Global Accountability Report
One World Trust
To promote global accountability, achieve organisational change, improve the effectiveness of global decision making and contribute to poverty reduction through decisions which take into account the needs of affected people, including the world’s poorest.
The One World Trust is funded through grants, bequests and individual donations. For its most recent work on accountability, the Trust received support from The Ford Foundation, The Baring Foundation and The Allan Nesta Ferguson Charitable Settlement.
The report and accompanying data are principally designed as a tool for conceptual and practical identification of opportunities for improvement of accountability policy, systems and practice of assessed organizations and their broader sectors.
The indicators were scored based on publicly available data, questionnaires that were completed by the assessed organisations, internal documents and other information collected through semi-structured interviews with representatives of the assessed organisations and external experts or stakeholders of the organisations.
Year Coverage: 2006 - 2008
The Report covers global organisations from the inter-governmental, non-governmental and corporate sectors. The following organisations has been assessed:
Intergovernmental Organisations
Bank for International Settlements (BIS)
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Global Environment Facility (GEF)
International Labour Organization (ILO)
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD)
World Health Organisation (WHO)
World Intellectual Property Organisation
(WIPO)
World Bank – International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)
World Trade Organisation (WTO)
International non-governmental actors
ActionAid International (AAI)
Amnesty International (AI)
Human Life International (HLI)
International Chamber of Commerce (ICC)
International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)
International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
The Nature Conservancy
Oxfam International (OI)
World Vision International (WVI)
World Wildlife Fund International (WWF)
Trans-national Corporations
Anglo American plc
Dow Chemical Company
Exxon Mobil Corporation
Microsoft Corporation
Nestlé
News Corporation
Pfizer Inc
RWE
Toyota Motor Corporation
Wal-Mart Stores Inc
Michael Hammer, Executive Director
Prince Consort House Suite 301,
3rd Floor 109-111 Farringdon Road
London UK EC1R 3BW
England
Tel: +44 (0)20 7713 6790
Fax +44 (0)20 7837 5352
accountability@oneworldtrust.org or mhammer@oneworldtrust.org
The Index documents the degree to which the headquarters / international secretariat of the assessed organisations have the capabilities in place to enable accountability and responsiveness to both the communities they affect and the public at large. Desk-based research, questionnaires, interviews, expert reviews, and feedback from organisations and their external stakeholders are used to score the organisational capabilities (policies and systems) against a set of good practice principles of accountability, which were developed through a participatory process. Indicators are weighted depending on their importance to accountability.
In the 2006 Global Accountability Report, the organisations are assessed against four core dimensions of accountability: transparency, participation, evaluation, and complaint and response mechanisms. The scores for each organisation were totalled and weighted out of 100 percent for each dimension but no aggregate score was provided. Higher scores in all four dimensions indicate higher capabilities to enable, support and foster accountability.
This data source and the accompanying profiles of organisations can be used to illuminate good practice, highlight accountability gaps, encourage cross-sector learning, and promote realistic reforms within the accountability of the organisations covered.
The coverage is limited to the sample of 30 organisations. For now, this cannot be used to identify best and worst overall performers in the global governance arena in terms of accountability. As coverage increases with the next report, this may become possible.
The Report captures the existence of and commitment to principles of accountability at the headquarter / international secretariat level of an organisation; and the internal capability to implement these principles across the wider organisation, network, federation or group to foster accountability to affected communities and the public at large. The presence and quality of accountability policies and systems at this level is taken either as reflecting an already existing organisation-wide commitment to the issue, or as an indication that the headquarters / international secretariat recognises that these stated values and principles should be applied throughout the organisation as a matter of conceptual integrity and good practice.
The Report does not attempt to measure the inevitable variations and differences between commitments that are made in organisational documents at the international
office and what happens in practice at the field level. Depending on the type of organisations and governances structures that they have in place, such differences can be a reflection of decentralised organisations, loose links between international and field offices, or inadequate communication and management practices. The study therefore does not claim to present a full and definitive assessment of the overall accountability of assessed organisations. What happens in practice and at field level is obviously key for a more definitive assessment of any organisation’s accountability.
There is recognition that accountability is a concept subject to multiple cultural or sector-specific interpretations and understandings. The Report does not claim to capture the breadth of the manifestations that accountability principles may take for different organisations.
