Humanitarian agencies have become more aware of the risks of corruption in aid programmes and have taken steps to deal with them in the past few years, a new report has found.

“Noble ambitions do not immunise the business of aid delivery during crises from corrupt abuse,” warns the two year study by three organisations working in this area, the Overseas Development Institute, the Feinstein International Center, and Transparency International. They monitored perceptions of corruption among staff at all levels of seven well known aid agencies working in seven different countries. Emergency health care, food aid, and procurement were seen as areas at particularly high risk of abuse.

The analysis found that agencies now have …