OCHA on Message: Accountability to Affected People

What is Accountability to Affected People (AAP)?

As humanitarians, our primary responsibility is to people affected by crisis.

An accountable humanitarian system, where decision -making power is in the hands of those affected by crisis, is central to effective humanitarian action. It requires humanitarians to recognize people - women, girls, men, boys of all ages and in all their diversity, as the first responders and active agents in their own relief and recovery.

Through AAP, humanitarians aim to ensure that humanitarian action protects and preserves the rights and dignity of people affected by crises, remains relevant and effective, leaves no one behind and upholds humanitarian principles.

AAP is a way to measure the collective performance of humanitarian leaders. How we respond to feedback, adapt programmes and how affected people experience and perceive humanitarian work is the most relevant measure of performance. Better engagement with communities is also a way we build trust and acceptance which enhances programming and the impact of our work.

To enable this, affected people must be empowered to guide and fully participate in humanitarian action. Humanitarians must engage affected people in decision -making and the design of humanitarian programmes and consistently act on their feedback to deliver a community -led, relevant, dignified and timely response.

Community engagement is a way of working that recognizes and values community members as equal partners.

It is the continuous interaction between organizations and crisis -affected people and communities for mutual social and organizational outcomes. In humanitarian action, this includes working with affected people to meet their different needs, priorities and preferences, address their vulnerabilities, risks and threats, build on pre -existing capacities and drive informed action. We do this through:

• Systematically sharing timely, relevant and actionable information with communities.

• Supporting the meaningful participation and leadership of affected people, including those of all gender, age, disability status and other diversities in decision -making.

• Ensuring feedback systems are in place to enable communities to assess and comment on the performance of humanitarian action, including on sensitive matters such as sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), fraud, corruption and racism and discrimination.

What does OCHA say?

OCHA is committed to meeting organizational and collective commitments as defined by the Inter - Agency Standing Committee (IASC ) and as outlined in the OCHA 2023 -2026 Strategic Plan. These include policies and guidance that set standards on AAP, protection, inclusion, localisation and PSEA. Under these commitments and standards, aid organizations are expected to strengthen coordinated community engagement. OCHA is dedicated to supporting Humanitarian Country Teams (HCTs) to meet their commitment of collective AAP as mandated in the IASC HCT Terms of Reference.

1.Leadership.

Ensure a coherent response that is peoplecentered, context specific and contributes to community resilience. Planning, programming, coordination and financing should focus on community priorities and support local responses. Community engagement should inform response-wide analysis, planning, and monitoring to trigger responses that are clearly centered around affected people. Ensure this is resourced including dedicated coordination and information management capacity for AAP.

2.Participation and partnership.

Agency mechanisms identify and maintain equal partnerships with local actors that enable people of all gender, age, disability, and displacement status, and other diversities, to drive decisions that affect their own lives, well-being, dignity and protection and ensure that responses are lean and tailored to the context and build upon the capacities of affected populations.

3.Information, feedback, and action.

Adopt agency mechanisms that support collective and participatory approaches that inform and listen to communities, address feedback and lead to corrective action. Recognize that information is a critical component of the response. Information from agency-specific community engagement should systematically influence the collective response.

4.Results.

The planning process should consider key metrics such as overall response performance on AAP and ensure that this is built into planning and monitoring processes by, for example, implementing the IASC Collective AAP Framework and using the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability.