FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about HAP:

What is accountability?
What is humanitarian accountability?
What are the benefits to my organisation of being a member of HAP?
What makes a humanitarian project accountable?
Is it okay for relief workers to be less accountable during acute emergencies?
Why be accountable to beneficiaries only?
To whom should my organisation be most accountable?
How can my organisation become accountable?
What implications does my organisation's commitment to accountability have for our partners?
What does HAP do?
Who is HAP accountable to?
What’s the background of HAP?
What are the HAP Standard Principles?
What is the difference between HAP, ALNAP and the Sphere Project?
What is the link between accountability and transparency?
What is the point of your research? Isn’t accountability a good thing anyway?
Do we need more standards in the humanitarian sector?
What is compliance and accreditation, and why is HAP advocating for that?
Why a Standard on Accountability and Quality Management?

1. What is accountability?

Accountability is about using power responsibly. HAP’s definition of accountability goes beyond an exclusive focus on the process or duty to report. It involves taking account of the needs, concerns, capacities and disposition of affected parties, and explaining the meaning of, and reasons for, actions and decisions. Accountability is therefore also about the right to be heard and the duty to respond. The HAP definition of accountability thus involves three process domains:

Processes through which individuals, organizations and states determine their decisions and actions.
Processes by which individuals, organizations and states report upon and explain their decisions and actions.
Processes through which individuals, organisations and states may safely report concerns arising from the decisions and actions of others, and gain redress as and where appropriate.

To be "accountable" therefore requires responsible and considerate behaviour within all three of these domains.

2. What is humanitarian accountability?

Because humanitarianism is founded upon the fundamental principle of human dignity and solidarity, the idea of Humanitarian accountability should by definition be intrinsic and inseparable from all "humanitarian" work. It should be obvious that to undertake relief work without first consulting the intended beneficiaries is to deny disaster survivors a voice and, paradoxically, to treat people as if they were the objects of veterinary work rather than the subjects of humanitarian action. Arguably, if emergency relief is planned and implemented in a manner that does not respect the views, capacities and disposition of disaster survivors, it can better be described as "charitable" rather than "humanitarian" in nature. Sadly however, many international aid agencies still tend towards servicing the accountability needs of those in power rather than those in need.

3. What are the benefits to my organisation of being a member of HAP?

Membership of HAP means participation in the humanitarian community’s foremost independent self-regulatory body.
Peer support for improving your organisation’s accountability practices and operational cost-effectiveness in new emergencies.
Peer review of your organisation’s accountability practices.
Learning from and participation in HAP’s action research programme.
Access to HAP’s collective complaints-handling mechanism.
Participation in the design and testing of HAP’s quality assurance certification scheme.
Enhanced public standing and credibility.
The satisfaction of knowing that your organisation is playing an important leadership role in humanitarian reform.

4. What makes a humanitarian project accountable?

This is a bit like asking "how long is piece of string?". At it's most basic level, an accountable humanitarian project will have been the subject of early consultation with its intended beneficiaries, will have publicised beneficiary entitlement criteria, and will provide a safe and accessible mechanism for complaints handling. A more advanced form of accountability will involve learning and continuous improvement. Like all "quality management" approaches, humanitarian accountability has costs as well as benefits, and the higher the proportion of a project's resources are devoted to improving accountability, the closer that project will get to a point where diminishing returns on effort expended upon accountability will set in. HAP recommends an optimal rather than a maximal effort, where the resources devoted to accountability and quality management can be justified in terms of humanitarian results. We think that very few organisations have yet achieved such an optimum and thus considerable humanitarian gains have still to be made through increasing the accountability and quality management quotient of most relief projects.

5. Is it okay for relief workers to be less accountable during acute emergencies? After all they are busy saving lives.

If being accountable means making a dedicated effort to manage the quality of humanitarian action through ensuring that due account is taken of the needs, capacities, perspectives and actual circumstances of the intended beneficiaries; then the answer must be an emphatic "No!” Good intentions alone are an insufficient basis for designing effective humanitarian operations. The earliest possible consultation with disaster-affected people will generate the greatest benefits in terms of improved humanitarian outcomes, and conversely, the longer that agencies postpone such consultation, the greater the quotient of waste and inefficiency in their work. But, as well as the cost-effectiveness of humanitarian action being at stake, so too is the dignity of disaster survivors, and relief work that treats them as little more than objects to be fed, watered and housed, scarcely deserves to be described as humanitarian.

