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Towards a more coherent humanitarian response in the Horn of Africa

The Sphere Project, People In Aid, and the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP) International, supported by the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP), sent a joint assessment team to Nairobi, Kenya in late August. The visit was a first step towards a joint contribution on the ground and one of the first fruits of their recent commitment to strengthen collaboration.

Martin FisherMartin Fisher, a humanitarian professional with extensive experience in programme planning, monitoring and evaluation represented the Sphere Project in the assessment team. In the following interview he explains the findings of the visit and how the four initiatives intend to address challenges in the field.

There are a lot of organizations, both local and international, involved in this humanitarian operation. Some have been working in Kenya for many years and are expanding their programmes to meet the needs connected to the current food insecurity and population movements. Others are new to Kenya or are moving into new areas of the country. Clearly, this poses many challenges, not the least being the coordination of information-sharing amongst agencies.

We have also seen that agencies are taking on large numbers of new staff and entering into a number of new partnerships with local NGOs and officials. Here, the challenge is to make sure that humanitarian workers responding to the needs of the people affected have the knowledge and tools to deal with the complexity they face.

We wanted to get out into the drought-affected areas to see and talk to communities and humanitarian workers in the camps. This proved difficult for a number of reasons and brought home to the team some practical constraints to moving around within the country, like the distances between affected areas, the demand on flight seats and the fact that that each visitor requires guides and security, taking these away from the humanitarian staff working with affected people.

This mission was about identifying whether having a joint team deployed on the ground by the Sphere Project, HAP and People In Aid and supported by ALNAP would help agencies address the challenges.

We were reassured by the strong interest of agencies in Nairobi for a quality and accountability team to set up in Kenya, possibly with a regional remit. Having agreed that this deployment would add value, the team will aim to help humanitarian as well as governmental agencies meet accepted standards of quality, both in the immediate response to the current crisis and in their work for short- and long-term recovery as well as prevention of future crises.

What would a “quality and accountability team” on the ground concretely do?

There are several areas in which we expect the team to make a contribution.

First, to develop increased training capacity. The team will work with partner agencies with existing capacity in staff development to identify strategies for increasing access to appropriate training in quality and accountability. The team will not carry out training itself, but provide resource materials and coaching to training providers and assist in the coordination of training delivery.

Second, the team will provide briefings and specialized, tailored trainings on quality programming, accountability, staff support and human resources quality issues, application of Sphere standards and other issues identified by humanitarian agencies, for example, how to handle complaints or disseminate information.

Third, the team will provide advice to the staff of humanitarian agencies, including senior- level staff, to ensure that they support activities seeking to integrate quality and accountability standards into the design, development and delivery of humanitarian response, staff management, performance evaluation and relationships with partners.

This will also include a series of visits to sites where the humanitarian response is delivered to assess the challenges in implementing the standards and codes of Sphere, HAP and People In Aid, identify good practice, consult on possible interventions, provide feedback, and meet with communities to gain their perspectives. This type of visit should provide material for both case studies and advocacy.

In the chaos of large-scale disasters, important tools such as Sphere standards can get forgotten, so it is important to remind the wide humanitarian community of the standards and how they can be used in practice in such situations.

The ideal is for the quality and accountability initiatives to work together, preferably being even hosted together, so trainings and field support are linked. In Haiti there was good collaboration with HAP, but lack of Sphere staffing continuity hindered these efforts to a certain extent.

During the deployment in Haiti, there were different understandings of the respective roles and responsibilities of the Sphere Project secretariat and of the other organizations involved. In the present case (Horn of Africa), a lot of effort is being placed into establishing clear objectives and roles for the deployment ahead of time as well as mechanisms to review them along the way.

It is useful to have a consignment of Sphere handbooks delivered to the field as soon as possible so they can be distributed and promoted amongst agencies, prioritizing those which need but cannot get immediate access to them, like local organizations and government staff.

The ultimate goal of this collaborative deployment is a more coherent humanitarian response based on enhanced quality management and accountability, in particular to communities affected by the crisis.

Drought and food insecurity are endemic in the region and have been compounded by a complex humanitarian context. The current response is hampered by management and coordination systems that were not prepared for the scale of the crisis and humanitarian interventions of varying quality.

The joint deployment should act broadly to influence the quality of aid delivery during the current response and to support and promote good practice, leading to greater impact and aid effectiveness. It will seek to complement and build on existing expertise and projects in the region, target needs appropriately at both grass-roots and systemic levels, and draw upon and highlight the unique contribution to quality and accountability of each of the participating agencies.

Additional information:

  • Additional information on the decision to strengthen collaboration between the Sphere Project, HAP, People In Aid and ALNAP can be found here.
  • Situation Report on the Horn of Africa Drought Crisis 
  • Photo: Martin Fisher. © The Sphere Project