitarian organizations — World Vision, for asking USAID to keep its finances secret and Mercy Corps, for allowing USAID to provide the information.

Since then, both World Vision and Mercy Corps have rebutted Bruckner’s claims. World Vision issued a statement saying it did not ask USAID to redact its financials and that USAID did it on its own.

Mercy Corps also issued a much more detailed response, basically saying it had concerns about Transparency International’s request and attempted to discuss it with Bruckner. It’s not clear if Mercy Corps was even contacted by USAID about the request for the information.

It’s a long, convoluted story played out on AidWatch’s web site. Interestingly, most of the other NGOs haven’t even publicly responded.

Transparency and accountability are critical in every endeavor, and are often lacking when it comes to international development and the activities of NGOs overseas (or here, for that matter).

The fundamental question is what level of transparency makes for accountability. Asking for individual salaries or personal information is not only problematic from a privacy standpoint, it’s unlikely to be of much use in terms of assuring project accountability.

A blog post by Scott Gilmore, of Peace Dividend Trust, seems to me to put this dispute in a good context — giving Bruckner credit for raising some legitimate concerns but noting that simply opening all your books to the world is neither always wise or the best method for ensuring proper behavior.

  • Jeffrey K. Silverman

    Sleeping in the same bed with AEI makes for strange bedfellows for a whistle blower against USAID abuses

    The underlying motivations are not crystal clear, why a lone scholar like Till Bruckner, accruing a long list of enemies who label him a whistle blower with an axe to grind against USAID lack of even basic transparency. Till Bruckner, whose name cannot pull up much at all on Google unrelated to this new polemic emerging circa April 2010, sprang out of nowhere to bemoan the lack of transparency that may be hiding corruption in USAID and their nongovernmental organization affiliates, including their religious aid networks, would pick the American Enterprise Institute's magazine, THE AMERICAN, to lead the armada as a flagship into the murky waters of investigating the similarties between World Food Program and USAID, which may itself today have grown to be a bloated behemoth of intelligence affiliates.

    http://www.american.com/archive/2010/april/how-…

    The AEI is well known and notorious among its detractors for being the birthplace of hard core neo convervatism, which has been a frightful infestation of American democratic ideals and foreign policy for over 20 years now.

    You may be thinking by now that I am a blind supporter of USAID and the black clouds of legitimate and illegitimate NGOs swarming around USAID and the Republic of Georgia like flies. On the contrary, I have been a long time investigative reporter dredging up such information for public disclosure for a few decades here in the Caucasus.

    The author's motivations portrayed by some as purely PhD research is a mouthful to chew on and not choke. One can simply Google his mentors, allies, and affiliations and see that there is enough envy and jealousy of a vast rival power network to make an overflowing Georgian 'supra' table seem meager. USAID now eclipses the former glory of AEI and their tangled web of patronages.

    Something akin to the legendary rivalry between the Templars and the Hospitallers during the Crusades is going on here, and I don't think i am the only muckracking hillbilly in these here hills that has noticed so effortlessly, do you?

    And I question if the poor and needy of our planet, and their even more unfortunate brothers and sisters living under bloody repression, who truly need humanitarian aid and development assistance, would be impressed by this infighting and feuding squabble between two juggernauts who in the end will lay out very little for the poor themselves, and leave the recipients questioning the sincerity of the benefits coming from “the American People”. Remember Katrina and Ward 9? Charity starts at home, as well as transparency.

    I have to give Mr. Bruckner credit for coining one of the pithiest sentences i have read in a very long time, “Secrecy and charity make for strange bedfellows.”

    http://aidwatchers.com/2010/05/secret-ngo-budge…

    I absolutely agree, and whistle blowing against abuses of U.S. monies exemplified by USAID projects, makes strange bedfellows for AEI.

    Jeffrey Silverman,
    Freelance journalist and former Editor of Georgian Times, 18 years resident of Georgia, who has investigated corruption within USAID in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Afghanistan, in the last ten years.

  • http://twitter.com/jamesian Sally James

    Times of India writer has an interesting view of philanthropy politics, and of the Gates Foundation in India
    http://tinyurl.com/23m39hu