6. Why be accountable to beneficiaries only?

HAP believes that our partner agencies should be held to account by all their stakeholders, including donors, staff and relevant authorities. However, because disaster survivors are typically amongst the least able to demand accountability, our partnership is founded upon the belief that the members must make an especially concerted and conscious effort to be accountable to their intended beneficiaries. HAP does not advocate that humanitarian agencies ignore the legitimate interests of others, but rather that they first attempt to ensure that due account is taken of the needs, capacities and actual circumstances of the intended beneficiaries. They are, after all, the "principals" for whom humanitarian action is designed to serve.

7. To whom should my organisation be most accountable?

HAP believes that in general organisations should be accountable to all their stakeholders, although especial attention needs to be given to people and groups with little or no political power or influence in the governance of your organisation. Most disaster survivors will qualify for special attention on these grounds alone. Particular groups of disaster survivors; people with disabilities, older people, young children, women, members of political, ethnic or religious minorities; will often be visible in media images (at least in higher profile emergencies) but paradoxically become politically invisible and without a voice in the processes that plan, allocate and coordinate emergency relief, unless that is, the agencies themselves ensure that they are consulted. HAP believes that consultation with intended beneficiaries (or, in very special cases with their representatives) is a fundamental characteristic of genuine humanitarian action, on the grounds that people whose lives may literally depend upon an agency´s decisions and actions, must surely have the chance to offer their informed consent at least to those elements of that organisation´s operations that may have a direct impact upon their welfare and safety, and indeed, upon their prospects for survival.

8. How can my organisation become accountable?

Although it is quite easy to identify and formally commit to codes, principles and standards, truly accountable organisations can achieve this status without such formalities. An agency that is built upon and that nurtures a "culture of accountability" will, through experience and common sense, place a high value on the views and capacities of its stakeholders, especially those with little or no formal power. As a consequence, it will listen to, learn from and explain its intentions and its performance to all those significantly affected by its actions. Smaller organisations perhaps find this easier to do without external support, while larger more complex agencies may require a more formalised approach, such as that being pioneered by the HAP 2010 Standard in Accountability & Quality Management.

9. What implications does my organisation's commitment to accountability have for our partners?

HAP has adopted a definition of humanitarian partnership that focuses upon the existence of a mutually beneficial relationship and common objectives. The HAP Standard defines humanitarian partnership as ‘a relationship of mutual respect between autonomous organisations that is founded upon a common purpose with defined expectations and responsibilities. Partners can be small, community-based organisations or large national or international institutions. A humanitarian partnership is one in which two or more bodies agree to combine their resources to provide essential goods or services for disaster survivors.

As partners are autonomous and are not themselves being held to the commitments to the HAP Standard they are not expected to be in compliance with the HAP Standard benchmarks and requirements. However, it is expected that HAP members will inform their partners of what standards, codes and guidelines they have signed up to and whether any of these have direct or indirect impact on the partner.

10. What does HAP do?

HAP was established in 2003 as an independent self-regulatory body designed to define, research, promote and support good practices of accountability, and to accredit its members accordingly. We do this through building the capacity of our members, especially in new emergency situations; through the identification of affordable good practices of accountability; through monitoring the compliance of our members with the HAP Standard; through reviewing complaints made against humanitarian agencies; and through a system of quality assurance certification.

11. Who is HAP accountable to?

As a Swiss association, HAP is formally accountable to its General Assembly, consisting of members and associate members. More particularly, the Secretariat is accountable to the Board appointed by General Assembly. HAP is not a "humanitarian claimants union", and it does not pretend that it "represents" the intended beneficiaries of humanitarian action. However, through its complaints-handling mechanism, through the independent members of the HAP Board, and through the full members of HAP, the Partnership is also indirectly accountable to disaster-affected people.

12. What’s the background of HAP?

The origins of HAP go back to the Joint Evaluation of the International Response to the Genocide in Rwanda. This seminal study included the following recommendations:

Systems for improving accountability need to be strengthened ....... The Red Cross/NGO Code of Conduct commits signatories to "hold ourselves accountable to both those we seek to assist and those from whom we accept resources". Full implementation of this commitment would entail establishment of NGO mechanisms for consultation with people affected by humanitarian emergencies......
Establish a unit in UN/DHA that would ..... serve as ombudsman to which any party can express a concern related to the provision of assistance or security
Identify a respected, independent organisation or network of organisations to act on behalf of beneficiaries of humanitarian assistance

Shortly after its publication in 1996 it became clear that the UN was unwilling (probably because it was also unable) to act as a "humanitarian ombudsman", and thus it was left to the NGO community to and thus it was left to the NGO community to explore alternative approaches. Various attempts were made to interpret, develop and implement the recommendations of the Joint Evaluation, most prominent of which are the Sphere Project and ALNAP. However, within the Sphere Project the discussion about how to strengthen accountability to beneficiaries generated considerable controversy and eventually a seperate inter-agency project was set up in 1998 to examine the feasibility of this particular concept, under the rather misleadingly named "Humanitarian Ombudsman Project", hosted by the British Red Cross. This initiative has often been (mis)represented as an attempt to create a "humanitarian claimants union", with the objective of facilitating hostile litigation against international humanitarian agencies. In fact the Humanitarian Ombudsman Project was nothing more than a research project designed to examine the applicability of "ombudsman" systems within the humanitarian domain.

