Complaints Handling

Complaints present agencies with significant opportunities to improve services and strengthen relationships with stakeholders as well as to test assumptions about community needs. Good complaints handling systems also allow beneficiaries to enforce agencies’ claims about quality and accountability. On the other hand, mishandled complaints can undermine community confidence in agencies and even compromise security.

Maximizing the opportunities and minimizing risks associated with complaints handling are the twin goals of HAP’s Complaints Handling Unit. Formed through a merger with the Building Safer Organizations project in April 2007, the Complaints Handling unit has developed a suite of resources for helping agencies respond to complaints of all types fairly, quickly and safely. The unit helps NGOs achieve greater accountability by:

training NGO staff on development of complaints mechanisms and investigation procedure;
promoting implementation of common standards on preventing and responding to sexual exploitation and abuse;
providing external support for monitoring and handling complaints against members;
peer-to-peer support for in-house complaints handling teams.

Complaints Handling Unit Research

You can read the most recently commissioned research, conducted by Kristi Lattu, into Refugees' perceptions of the effort to prevent and respond to SEA by aid workers. This report, To complain or not to complain: still the question, is the result of seven months participatory-based research with nearly 300 disaster survivors taking part in Kenya, Namibia and Thailand.

To complain or not to complain is available in our Resource section and by clicking here!