Attachments
Despite long-standing, system-wide commitments and activity, progress on accountability outcomes for people affected by crisis continues to be underwhelming.
The ‘participation revolution’ promised by the Grand Bargain has not materialised and despite years of accountability to affected people being at the forefront of the humanitarian discourse, the needle has hardly moved when it comes to on the ground results. Community members who have provided feedback, but have seen no resultant change, are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the humanitarian system.
The stagnation raises questions about whether the system is tackling accountability in the wrong way, at the wrong level, and whether the aid sector should adjust its expectations of what is possible given its current configuration.
At a time when the humanitarian system is stretched like never before, with donors and agencies forced to make tough choices over where and who gets assistance, some are questioning whether resources should continue to be spent on community engagement and accountability mechanisms when pressure to focus on ‘lifesaving’ activities is growing.
As donors and agencies are forced to prioritise, will they include affected people in targeting decisions? What happens when their opinions differ from donors and others in the aid system?
Ultimately, the fundamentals of aid have not changed along with the calls for greater accountability. Feedback mechanisms – widely seen as the instrument for making aid more accountable – are prolific at this point, but they only go so far in making aid more responsive and in line with people’s expressed priority needs.
Recent data from Ground Truth Solutions finds that even if people were satisfied with the response they received from a feedback mechanism, this ultimately did not improve how they felt overall about the relevance or usefulness of the aid they received. In other words, these mechanisms may address local concerns, but ultimately don’t touch the underlying nature of the aid system.
The humanitarian system does well in addressing short-term needs, but struggles to deliver the longerterm solutions that people affected by crisis repeatedly request.
Without shifts of this nature, the system could continue to spin its wheels on delivering a truly accountable response. That said, a few promising practices – taken on by individual organisations – have begun to emerge. They may not be on the scale of a revolution, but could result in smaller, yet more substantial shifts for people in crisis.
The evidence on accountability points to strikingly poor progress, despite its prominence on the humanitarian agenda for decades. The proliferation of formal approaches – frameworks, technical working groups, guidelines – have had limited impact for people on the ground.
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A recent global analysis by Ground Truth Solutions found that while the majority of crisis affected people want communities to have a say on aid provision, only 36% of respondents in DRC and CAR felt they could influence the humanitarian response.
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The latest CHS 2022 Humanitarian Accountability Report found specific commitments related to accountability were among the lowest scoring of the nine commitments.
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Recent multi-agency evaluations of key responses also indicate poor progress in supporting accountability, including the inter-agency COVID-19 evaluation and the Disasters and Emergency Committee’s real time evaluation of the Ukraine response.