1 00:00:00,330 --> 00:00:02,129 Great. Everyone, welcome. Thank you, guys. Soon. 2 00:00:02,130 --> 00:00:08,730 Convenor of the Ulster Humanitarian Group, Pat Elect gives me great pleasure today to introduce our two speakers. 3 00:00:08,730 --> 00:00:13,410 And it's a great time for this. I mean, guys, we're very lucky to have them both. 4 00:00:13,410 --> 00:00:17,549 Philips coming from the trade as is coming from rich graves. 5 00:00:17,550 --> 00:00:21,629 So that's good. The topic we want to look at today and this continues our series, 6 00:00:21,630 --> 00:00:27,660 This Time on Ethical Dimensions of humanitarian action, is the whole question of humanitarian accountability. 7 00:00:28,440 --> 00:00:31,980 And for those of you that are not familiar, even less than you are, 8 00:00:32,790 --> 00:00:40,489 the last 25 years of humanitarian work has seen a gradual growth in sharing of 9 00:00:40,490 --> 00:00:44,490 the business into what people are calling a profession now of various kinds. 10 00:00:44,850 --> 00:00:48,940 In that process, we've seen the the the movement, 11 00:00:48,940 --> 00:00:53,669 the humanitarian organisations trying to self-regulate yourselves through the code 12 00:00:53,670 --> 00:00:58,709 of conduct of the Red Cross and through the emergence of the service standards, 13 00:00:58,710 --> 00:01:03,900 very technical standards on different areas of food, health, shelter protection, 14 00:01:05,100 --> 00:01:10,020 which is trying to sort of put their house in order so that everybody is doing the same kind of 15 00:01:10,020 --> 00:01:15,989 levels of humanitarian work in terms of quality aligned with the same kind of values of humanity, 16 00:01:15,990 --> 00:01:22,170 impartiality. And I'm very keen that we understand how that is working. 17 00:01:22,170 --> 00:01:28,140 And we've got two real experts today. We've got Amnesty's going to talk to us about NGO accountability. 18 00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:37,740 That is has a Ph.D. from LSC, which I've been looking at, which is very important on this issue of NGO accountability and NGO as moral agency. 19 00:01:38,640 --> 00:01:44,160 And she's going to talk in particular about her experience of evaluating NGOs from her 20 00:01:44,160 --> 00:01:49,140 role as senior researcher on NGO accountability at the One World Trust in London. 21 00:01:49,620 --> 00:01:56,160 So this is going to start for about 20 minutes and then Philip is going to look at the other end, and Philip produces this every year, 22 00:01:56,520 --> 00:02:04,320 which is calling the OECD government donors to account for the humanitarian quality of their aid. 23 00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:11,080 So Philip will be talking about government taking the accountability in line with that same principles of management quality. 24 00:02:12,910 --> 00:02:21,360 It's a great pleasure base here and it's a community 20 minutes you might think is trying to fill it and then have questions I have to ask. 25 00:02:21,730 --> 00:02:26,469 Thank you so much, Hugo, for inviting me. And thank you to everyone for attending today. 26 00:02:26,470 --> 00:02:29,560 I'm looking forward to this discussion and to Philip's talk as well. 27 00:02:30,590 --> 00:02:35,120 So I'm going to talk today about accountability as respect. 28 00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:41,120 And there's kind of two components to my talk. The first part is very sort of theoretical and conceptual. 29 00:02:41,360 --> 00:02:45,410 I'm going to talk about four main approaches to defining accountability. 30 00:02:45,980 --> 00:02:51,080 I'm going to point out some limitations of the first three and argue for a fourth, 31 00:02:51,230 --> 00:02:54,620 which I call it ability is respect, a moral appraisal, accountability. 32 00:02:55,070 --> 00:02:59,870 And then the second part of my talk is going to look more at the practical side of these issues, 33 00:03:01,250 --> 00:03:04,459 trying to pull out some examples from the Disasters Emergency Committee, 34 00:03:04,460 --> 00:03:12,750 Accountability Frameworks and the annual assessment process to highlight what accountability is respect might look like for some communitarian ideas. 35 00:03:12,770 --> 00:03:20,419 So kind of two caveats to begin with. One is that while I work for the World Trust in the practical examples pulled at the end, 36 00:03:20,420 --> 00:03:27,920 or from my role on our team, providing that external validation to the DCI on their accountability assessments. 37 00:03:28,370 --> 00:03:31,700 My views here are not identical as the One World Trust view. 38 00:03:31,710 --> 00:03:39,200 So there's a difference between the company line of my line and also that I'm focussed particularly on non-governmental organisations. 39 00:03:39,230 --> 00:03:44,180 I know some of you might be more familiar with or have a background with other types of actor in humanitarian work. 40 00:03:44,540 --> 00:03:48,680 My kind of angle on this is through the NGO perspective. 41 00:03:49,320 --> 00:03:53,570 You can start off with talking about what is NGO accountability, why is it valuable? 42 00:03:53,570 --> 00:03:58,250 And then go into these three specific examples with disaster affected persons donors, 43 00:03:58,250 --> 00:04:03,500 and then also end with hopefully something that will tie in to what Philip is currently working on. 44 00:04:03,950 --> 00:04:10,040 And that's these collective accountability initiatives and self-regulatory schemes amongst NGOs. 45 00:04:10,920 --> 00:04:14,030 Okay. So starting off with what is accountability? 46 00:04:15,260 --> 00:04:19,640 So accountability is is a hotly contested concept. 47 00:04:19,940 --> 00:04:21,950 There's a lot of arguments over how to define it. 48 00:04:22,430 --> 00:04:28,280 It's essentially a type of responsibility that we have in virtue of other obligations that we have towards others. 49 00:04:28,280 --> 00:04:31,460 And I think that's kind of a source of the confusion about accountability. 50 00:04:31,880 --> 00:04:40,550 So it's on a second level or a dual level obligation that only kicks in if we already have a prior obligation to another agent. 51 00:04:40,580 --> 00:04:45,799 So I'm accountable to you for running over your foot maliciously with my car 52 00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:50,840 because I had a prior obligation not to cause grievous bodily harm to you. 53 00:04:51,140 --> 00:04:55,219 But I'm not necessarily accountable to you for eating cake for breakfast every 54 00:04:55,220 --> 00:04:59,990 day of the week because I have no prior obligation not to do that to you. 55 00:05:00,690 --> 00:05:04,340 And so we have to have a prior obligation, I think, in a number of cases. 56 00:05:04,550 --> 00:05:10,610 Accountability can then become confused or switched around with these other prior obligations. 57 00:05:10,610 --> 00:05:17,210 So as an example, sometimes you see in these codes of conduct organisations sign up to codes, of conduct of accountability. 58 00:05:17,600 --> 00:05:25,069 And one of the lines that they sign up to is, is to ascribe to certain principles or values such as social justice or equality. 59 00:05:25,070 --> 00:05:32,570 And I think it's important to try and highlight that living up to those values is a separate obligation from being accountable. 60 00:05:32,630 --> 00:05:35,480 You might be accountable for how well you live up to those values, 61 00:05:35,690 --> 00:05:41,810 but fulfilling values of social justice and equality does not discharge your accountability obligation. 62 00:05:42,530 --> 00:05:47,059 So I think in order to understand different ways of defining the accountability, 63 00:05:47,060 --> 00:05:51,740 we can focus on the fact that it's a relational notion and we can look at how different 64 00:05:51,740 --> 00:05:57,210 approaches characterise or conceptualise that relationship of accountability. 65 00:05:57,230 --> 00:06:01,450 And they can do so by answering three main questions. 66 00:06:01,460 --> 00:06:06,920 One is what is the normative starting point for that relationship between the two actors, 67 00:06:06,920 --> 00:06:12,680 the actor who is owed an account, and the actor who is expected to be accountable? 68 00:06:13,550 --> 00:06:18,650 The prior or immediate obligation that triggers the accountability obligation, 69 00:06:19,610 --> 00:06:27,680 the motivations of the agent who is expected to be accountable, why accountability is needed in virtue of their motivations. 70 00:06:28,130 --> 00:06:34,880 And then the answers to these three questions contribute to an overall understanding of the function and the value. 71 00:06:36,320 --> 00:06:42,120 So. I'm going to go through three of these that I think have certain limitations. 72 00:06:42,120 --> 00:06:49,290 The main one, probably the most popular, dominant one that comes from the private sector is the principal agent approach to accountability. 73 00:06:49,330 --> 00:06:53,520 Some of you may have heard of this before. I mean, the principle agent approach to accountability. 74 00:06:53,520 --> 00:07:04,499 You have a principal that provides resources to an agent in order that the agent uses those resources to act in the principal's best interests. 75 00:07:04,500 --> 00:07:07,650 So that's the normative starting point for the relationship. 76 00:07:07,980 --> 00:07:13,800 The agent is then obliged to use those resources in the way that the principal has specified. 77 00:07:14,250 --> 00:07:23,550 But principal agent's accountability model says the problem is that agents will be opportunistic who want to do other things with that, 78 00:07:23,850 --> 00:07:25,800 with that funding, with that resource. 79 00:07:27,180 --> 00:07:34,560 So this triggers the obligation of accountability to agents needs to show to the principal how they've spent their resources. 80 00:07:34,920 --> 00:07:39,239 And the function of accountability is to constrain the agent's opportunism and 81 00:07:39,240 --> 00:07:44,430 ensure that the resources have been spent in the way specified by the principal. 82 00:07:46,080 --> 00:07:52,409 So the definition of accountability that you often see that comes out of this framework is that to be 83 00:07:52,410 --> 00:07:59,490 accountable means to provide an account to another actor and to face sanctions if performance has not met, 84 00:07:59,700 --> 00:08:07,650 shared or pre-established expectations. And that's pretty standard definition of accountability that comes out of this again, 85 00:08:08,490 --> 00:08:13,530 in terms of limitations of thinking about this through the specific lens of NGOs. 86 00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:18,840 Right. There's been a lot of criticisms of applying this framework to NGOs. 87 00:08:19,320 --> 00:08:25,799 One of the big criticisms is that it focuses NGO accountability on the donor relationship, which is quite clear. 88 00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:34,590 Why? Because that's the main actor from which ventures receive resources, financial resources and people have criticised, 89 00:08:34,590 --> 00:08:39,149 you know, it just focuses all of NGO accountability around the relationship to the donor. 90 00:08:39,150 --> 00:08:43,799 We should be looking at other relationships that NGOs have here and I agree with that. 91 00:08:43,800 --> 00:08:44,760 But I also think moreover, 92 00:08:44,760 --> 00:08:51,930 it doesn't even accurately describe the donor NGO relationship because something that it misses out on is that prior stage where, 93 00:08:52,800 --> 00:08:59,430 you know, I know many NGOs might wish it were the case, but a lot of them, a lot of donors just don't go around dropping money into their laps. 94 00:08:59,430 --> 00:09:07,229 Right. The NGO has to go to the donor, articulate an identity, make an argument, show them a proposal, show them a plan. 95 00:09:07,230 --> 00:09:12,030 They have to make certain claims, in other words. And in exchange for those claims, they get the resources. 96 00:09:12,450 --> 00:09:17,939 I think that's a key component to that relationship that gets dropped out of the principal agent framework. 97 00:09:17,940 --> 00:09:20,300 So we should try to capture that more accurate. 98 00:09:22,330 --> 00:09:31,000 A second approach to accountability itself from the political sector has its main sort of indicators, the democratic stakeholder accountability model. 99 00:09:31,300 --> 00:09:39,910 And here you have a political actor that has an impact or is empowered to take an authoritative decision over a stakeholder. 100 00:09:40,480 --> 00:09:48,160 That's the normative starting point. The immediate obligation, then, is to exercise this power in a way that's justifiable to the stakeholder. 101 00:09:49,510 --> 00:09:53,650 But the motivations of the political actor may be susceptible to other intervening pressures. 102 00:09:53,980 --> 00:09:54,490 And therefore, 103 00:09:54,490 --> 00:10:01,450 accountability is brought about to ensure that the political actor sufficiently represents the stakeholders interests in that exercise of power. 104 00:10:01,660 --> 00:10:07,389 And this is the one that the One World Trust uses in our assessment of global institutions and organisations, 105 00:10:07,390 --> 00:10:12,670 saying if you have an impact on certain parties, then you have these obligations of accountability. 106 00:10:13,000 --> 00:10:16,660 And I think that's important when we're looking at global institutions. 107 00:10:17,320 --> 00:10:27,070 In a lot of organisations, but for NGOs specifically, I still think we can do a bit better because this model both does too little and too much. 108 00:10:27,070 --> 00:10:36,460 So it does too little in the sense that what a lot of stakeholders, NGO stakeholders want from NGOs is not to have their own views represented, 109 00:10:36,880 --> 00:10:42,310 but to have the NGO represent its own expertise in the field when it acts right. 110 00:10:42,310 --> 00:10:51,640 The NGO is enlisted by those other stakeholders in some cases to use its expertise to drive its projects, not to represent the views of others. 111 00:10:52,270 --> 00:10:54,320 And in other cases it's a bit too much. 112 00:10:54,340 --> 00:11:02,500 I don't think a lot of humanitarian NGOs should really be accountable to the militias who they may have a negative impact on through their actions. 113 00:11:02,730 --> 00:11:09,850 And so it's a bit too much on either side. But the focus on justification and the need for justification was important. 114 00:11:10,600 --> 00:11:13,300 So then we can try multiparty social actor accountability. 115 00:11:13,660 --> 00:11:22,490 And this model was proposed by David Brown specifically for NGO is to try and highlight the collaborative nature in which NGOs work. 116 00:11:22,510 --> 00:11:31,240 So in this model, you have two equal social actors who choose to join together in a joint collaboration on shared values and goals. 117 00:11:33,180 --> 00:11:38,560 The immediate obligation is to continue to continue to honour and work towards those shared values or goals. 118 00:11:38,640 --> 00:11:45,320 That's the basis for the relationships existence. But other agent centred interests might intervene. 119 00:11:45,330 --> 00:11:51,209 So each social actor may have other interests or preferences that pertain only to them 120 00:11:51,210 --> 00:11:55,410 that could come into conflict with that shared enterprise and drive them away from it. 121 00:11:55,680 --> 00:11:59,669 And so the function of accountability in this case is to ensure that all parties 122 00:11:59,670 --> 00:12:05,670 continue to deliver on their shared values and to maintain the collaboration. 123 00:12:06,390 --> 00:12:13,440 So a common definition of accountability here is to demonstrate this continued commitment and to face an exit sanction. 124 00:12:13,680 --> 00:12:16,829 If you don't continue to demonstrate that commitment. 125 00:12:16,830 --> 00:12:20,640 So the sanction here is little bit weaker than the other two and it's an exit. 126 00:12:21,210 --> 00:12:23,850 One of the social actors is forced out of the collaboration. 127 00:12:24,660 --> 00:12:31,200 I think this gets much closer to the mark, but it still doesn't really capture the entirety of NGOs accountability, 128 00:12:31,200 --> 00:12:39,569 relationships, because not all of the collaborations the NGO engages in is one with all other social actors of equal standing, 129 00:12:39,570 --> 00:12:48,060 in which both parties contribute something of a very similar nature to that collaboration that works for some of their relationships, but not all. 130 00:12:49,770 --> 00:12:55,200 So we have some elements of truth in each of these initial three accounts. 131 00:12:55,210 --> 00:13:02,160 So you have the transfer of resources, which I do think is important from the principal agents approach. 132 00:13:02,160 --> 00:13:06,870 You have the focus on justification from the democratic stakeholder approach, 133 00:13:07,740 --> 00:13:12,720 and then you have this collaborative aspect for the multiparty social actor approach. 134 00:13:14,340 --> 00:13:20,910 So here's a way of trying to capture a more holistic approach to ensure accountability for moral appraisal accountability. 135 00:13:21,540 --> 00:13:27,090 Here we have an NGO and a potential collaborator that can be any type of other actor. 136 00:13:27,660 --> 00:13:32,280 That NGO makes a certain claim to the collaborator that can be a normative claim 137 00:13:32,280 --> 00:13:37,950 about certain values that that NGO identifies with principles of neutrality, 138 00:13:37,950 --> 00:13:45,450 of impartiality, of humanity. They make the claim to the collaborator and as a result, where it can be a descriptive claim. 