Report urges donors to be more impartial in aid

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wealthy countries including the United States, Britain and France should show more impartiality in allocating humanitarian aid to alleviate disasters around the world, a report said on Wednesday.

The Humanitarian Response Index 2008, released by the international non-profit organization DARA (Development Assistance Research Associates), ranked 22 rich countries and the European Union on the effectiveness of their aid efforts.

The index combines quantitative data, such as the amount of aid given, with information gathered from 350 humanitarian organizations who were asked to rate donors on responding appropriately to needs, neutrality, working with aid groups and building local capacity in disaster areas.

The top three donor countries remained the same as in 2007 -- Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The lowest ranked donors were France, Austria, Italy, Portugal and Greece, which received generally poor evaluations from agencies in the field.

The United States was ranked 15 out of 23, pulled down by below-average scores for providing aid with "neutrality" and supporting long-term development. It also scored next-to-last, only ahead of Greece, for upholding international humanitarian law and human rights law, the report said.

Despite $8 billion invested in humanitarian relief intervention in 2007, wealthy nations do not always act in accordance with a set of humanitarian principles agreed in 2005, the report said.

"Today, more than ever, as the financial crisis threatens to reduce humanitarian funding, we must make sure that future humanitarian aid is distributed in the most effective manner possible," DARA's Executive Director Silvia Hidalgo said.

Wealthy countries should do more to help victims of disasters by providing aid impartially instead of according to political, economic or security agendas, the report found.

The report said the United States is the 13th most generous humanitarian donor in the group relative to its size, with bilateral humanitarian aid amounting to $2.9 billion in 2007.

"President-elect Barack Obama has expressed his desire to re-establish the United States' moral standing in the world," Hidalgo said in a statement.

"American leadership in the field of humanitarian relief would improve the perception that people around the world have of the United States and would also inspire other donor countries to do their best on behalf of the world's least fortunate."

(Editing by Daniel Trotta and David Wiessler)