Displaying items by tag: Standards

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. T. S. Eliot, The Rock There is no question that humanitarian organisations must be accountable, both in the sense of ‘giving account’ and ‘being answerable’ for the choices they make, the work they do and the resources they use. Nor is it debatable, given the often poor response to crises and the lack of transparency about results obtained, that far more accountability is needed. The issue is rather to whom, about what and for what…

This Network Paper discusses livelihoods-based livestock programming and its role in humanitarian emergency response. It highlights the importance of taking livelihood assets, in particular livestock, into account in responding to emergencies and describes how the Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS) Project has been developed to support this process. LEGS aims to promote the use of livelihood based livestock responses to emergencies, through building the capacity of humanitarian actors to plan and intervene appropriately. LEGS can also be used to assist in the evaluation of emergency responses by providing a framework and benchmark against which interventions can be reviewed. There…

Aid workers and analysts seeking to explain Somalia’s current humanitarian disaster are understandably preoccupied with the immediate and obvious – the combination of factors which has placed 2.5 million Somalis in urgent need of emergency relief. These include the displacement of between 500,000 and 700,000 civilians, caused by the heavy-handed Ethiopian military occupation; predatory attacks and crime by the Transitional Federal Government’s uncontrolled security forces; assassinations of civic leaders by an increasingly decentralised and violent jihadist movement; economic paralysis and hyperinflation; severe local drought; global spikes in food and fuel prices; and a highly dangerous, non-permissive environment for national and…

Humanitarian agencies, whose sole mandate is to save lives and ensure that those who require humanitarian assistance receive it, have been faced with tough choices during the past 17 years in Somalia. Somalia, one of the world’s longest ongoing humanitarian operations, has challenged how we operate, often forcing agencies to compromise principled action for the sake of delivering assistance at almost any cost. Somalis are suffering in frightening numbers but, even with relatively significant resources at their disposal, humanitarian workers are frequently unable to confirm that the majority of aid delivered is reaching the people who really need it. Rather,…

The debate regarding the protection role of non-mandated agencies in humanitarian responses is gradually producing some concrete answers. A recent HPG report recommends that ‘every humanitarian agency should incorporate a minimum commitment to protection into their work’. In a practical sense this should include the incorporation of protection considerations into all assessments and project interventions, and in theory many non-mandated agencies have recognised this as an essential component of humanitarian response programming. However, in practice the incorporation of protection considerations into agency programming remains ad hocand dependent on the knowledge and interest of individuals. The recent response to the post-election…

Conflicts and natural disasters take a heavy toll on education systems and deny generations the knowledge and opportunities that an education can provide. Of the 115 million primary-aged children not in school, one in three live in conflict-affected and fragile states. Millions more have no access to schooling because they live in areas affected by natural disasters. Although education is a basic human right, education in emergencies is only just beginning to be considered as a vital relief intervention. Education is often considered as a long-term development issue, and so struggles to be recognised as a critical area of emergency…

For accountability enthusiasts, Jan Egeland’s article ‘Humanitarian Accountability: Putting Principles into Practice’, published in Humanitarian Exchange in June 2005, promised much. Here was a good opportunity for the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator to show how the process of UN reform might enable international humanitarian action to become more accountable to ‘the peoples of the United Nations’, rather than just beholden to the very mixed company that is the governments of the UN’s member states. After all, OCHA must know as well as any institution that most humanitarian crises are provoked or exacerbated by bad governance, and that the most…

This article examines the Peer Review process set up by the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR) to look at how its members are seeking to address the problem of sexual abuse and exploitation of beneficiaries by agency staff. Eight of SCHR’s nine members have now gone through the process, and the first round of reviews will be finished in 2006. Agencies are in the process of implementing recommendations from their peers, and are starting to report back on the first year’s progress. Why Peer Review? Various methods for monitoring and improving quality and standards have been discussed within the…

The way in which humanitarian needs are defined and prioritised can mean the difference between life and death for millions of the world’s poorest people. It is, therefore, critical that donors and humanitarian organisations invest effort and resources to ensure that our understanding is as accurate as possible, and programmes are directed to those most in need. Responses to emergencies require a consistently accurate picture of the scale and nature of the problems people face. Decisions should be informed by that understanding. But until now there has been no system-wide framework for judging the relative severity of situations. This may…

The pages of Humanitarian Exchange and Disasters bear witness to the fact that the interaction between international military forces and aid workers has become a subject of great fascination. Amid the heated discussions of the issue, however, little attention has been paid to how local communities and vulnerable populations perceive their own security and survival prospects. These perceptions are the subject of recently concluded research contrasting local views of peace and security with the views of foreign troops and aid agencies. This article highlights the findings of the research, examines its reception to date and explores its implications for future…