139 00:13:46,620 --> 00:13:50,400 Know if you provide £10, we will be able to save this child's life. 140 00:13:51,360 --> 00:13:57,480 We have to do X, Y and Z in this environment and expect these outcomes and a response that clean 141 00:13:58,020 --> 00:14:04,440 collaborators can provide any number of voluntary assets to that NGO privilege, 142 00:14:04,440 --> 00:14:06,150 support, resources and access. 143 00:14:06,420 --> 00:14:15,540 And which here about this model is that these are the the essential components that allow the NGO to exist as an agent or as an actor in the world. 144 00:14:15,810 --> 00:14:21,030 Without receiving that voluntary support and collaboration from other actors, 145 00:14:21,240 --> 00:14:25,229 the NGO would only have its claims and would be impotent as an actor in the role. 146 00:14:25,230 --> 00:14:29,070 So that's kind of the key aspect of this relationship. 147 00:14:30,540 --> 00:14:37,860 It's an enormous starting point is that the NGO engages other parties to voluntarily cooperate with it through these claims and arguments, 148 00:14:38,220 --> 00:14:46,980 and that elicits an obligation to maintain a fidelity to those claims and descriptions of value to maintain coherence with those claims. 149 00:14:48,270 --> 00:14:56,310 And so the motivation here on differing from the previous three approaches to accountability isn't that the motivation 150 00:14:56,670 --> 00:15:04,500 of the NGO is to shy away from its immediate obligation and therefore accountability is needed to assure compliance, 151 00:15:04,800 --> 00:15:10,740 but rather that an NGO should attempt to live up to its identity as a social actor and be 152 00:15:10,740 --> 00:15:16,020 motivated to live up to its identity as a social actor by fulfilling its immediate obligations. 153 00:15:16,020 --> 00:15:18,230 So accountability should be something that it wants to, 154 00:15:18,660 --> 00:15:25,709 because fulfilling its obligations of accountability allows it to realise its identity as a social 155 00:15:25,710 --> 00:15:32,790 actor or social actor that embodies and structures its relationships in a way that embodies respect. 156 00:15:33,420 --> 00:15:37,850 And the reason why accountability is respect is positioned as a moral prism. 157 00:15:37,860 --> 00:15:45,899 Accountability is because the way in which an organisation is allowed to maintain fidelity to its claims and descriptions of values by checking 158 00:15:45,900 --> 00:15:55,650 in with all of its relevant collaborators in ensuring that it's behaving in a way that has past certain conditions of moral appraisal by those. 159 00:15:58,970 --> 00:16:06,050 Okay. So accountability under this account is defined as a structured relationship between two agents in which the accountable 160 00:16:06,260 --> 00:16:12,710 fulfils its obligation to ensure that the other party is in a position where it can critically appraise its actions. 161 00:16:13,040 --> 00:16:17,719 It gives an account for that set of actions and recognises the collaborators 162 00:16:17,720 --> 00:16:23,270 determination of whether their standards have been met and provides an engaged response. 163 00:16:23,330 --> 00:16:28,370 So there's no mention of sanctions here because the idea is supposed to be that 164 00:16:28,820 --> 00:16:33,140 you fulfil your accountability by engaging in a particular type of relationship, 165 00:16:33,680 --> 00:16:37,009 not by facing the threat of sanctions or compliance. 166 00:16:37,010 --> 00:16:42,050 If you if you don't obey the standards that are expected of you. 167 00:16:42,290 --> 00:16:47,509 It's that critical engagement itself. Okay. 168 00:16:47,510 --> 00:16:51,110 So that was sort of part one, accountability as respect. 169 00:16:51,590 --> 00:17:00,110 And then trying to look at a couple of practical examples where NGOs are pursuing these opportunities 170 00:17:00,110 --> 00:17:05,750 for deeper critical engagement with other collaborators and other parties that they work with. 171 00:17:07,520 --> 00:17:17,659 So just to give you some brief background, very brief background to this part of the work that I've done at the World Trust is to serve as 172 00:17:17,660 --> 00:17:23,510 an external validator for the Disasters Emergency Committee Accountability Framework Assessment. 173 00:17:23,510 --> 00:17:31,520 So the Disasters Emergency Committee is made up of 14 leading humanitarian aid NGOs agencies because the British Red 174 00:17:31,520 --> 00:17:39,800 Cross is and technically an NGO and these organisations sign up to an accountability framework on an annual basis. 175 00:17:40,160 --> 00:17:44,450 They carry out self-assessments against this accountability framework, 176 00:17:44,450 --> 00:17:49,190 which consists of 21 best practice standards for ways of working as they're called. 177 00:17:51,530 --> 00:17:56,750 And then we test the sample of those ways of working, so they fill out their self-assessment against all 21. 178 00:17:56,870 --> 00:18:06,220 We receive those assessments. We pick five and we tell them to collect evidence on those five sample ways of working for two sample countries. 179 00:18:06,240 --> 00:18:09,260 So the poor countries that we sampled last year were Kenya, 180 00:18:09,620 --> 00:18:14,990 Pakistan and Ethiopia in each agency had to submit evidence against two out of those three. 181 00:18:16,250 --> 00:18:24,979 So agencies provide evidence for the sample, and then we discuss their self-assessments and discuss the evidence in a peer validation workshop. 182 00:18:24,980 --> 00:18:32,750 And quite excitingly, this year saw the first published published version of the report, which is on the DSE website. 183 00:18:33,020 --> 00:18:40,020 It's not terribly deep on context, but we're hoping it is a good first step and will provide context for this year. 184 00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:43,400 So kind of watch that space for this year's report as well. 185 00:18:44,780 --> 00:18:49,459 So a couple of examples of of standards that we looked at this year. 186 00:18:49,460 --> 00:18:55,970 One or two of them actually pertained to accountability to beneficiaries or disaster affected populations. 187 00:18:56,810 --> 00:19:02,170 One of those was the straightforward participation requirement. 188 00:19:02,180 --> 00:19:10,760 So we're working 3.3 states that disaster affected populations participate in program assessment, design, imitation and evaluation. 189 00:19:12,260 --> 00:19:15,600 And one of the strengths that we saw in the agencies for this way of working 190 00:19:15,600 --> 00:19:19,550 was a lot of innovation and originality at the policy and framework level. 191 00:19:19,820 --> 00:19:26,629 So a lot of organisations really define their own path to how they want to engage with disaster affected populations. 192 00:19:26,630 --> 00:19:34,280 And I think that diversity is actually a benefit because it reflects on kind of what accountability is, respect is getting at, 193 00:19:34,280 --> 00:19:38,330 which is that each agency really thinks about its own identity as an agency 194 00:19:38,510 --> 00:19:41,959 and what that means for its relationship with disaster affected populations. 195 00:19:41,960 --> 00:19:45,020 So it's not just a one size fits all approach. 196 00:19:47,330 --> 00:19:48,950 And so we have a lot of strong policy, 197 00:19:48,950 --> 00:19:55,159 but we saw that a lot of aid agencies reported some difficulties in seeing those policies and frameworks implemented 198 00:19:55,160 --> 00:20:02,120 on the ground and finding sufficient evidence to just show that those policies are being implemented on the ground. 199 00:20:02,420 --> 00:20:09,050 A lot of them felt that it was occurring in ad hoc or informal settings, but not appearing in forms. 200 00:20:09,320 --> 00:20:13,280 So one of the one of the objections, however, 201 00:20:13,280 --> 00:20:22,790 that came up from some agency staff was whether or not this kind of requirement or expectation is actually justified for humanitarian organisations. 202 00:20:22,790 --> 00:20:28,999 And this is what I kind of called the burning house objection, because people seem to use the same kind of example over and over again. 203 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:32,390 And the objection is, you know, if my house is on fire. 204 00:20:33,500 --> 00:20:38,629 I don't want to fill out a feedback form saying that I think you did a good job providing me with tea and a blanket. 205 00:20:38,630 --> 00:20:47,620 I just want the T and blanket. Right. And so why are you having us do this sort of stuff with our beneficiaries, with disaster affected populations? 206 00:20:47,630 --> 00:20:49,730 And I think that's kind of an extreme case. 207 00:20:49,730 --> 00:20:57,470 It's not entirely an accurate reflection of what's actually going on between humanitarian workers and the people that they're. 208 00:20:57,530 --> 00:21:05,329 Providing services too. For one, they do have some type of early interactions when you're doing routine needs assessments. 