At an international conference in Geneva in March 2000 to review the findings of the Ombudsman project, it was recognized that an international Humanitarian Ombudsman was not be the best approach possible to tackle accountability problems. Thus the Humanitarian Accountability Project was born to identify, test and recommend a variety of accountability approaches and mechanisms.

From 2001 to 2003, some seventy staff and consultants conducted field operations in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Cambodia, undertaking five research projects, and engaging in a variety of advocacy activities on accountability.

A fundamental conclusion to emerge from the pilot phase was that accountability would best be strengthened and implemented through the creation of a strong international self-regulatory body that would insist on monitoring and compliance, while providing strategic and technical support to member agencies. The Chief Executive Officers of fourteen humanitarian agencies endorsed this recommendation in January 2003. HAP was officially registered in Geneva, Switzerland, in March of that year, although it only formally came into existence in December 2003 when the first HAP General Assembly met and elected the first HAP Board. HAP International thus became the humanitarian sector´s first international self-regulatory body.

*Borton J. et al, The International Response to Conflict and Geneocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience - Humanitarian Aid and Effects. (1996) Copenhagen

13. What are the HAP Standard Principles?

Humanity: concern for human welfare and respect for the individual.
Impartiality: providing humanitarian assistance in proportion to need, and giving priority to the most urgent needs, without discrimination (including that based upon gender, age, race, disability, ethnic background, nationality or political, religious, cultural or organisational affiliation).
Neutrality: aiming only to meet human needs and refraining from taking sides in hostilities or giving material or political support to parties to an armed conflict.
Independence: acting only under the authority of the organisation's governing body and in line with the organisation's purpose.
Participation and informed consent: listening and responding to feedback from crisis-affected people when planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating programmes, and making sure that crisis-affected people understand and agree with the proposed humanitarian action and are aware of its implications.
Duty of care: meeting recognised minimum standards for the well-being of crisis-affected people, and paying proper attention to their safety and the safety of staff.
Witness: reporting when the actions of others have a negative effect on the well-being of people in need of humanitarian assistance or protection.
Offer redress: enabling crisis-affected people and staff to raise complaints, and responding with appropriate action.
Transparency: being honest and open in communications and sharing relevant information, in an appropriate form, with crisis-affected people and other stakeholders.
Complementarity: working as a responsible member of the aid community, co-ordinating with others to promote accountability to, and coherence for, crisis-affected people.

14. What is the difference between HAP, ALNAP, the Sphere Project and other similar initiatives?

Although there are some institutional differences we would like to focus on the qualities the initiatives have in common. In 2009 the Sphere Project took the lead in highlighting these common traits and detailed how the initiaitives work together in a paper called Taking the Initiative.

HAP is a formal partnership of member agencies with a shared obligation to comply with the HAP Principles and a common commitment to compliance monitoring and accreditation. The Secretariat of HAP is registered in Switzerland as an independent association, governed by a legally constituted Board and General Assembly.

Sphere is an inter-agency humanitarian standards development initiative hosted by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. ALNAP is an inter-agency learning initiative hosted by the ODI, mainly concerned with promoting good practices of evaluation.

HAP meets regularly with Sphere, ALNAP, People in Aid, Coordination Sud, the ECB Project and Groupe URD. Minutes of these meetings and a jointly authored FAQ about these "quality and accountability initiatives" can be found on the websites of all these agencies and by going directly to the the Quality and Accountability Initiatives page of our website.

15. What is the link between accountability and transparency?

Transparency is an essential condition for accountability, but alone it is an insufficient one. Transparency is achieved through allowing public scrutiny of policies and practices. An organisation that says, "this is what we are, take it or leave it", will rate high on transparency, but low on accountability overall, since this posture means that it is unwilling (and perhaps unable) to "take account of" the legitimate concerns of its customers, clients or beneficiaries.

