History
The principle of humanitarian accountability can be traced at least as far back as 1859 when the young Swiss traveller, Henry Dunant, found himself caught up in one of the most horrific battles of Nineteenth Century Europe. Dunant witnessed many acts of kindness amidst the harrowing scenes at Solferino. However, he also observed that misguided compassion can do more harm than good, and worse still, that the most vulnerable can be cruelly exploited by people apparently ‘there to help’.
Lessons from Rwanda
Even though Dunant recorded these observations over 150 years ago, he might equally have been describing a contemporary disaster relief operation. The 1994 Rwanda genocide was a horrible reminder of the consequences of ‘helping power’ gone wrong. The ineffectiveness of international actors in preventing and responding to the genocide dramatized the harm humanitarians could cause by failing to deliver on their promises of assistance and protection.
The Rwanda report
The Joint Evaluation on the International Response to the Genocide recommended that agencies strengthen their systems for improving accountability to recipients of assistance. In the view of the evaluation team, this commitment meant establishing mechanisms for consultation with people affected by humanitarian emergencies. Beneficiaries themselves need a respected, independent organisation or network of organisations to act on their behalf and a person or body to hear their concerns about assistance or security i.e. a humanitarian ombudsman.
The Humanitarian Ombudsman Project
The idea of a 'humanitarian ombudsman' initially appealed to humanitarian agencies. However, it was unclear who should assume this role. The UN, the original choice, excluded itself from consideration and discussions about accountability to beneficiaries also proved controversial within the NGO networks, Sphere and ALNAP.
Eventually a separate project was created from Sphere to examine the concept further. Sometimes represented as a ‘humanitarian claimants union’, set on facilitating hostile litigation against international humanitarian agencies, the "Humanitarian Ombudsman Project" was in fact no more than a research project into the applicability of ‘ombudsman’ systems in humanitarian situations. After two years, it recognized that an international humanitarian ombudsman was not a realistic approach to accountability problems in the international humanitarian sector. ‘Ombudsman’ systems, it was concluded, were only effective in societies with well-established public services and fair, effective and accessible judicial systems.
The Humanitarian Accountability Project
Nonetheless, agencies remained aware of the accountability ‘gap’ in humanitarian situations. The Humanitarian Accountability Project was created to identify, test and recommend alternative approaches to accountability. From 2001 to 2003, some seventy staff and consultants conducted field operations in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Cambodia, undertook five research projects and engaged in a variety of advocacy activities on accountability. To read reports and findings from these field operations go the Accountability trials page.
From Project to Partnership
The main conclusions to emerge from the action research phase was that humanitarian accountability could best be strengthened and implemented through the creation of a strong international self-regulatory body, able to insist on monitoring and compliance, while providing strategic and technical support to member agencies. This recommendation was endorsed by the Chief Executive Officers of fourteen humanitarian agencies in January 2003.
Principles to practice
The Humanitarian Accountability Partnership was officially registered in Geneva, Switzerland, in March 2003, with the purpose of "achieving and promoting the highest principles of accountability through self-regulation by members …". HAP’s seven basic rules for accountability have gained considerable acceptance in the humanitarian community and were the basis for the HAP Standard in Humanitarian Accountability and Quality Management. The creation of the Standard and the complementary system for certification, means that it is now possible for humanitarian agencies to demonstrate their compliance with proven good practices in humanitarian work.
