Accountability and transparency in disaster aid: Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu

Abstract

The world's largest humanitarian donors and implementing organisations have recently re-affirmed their commitments to financial transparency and broader accountability when responding to humanitarian crises. These are important demonstrations of the international community's on-going efforts to shift more power to those affected by disasters and to help ensure their dignity throughout the response and recovery efforts. This paper takes these commitments and applies them to the international humanitarian response following TC Pam in Vanuatu to gain greater insight into the implementation of these high-level goals. TC Pam caused massive damage as it tracked across Vanuatu in March 2015 and is still the largest tropical cyclone on record in the south Pacific. This paper clarifies the following contributions: USD 37.04 m to the response efforts, and USD 147.45 m to the on-going recovery from the tropical cyclone. It documents where that money came from, where it went, and what impact it has had to date using only publicly available data. The paper proceeds with analysis of the level of transparency and accountability to the people and communities affected by the disaster, rather than to foreign donors. This analysis shows relatively high transparency of financial flows during the response phase, but low transparency in the recovery phase. Furthermore, there is little evidence of accountability to affected populations through the transparency of information about the impact of the aid provided following TC Pam. This paper concludes with some recommendations to increase financial transparency and broader accountability following disasters.