I have just returned from Geneva where I went to join two IHP+ events aimed at strengthening mutual accountability.

An evolving conversation

One, on 18 May, was a technical side-event on “Enhancing Mutual Accountability for Results”.  Given the competing demands of the World Health Assembly on representatives of IHP+ signatories, the event was well attended – there were around 70 people there, including many from IHP+ Country Governments, bilateral and multilateral partners.  Maybe the event built on the momentum of 10 new signatories to the IHP+ on the previous day; but it provided an important opportunity for signatories to reflect on progress and challenges in really putting accountability into practice.  Shaun Conway, IHP+Results Director, launched our first annual progress report with a presentation that touched on findings and lessons from IHP+Results experience in 2009.  I was particularly interested to hear about progress in monitoring aid effectiveness in the DRC and Rwanda.  I’ll try to track down more information on these countries and post those here in due course.  Overall, I felt the meeting provided a useful barometer of how the conversation within the IHP+ has shifted over the past 12 months, and a signal that IHP+ signatories are taking their commitment to mutual accountability seriously.

Standardising efforts to track implementation

This commitment has been further demonstrated through the establishment of an IHP+ Working Group on Mutual Accountability.  IHP+Results made a recommendation to the SuRG in our internal draft interim progress report (discussed by the SuRG in February 2010) that such a working group should be established to oversee revisions to IHP+Results approach in 2010 and to strengthen mutual accountability within the IHP+.  The Working Group has met 4 times since March, with the fourth meeting taking place yesterday (19 March).  This meeting saw the Working Group reach broad agreement on a set of Standard Performance Measures that will be used to track progress in implementing IHP+ implementation in 2010.  Click here for more information these standard measures.  We look forward to future IHP+ Executive Team and SuRG discussions that will ensure the Working Group’s work is taken forward to strengthen mutual accountability at country- and international- level.

So overall, it was a good trip to Geneva.  It is a complex process, dealing with sensitive issues.  IHP+Results is doing cutting edge work, as built in independent mechanisms are not common in political initiatives that are similar to the IHP+.  But I feel we are in a much stronger place than 6 months ago, and there is cause for optimism that this trend will continue during 2010.  We look forward to collaborating with IHP+ signatories over the coming months to realise this promise.

How is IHP+Results working with the OECD/DAC Task Team on Health as a Tracer Sector (TT HATS) and where does it add value to aid effectiveness in the health sector?  We have been asked this question by a number of IHP+ signatories over the past months as we have collected information on IHP+ performance.   As I will be attending a meeting of the TT HATS on Friday 16th October – representing IHP+Results, as a member of the Task Team – I thought it would be interesting and helpful to respond to these questions.

What is the TT HATS process?

The Task Team on Health as a Tracer Sector (TT HATS) was created in 2007 to report about progress in implementing the Paris Declaration in the health sector.   As a workstream of the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP EFF), the purpose of TT HATS is to:

• use a complex and fragmented sector such as health to deepen the aid effectiveness process and change behaviour in a set of interdependent activities and interventions;

• achieve further progress in health outcomes through more effective aid;

• offer the lessons from health to be used in other areas such as environment, agriculture, education and water.

The TT HATS will produce an interim report in November 2009, to cover activities that are expected to contribute to greater aid effectiveness in time to be assessed by the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2011.  The TT HATS approach is to give partner countries a prominent voice, to use the WP EFF structure and the interim report to promote solutions or to illustrate and promote more behaviour change at the country level, to formulate practical recommendations for decision makers, and to encourage further change across all sectors and areas of development policy and practice.

How IHP+Results and TT HATS are working together?

IHP+Results is a member of the Task Team on Health as a Tracer Sector.  This helps ensure that the work of IHP+Results is reflected in the workplan of the TT HATS, and that our activities are reported in the interim report.  It is also an important way to avoid duplication – it ensures that TT HATS is drawing on our work, and vice versa, as appropriate.  We have structured our work to facilitate the closest possible links with TT HATS – our Results Areas map directly onto the clusters of the WP  EFF.  At a strategic level, our membership of the TT HATS enables us to feed the work of IHP+Results into the aid effectiveness discourse, to reach a wider non-health audience, and to increase the influence and understanding of the IHP+ in the process.

There are differences. IHP+Results is focusing initially on a limited (10) set of IHP+ countries, and a limited set of IHP+ signatories.  The TT HATS report will cover a broader set of countries and partners.  IHP+Results principal audience is health experts, whereas the TT HATS is explicitly communicating to a wider readership than just health professionals.  TT HATS is interested in using the health sector to learn lessons on aid effectiveness, and IHP+Results is focused on strengthening accountability within the IHP+ through monitoring the implementation of commitments and actions made by IHP+ signatories to accelerate progress on health.  IHP+Results and TT HATS have similar aims of highlighting work that is going well, raising issues that require attention, making recommendations – but we have different opportunities and entry points to do this (the Ministerial Review for IHP+, and the High Level Forum (HLF4) for the TT HATS).  Furthermore, IHP+Results has a clear mandate to contribute to accountability through our tools and process, driving incrementally towards greater specificity and stronger mutual accountability at global and country levels.

The way forward, next steps

The meeting on Friday will discuss issues and emerging findings from the TT HATS interim report due to be published in November 2009.  It will provide an opportunity for Task Team members to think about potential new areas for work in 2010.  It will also provide an opportunity for me to reflect on how IHP+Results should continue to work in collaboration with the TT HATS process en route to HLF4 in 2011.  I will write a short update after the meeting, next week.