Written question asked by David Anderson (Labour) on Friday, 16 March 2012, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 20 March 2012. It was answered by Andrew Mitchell (Conservative) on Friday, 23 March 2012 on behalf of the Department for International Development.

Ethiopia: Human Rights

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development whether he has made an assessment of recent allegations made by Human Rights Watch that UK aid to Ethiopia is not closely monitored at field level by the donor community.

Answer: We assess that UK Aid in Ethiopia is well spent and closely monitored at the field level. The UK employs a range of mechanisms to monitor the effectiveness of UK aid to Ethiopia and to ensure that we get maximum impact from every pound of taxpayers' money. These include regular field visits, audits and evaluation, financial and performance reports. We are also investing in national surveys to tell us more about citizens' experiences of local service delivery to supplement Government's own administrative sources. Ministers regularly raise human rights matters with the Government of Ethiopia. I raised this personally with PM Meles at Davos and in Addis in January, and with Minister Tedros in March 2012. And we will continue to review the situation on the ground. My most recent meeting with Jan Egeland (executive director) from Human Rights Watch was on 22 March 2012.

Secondary information