Groupe URD’s links with different types of organisation and the evaluation and research work that it carries out on a daily basis mean that it is perfectly positioned to keep abreast of humanitarian issues and to follow debates about the humanitarian sector, the management of crises and the relations between relief and development.
To what extent are funding agencies responsible for the quality of aid?
The quality of aid was long seen as the sole responsibility of humanitarian agencies. Yet the practices of funding agencies have a direct impact on the quality of aid. The Good Humanitarian Donorship principles and the recently developed Humanitarian Response Index have begun to shed light on this question.
Obviously, the quality of aid is first and foremost the responsibility of aid agencies themselves: each agency is responsible for its actions, its personnel, its use of funds and its different projects. This responsibility is the foundation of the humanitarian system as a whole and a growing number of control mechanisms exist, particularly concerning the management of funds. Efforts to improve the quality of aid have therefore principally been aimed at aid agencies (Sphere, People in Aid, HAP or the Quality COMPAS). Despite its importance, the idea of trying to make funding agencies more responsible is relatively new.
Humanitarian action can not be seen independently of the ‘aid chain’. An organisation’s ability to act and exist depends on the will and continued support of its donors, whether these are public or private. The notion of shared responsibility for the quality of aid is therefore dependent on the type of relations which exist between the different ‘links’ in the chain. Relations with institutional funding agencies vary a lot, with varying degrees of autonomy which (theoretically) condition the degree of responsibility for the quality of the aid provided. In very basic terms, it is possible to differentiate three broad categories of funding agency – the ‘banker’, the ‘partner’, and the ‘funder-actor’.
‘Banker’ funding agencies see their role in classic terms and do not consider themselves responsible for anything other than managing the funds available for humanitarian aid. This involves distributing subsidies, transferring the funds on time and monitoring financial reports. In such cases, responsibility for the quality of the aid paid for with these funds is the responsibility of the aid agency alone, which implies that the relation is one of trust. This is the Scandinavian model, where states provide the UN and a number of large national NGOs with considerable sums of money.
For funding agencies who see themselves as the partners of the aid agencies, the quality of the aid provided becomes a question of shared responsibility. In such cases the funding agency becomes more involved in operations, in the analysis of situations and in the organisation of projects. This implies greater presence of the funding agency in the field, decentralisation of decision-making and increased technical expertise of funding agency representatives. This is the case of ECHO, OFDA in the US and DFID in the UK.
Other funding agencies see themselves as directly involved in the provision of aid (funder-actors). They manage their actions based on their own understanding of situations and what needs to be put in place and operate on the basis of calls for proposals, and even calls for tenders. This is often the case with UN agencies when they themselves become funding agencies, but also for certain operations by USAID, the World Bank and the European Commission. In these cases there is a sub-contracting relationship with humanitarian agencies and in certain extreme cases the question of responsibility could be turned around so that the organisation which ‘gives the orders’ can be considered to be responsible for any damage caused by the aid agency.
But whatever the relation between aid agency and funding agency, the funding agency will always be responsible to some degree for the aid provided in the field, in terms of its responsibility for choosing the agency, funding procedures and the choice of activities that are funded.
The choice of how much funding is to be allocated to humanitarian action is a first level of responsibility. As the resources allocated to the humanitarian sector do not cover global humanitarian needs, the first responsibility of every funding agency is to allocate relatively large sums of money. This will become increasingly important in the future if humanitarian needs increase due to climate change. In contrast to the 0.7% of GDP which is allocated to development, there is currently no such reference for humanitarian aid, but it could well be useful in the future.
The decision to finance a particular project by a particular agency represents a further level of responsibility. Selection criteria are therefore a central issue, but they are rarely examined except in ex-post evaluations of programmes implemented in the field. The funding agency’s responsibility in funding a project based on particular criteria is not taken into account or is seen as secondary to the aid agency’s responsibility. The question of whether funds are distributed impartially between different contexts based on their needs remains an issue for the future. At present there is no real coordination mechanism for humanitarian funding at an international level to guarantee such impartiality even though ethically it would seem of paramount importance.
