A/HRC/10/5 page 19 by independent bodies.52 Apart from providing donor countries and partner countries with a focal point for the performance of joint assessments, this could significantly enhance accountability of both donors and recipient Governments to the national parliaments and civil society organizations in the recipient countries, ensuring the involvement of these actors in the assessment itself, and encouraging the launching of a public debate about the results of the evaluation. Thus, such assessments would allow citizens of developing countries to hold their Governments and donor States to account for the impact of development cooperation, and for the use of aid. B. Evaluating the effectiveness of food aid 39. Article XIII (h) of the FAC provides that “Members shall endeavour to carry out joint evaluations of their food aid programmes and operations … based on agreed international principles.” This suggests the need for the Food Aid Committee to transform itself into a learning forum, in which States parties, together with the recipient States and non-governmental organizations, could on a regular basis assess the effectiveness of food aid both in responding to emergency situations and in enhancing the long-term food security of the country concerned. It also points to the usefulness of basing such evaluations on objective and internationally agreed criteria. Although the FAC refers to the use of indicators “such as the nutritional status of the beneficiaries and other indicators related to world food security”, at least for those Members’ monitoring the impact of the food aid they provide (art. XIII (j)), a reference to the normative components of the human right to adequate food would be most appropriate. Those components are well recognized and provide an objective benchmark, including a well-established set of indicators, on the basis of which the effectiveness of food aid could be assessed. 40. Although the FAC defines the composition of the Food Aid Committee as including all the Parties to the FAC, it does not exclude the organization of regular meetings between the members of the FAC on the one hand, and the recipient countries or their representatives as well as non-governmental organizations active in the field of food aid,53 on the other hand. Such meetings could encourage mutual learning, on the basis of an exchange of experiences about the successes or failures of food aid in different contexts. They could enhance mutual accountability - of donors towards recipients, who must receive aid in more predictable ways in the future, of recipients towards donors, who must ensure that the food aid they receive is used in accordance with appropriate national strategies, and of both donors and recipients towards the beneficiaries of aid, whose concerns non-governmental organizations may be in a position to convey. They could also contribute to more transparency, allowing in turn both national and international monitoring mechanisms to better supervise whether the States concerned comply with the requirements of the right to food in the provision, delivery, and management of food aid. 52 House of Commons, United Kingdom, International Development Committee, Working Together to Make Aid More Effective, Ninth Report of Session 20078, HC 520-1, 17 July 2008, paras. 73-74. 53 These NGOs already form a coalition through the Trans-Atlantic Food Aid Policy Dialogue (TAFAD).