Pledges are not payments: international commitments should be tracked like budgets

Summits end with large numbers: billions pledged for aid, climate finance, reconstruction or health. Months later, it is surprisingly hard to find out how much has actually been paid, to whom, for what, and whether it is new money or relabelled old money.

We think international commitments should be tracked the way a household or a company tracks a budget. Each pledge should have a date, an amount, a currency, a recipient type, a delivery schedule and a status: promised, committed, disbursed, spent. Differences between the headline and the paid total should be easy for anyone to see.

The objection is that definitions are slippery: loans, guarantees and grants are different things and are sometimes counted together. That is exactly why a shared, public tracker with clear definitions is needed.

What would change our mind: evidence that existing trackers already let ordinary people follow a pledge from announcement to spending without specialist knowledge.

A good habit for readers: whenever you see a big pledge, ask what the payment status is.