The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness expresses the international community’s consensus on the direction for reforming aid delivery and management to achieve improved effectiveness and results. It is based on five mutually reinforcing principles (More information is available here):

Ownership: Partner countries exercise effective leadership over their development policies and strategies, and coordinate development actions.

Alignment: Donors base their overall support on partner countries’ national development strategies, institutions, and procedures. 

Harmonization: Donors’ actions are more harmonized, transparent, and collectively effective.

Managing for results: Managing resources and improving decision making for development results.

Mutual accountability: Donors and partners are accountable for development results.

Source: http://www.oecd.org

The international community organizes high level meetings to monitor progress. The third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness was hosted by the Government of Ghana in Accra, 2-4 September 2008.  More information is available here.