HAP in Bangladesh
Responding to Cyclone Sidr: November 2007 to December 2008
On the 15th November 2007 Cyclone Sidr hit southern Bangladesh destroying both houses and livelihoods, and leaving thousands of people in need of assistance. Immediate relief focused on life-saving measures such as provision of medical support and clean water, and distribution of food and non-food items. The critical period is now over and NGOs are focusing on longer-term rehabilitation and reconstruction, including supporting with shelter, livelihoods and income-generation activities.
Under the New Emergencies Policy, a HAP-led initiative in Bangladesh was agreed to promote good practice through supporting efforts to develop and improve immediate activities and systems that focus on quality and accountability to disaster survivors during the Sidr response.
An Overview of HAP's Initiative
The strategy for this initiative is:
- To strengthen staff understanding of Principles of Accountability to disaster survivors and of their agencies’ compliance with these Principles;
- To promote and support immediate action and longer-term collaborative approaches that strengthen the accountability and quality of humanitarian work in Bangladesh;
- To facilitate the development and implementation of accountability self-assessment plans; and
- To encourage sharing of lessons learnt and peer support amongst HAP members, their local partners and other interested agencies.
The HAP Field Team provide hands-on guidance to staff from participating agencies on quality and accountability self-assessments of their respective agency’s cyclone response at one field location. The findings provide a snapshot of the agency’s humanitarian accountability and quality at that particular site. Based on this, the joint team can identify good practices, gaps, and areas for improvement that require immediate or longer-term action. At the end of this process, staff will have the knowledge, capacity and confidence to undertake further reviews of their respective agency’s accountability to disaster survivors (by integrating this into existing monitoring and evaluation or through the use of new tools and processes). Participating agencies will be in a better position to respond to evidence-based recommendations and continuously improve their humanitarian accountability and quality management system.
Details on the plan for HAP’s engagement in Bangladesh can be found in the terms of reference.
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Phase 1: Accountability Self-Assessments
The initiative started on 23rd-24th January with a workshop on accountability self-assessments attended by key staff from 14 NGOs. Following this and with guidance from the HAP Field Team, staff from participating agencies have been undertaking self-assessments during field visits in the most severely Sidr-affected in Bagerhat, Patuakhali and Burguna Districts. In total, six field visits were conducted with: Save the Children UK; GUP and their partner Christian Aid; Concern Worldwide and their partner SPEED Trust; CARE Bangladesh; HEED Bangladesh; and Muslim Aid.
The field visits focused on reviewing practice against the HAP Standard Benchmarks in particular information dissemination, community engagement, and complaint-handling. Through reviews of existing policies and procedures, semi-structured interviews and facilitated discussions with local staff, and focus group discussions with disaster-affected communities, the six NGOs have been able to identity good practice and gaps in their accountability towards Sidr-affected communities.
To enable participating agencies to strengthen their humanitarian accountability in this response and from the onset of future emergency responses, recommendations and specific action points have been agreed with each of the participating agencies.
Lessons Learnt Workshop (March 2008)
On the 25th March 2008, 17 "accountability champions" met in Dhaka to review progress and lessons learnt to date. From notice boards with key information about humanitarian plans, to regular monitoring of beneficiary satisfaction with the response programmes, to village committees which make project related decisions on behalf of their communities, good practice examples of humanitarian accountability abound. However, many of these remain ad-hoc and are not always integrated into a coherent strategy.
Where new approaches have been piloted NGOs have already seen results. Workshop participants highlighted that offering beneficiaries opportunities to provide suggestions has changed mind-sets of staff, and involving local communities in beneficiary selection improves the effectiveness of the intervention. Through action agencies have shown participation is possible, even in project planning and design during the early stages of an emergency response.
Many creative methods for sharing information with communities were observed, although limited monitoring of what information reaches people means that the effectiveness of different channels has not been assessed. Over reliance on one means of communication alone risks excluding some members of the community from accessing information.
It was recognised that, if communities are not able to have their voices heard and raise concerns, humanitarian agencies are undermining them as human beings. To address complaints, staff need to be supported with clear procedures, and communities need to be made aware of their rights and entitlements, and reassured that a process is followed.
Details on the lessons learnt workshop held on the 25th March 2008, including key learning points can be found in the workshop report, and accompanying power point slides.
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Phase 2: Focused Support
Since March 2008 HAP staff have provided remote assistance to participating members and their partners. This has included sharing specific tools (such as Complaint and Response Mechanism Questionnaire for Save the Children UK to use with their partners), providing feedback on progress reports, and supporting with the development and implementation of action plans. In response to requests from participating agencies to develop and further strengthen complaint-handling processes, a HAP team returned to Bangladesh in August 2008.
Complaint and Response Mechanism Workshop (August 2008)
Agencies that had already taken steps to develop complaint and response mechanisms faced specific challenges. For example, where complaint boxes were set up as the main channel for raising issues, and in the absence of proper information dissemination on their purpose, communities used the boxes to submit job applications, requests for more aid, and for donations; complaints via mobile phones were often received by different staff, which made it difficult to monitor the type of concerns raised and the rate of response from the agency. To strengthen existing mechanisms and develop more effective ways of handling complaints, HAP conducted a three-day workshop in Dhaka, attended by 20 participants from 12 NGOs.