209 00:21:05,330 --> 00:21:10,520 And I know that because they've submitted the documents that reflect this needs assessments where 210 00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:16,490 they're just collecting basic descriptive data on the people that they're going to run projects with. 211 00:21:16,760 --> 00:21:21,260 I think it's there's there's potential room to include more questions or just ad hoc 212 00:21:22,070 --> 00:21:27,440 conversations that are occur between aid workers and disaster affected persons. 213 00:21:27,710 --> 00:21:32,600 During those encounters, those face to face encounters. But really more importantly, 214 00:21:33,350 --> 00:21:41,089 what it also comes down to is the relationship between the humanitarian and the development components or teams within the same organisation, 215 00:21:41,090 --> 00:21:48,110 because in many cases it's not as if the humanitarian worker just comes on the scene and meets a 216 00:21:48,110 --> 00:21:54,500 disaster affected person who's never had any contact of correspondence with their organisation. 217 00:21:54,650 --> 00:22:03,170 So usually it needs to actually be improved. Is relationships and communications between the humanitarian and development sections with within 218 00:22:03,170 --> 00:22:08,780 the same organisation or with larger organisations that are part of an international family, 219 00:22:08,780 --> 00:22:18,650 it's communicating within that family better. The other standard that we looked at for under accountability to beneficiaries was. 220 00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:28,780 Standard that pertains to complaints. So this was changed recently to reflect the change in the HAP standards. 221 00:22:28,810 --> 00:22:31,240 They have standards were revised in 2010. 222 00:22:31,540 --> 00:22:37,840 And the novel thing about that standard is that it's requiring not it's required agencies not to simply set up 223 00:22:38,200 --> 00:22:44,380 complaints mechanisms and offer disaster affected persons the opportunity to complain about their activities, 224 00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:51,969 but that they're actually required to consult and prove that they've consulted with disaster affected populations in designing 225 00:22:51,970 --> 00:22:59,350 that complaints mechanism so that they can make sure that they know it's designed in a way that the people can actually use. 226 00:22:59,990 --> 00:23:01,930 And I was, you know, very happily, 227 00:23:02,500 --> 00:23:08,050 very happy to see that many agencies are able to submit strong pieces of evidence showing that they were doing this, 228 00:23:08,620 --> 00:23:10,990 because I thought it was quite a tough standard. 229 00:23:11,710 --> 00:23:20,560 And I also think that the design component of this standard really touches on that part one note of accountability as respect, 230 00:23:20,560 --> 00:23:28,299 which is ensuring really meaningful opportunities for critical praise on ensuring that the format or the opportunities 231 00:23:28,300 --> 00:23:34,840 for critical appraisal that you're offering are tailored to the specific needs of the person that you're engaging with. 232 00:23:36,550 --> 00:23:38,860 Another standard that we looked at was value for money, 233 00:23:38,860 --> 00:23:46,240 which has been quite a big and controversial issue in UK aid I've seen over the past couple of years. 234 00:23:47,420 --> 00:23:54,280 So this was way of working. 1.3 Programme design and procurement processes maximise value for money, that is, 235 00:23:54,280 --> 00:23:58,300 they balance quality, cost and timeliness at each phase of the response. 236 00:23:59,230 --> 00:24:05,620 So we saw that for many agencies these considerations are being undertaken, but they're occurring still in silos. 237 00:24:05,860 --> 00:24:10,719 And the place where we saw the strongest evidence that these different considerations 238 00:24:10,720 --> 00:24:15,010 are being balanced together to show how an organisation is maximising 239 00:24:15,250 --> 00:24:23,320 the value for every pound that it puts into its work was actually created the procurement level procurement process rather than programme design. 240 00:24:23,410 --> 00:24:25,870 And that's really where a lot of agencies want to be heading. 241 00:24:26,920 --> 00:24:32,770 We saw that a lot of agencies are following, following the lead of the Department for International Development on this, 242 00:24:32,770 --> 00:24:38,169 who's really kind of kickstarted value for money in the UK, in UK aid environment, 243 00:24:38,170 --> 00:24:41,560 environment, and they have their own kind of equation and definition. 244 00:24:42,790 --> 00:24:46,719 But there is also some innovators who are really trying to articulate, you know, 245 00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:54,300 take this as an opportunity to really reflect and think what is the value of what we do as NGOs as opposed to other types of humanitarian actors. 246 00:24:54,310 --> 00:24:58,090 And so the discussion in some of the workshops revolved around why. 247 00:24:58,510 --> 00:25:05,079 Why should we be doing this instead of the military? Why does the UK just send the military in to deliver humanitarian aid? 248 00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:11,020 What is the the special kind of value that we offer as humanitarian INGOs? 249 00:25:11,590 --> 00:25:19,090 And a number of them are including disaster affected populations in these discussions, which I thought was close, was quite interesting. 250 00:25:19,570 --> 00:25:27,580 So I think, you know, I think some agencies and a lot of people also who don't work for NGOs might look at value 251 00:25:27,580 --> 00:25:33,760 for money and think this is a pretty standard example of principle and accountability. 252 00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:41,020 You're essentially being asked to line up your outcomes with a monetary unit, 253 00:25:41,140 --> 00:25:48,250 usually ascribing value the monetary value to each of your outcomes on that seems quite principle agent, 254 00:25:48,250 --> 00:25:54,730 but really when you look at difference definition, it encompasses these different concepts of effectiveness, 255 00:25:55,480 --> 00:26:01,030 efficiency and even now equity or equality, which if it has been brought into the mix. 256 00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:08,080 So I think it actually offers an opportunity for NGOs to engage in a more substantive conversation. 257 00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:11,440 And again, this is what the moral appraisal approach to accountability is, 258 00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:19,810 trying to get at a more substantive conversation of the purpose and meaning of the humanitarian collaboration that they engage in with their donor, 259 00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:27,520 to try and think about what is the value of what they're doing and articulate that on a stronger footing to their donors. 260 00:26:29,260 --> 00:26:39,910 And then I'll just kind of close with a point about the nature of these collective accountability initiatives in general, I think. 261 00:26:41,110 --> 00:26:49,219 You know, such as the Disasters Emergency Committee Accountability Framework, but also, you know, the Joint Standards Initiative, 262 00:26:49,220 --> 00:27:00,710 which comprises half and sphere and people in aid and CGI, which Philip is now working with these humanitarian collective agents. 263 00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:05,719 Collective accountability schemes tend to focus on compliance with agreed standards. 264 00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:09,830 And while the individual standards, such as a couple of the examples that I've highlighted, 265 00:27:10,070 --> 00:27:14,450 can really push NGOs on their relationships with key state stakeholders. 266 00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:22,790 I have just, I guess, a question about the kind of relationships that occur within those initiatives and within those schemes, 267 00:27:22,790 --> 00:27:30,470 because it does seem to still be focussed heavily on compliance and providing evidence and verification to one another, 268 00:27:30,800 --> 00:27:34,130 rather than opening up the space of more honest, 269 00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:43,970 critical dialogue between agencies on their shared projects and on whom there's a shared project of humanitarianism, more broadly speaking. 