Accountability and managing for results, accountability to whom? Who hold whom accountable? accountability to whom? Who hold whom accountable?

Each principle of the Paris Declaration is separately and mutually important to achieving the effective use of aid to produce actual results on the ground. Mutual accountability is a significant mechanism through which donors and partner governments commit to being responsible for development results. However, ‘accountability’ can mean many things in different contexts and it is important to define it; a key question is always ‘accountability to whom?’ For example, the donors themselves are accountable to their own parliaments and citizens on the use of their money. On the other hand, the recipient governments are required to be accountable to the donors for the fund and project or program implementation. What can be our understanding of the ‘mutual accountability’ in aid referred to in the Paris Declaration? The focus here is not so much on who is accountable to whom. The Declaration calls for both the “donors and partner governments to mutually account for development results.” Therefore, rather than being accountable to someone, it is understood that the donors and partners are meant to hold each other accountable for something – in this case, the delivery of aid.