Origins in Charter 99
The One World Trust's highly-regarded Global Accountability Project (GAP) was born out of CHARTER 99 and ran for a decade. It sought to bring greater levels of transparency and accountability to large and influential inter-governmental organisations (IGOs), transnational corporations (TNCs) and international non-governmental organisations, with the aim of enhancing their accountability to the individuals and communities they affect.
The Program Methodology
The pilot report published in 2003, ‘Power without accountability?’, was funded by the Ford Foundation, and evaluated the accountability of 18 organisations. A further report, 'Pathways to Accountability - the GAP framework', followed, which set out the formal methodology for evaluating the accountability of global organisations.
Global Accountability Reports
In 2006, the One World Trust produced the first full Global Accountability Report (GAR) on 30 major international organisations. For three years the GAR was produced on a new set of organisations comparing the accountability of ten international NGOs, ten intergovernmental organisations and ten transnational corporations using four criteria:
(1) Transparency: accessibility of information to internal and external stakeholders;
(2) Participation: active involvement of stakeholders and their ability to influence decision-making;
(3) Evaluation: Methods of self-evaluation to monitor performance and establish learning criteria for future planning;
(4) Complaint and response mechanisms: These criteria were refined over time. A selection of the key Global Accountability reports is available to download below.
The other key Global Accountability Reports are available to download below:
2006 GAP Paper
2007 GAP Paper
2008 GAP Paper
NGO/CSO Self-regulation
Some non-governmental or Civil Society organisations (known as NGOs or CSOs respectively) are huge and highly influential operations nowadays, acting as major suppliers of public services and wielding significant lobbying muscle on policy issues. Some have a turnover of billions of dollars a year and a global reach. As demands for transparency and accountability from NGOs have grown, something the One World Trust has championed, the sector's response has been a raft of self-regulation initiatives. The One World Trust spent several years researching this subject and producing a worldwide database - by 2010, the Trust’s database on worldwide self-regulation amongst CSOs featured over 350 initiatives, providing for the first time a clear picture of CSO self-regulation as a global phenomenon. Unfortunately the database is not currently available, but several of the key reports and briefing papers on this subject produced by the Trust are available via the following links:
The Role of NGO Self-Regulation in Increasing Stakeholder Accountability
NGO Self-Regulation - Enforcing and Balancing Accountability
Effective Accountability: The Drivers, Benefits and Mechanisms of CSO Self-Regulation
Building a Common Framework (Produced with World Vision)
Collective Accountability in Civil Society: The African Picture
CSO Self-Regulation: The Global Picture
Empowering Citizens: Service User Involvement in Self-Regulatory Initiatives
FAQs: CSO Self-Regulatory Initiatives
Accountability in different sectors
Following the Global Accountability Reports, the One World Trust undertook some specific sectoral accountability projects, addressing Research Organisations, Climate Change and Lobbying. Most of the key reports and papers from this body of work are available to download here.'The Accountability Principles for Policy-Oriented Research Organisations (APRO)' built on the working paper 'Who Do You Think You Work For?' and consisted of a 2008 Report, a toolkit and a framework and database guide.'Power, Equity and Accountability in Global Climate Change Governance' was an ESRC/DfID-funded research programme resulting from a partnership between the One World Trust and the London School of Tropical Hygiene. More information about this project can be found on the Global Climate Governance website.
Helping institutions directly improve their accountability & governance
As well as producing global transparency and accountability reports, the One World Trust has also worked directly with organisations to independently audit their accountability to their different stake-holders.
Previous Clients of the One World Trust Consultancy Include:
Amnesty International UK
Bond
British Red Cross BRC
Child Helpline International
Christian Aid
CIVICUS
Commonwealth Secretariat
Cordaid
DFID Afghanistan
Directorate-General Internal Policies of the Union, European Parliament
Disasters Emergency Committee
European Parliament
European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control
Free University, Otto-Suhr-Institut for Political Sciences
Habitat for Humanity
ICANN
Independent Evaluation Office, IMF
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
OECD-DAC
OSI Think Tank Fund
Oxfam GB - Horn, Eastern & Central Africa Regional Office
VOICE
World Vision International
An example of the One World Trust's consultancy work can be seen in ICANN Announcement and ICANN Accountability and Transparency Metrics and Benchmarks: Consultancy Report.