270 00:27:44,570 --> 00:27:47,990 So while ensuring compliance with agreed standards is very valuable, 271 00:27:48,740 --> 00:27:55,280 I think we can question the depth and the quality of the horizontal accountability relationships that they provide, 272 00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:56,749 and I don't really have an answer to that, 273 00:27:56,750 --> 00:28:03,800 just to kind of think about whether or not maybe those are just dual functions that can't both be satisfied within the same scheme. 274 00:28:05,060 --> 00:28:08,629 And you need to kind of have that kind of discussion outside of those collective 275 00:28:08,630 --> 00:28:12,350 accountability schemes and then focus simply on compliance with standards. 276 00:28:12,620 --> 00:28:20,810 But then I would argue we might not be able to call that accountability a certain type of accountability that you're looking at there. 277 00:28:21,650 --> 00:28:25,250 Okay, great. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. Another time. 278 00:28:29,980 --> 00:28:38,450 Thank you for getting on. That's awfully good theoretical and practical stuff, and I think this is helping us to really try to fit it. 279 00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:41,820 Yeah, well, if you get this been she's pretty thin, it's been working. 280 00:28:41,870 --> 00:28:47,549 You might have sex with more than two years now, starting initially with you when you became in Central America. 281 00:28:47,550 --> 00:28:51,360 And then we get cross movement in in hurricanes in Central America. 282 00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:55,110 And then I think to Geneva, the last few years he's been at Tara in Madrid, 283 00:28:55,110 --> 00:28:59,660 as I said, inventing and consolidating the means of coping Danas to account. 284 00:29:00,210 --> 00:29:08,100 And you'll just moving to SCA from standing committee series steering events and response in Geneva to 285 00:29:08,100 --> 00:29:15,510 investigate how you might certify humanitarians Tuesday night and use meeting for mental health as well. 286 00:29:16,080 --> 00:29:19,350 Good. Thank you. I'm not using any PowerPoints. 287 00:29:19,500 --> 00:29:23,220 Is it possible to contribute? Yeah. Just a quick question. 288 00:29:25,290 --> 00:29:29,250 How many of you have actually seen this report? A few of you. 289 00:29:30,390 --> 00:29:34,050 So not many. I would having just left it at that. 290 00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:43,440 It still feels after five years and so very much kind of my daily Davos view, but there's a lot of interesting material there. 291 00:29:44,010 --> 00:29:53,370 If you're interested in humanitarian, how well the humanitarian sector in general is responding to crises like Somalia or Sudan, Pakistan. 292 00:29:53,960 --> 00:29:59,430 And the focus is on donors in the relationship and the role of donor governments, in particular, 293 00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:09,630 to making sure that administration responses are more effective and more accountable, particularly to the populations that we intend to serve. 294 00:30:12,330 --> 00:30:16,830 So I encourage you to look for that and and find, I think, 295 00:30:16,830 --> 00:30:24,120 not just information about donors as funders, but also donors as players within the overall sector. 296 00:30:24,660 --> 00:30:32,250 And some of the big challenges that this sector is facing challenges around, for example, 297 00:30:32,850 --> 00:30:39,630 how do we more effectively link relief to recovery, to long term development? 298 00:30:40,110 --> 00:30:49,500 How do we avoid failures like the Horn of Africa famine, where there's good evidence that there's increasing humanitarian needs, 299 00:30:49,860 --> 00:30:55,740 and what preventive and anticipatory approaches might have minimised the loss of life and human suffering. 300 00:30:56,790 --> 00:31:09,839 So I encourage you to look at that. Speaking about ethics, I guess, for Dara, where we got into the issue of why looking at donors, 301 00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:16,650 because most of the initiatives in the sector have come out of the concerns of humanitarian organisations, 302 00:31:17,100 --> 00:31:25,740 that our sense that we're not living up to the claims to use your your presentation, 303 00:31:25,950 --> 00:31:33,630 the claims that we make that we're there to help people who are vulnerable and affected by disasters, crisis. 304 00:31:34,590 --> 00:31:38,970 We're there to provide aid in an impartial, non-discriminatory way. 305 00:31:39,570 --> 00:31:49,710 We're there to support there. And in fact, a lot of these initiatives that come out of that sense of unease that we're not living up to those claims, 306 00:31:49,800 --> 00:32:00,690 we're not meeting our own commitments. And so there's, I think, a lot of dilemmas that humanitarians face every day. 307 00:32:01,380 --> 00:32:06,180 How do we do that? How do we balance all these competing demands on us? And how do we make these choices? 308 00:32:07,380 --> 00:32:14,520 What kind of choices do we make that will allow us to live up to our claims and to have I 309 00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:17,670 like this idea of relationship because it's something that I've been dealing with a lot, too. 310 00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:21,180 How do we make sure that the quality of this relationship that we have as an 311 00:32:21,180 --> 00:32:25,950 organisation and with effective populations and the other stakeholders and supporters, 312 00:32:26,700 --> 00:32:29,040 allows us to achieve our mission. 313 00:32:29,910 --> 00:32:41,400 So there's a lot of choices involved and I think many of the things that we've heard already this morning about code of conduct or more recently. 314 00:32:45,470 --> 00:32:48,500 It takes around sexual exploitation and abuse of power. 315 00:32:49,850 --> 00:32:54,350 All of these things are reflections of our own level of dissatisfaction about us 316 00:32:54,350 --> 00:32:58,880 living up to those some of those ethical standards that we all claim to adhere to. 317 00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:06,110 So these codes come up and they evolve because mainly because of a failure on their part to live up to 318 00:33:06,110 --> 00:33:13,370 those those claims and to those commitments to failures in Rwanda and the Balkans and the tsunami, 319 00:33:13,730 --> 00:33:17,600 Indian Ocean tsunami have all led to pushing us to try to do better. 320 00:33:20,210 --> 00:33:28,100 One of the things that when I started its work was to try to evaluate how effectively were humanitarian 321 00:33:28,490 --> 00:33:34,100 organisations living up to their claims and how effectively they were actually meeting up, 322 00:33:34,220 --> 00:33:39,900 meeting their mission, humanitarian mission of of preventing in the region who is suffering. 323 00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:41,480 So we did a lot of evaluation work. 324 00:33:42,050 --> 00:33:50,630 And in the Indian Ocean tsunami, we specifically looked at the mutual funding relationship and the role of donor governments. 325 00:33:51,410 --> 00:33:54,890 And we found that donor governments. 326 00:33:56,360 --> 00:34:03,170 I think a hugely important role at shaping the way that humanitarian organisations work, 327 00:34:03,890 --> 00:34:10,340 affecting the choices that they could make at the operational level about how they were going to carry out their work, 328 00:34:10,820 --> 00:34:15,350 how they were going to interact with affected populations. 329 00:34:15,860 --> 00:34:23,990 And and that was an important component that nobody had really looked at in great detail, a lot of work around. 330 00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:29,800 You had to follow severe standards that's trying to be to the best quality programs that we can. 331 00:34:29,810 --> 00:34:31,100 Let's try to be more accountable. 332 00:34:31,670 --> 00:34:39,010 But nobody's really looking at the nature of the relationship of the donors that fund and allow humanitarian organisations to do that work. 333 00:34:39,530 --> 00:34:42,260 So that's where the idea of the Humanitarian Response Index came out. 334 00:34:44,720 --> 00:34:50,450 When we wanted to look at how how doing his part to play part of that accountability 335 00:34:50,450 --> 00:34:55,280 relationship the obvious the first question came to us well how do we measure that? 336 00:34:55,490 --> 00:35:00,950 How do we measure the quality of the support that they're giving to humanitarian organisations? 337 00:35:00,980 --> 00:35:06,280 What can we use as a way to to try to assess that and that? 338 00:35:07,540 --> 00:35:17,940 The tool that we decided to use at the time was a declaration called the Good Humanitarian Donation Principles back in 2003. 