Funding procedures are also crucially important for the quality of aid. How quickly decisions are made, how transparent the process is, and how flexible programmes are allowed to be are all criteria which can influence quality in the field. These need to be clarified. The DAC/OECD criteria, which are used for evaluations in the field, do not include flexibility. Yet flexibility is essential in humanitarian programmes and depends on procedures fixed by the funding agencies.
Finally, there is the question of funding for activities directly linked to improving the quality of aid. Evaluations have been funded since the 90s, but other activities remain under-funded. It is now widely accepted that a detailed analysis of contexts is essential to the quality of a programme. And yet, how many funding agencies accept to finance this activity ? Similarly, existing institutional funding rarely permits the training of personnel and the adoption of quality approaches at a structural level. These are areas which need to be developed in the future to make a real difference to the quality of aid in general.
If it is therefore clear that funding agencies can be responsible for the quality of humanitarian aid in a number of ways, how is this controlled and monitored? The national level is obviously essential, and funding agencies are accountable to their own national authorities (government or other). Monitoring and control takes place in public policy evaluations, parliamentary enquiries and audits, but the quality of aid brought to affected populations rarely takes priority over considerations of good financial management. Funding agencies from OECD countries have developed peer reviews, which involve member states taking turns to assess each other and make proposals. There is a lot that is positive in such a practice, but we all know how difficult it is to implement evaluation recommendations!
From 2003, the same states have been clarifying what good humanitarian donorship is. In Stockholm, funding agencies drew up a list of 23 principles, which have been signed by 23 states and ECHO. Amongst the principles that are mentioned are that funding should be in proportion to needs and that populations should participate in humanitarian operations, but it does not clearly state that these are quality criteria.
And yet these 23 principles could easily be transformed into a series of criteria to evaluate the quality of funding. Indeed, this is the idea behind the Humanitarian Response Index, which has been developed by the Spanish organisation, Dara (www.daraint.org): the funding practices of countries who have signed up to GHD are rated on the basis of the 23 principles.
There have been many reactions to this initiative. Some have included legitimate questions, such as knowing whether or not giving priority to certain humanitarian crises because of linguistic, geographical and historical links is contrary to the principle of impartiality. Other reactions, on the other hand, seem to have been the result of frustration at having been given a poor rating. But the aim of this initiative is not to please funding agencies, but to create an additional incentive to improve the quality of aid by allowing the general public to judge their country’s performance on humanitarian questions.
Everyone is aware that a lot still needs to be done to improve the quality of aid. This objective should be seen as the responsibility of both humanitarian agencies and funding agencies, even if improving the quality of aid will never replace preventing humanitarian needs from appearing in the first place! Behind an institutional funding agency there is a state whose political roles and responsibilities, notably in terms of prevention, involve so much more than the funding of humanitarian aid!
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Women in Afghanistan.
Following work on the role of women in agriculture and the household economy in the mountains of Hazarajat and in Badakshan, three studies are currently under way: one on the issue of poverty amongst women in Afghanistan, a second on girls’ access to education and and another on women and water, in this arid country. With the Taliban regaining strength and women trembling at the prospect of a return to the terrible period of 1996-2001, women’s issues are fundamental to the situation in Afghanistan.
The situation in Afghanistan has considerably degenerated in recent months and the threat of foreigners being kidnapped means that special precautions need to be taken. The recently formed ‘jirga’ (an assembly which is meant to ‘manage conflict’ between political leaders and Afghan and Pakistani tribal leaders) is an important event, but how and to what extent it will affect the conflict has yet to be seen. Unfortunately, it is clear that the ‘military’ approach to managing the difficult stabilisation of the country has been a failure. NATO has been blind and does not understand what is happening in the rural areas of Afghanistan and in the hearts of Afghans. Is there no way out of this situation? Thanks to the continuation of our research programmes in this country, we are in the front line of a difficult crisis management situation. It is essential that we are able to continue to make a contribution to the evaluation and lesson-learning effort, in what may be NATO’s first Vietnam…
