From the sanctimonious world organization that called Western countries “stingy” in the aftermath of the southeast Asian tsunami disaster comes this unsurprising news via the Financial Times: “Little clarity on how aid gets spent.” The intro:

When Jan Egeland, the United Nations top disaster official, announced in March that PwC, the professional services firm, would help monitor the expenditure of funds collected under the UN’s $1.1bn tsunami “flash appeal” he offered a simple gauge for what would result. The new system, he said, would mean that “my aunt can go in and can see how her money for Unicef (the UN children’s fund) is being spent”.

Mr Egeland had good reasons for pledging transparency. UN officials cite Paul Volcker’s investigation into corruption in the UN’s oil-for-food programme, well under way when last December’s tsunami struck, as part of the impetus. So too was the sheer size of the outpouring from companies, governments, and individuals worldwide in response to the tsunami and the responsibilities that came with that.

Yet a year after the disaster Mr Egeland’s aunt would have a difficult time learning very much. Not unless, as a senior UN official puts it, Mr Egeland has a “very smart aunt”. Or, “she is very patient”, adds a senior official with a large aid agency. Mr Egeland contends only that nine months later his aunt “would be happy with a work in progress”.

A year after the tsunami, pledges of transparency and accountability for the UN’s appeal appear a long way from being realised. This is primarily blamed on duelling UN bureaucracies and accounting methods plus what in many cases appears to be institutional paranoia.

“The good news is that it’s the best [financial] tracking ever. The bad news is that it’s not good enough,” Mr Egeland conceded in an interview this week.

According to the UN’s publicly available figures, as of yesterday more than $635m (€530m, £360m) of the $1.1bn pledged had been spent on areas such as “food” ($152.6m), “co-ordination and support services” ($106.5m), “health” ($94.7m), and “shelter and non-food items” ($84.6m). What is harder to determine is how that money has actually been spent, according to a two-month investigation by the Financial Times.

Mr Egeland argues that procedures are changing. “In a few years from now there will be a whole different degree of openness,” he says. For the time being, however, there is no publicly accessible information detailing how much of the flash appeal - only a small portion of the more than $13bn raised for tsunami relief worldwide according to UN estimates - has gone to $10,000-a-month consultants or administrative overheads as opposed to the delivery of relief supplies, for example. The only way to get financial details of what in some cases are $100m projects with titles such as “emergency support for basic education” is to approach each of the 39 agencies listed in the appeal, UN officials say.

The FT approached many of those agencies. Some declined, or ignored, requests for information. Others offered incomplete or, as with the UN Environment Programme, “preliminary, unconfirmed and unofficial” expenditure data.

Information often took weeks to obtain. Mr Egeland’s own agency, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, had still to provide numbers at the time of going to press.

Why so stingy with the information? Ask the U.N. here.

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