During the workshop, participants highlighted that, while feedback can be positive or negative and may be ignored, complaints often indicate specific irregularities in the way that the agency and staff perform their work, and always require a response. Participants felt that, by receiving and responding to complaints, NGOs would move closer to readdressing the power imbalance that exists between aid agencies and affected populations. Over the three days, participants explored the barriers that may prevent affected communities from complaining, the importance of community engagement in designing the complaint and response mechanisms, steps to be taken by the agency after it received a complaint, and issues surrounding dealing with more sensitive complaints such as those related to sexual exploitation and abuse.
All participants identified three actions points they would take forward as a result of the workshop to develop complaint and response mechanisms for beneficiaries, affected communities, partners, and staff. These included:
- Seek senior manager commitment;
- Orient staff, partners and beneficiaries;
- Engage beneficiaries in the design of the mechanism;
- Develop a staff Code of Conduct and organisational complaints handling policy and procedure;
- Link complaint and response mechanism indicators with existing monitoring and evaluation systems;
- Review existing tools and guidelines used during the Sidr programme;
- Pilot new complaint handling mechanisms.
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Phase 3: After Action Review
The After Action Review process
The After Action Review (AAR) carried out in November 2008 examined the progress made against the aims of this initiative and reviewed the activities carried out with participating agencies with a view to assessing the appropriateness and impact of HAP’s engagement in terms of influencing field practice and humanitarian quality management systems.
As part of the AAR HAP team carried out two main activities:
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Visits to a project site of interested agencies that went through the self-assessment process earlier in 2008.
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AAR workshop for participating agency staff and community representatives who had first hand experience of the Sidr response.
During a two-day workshop 35 participants took part from HAP member agencies, partner agencies, Sidr-affected communities, and HAP staff.
This gave those agencies involved the opportunity to present the progress made in strengthening accountability, discuss some of the barriers and opportunities to bringing about field and organisational level change as a result of HAP support. The workshop also allowed for agency staff to share their thoughts and ideas on future roles for HAP to support agencies in new emergencies.
Community representatives, from the Sidr affected regions, shared their perspectives on NGO initiatives to strengthen accountability, and commented on some of the enablers and disablers that effected their participation in programme decision making.
The detailed summary (AAR workshop summary) from the workshop documents the sessions and issues discussed, including highlights from the agency presentations; and current practice on strengthening accountability related to partners, staff, organisational preparedness, and monitoring and continuous learning, as well as new ideas that could be tried in respect to these areas.
**NEW** The final report, Quality and Accountability during the Cyclone Sidr Response: Reflections on Agencies Approaches and HAP Support, (published in July 2009) is available to download. The report highlights work conducted in both phases of the HAP response, identifies the emerging themes, the factors that influenced changes on the ground and addresses the implications for HAP support in future emergencies.
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Next Steps
HAP will work with interested agencies to develop case studies documenting tried and tested approaches to strengthening accountability during the Cyclone Sidr response.
Agencies who have participated in this initiative are continuing to strengthen humanitarian accountability and quality management. The Bangladesh Peer Support Group is planning to continue to meet as an in-country support network, to share experiences and good practice, explore options of overcoming challenges, and build a human, knowledge and tool resource base.
Case Studies from Bangladesh – *New*
A number of agencies who participated in HAP’s initiative in Bangladesh are documenting the approaches they took to strengthen accountability and their learning from this.
Concern Worldwide Bangladesh’s case study (published May 2009) outlines the work undertaken with their partners to develop a participatory beneficiary selection process and Community Monitoring Committees, in order to increase levels of participation as part of their rehabilitation projects and provide a channel through which affected-communities could raise complaints.
Muslim Aid Bangladesh - “Developing a country-level accountability work plan - the process” outlines the steps taken to strengthening accountability and quality management over a period of twelve months following Cyclone Sidr. This includes the process followed with staff in developing a country-level accountability work plan.
Muslim Aid Bangladesh – “Participation in Shelter project - from design to implementation and monitoring” captures the approach used to engage with beneficiaries in designing and implementing as part of Muslim Aid’s shelter project following Cyclone Sidr.
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We would like to thank the following organisations for their financial support to this initiative: CAFOD, CARE Bangladesh, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide Bangladesh, DanChurchAid, Muslim Aid UK, Oxfam GB Bangladesh Program, Save the Children UK in Bangladesh, Tearfund UK, and World Vision Bangladesh. In particular we would like to acknowledge the support from Concern Worldwide in hosting the HAP Field Team in Dhaka.
Also available HAP reflections on the Sidr-cyclone response (November 2007) and the HAP Principles of Accountability in Bangla.
For details about previous HAP work in Bangladesh please see the 2006 HAP Standard development workshop report and beneficiary input report.
Updated: 23 July 2009