For more information, visit our member website: Transparency International

16. What is the point of your research? Isn’t accountability a good thing anyway?

At first glance, the answer appears to be yes. But like every business model, there is a balance between time and resources spent on accountability and getting the job done safely and efficiently for all involved. At HAP, we call this the ‘humanitarian business case’.

The ‘humanitarian business case’ examines this balance from three perspectives: 1) beneficiaries, 2) aid agencies, and 3) aid workers.

To do this, HAP Research performs three types of research:

HAP Research carries out small research projects (either desk studies or through member agencies) to collect good practice and analyze the less resource intensive aspects of this issue.
HAP Research commissions research projects to consultants, individuals researchers, members, research institutions, or through cooperative arrangements with other initiatives.
HAP Research acts as a support function to the program areas of HAP, carrying out their required research when necessary.

Visit the research pages or send an e-mail to the HAP Researcher.

17. Do we need more standards in the humanitarian sector?

The last 15 years have seen the development of a number of guidelines, technical benchmarking, codes of conduct and principles of good practices within the humanitarian aid sector. These have all been timely and born out of a real need to ensure that when implementing disaster response projects, higher standards are aimed for and met.

However, as necessary as these standards are, they are not as yet firmly anchored in quality management and accountability to beneficiaries.

We must have an overall set of practical and verifiable standards (good practices) linked to robust indicators that measure accountability to beneficiaries.

For more information, visit the 2010 Standard pages

18. What is compliance and accreditation, and why is HAP advocating for that?

Some definitions:

Accreditation: the formal recognition by a specialized body - an accreditation body - that a certification body is competent to carry out certification in specified business sectors. Accreditation is like certification of the certification body. An accrediting body, agency, or association is a non-governmental entity that sets standards for accreditation, administers the process of accreditation, and provides assistance, as it is able, to institutions, programmes, and the general public. Accreditation is a process by which an institution periodically evaluates its work and seeks an independent judgement by peers that it achieves substantially its own objectives and meets the established standards of the body from which it seeks accreditation.
Certification: the issuing of written assurance (the certificate) by an independent, external body that has audited an organization´s management system and verified that it conforms to the requirements specified in the standard. Certificates issued by accredited certification bodies - and known as "accredited certificates" - may be perceived on the market as having increased credibility.
Registration: adding the name of an organisation to a recognised list of certified agencies. The organization´s management system has therefore been both certified and registered.
Compliance: when agencies voluntarily observe and perform according to accepted standards.

A reliable, robust and accessible accreditation system will:

Create incentives for improving the quality, effectiveness and accountability to beneficiaries of the humanitarian work of certified agencies;
Confirm that a reasonable level of compliance with the HAP Standard Principles is being achieved by certified agencies;
Provide a framework for recognising and rewarding agency staff that implement the HAP Standard Principles;
Ensure learning and continuous improvement within certified agencies;
Enhance the credibility of certified agencies;
Protect certified members against harmful internal and external pressures;
Enable donors (private as well as official) to make more informed choices.

As HAP grows, it must develop and promote incentives for greater accountability to beneficiaries. An accessible and robust accreditation system is probably the most powerful tool that could be deployed for this purpose.

19. Why a Standard on Accountability and Quality Management?

Non-government organizations exercise significant power in humanitarian crisis through their control over essential goods and services, such as food, medical aid and shelter. However, until recently, the "helping power" of emergency relief agencies has been fairly unregulated as few organizations formalized procedures to allow crisis-affected communities to participate in decisions about services or complain about poor practices.

UN and NGO agencies became acutely aware of their lack of accountability after the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Over the next 10 years, they worked together on various initiatives directed at remedying the so-called 'accountability deficit' in humanitarian action. One of those initiatives eventually became HAP. Read more about HAP history.

Immediately following its launch in 2003, HAP set about developing a set of Principles of Accountability. These summarized - for the first time - core elements of good practice in accountability in humanitarian situations.

Based on the Principles of Accountability alone, agencies were not able to demonstrate the quality and accountability of their humanitarian action. Therefore, HAP members asked the Secretariat in 2005 to develop a set of benchmarks and indicators for accountability and quality management in humanitarian work. HAP did so, consulting over two years with disaster-affected communities and staff from over 120 organisations. The result of this process was The HAP 2007 Standard in Humanitarian Accountability and Quality Management.

The 2010 edition of the HAP Standard in Accountability and Quality Management is the result of an extensive review process that involved wide consultation with different stakeholders, including crisis-affected communities, aid workers and donors. Over 1,900 people in 56 countries contributed to the review process and the preparation of the 2010 edition, bringing to the process authentic experiences from different perspectives. The HAP Board, authorised by the HAP General Assembly, approved the 2010 edition on 20 October 2010.