339 00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:25,850 A group of, I think, enlightened donor governments, agents, agencies, and more importantly, 340 00:35:26,330 --> 00:35:35,090 a group of enlightened individuals within those donor government humanitarian agencies said, we have to take responsibility. 341 00:35:35,990 --> 00:35:40,700 We have to take certain responsibility for the outcomes of humanitarian actions. 342 00:35:41,890 --> 00:35:46,730 And you know, the old saying, you pay, you pay the piper, you get to pay here. 343 00:35:46,730 --> 00:35:54,799 The tune is essentially, I think, the rest of the realisation by some of these donors that we have a responsibility and we have some 344 00:35:54,800 --> 00:36:01,550 commitments and accountability not just to the partners that we fund but also to affected communities. 345 00:36:02,540 --> 00:36:09,890 Because from the donors perspective, whether it's deferred or RS aid or Swiss cooperation, 346 00:36:10,610 --> 00:36:18,980 all of them make that same claim of the shared vision and shared objectives, preventing and alleviating human suffering. 347 00:36:19,340 --> 00:36:25,490 So donors, by making that claim, some of them thought that they have a responsibility to demonstrate and live up to that. 348 00:36:26,030 --> 00:36:31,640 So the Good Samaritan leadership principle set out 23 different principles where donor governments 349 00:36:31,700 --> 00:36:42,020 committed to things like making sure that aid is is non-discriminatory in proportion to needs. 350 00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:51,169 It doesn't say you work over here in this country or you were over there with that group of people that says we will 351 00:36:51,170 --> 00:36:58,130 provide aid resources in ways that allow humanitarian organisations to fulfil their pledge about impartiality, 352 00:36:59,390 --> 00:37:09,770 neutrality, about independence. So their humanitarian principles are included in the Good Humanitarian Japan declaration. 353 00:37:10,010 --> 00:37:16,100 There's also lots of more operational issues around. 354 00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:26,510 We will provide money on time so that agencies can get to the resources on the ground and to actually carry out programs. 355 00:37:27,620 --> 00:37:34,820 We will not impose conditions on aid that would hamper the ability of organisations to do that work. 356 00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:40,580 Bunch of other different things like that. So for us at DHARA, it was a really interesting thing to say. 357 00:37:41,180 --> 00:37:45,500 This is what you said you're going to do as donors, this is what you said, 358 00:37:46,460 --> 00:37:51,860 or how you will manage the relationship with aid agencies and for what purpose, 359 00:37:51,860 --> 00:37:57,590 for what end to help affected populations in the most effective way possible. 360 00:37:58,460 --> 00:38:04,400 So it became, for us, a really good framework from which to start to develop indicators about. 361 00:38:05,300 --> 00:38:09,860 To what extent we're doing the government's actually living up to those commitments. 362 00:38:10,820 --> 00:38:19,820 We developed indicators of framework and then we developed a research process to look at how in 363 00:38:19,820 --> 00:38:27,530 practice the donors were doing that in specific cases like in Kenya or in Somalia or Pakistan or Haiti. 364 00:38:28,460 --> 00:38:33,740 We did that by talking to humanitarian agencies at the field level about the 365 00:38:33,740 --> 00:38:36,740 nature of the relationship that they have with the donors that from their work. 366 00:38:37,430 --> 00:38:41,810 But the quality of that and how well donors actually facilitated or impeded 367 00:38:41,990 --> 00:38:48,890 them from doing humanitarian action that was principle based and effective. 368 00:38:49,610 --> 00:38:54,049 We also took a look at policy and we looked at funding patterns. 369 00:38:54,050 --> 00:38:58,550 We looked at a whole bunch of different indicators to come up with an assessment. 370 00:38:59,750 --> 00:39:09,950 That essentially compares to 23 of the major overseas impact governments against 371 00:39:09,950 --> 00:39:14,630 the GST principles to say well who's doing better and who's not doing so, 372 00:39:16,010 --> 00:39:21,500 who's better at, for example, maintaining commitment to neutrality, impartiality, 373 00:39:22,010 --> 00:39:31,040 who's better at supporting accountability towards affected populations and develop a comparative ranking on this? 374 00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:43,170 So we've done that for five years. And now that I've stepped aside from that a bit. 375 00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:50,730 I wanted to share some reflections about how well I think the experience of it has been about making donors more accountable. 376 00:39:53,220 --> 00:39:54,930 The first thing to say is, is that. 377 00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:06,590 Donors when they talk about good humanitarian nutrition principles, I'll say that we all support this, our government support this. 378 00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:11,780 And we we apply these good standards consistently. 379 00:40:12,940 --> 00:40:15,860 So where's the evidence for that? And there is no evidence. 380 00:40:17,540 --> 00:40:26,780 There's no external evaluations, for the most part, that look specifically about how donor governments are applying those standards. 381 00:40:27,350 --> 00:40:33,530 And donors will say, well, we use self-regulation, we do peer reviews, we talk to our partners. 382 00:40:35,690 --> 00:40:43,130 And if that was the case, you would expect to see noticeable improvements amongst donors in terms of applying change to principles. 383 00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:47,960 And in fact, what we have seen in our observation after five years of this is that, in fact, 384 00:40:48,290 --> 00:40:55,970 many of those principles are gradually being eroded and discarded, ignored and overlooked by donor governments. 385 00:40:56,510 --> 00:41:02,000 So self-regulation by in and of itself is an interesting process, can help learning. 386 00:41:04,010 --> 00:41:07,070 But there was no incentive, we felt, 387 00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:17,300 to keep donors to constantly push for improvements and to constantly hold themselves up against those commitments and say, how well are we doing? 388 00:41:18,530 --> 00:41:26,540 So it's it was important for us as governor to have some external independent 389 00:41:26,540 --> 00:41:35,540 review of donors and to try to use that as an impetus to promote a more equitable, 390 00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:42,440 more responsible and more comfortable relationship of donors with the other parts of that 391 00:41:43,410 --> 00:41:49,910 relationship with the partners they fund and with the communities that they claim to be serving. 392 00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:54,860 DFID will always say, We're helping the people of Pakistan. They're providing some funding, 393 00:41:55,460 --> 00:42:01,070 but it's usually the British Red Cross or Save the Children or others actually doing the direct relationship with affected communities. 394 00:42:01,370 --> 00:42:06,680 But because they make that claim, we felt it was important that they're held up to some external scrutiny. 395 00:42:08,150 --> 00:42:12,050 The problem that we found was. 396 00:42:13,790 --> 00:42:23,240 That our theory of change was that by holding them up to to external scrutiny, by holding them up to some indicators of good practice, 397 00:42:23,750 --> 00:42:30,829 ones that they've already agreed to, there will be an incentive for donors to look at their scores, 398 00:42:30,830 --> 00:42:33,020 to look at their ranking, and to make some improvements. 399 00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:42,010 And in fact, many of the donors that we've talked to, the governments you talk to, have said that this is a perverse motivation. 400 00:42:42,020 --> 00:42:48,580 It's a perverse incentive. We don't we don't want to be reviewed. 401 00:42:49,420 --> 00:42:55,720 What's your literature? Legitimacy as a as an NGO, as an independent actor, to be reviewing us. 402 00:42:56,260 --> 00:43:02,860 So discredit the external evaluation with the first kind of response. 403 00:43:05,070 --> 00:43:08,220 You know, who who authorised who gave you permission to do this? 404 00:43:09,030 --> 00:43:16,559 Who gave you the authority to do this? And my argument to do it to an undercover survivor who gave anyone an NGO or a government or 405 00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:21,780 anyone else to say that you are legitimate when you're undertaking some humanitarian action. 406 00:43:23,460 --> 00:43:26,850 But governance and legitimacy was one of the big concerns. 