Anyone who kicks around the aid business long enough will eventually learn to speak the right kind of language. You know you've made it when phrases like "community participation", "donor accountability" and "needs assessment" start tripping lightly off the tongue.

Two events this week offer proof, if any were needed, of how depressingly far we still are from understanding what this kind of language really means.

On Tuesday, the London-based aid think-tank, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) hosted the launch of a new book by development specialist Roger Riddell entitled "Does Foreign Aid Really Work?".

And on Thursday, the Geneva-based Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP) launched a set of standards offering a system of quality control and certification for aid agencies, aimed at addressing the chronic and woeful inconsistencies and inefficiencies of international humanitarian intervention.

On the one hand, one can only welcome further contributions to the ongoing global effort to run an equitable and fair aid system. On the other, one hangs one's head in exhaustion that we still get it all so very wrong.

"We must stop kidding ourselves that the current way of giving aid is good," said Riddell, whose recent appointments include a stint as International Director of Christian Aid. "There are huge, huge problems," he told the ODI audience at the launch of his book.

His impressive and comprehensive work names all the usual suspects. Official aid can destabilise the government of the country where it is spent, non-official aid is often wasted. Needs assessments are routinely poorly thought through. A lack of investment in preparing for disasters hamstrings attempts to respond to them.

Too many cooks...

He also takes a look at the untrammelled and largely uncoordinated proliferation of agencies and projects. A typical developing country will receive as many as 200 separate visiting aid missions each year, and there are at least 27,000 separate donor projects in the world. An enormous number of donors all imposing different conditions on recipient governments has added up to a cumbersome, inefficient and expensive way of doing things.

Most controversially, perhaps, he demolishes current methods of evaluating aid interventions, which he ascribes to the hopelessly inadequate data available in most poorer countries. Too much effort is put into "proving that aid works" as opposed to gaining a functional understanding of the countries where it's least likely to work.

The successes claimed by aid agencies and donors for their projects are largely short-term, he says, and take little account of longer term sustainability. "Far-reaching changes are needed," he said, to "narrow the gap between the rhetoric of what aid is meant to achieve and the reality of what it does".

So how would one go about doing that? Move from a voluntary to a compulsory system of managing aid flows, says Riddell; create an international development fund. This would be overseen by an international aid office, established by agreement of both donor and recipient countries, which would separate the process from short-term political interests of governments.

The office would then, in turn, oversee an aid implementation agency in the affected country, which would run assessments and distributions, based on a detailed and nuanced knowledge of the local environment.

Riddell was keen to emphasise this was just one suggestion, aimed more at kick-starting the debate than at presenting a definitive solution. The idea of a compulsory framework that would impose certain sorely needed efficiencies is indeed a compelling one.

But over in Geneva, the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP), is unlikely to agree.

To enforce or not to enforce

This week the inter-agency body launched the "HAP Standard in Humanitarian Accountability and Quality Management", a voluntary certification process that will provide a kind of kite-mark for aid organisations.

According to HAP Executive Director Nicholas Stockton, the idea of compulsory enforcement of standards for aid agencies is unrealistic, given the simple fact that agencies that work overseas are operating under different laws.

"It would be impossible to legislate with regard to organisations working outside a country's legal jurisdiction," said Stockton, who worked for Oxfam for 20 years.

"The reach of coercive processes is very limited." Not only that, he said, but statutory systems of licensing do not in themselves guarantee good practice.

Instead, HAP is proposing a "robust external audit process" whereby agencies submit themselves to a rigorous assessment based on a series of humanitarian principles and six key benchmarks. These include transparency, beneficiary participation and an efficient capacity to handle complaints from recipients.

HAP's 17 member agencies have signed up, and Stockton is hoping others will follow suit, driven by a desire to strengthen the quality of programming and - most importantly - to be recognised by donors and beneficiaries alike to be doing so.

Aid, he says, has been plagued by the tendency of agencies to build their reputations on the quality of their marketing - that's to say selling the suffering - as opposed to the quality of their programmes and the effectiveness of the humanitarian response itself.

HAP certification, he insists, could provide the impetus to focus on operational effectiveness by "putting donors in the position to make more informed decisions".

"Organisations are concerned with achieving better results. If (the standards) are strengthening the business process, organisations will welcome verification of their own commitments."

There have been several attempts at drawing up comprehensive guidelines for aid agencies. The Sphere Project, launched in 1997 by a group of non-governmental organisations and the Red Cross Movement, is a notable example. There have also been several moves towards a global aid regime along the lines suggested by Riddell, the United Nations' Central Emergency Response Fund being a case in point.

For all the endelss initiatives, however, consensus on what to do remains perilously elusive. And some things never change.

At the ODI book launch, it was intriguing to note the huge predominance of white faces in the room. A question from a Ugandan audience member on chronic trade imbalances between rich and poor countries was astonishingly ignored until the panel was reminded of it by one of the few other black faces in the room.

Western aid agencies, academics and government representatives can debate the inconsistencies of aid until the heavily malnourished cows come home. But not much is going to change until they start getting to grips with the hardest challenge of all. And that's called listening.

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