Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) is a donor-led initiative that aims to work towards efficient and principled humanitarian assistance. By defining principles and standards, GHD provides both a framework to guide official humanitarian aid and a mechanism for encouraging greater donor accountability.

A set of 23 GHD principles was initially agreed and endorsed by 17 donor governments in Stockholm in 2003. Subsequent annual meetings (Ottawa 2004, New York 2005, Geneva 2006 and Geneva 2007) have reviewed progress and provided a platform for discussion of future work for the group.

The 17 GHD indicators, revised July 2007 >

35 donor bodies have now signed up to the principles: Australia; Austria; Belgium; Bulgaria;Canada; Cyprus; Czech Republic; Denmark, the EC; Estonia; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Hungary; Ireland; Italy; Japan; Latvia; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Malta; the Netherlands; New Zealand; Norway; Poland; Portugal; Romania; Slovak Republic; Slovenia; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; the UK and the US.

goodhumanitariandonorship.org >

The GHD group uses a set of 17 indicators that are intended to be used as a tool to measure collective performance against the 23 GHD principles.

The indicators look at:

• flexibility and timeliness (indicators 1-8)
• donor and agency funding for common humanitarian assistance action plans (CHAPs) and consolidated appeal process (CAP) appeals (indicators 9-12)
• donor advocacy and support for coordination mechanisms, needs assessment methodologies and M&E (indicators 13-15)
• donor practices and standards (indicators 16 and 17).

Development Initiatives produces reports looking at collective and individual performance against the GHD indicators each year. The reports on collective performance are published on this site and also on the GHD site. Individualised reports are also produced for each country and published at their discretion.

GHD indicators 2008 (reporting against 2007 data) – first draft issued in July 2008 and reissued in February 2009. Download supporting Excel files - All indicator zip file (1.2MB) - Indicator 1 (1.2MB) - Indicators 2 & 3 (745Kb) - Indicator 4 (30Kb) - Indicator 5 & 6 (45Kb) - Indicator 7 (28Kb) - Indicator 8 (48Kb) - Indicator 9 (188Kb) - Indicator 10 (793Kb) - Indicator 11 (88Kb) - Indicator 12 (343Kb) - Indicator 13 (1.32MB) - Indicators 14, 15, 16 and 17 (53Kb)

GHD indicators 2007 (2006 data) – available here shortly

GHD indicators 2006 (2005 data) – published in GHA 2006 >

GHD indicators 2005 (reporting against 2004 data) – available here shortly

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GHD indicators report, 2008 (data relates to 2007)

GHD indicators report, 2006 (data for 2005/2006)

The 17 GHD indicators, revised July 2007

>Development Initiatives 2009