407 00:43:26,850 --> 00:43:37,230 Sweep Because we are not considered legitimate. It was an easy opportunity to undermine the work that I was doing and to discredit the findings. 408 00:43:38,970 --> 00:43:42,920 So. That was brought. 409 00:43:43,190 --> 00:43:48,919 I guess one of the lessons is how do you get buy in from the stakeholders on any type of accountability 410 00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:58,129 system that allows you to have the rigour that you need to make sure that there is a credible process, 411 00:43:58,130 --> 00:44:07,250 that there's legitimacy in the results, and yet not lose sight of the fact that you have to step back and do some kind of assessment. 412 00:44:08,030 --> 00:44:12,650 If you're too closely linked, which is, I think actually the case in the humanitarian sector, 413 00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:20,480 there's a there's a bias in that relationship that sometimes makes it really difficult for you to look at those hard truths. 414 00:44:21,350 --> 00:44:25,760 So getting by in was one of the lessons that I think we've come to after five years of doing this, 415 00:44:26,360 --> 00:44:34,700 but finding the balance between getting a sense of legitimacy from donors credibility on this and 416 00:44:36,410 --> 00:44:41,930 at the same time not losing that independence to be able to see to see those types of things. 417 00:44:42,860 --> 00:44:53,600 Another lesson. I guess being targeting our theory of change is that if you if you look at the funding flow, 418 00:44:54,800 --> 00:45:01,250 if you can influence and ensure that principles of good humanitarian principles and good 419 00:45:01,250 --> 00:45:07,760 practices are part of that relationship between donors and the agencies they fund, 420 00:45:08,730 --> 00:45:15,320 then that should also have. And a spinoff effect at the actual programming level. 421 00:45:17,940 --> 00:45:25,110 I think it's a reasonable assumption. I actually do think that that's an important and and an important component to look at. 422 00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:38,010 But what we discovered as well is that five years of doing this and in a sense, we were preaching to the converted when I said enlightened people, 423 00:45:38,010 --> 00:45:44,070 it was an it really was enlightened people within donor government agencies who came up with a good community and ownership principles. 424 00:45:45,150 --> 00:45:52,260 And over the course of five years, in talking to many donor representatives, whether as a devout or Aussie or you or any of them, 425 00:45:52,650 --> 00:45:57,780 they are absolutely genuinely committed to maintaining humanitarian principles. 426 00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:03,340 And so and some of them just to keep it in perspective. 427 00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:11,650 Humanitarian departments compared to, let's say, development departments within donor government agencies, there are minuscule minority. 428 00:46:12,490 --> 00:46:15,970 And so when we start saying you should be doing better than this and this and this, 429 00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:21,870 I think a lot of it felt personally attacked in the sense that we're trying our very best. 430 00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:29,440 We actually believe in our community humanitarian principles, but we're not the ones who ultimately make the decisions. 431 00:46:30,070 --> 00:46:34,930 So another lesson for us is who do you target? Where do we want the change to happen? 432 00:46:36,010 --> 00:46:38,470 And I guess after doing this for a while, 433 00:46:39,610 --> 00:46:46,000 come to the realisation that maybe this is not the place where we should be focusing our energy and our attention. 434 00:46:46,420 --> 00:46:55,209 Maybe it should be with the general public so that the public doesn't put pressure on our government to have 435 00:46:55,210 --> 00:47:03,280 a knee jerk reaction to Haiti or Pakistan while ignoring massive humanitarian needs in a place like Chad. 436 00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:14,239 Maybe it's with parliaments to make sure that next time it's not Andrew Mitchell anymore. 437 00:47:14,240 --> 00:47:23,540 Is it to see some sort of new person? Yeah. So next time the Secretary of State or the Minister of External Affairs is questioned in Parliament that 438 00:47:23,540 --> 00:47:29,600 all parliamentarians know that there's a real reason why these principles to have good practices there. 439 00:47:32,150 --> 00:47:33,670 We don't have the answer to that yet, 440 00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:45,680 but I think one of our conclusions is that if you're going to try to do some kind of accountability scheme and you're trying to get for change, 441 00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:51,260 behaviours and practices have to be really clear about who and where you're going to focus and target those actions. 442 00:47:54,380 --> 00:48:10,180 Another kind of lesson learned is when we started this 2007 edition was actually done by economists, two economists from the World Economic Forum. 443 00:48:12,230 --> 00:48:17,230 And they came up with a very robust statistical model that said this and this. 444 00:48:17,310 --> 00:48:20,720 These types of things can show how donors are doing. 445 00:48:21,620 --> 00:48:28,340 And for those of us who are not economists and not statisticians, we have good understanding of how that works. 446 00:48:29,030 --> 00:48:37,730 But our sense was, wait a second, this is not this is going to go over terribly within the humanitarian sector. 447 00:48:38,300 --> 00:48:42,200 Humanitarians, they don't understand the suffering. They don't want to know the stuff. 448 00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:48,499 They don't have theory. They want to know about practical issues, about how we're going to make this response more effective, 449 00:48:48,500 --> 00:48:58,820 how we're going to be provide a better quality and more durable solutions to the situations faced by by vulnerable populations. 450 00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:07,760 And so we move very quickly away from a very theoretical base to one where we tried to get a more practical methodology. 451 00:49:08,150 --> 00:49:16,070 I spent a lot of time at the field level talking to hundreds and thousands of of representatives of humanitarian 452 00:49:16,070 --> 00:49:21,230 organisations about the nature and the quality of that relationship so that we could start to feedback. 453 00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:30,280 And going back to kind of that fourth option kind of feedback or the third option feedback, that information. 454 00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:37,210 Begin to put information on the table that would help to facilitate a better and more effective relationship. 455 00:49:38,830 --> 00:49:45,159 But then we ran into the dilemma of, are you doing this as a kind of independent, 456 00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:50,680 impartial research project with the research results that you just put out there? 457 00:49:51,370 --> 00:49:57,130 Or are you doing this for advocacy purposes, trying to raise awareness of issues, trying to push for change? 458 00:49:57,430 --> 00:49:58,990 And that's a huge dilemma, in fact. 459 00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:09,640 And you can get kind of accused sometimes of trying to mis represent or distort your research findings to fit an advocacy message. 460 00:50:10,510 --> 00:50:15,820 Or you can say your advocacy message don't match the evidence. 461 00:50:17,500 --> 00:50:23,650 One are the evidence, which is often the case in the financial sector runs contrary to what people's common sense understanding is. 462 00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:27,850 My former boss used to say, I have a great relationship with David. 463 00:50:28,240 --> 00:50:32,440 He helped me out wonderfully in Democratic Republic of the Congo. 464 00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:35,980 And I said, You know, I can understand why they're ranked number eight. 465 00:50:36,790 --> 00:50:40,210 They should be number one. If you talk to David, I think they would feel the same. 466 00:50:42,310 --> 00:50:45,879 But sometimes the evidence that we've brought out of the ground, 467 00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:50,680 contrary to what people's perceptions are about the relationship that they had with donors. 468 00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:55,660 And so it's really difficult to find that balance as well. 469 00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:01,730 So that's another lesson. 