Et godt hjerte og støttekoncerter for Afrika er ikke nok: Bistandsgivere bør rådføre sig med de katastrofeofre, de samler penge ind til – det sker langt fra i dag, selv om det kunne hæve kvaliteten af verdens omfattende katastrofehjælp hvert år.
(FN-bureauet) IRIN’s latest In-Depth explores the issues around the growing demand for humanitarian accountability (ansvarlighed) – providing beneficiaries (modtagerne) with a voice, and returning some of their dignity.
AID POLICY: From Rwanda to Haiti – what progress on accountability?
DAKAR, 4 July 2012 (IRIN): The Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda (JEEAR), a 1996 review by governments and aid agencies into the humanitarian response to the 1994 genocide (folkedrab), highlighted poor coordination, low accountability to genocide survivors, and extensive reports of aid being directed to perpetrators of the violence – among other problems.
All this trowed aid agencies into a flurry of questioning and introspection (and which lead to the creation of IRIN).
It kick-started a drive towards better accountability throughout the sector, including higher programming standards, a better-skilled workforce, and stronger accountability to disaster-affected communities.
Out of JEEAR came mechanisms like the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership International (HAP-I), the Sphere Project to enhance accountability and quality standards in disaster response, People in Aid, and the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance (ALNAP) in Humanitarian Action.
Bringing aid back to the humanitarian principles
The growing emphasis on accountability was also linked to a sector-wide shift towards rights-based approaches to aid, bringing aid back to the humanitarian principles, and an effort to professionalize (and thus improve) management and strategy, said an October 2011 paper by the Humanitarian Practice Network of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a UK think-tank.
In the past 10 years agencies have realized they need to evaluate the impact of their work rather than simply focusing on the outlay (snarere se på, hvad der kommer ud af pengene, end hvor mange, der samles ind), and in an increasingly competitive industry, donors are now insisting on impact studies too.
Disaster survivors – and states – are also demanding greater accountabi-lity themselves. Information and communications technology allows disaster survivors to complain when things go wrong, to voice their prio-rity needs and to bridge the gap between funders and the communities.
Progress since then has been bitty (lille), but “critical mass” has now built up, says HAP interim head Robert Schofield, as actors ranging from UN agencies to small local NGOs realize they can no longer afford to sideline the issue.
“It feels like there is a critical mass that has moved it [accountability] beyond incremental (gradvis stigende) change to something more fundamental,” he told IRIN.
For Jacobo Quintanilla, director of humanitarian information projects at InterNews, an international NGO promoting local media, better commu-nication underpins four elements that are crucial to accountability – transparency, participation, monitoring and evaluation, and effective feedback.
Impact
Læs videre på http://www.irinnews.org/In-Depth/95780/97
Se også hele temaet “Are they listening? Aid and Humanitarian Accountability” på
http://www.irinnews.org/In-depth/95731/97/Are-they-listening-Aid-and-humanitarian-accountability
