Calculations & Methodologies

Governments

OECD DAC donors

The term ‘DAC donors’ includes the European institutions as well as DAC governments. Korea officially joined the DAC donor group on 1 January 2010.

DAC-reported humanitarian aid includes expenditure on: emergency response (material relief assistance and services, emergency food aid and relief and coordination services); reconstruction and rehabilitation; and disaster prevention and preparedness.

But although the humanitarian aid expenditure reported to the DAC includes governments’ expenditure through NGOs, multilateral UN agencies and funds, public private partnerships and public sector agencies, it does not take account of DAC donors’ core, totally unearmarked contributions that are made in the form of multilateral ODA contributions to UN agencies with almost uniquely humanitarian mandates. In order to calculate DAC donor humanitarian aid expenditure, we add:

• humanitarian aid as reported in DAC1 Official and Private Flows, Memo: Humanitarian Aid (net disbursements)
• total ODA disbursements to UNHCR, UNRWA and WFP, as recipients, reported in DAC2a ODA Disbursements
  • we do not include all ODA to WFP but apply a percentage in order to take into account that not all WFP expenditure will be ‘humanitarian’
  • humanitarian aid reported to UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP and ‘Other UN’ in DAC2a tables is also included in our calculation.

The EU institutions function both as donor agencies and as multilateral recipients of funds from EU member states.

We treat the EU institutions as a donor within our DAC donor analyses. However, totally unearmarked (‘multilateral’) ODA to the EU institutions is a core component of some donors’ overall ODA/humanitarian aid contributions – so we calculate the EU institutions’ humanitarian aid (including their own unearmarked multilateral ODA to UNHCR, UNRWA and WFP) and apportion a share of this to each DAC EU member state – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Non-DAC donors

A number of different terms are used to describe this group of government donors such as ‘new’,  ‘emerging’, ‘non-traditional’, ‘non-Western’ or ‘non-DAC’. However, these labels simplify a very complex and diverse group. We refer to this government donor sub-set as ‘non-DAC’  donors which includes all donors that are not members of the OECD DAC (see above). However this is by no means an ideal or an accurate title – many of these ‘donors’ do not want to be labelled as such and instead see themselves as development partners facilitating South–South cooperation.

We use data downloaded from the ocha-fts">UN OCHA FTS on 5 April 2011 which we coded using macros, enabling us to filter and analyse the data quickly and easily. We exclude ‘domestic response’ expenditure which is intra-country humanitarian assistance when the donor and the recipient are the same e.g. money from Iraq to Iraq. We include the inputted Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) calculation to our non-DAC donor’s humanitarian aid contributions (see below).

For more detailed analysis of non-DAC donors’ humanitarian aid contributions read our report non-DAC-donors-humanitarian-aid1.pdf">here.

CERF and country-level pooled funding

DAC donor contributions to the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and country-level pooled funding are reported to the respective funds and also captured as part of the donors’ official aid reporting to the DAC. However, while funding to country-level pooled funds is allocable by country (funding to Haiti through the emergency response fund (ERF) will be included in a donor’s funding for Haiti, for example), funding for CERF is, by definition, not allocable by country. So, in order to give a more comprehensive overview of a donor’s humanitarian contributions to a country, and to ensure that decisions to provide funding through pooled mechanisms do not result in under-reporting of a donor’s contribution to a country, we impute the amount that is de facto contributed via the CERF and add it to their humanitarian aid on a country-by-country basis.

Our imputation of donor contributions to an affected country via the CERF is simple: Norway contributed 14.3% of funding to the CERF in 2007. The CERF allocated US$5.4 million to Afghanistan. Therefore Norway contributed 14.3% of US$5.4 million – or US$0.8 million.

Private contributions

Data on private contributions by recipient country is provided by UN OCHA FTS.

Data on private contributions for the period 2006–2008 was collated directly from the sample of organisations and complemented by figures from annual reports. The study-set for this period included five UN agencies (UNHCR, UNRWA, WFP, FAO and UNICEF), 48 NGOs, ICRC and IFRC. Data for 2009 and 2010 was extrapolated from the 2008 figure, using a coefficient of increase/decrease based on the analysis of annual reports, as well as private contributions reported to UN OCHA FTS.

Delivery agencies

Delivery agencies include UN and other international organisations and NGOs. We use data from the DAC CRS and UN OCHA FTS to provide information on delivery agency income from government donors.
\OTHER INTERNATIONAL RESOURCES
OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE (ODA)
ODA is a grant or loan from an ‘official’ source to a developing country (defined by the OECD) or multilateral agency (defined by the OECD) for the promotion of economic development and welfare. It is reported by members of the DAC, along with several other government donors and institutions, according to strict criteria each year. It includes sustainable and poverty-reducing development assistance (for sectors such as governance and security, growth, social services, education, health and water and sanitation.
In this report we express our total ODA figures net of debt relief unless expressly stated otherwise.
GOVERNANCE AND SECURITY ODA
This is a sub-set of the social services and infrastructure sector grouping of aid activities – within sector-allocable ODA – that is sub-divided into two further discrete groups of activities.
• The first grouping, the government and civil society set of activities, is primarily concerned with building the capacity of recipient country governments – in areas including public sector policy, finance management, legislatures and judiciaries – as well as a range of thematic activities including support to elections, democratic participation, media and free flow of information, human rights and women’s equality. In 2010 anti-corruption and support to legislatures and political parties were added to the list of activities in this grouping.
• The second grouping is concerned with conflict prevention and resolution, peace and security and includes activities supporting security system management and reform, removal of landmines and other explosive remnants of war, demobilisation of child soldiers, reintegration of demobilised military personnel, small arms and light weapons (SALW) control, civilian peace-building and some elements of bilateral support for multilateral peacekeeping operations (excluding direct contributions to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) budget).
FOREIGN ASSISTANCE
Our figures for the foreign assistance of China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa are a conservative estimate based on secondary sources, which include those in the following list.
• China: Deborah Brautigam’s The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, which references data from the China Statistical Yearbook (National Bureau of Statistics of China) and China Eximbank. These aid figures are the sum of official external assistance and Eximbank concessional loans. All figures are exclusive of debt relief.
• India: Figures are taken from the Indian Ministry of Economic Affairs’ (MEA) annual reports and converted from financial years into calendar years. Foreign assistance disbursed by other ministries has not been captured.
• Brazil: Figures are taken from the report ‘Brazilian International Development Cooperation 2005–2009’ published in 2010 by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) and the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC).
• Russia: Time-series data for aid that Russia disburses is not publicly available. In 2007 the Russian government, in its preparatory concept note on Russian participation in international development assistance, estimated that total development assistance was US$212 million. A Russian Federation statement at the DAC senior-level meeting in April 2010 reported 2008 development assistance as totalling US$200 million. Sources include OECD DAC and the Ministry of Finance in Russia.
• South Africa: Figures are taken from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MFA) budget report and converted from financial years into calendar years. Figures are not inclusive of development assistance disbursed by other ministries, which are reported to be between six and seven times the volumes reported by the MFA.