470 00:51:03,020 --> 00:51:07,220 We've got three of them that so far finding legitimacy, credibility, 471 00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:16,250 targeting specifically the type or the people or the organisations where you want to effect change of behaviours. 472 00:51:18,050 --> 00:51:23,540 Balancing between kind of evidence based on the one hand and advocacy on the other. 473 00:51:25,430 --> 00:51:30,980 And I guess the, the, the, the last kind of lesson of this was. 474 00:51:35,210 --> 00:51:39,720 When we started this was I had the feeling, as I said to it, 475 00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:48,050 that nobody was looking at the relationship and the accountability of responsibilities between funders and humanitarian organisations. 476 00:51:49,310 --> 00:51:56,420 And so we thought we were adding some value to the sector by doing this and adding to some value to the work that other 477 00:51:56,420 --> 00:52:02,510 organisations are already doing around the relationship between humanitarian organisations and affected communities. 478 00:52:03,290 --> 00:52:11,660 And I think the lesson learned for us though is that you need to look at the whole parts of that relationship. 479 00:52:12,650 --> 00:52:17,450 You have to look at all those multiple stakeholders and talk about those mutual responsibilities 480 00:52:17,450 --> 00:52:21,910 and mutual accountability if you're going to have an effective framework for accountability. 481 00:52:22,340 --> 00:52:26,420 So in the next phase of the HRA, that's something we're going to look at. 482 00:52:26,990 --> 00:52:33,290 More precisely, how can we also then get affected communities, 483 00:52:33,290 --> 00:52:43,489 voices and concerns into this equation so that we have a more complete picture about what these mutual 484 00:52:43,490 --> 00:52:50,900 accountabilities mean to different stakeholders and how we can how we can integrate this in a more comprehensive way. 485 00:52:51,530 --> 00:52:55,730 For the first five years, we really didn't have the resources or I think, the capacity to do so. 486 00:52:56,510 --> 00:53:03,290 But in the next phase, I think it will be possible to to do some interesting collaborations and have the field level and get and 487 00:53:03,290 --> 00:53:09,670 hear from some of the other missing pieces or the missing part of their analysis and perspective of the HRA. 488 00:53:11,240 --> 00:53:15,590 And if we get to that stage, I think it will be really interesting, 489 00:53:15,590 --> 00:53:24,200 the stories that we'll hear from coming out of this and what not just about the compliance and commitments, but what are the real challenges? 490 00:53:24,200 --> 00:53:32,480 What are the real issues and concerns? Know, as I said, to get people working at different and humanitarian are absolutely committed. 491 00:53:32,930 --> 00:53:37,780 They face lots and lots of challenges and obstacles about who they selected, 492 00:53:37,790 --> 00:53:42,350 partners in which crisis, and how do they deal with the ministers and the media as pressure? 493 00:53:42,740 --> 00:53:48,290 Just like an organisation like Save the Children, Oxfam, UK or anyone else has these dilemmas to face. 494 00:53:49,450 --> 00:53:52,750 I'm just I'm sure it is affected communities. 495 00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:59,260 Do we want this organisation to come working with us? Is this the kind of program that we really want? 496 00:53:59,500 --> 00:54:05,350 Does this meet our needs and priorities? So I hope that in the next phase of the humanitarian response events, 497 00:54:05,350 --> 00:54:10,870 we'll be able to put all these pieces together in a more comprehensive picture and 498 00:54:10,870 --> 00:54:18,220 help us to build those types of a framework that allows us to look at accountability, 499 00:54:18,430 --> 00:54:24,820 around respectful relationships, about sharing visions and goals and move. 500 00:54:25,660 --> 00:54:30,069 Yes, it's important to have a framework, and yes, it's important to kind of measure itself against those frameworks. 501 00:54:30,070 --> 00:54:39,370 But I think for us, the interesting conclusion from five years actually in this is that that's really, really interesting stuff. 502 00:54:40,210 --> 00:54:47,170 But it's understanding why things haven't happened, why people have found it difficult to live up to their commitments. 503 00:54:49,240 --> 00:54:51,910 What are the challenges and how could we resolve them? 504 00:54:52,420 --> 00:54:58,060 That's going to be the interesting story and that's going to tell us more about are we being more accountable, 505 00:54:59,640 --> 00:55:13,510 as has different stakeholders in the relationship? Maybe just one final note on the right and I'll just quickly mention my to do project and. 506 00:55:19,500 --> 00:55:24,290 What I think is interesting about these types of things and what's missing in the 507 00:55:24,290 --> 00:55:29,279 humanitarian sector quite frequently is that we take a look in a real piecemeal fashion, 508 00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:42,660 sometimes at a specific program, in a specific crisis, have lots and program in in Kenya for food distributions in Somalia. 509 00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:47,520 And we often don't get the whole comprehensive picture. 510 00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:54,810 And one of the things that I really liked about working on VHI is that because we visited on average about ten crises each year, 511 00:55:55,170 --> 00:55:58,230 sent our teams to do field research, talked to hundreds of people. 512 00:55:58,590 --> 00:56:04,919 We love to draw out lots of interesting things and commonalities across the world about where the 513 00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:09,630 challenges were for the humanitarian system and maybe some ideas of where things could be improved. 514 00:56:10,830 --> 00:56:18,150 And I think that in itself is a valuable lesson, but it's something I hope collectively all of us do. 515 00:56:19,230 --> 00:56:22,980 We begin to look at putting these pieces together in a more comprehensive picture 516 00:56:23,910 --> 00:56:30,210 and understand and debate and challenge some of those those issues as needed. 517 00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:36,900 Right now, there isn't any really kind of one or one single place where you can get good quality, 518 00:56:37,770 --> 00:56:42,510 the thoughtful analysis about the comprehensive issues that we're facing as a sector. 519 00:56:43,770 --> 00:56:48,240 So I do I encourage you to look at that. I hope you can find it useful, 520 00:56:48,630 --> 00:56:52,510 and I hope you support the next phase because I think it's going to be quite interesting to try 521 00:56:52,540 --> 00:56:57,960 to to rethink our understanding about accountability and how to look at these relationships. 522 00:56:58,810 --> 00:57:06,330 Just to finish. The project I'm working on now is supported by the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, 523 00:57:06,330 --> 00:57:14,250 which is kind of an umbrella of nine of the largest humanitarian organisations like the Oxfam International Network, 524 00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:24,540 the Red Cross, with my significant others. And it's it's an idea to look at whether or not we've reached a sufficient level 525 00:57:24,540 --> 00:57:32,850 of maturity within the humanitarian sector to actually certify organisations, 526 00:57:33,060 --> 00:57:40,080 not individuals or organisations that want or claim to be doing humanitarian work in a crisis situation. 527 00:57:40,770 --> 00:57:44,070 Could it add value to the to the sector? 528 00:57:44,640 --> 00:57:51,780 Would it help to provide better trust, credibility, confidence in humanitarian actors or not? 529 00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:54,090 That's a question that needs to be addressed. 530 00:57:54,750 --> 00:58:03,330 And if it would add value, how could it contribute to improving quality, effectiveness and accountability of actors? 531 00:58:03,720 --> 00:58:06,240 It's a question mark. It's a it's more of an exploration. 532 00:58:08,460 --> 00:58:14,910 But I think it's an interesting question for me to look at, because it goes back to that kind of original point that, I mean, 533 00:58:15,330 --> 00:58:19,980 if we all want to act ethically and responsibly when we work in humanitarian sector, 534 00:58:21,960 --> 00:58:25,920 but sometimes it's very hard to show evidence of how we're doing that. 535 00:58:25,920 --> 00:58:33,630 And would certification possibly add another need to to help and to provide evidence of that? 536 00:58:33,870 --> 00:58:40,170 I'm not sure of the answer, but if you're hoping that we'll get some lots of feedback and inputs from you. 537 00:58:41,350 --> 00:58:42,460 So. Thank you. Thank you.