The One World Trust's ongoing work on climate change has centred around governance, starting with the bold initiative to develop an alternative to the UN climate change process, but also embracing a study of the facilitative process being applied as part of the implementation of the Paris Agreement - and a study on accountability within Climate Change related institutions.
Action for a Global Climate Community
In 2002, the One World Trust organised a Wilton Park meeting, leading to the Chanctonbury Initiative and subsequently the formation of the Action for a Global Climate Community (AGCC). This bold initiative sought to establish a global climate community, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that would commit to ambitious targets and a progressive approach to addressing climate change. Written evidence was provided to the UK parliamentary Select Committee on Environment to explain the project. In May 2008 the AGCC, together with partners including the European Environment Agency, organised a seminar to discuss cooperation between Europe and India on climate change and sustainable development. The Potsdam Seminar brought together 71 distinguished Indians and Europeans representing the highest levels of government, and explored issues of equity, emissions trading, financing development and institutional arrangements. A full summary of the Potsdam meeting is available here.
Realising Ambitions
With the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the close to universal ratification of that agreement by countries in record time – the world has a good foundation for a strong multilaterally based strategy to address climate change. Crucial for this strategy to work is that the commitment towards implementation remains strong and indeed increases over time. The One World Trust therefore initiated a research project in 2018 in partnership with Wageningen University and GLOBE to analyse how the 'ambition mechanism' of the Paris Agreement can work.
The core idea of the ambition mechanism is that every country shall reflect on the outcome of a global assessment of progress towards the agreement’s objectives every five years and use this as input to enhance their level of ambition if the assessment (referred to as the ‘global stocktake’) shows this is necessary.
The first output of this project was the policy brief that the One World Trust brought to COP24 in Katowice in December 2018 looking at how countries are preparing to enable the ambition mechanism. The brief also suggested measures both at national and international level that are key to making the ambition mechanism work.
The second output of the project was a story capturing key findings that were shared by project leader and the One World Trust Board of Trustee member Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen in the roundtable with Ministers on 11 December at COP24 as part of the final phase of the Talanoa Dialogue.
The project has since 2022 fed into a research project financed by the Norwegian Research Council and led by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen is a member of the international research team that follows the operationalisation of the first global stocktake that was finalised in December 2023 and its impact on national action. More information on the project
can be found here.
Accountability within Climate Change Governance (with LSHTM)
A joint project with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine focused on global and national organisations that play an important role in responding to climate change-induced threats to poverty alleviation and public health. The study examined how such organisations are preparing themselves institutionally to meet these challenges. You can see details of this work on the Global Climate Governance website.
The One World Trust, a 'critical friend' of the UN
The founders of the One World Trust felt sure there was a better way to manage global affairs to ensure peace and prosperity for all the citizens of the planet. We strongly support the UN, but we do not believe that it is currently designed to make and effectively implement the decisions that the world needs to make for the future of humanity, for example, to meet the crises around climate and environment. To create more effective and accountable global governance, we support the appeal for the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) and are bringing the UNPA campaign to the UK.
Improving Global Democracy
International Justice and the ICC
Responsibility to Protect
Improving Transparency in the selection of the UN Secretary-General
Global Challenges Prize: A New Shape
The Global Challenges Foundation launched the Global Challenges Prize 2017: A New Shape. This competition was a quest to find new models of global cooperation capable of handling global risks. It sought to bring forward the best ideas that re-envision global governance for the 21st century. The One World Trust submission, entitled A World that Works for Everyone did not win the prize, but it shares a number of ideas with the most substantive of the winning entries.
Global Challenges Prize: A New Shape
