US legislation mandates beneficiary focus for humanitarian aid
Prospects improve for the displaced
The omnibus appropriations bill approved by the US Senate on January 16 – and expected to be signed into law this week by President Barack Obama – is likely to fast forward years of effort to make aid more responsive to people affected by humanitarian crises.
Legislative language included in the foreign operations section of the bill requires that funds appropriated for International Disaster Assistance and Migration and Refugee Assistance should be made available for the “independent and systematic collection and reporting of information obtained directly from beneficiaries…regarding the quality and utility of such assistance”.
The goal, according to the report language, is to maximize the effectiveness of programs and accountability to beneficiaries. Congress instructs the Department of State and USAID to post summaries of the findings on their websites.
Given the amount of US humanitarian spending, which was $3.8 billion in 2012 (twice the amount the EU institutions spent on humanitarian activities and three times more than the UK), this legislation will force the pace of change across the sector as humanitarian agencies are obliged to do better at including the beneficiary perspective in the way they design and implement their programs.
Over the last 15 years, a number of initiatives have been launched, starting with SPHERE in the late 1990s, which set out in detail how and why humanitarian organizations should heed the perspectives of those they exist to assist. HAP, which was set up a few years later, offers certification to organizations that meet its standards of accountability. A couple of years ago Ground Truth introduced a new rapid-cycle approach to getting feedback from people hit by humanitarian crises and incorporating it in the management systems of aid agencies.
These efforts have made some inroads and greater accountability to affected populations is increasingly accepted as important in improving the quality and effectiveness of aid.
But the speed with which accountability practices have been adopted is slow among humanitarian organizations that, for the most part, are keen to maintain their freedom of maneuver. While the most progressive among them have experimented with ways of incorporating the voice of affected people in their work, it is far from a standard operating practice; beneficiary accountability efforts tend to be sidelined in face of what most agencies consider more pressing demands.
The new US legislation, which may become a model for other donors keen to promote greater effectiveness in humanitarian aid, replaces voluntary compliance with a mandatory approach to accountability that will be harder to ignore.
These efforts in the humanitarian space echo those underway in the development field. In a speech to shareholders in October 2013, World Bank President Jim Kim undertook to ensure that by the end of 2014 all bank-funded projects with identifiable beneficiaries will include feedback mechanisms to enable managers to keep a finger on the pulse of the consumers of aid, and make course corrections in response.
As the new US legislation becomes law and its ramifications spread across the international humanitarian system, we are likely to see a wave of creativity as agencies experiment with ways of capturing the beneficiary experience and translate it into better programs and more effective practice on the ground.
