A policy to help save lives


June 16, 2011

Uma Narayanan, of CWS Pakistan-Afghanistan, leads a session on the Humanitarian Charter, which describes the principles that ought to govern humanitarian action. Photo: Damon Perry/CWS

Uma Narayanan, of CWS Pakistan-Afghanistan, leads a session on the Humanitarian Charter, which describes the principles that ought to govern humanitarian action. Photo: Damon Perry/CWS

BANGKOK – As a leader in humanitarian accountability and standards, Church World Service Asia-Pacific hosted around 50 representatives of humanitarian aid organizations in the region to share views on the increasingly insecure operating environments in which they work, and the importance of accountability towards local partners.

The conference, Responsibilities and Response: a Discussion on Policy and Standards, was organized by Church World Service Asia-Pacific within the scope of its regional risk management programme, which has been funded by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department and DanChurchAid.

The recurring theme throughout the day was the greater accountability of aid organizations, and the greater participation of those affected by disasters, in the delivery of humanitarian assistance. This theme, reflected in a shift in thinking in the humanitarian sector in recent years, resonated in all three presentations and discussions.

Staying and Delivering

Delivering the opening presentation at the conference, Oliver Lacey-Hall, Head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Asia-Pacific region, introduced the recently-published OCHA report, To Stay and Deliver, which captures the best practices that have enabled aid organizations to provide life-saving assistance to people in high-risk areas.

Lacey-Hall noted that not only have attacks against aid workers tripled in the past decade, there is also a growing concern about decreased access to affected people in violent areas.

In the UN, he said, there has commenced a shift from thinking about “when to leave” to “how to stay,” but that much more work remains to be done – by the UN but also by other aid agencies, government partners and donors – to deliver principled humanitarian assistance. He noted donors ought to be reminded that “security is an intrinsic part of humanitarian programming” that needs to be accounted for and financed.

Towards a policy on humanitarian aid accountability

The event was also an opportunity to launch a new policy paper commissioned by CWS entitled Responsibilities Towards Local Implementing Partners. The author of the report, independent researcher Christopher Finucane, cited research that reveals on average, an aid worker dies every three days.

Yet, he noted, that there is no standard approach to security risk management in the humanitarian sector. “Systematic responses to our security challenges remains quite weak,” he said.

It is thus important, he urged, for aid agencies to develop a clear policy statement on security risk management in the context of working with local implementing partners. “Policy is not just something that just comes out of headquarters or for headquarters,” he said. “It is for all staff and implementing partners for all the time.”

Mr. Finucane emphasized the importance for contracting parties to conduct “competent risk analysis” prior to engaging with local implementing partners, ensuring that the risks of the partnership are clearly understood on both sides. Ideally, he said, agencies ought to help the local partner to meet any gaps in capacity and competence relating to risk management. Programs ought to include security measures, he urged, even if this means less overall beneficiaries.

“Donors can play a far more critical role in holding us accountable as aid workers,” Finucane said, adding that we need to engage with donors more in order to help consolidate a shift in thinking that values the importance of integrating security within programme planning.

Kathrine Alexandrowiz, CWS Asia-Pacific’s Head of Programs, noted that the policy paper represents the culmination of almost a year’s work involving colleagues from numerous countries in the region. This work included security planning training for local and international organizational partners in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. These training sessions, she said, provided a valuable conduit for ideas and experiences to inform the paper.

Sphere Handbook 2011

The afternoon session was an orientation on the new Sphere Handbook, which was extensively revised and published in April 2011, facilitated by Uma Narayanan from CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan, Sphere’s regional partner. Narayanan led a lively discussion on the Handbook, including the Humanitarian Charter, which lies at the heart of the Handbook and describes the principles that ought to govern humanitarian action.

Discussions also focussed on the Handbook’s Core Standards and Minimum Standards in the four key areas of humanitarian response (water and sanitation, food, shelter and healthcare) and practical issues in their implementation. Some questioned whether quantifiable standards were as important as a culture of security awareness, from which good risk management practices follow.

Overall, there was strong interest in the Sphere guidelines and in training in local contexts. One challenge, however, was to obtain translations of the Handbook into local languages, a process that is underway in some countries.

Integrating security

The overriding message of the conference, in the presentations but also in the discussions, was that security ought to be an integral part of humanitarian assistance, not an add-on. Most agreed that this message, and the shift in thinking towards greater accountability to local partners, need to be encouraged further. As Finucane expressed it, “We’re not keeping pace with the changing security environment as a sector, whether we are NGOs, whether we are a UN agency or one of our implementing partners. We need to step up to the mark, we need to accelerate our efforts to meet those challenges head on, and we need to do things that will ensure that we reduce the risks.”