Peer Support

HAP organises various activities and peer support opportunities for agency staff:

Full Members Accountability Peer Support Group
Building Safer Organisations Networks
Building Safer Organisations Online Information Exchange

1. Accountability Peer Support Group

The HAP Secretariat facilitates and contributes to sharing of knowledge and experience amongst accountability focal points of member agencies. This Peer Support Group (PSG) meets once a year, with bilateral and issue-specific interaction taking place on a regular basis. Activities of the Peer Support Group to date include:

input into the HAP Standard development process, with specific focus on developing the benchmark and guidelines on complaint handling
review of the New Emergencies Policy Protocol
feedback on terms of reference for the deployment of HAP staff in new emergencies
contribution to the guidelines for preparing Accountability Work Plans
sharing of case studies and agency-specific tools for implementing the HAP Principles of Accountability and achieving certification with the HAP Standard

Presentations from the most recent HAP Peer Support Group meeting (London, 12 December 2008) are available here. Notes from previous meetings are available in our Resource Library.

2. Building Safer Organisations Networks

The Building Safer Organisations project provides agencies with opportunities to interact specifically on the subject of preventing and responding to sexual exploitation and abuse by humanitarian workers. The networks are self-sustaining, regionally-focused and diverse coalitions of NGOs working to improve sexual exploitation and abuse prevention and response strategies in their organizations and in other organizations.

The activities of the networks are to:

improve the uniformity of mechanisms to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse
enable trained investigators to support each other and exchange advice on good practice
maintain awareness of issues surrounding sexual exploitation and abuse amongst humanitarian agencies
enable more humanitarian workers to participate in Building Safer Organisations and HAP training
broaden the number of advocates promoting appropriate prevention and response strategies

Building Safer Organisations has a long standing relationship with existing networks in Kenya and the United States, supplementing their programs with training and are currently developing relationships in the Middle East.

To discuss joining the BSO Network system please email either Ester Dross or Coleen Heemskerk, our BSO/Complaints Handling Training Officers.

3. Building Safer Organisations Online Information Exchange

Building Safer Organisations also operates an online information exchange for former BSO Investigations Learning Programme participants. Known as the BSOWorkshop Dgroup, the exchange:

promotes discussion of issues related to sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian agencies
circulates resources on the problem of sexual exploitation and abuse and capacity building
circulates news items relevant to humanitarian accountability and sexual exploitation and abuse

If you would like to join, it is important to remember that members of the Dgroup also have priority access to training resources shared with the group.

In early 2010, HAP will conduct a review of the BSOWorkshop Dgroup to improve the services offered to users.