Opinion: Time for a participation revolution by design in aid sector

A vision for people to be meaningfully involved in decisions about their own lives in an emergency feels like a minimum ask. The rousing language of the community participation revolution envisaged by the Grand Bargain offered hope — but the humanitarian sector is a long way from this, and progress on the transfer of power and resources locally has been called “disgraceful.” Progress toward a participation revolution has so far been at the fringes of the humanitarian sector, rather than disrupting the system, which is a requirement of any revolution. We need to ask and answer questions about who designs interventions and who is excluded from the process, because this is where critical decisions about how funds are spent are made. It should be the norm for local staff, organizations, and networks to be involved at this stage — but in my experience this remains a blue moon phenomena. It should also be standard to plan and budget for a participation revolution in every intervention, given the widespread commitment to the Grand Bargain. Yet the humanitarian sector continues to design and budget programs as it has for the last generation: Existing power holders won’t design themselves out of the picture. This costs lives and livelihoods and can condemn people to a lifetime of poverty. As a sector, we have to make deliberate efforts for a participation revolution to happen. But how, given the political and financial weight of the “top” that is reluctant to move over? 1. Clean up our language The Inter-Agency Standing Committee defines “Accountability to Affected Populations” as a “commitment by humanitarian actors to use power responsibly to take account of, give account to, and be held to account by the people they seek to assist.” The IASC terminology maintains power with the current stakeholders by only calling for its responsible use. We need to echo the growing call to “shift power” locally — not just to use power responsibly. 2. Rebels unite The voices that are calling for this shift in power are isolated in operations. Technical leads and senior managers need to collaborate and coordinate across the sector to catalyze change from the outset — not just during interventions. Technical experts need to work with implementers as a people-centered design team that advocates this approach and works alongside development teams to design, plan, and budget for a participation revolution. 3. Systematically engage field staff Implementing staff and local organizations must be part of the whole design and funding process — as a minimum standard. Local staff should lead decisions about who, what, and how to deliver an operation, and more crucially, they should be involved in how funds are spent to ensure community engagement, accountability, quality, and effectiveness. 4. Engage and support local networks Local networks (e.g., disability organizations) must be included to design targeting criteria, provide strategies to overcome local power dynamics, and reflect the preferred communications communities use. Local networks must also be recognized and included at the decision-making level. 5. Fund the participation revolution Budgets should reflect design choices to ensure words are supported with adequate resources. Budget lines for engagement and accountability should be far bolder than those for complaints and feedback mechanisms. This may involve transport, technology, mapping areas where marginalized people or groups live, or creating a dedicated radio program to answer community questions. 6. Ensure diversity of all teams Beyond ensuring diversity in operational staff, we need to ensure funding and development teams are fit for purpose. These teams are all too often based in HQ; we need to ensure they are diverse and local, and orientated to work collaboratively with local groups. These teams can systematically and sustainably bring in local staff and networks from the outset. Donors should require this as a way of working. 7. Get accountability right locally first The sector, over recent years, has increased spending on data without insisting on resulting action based on the information and trends gathered. This data is presented at meetings — while not usually or systematically shared with communities or field workers. This mantra of gathering more data for upward accountability in effect disempowers those on the ground. We must get ground level basics right: we need strong hyper-local accountability by communities — supported by stronger accountability by local coordination bodies. 8. Communities are the arbitrators of quality The sector designs in technical silos — but one of the most nonsensical disconnects is between gathering information to measure the quality of operations for managers and donors — known as Monitoring, Evaluations, Accountability and Learning, or MEAL — and gathering information and questions from communities (e.g., via complaints and feedback mechanisms, or CFMs). Communities need to be the arbitrators of the quality of interventions; and this measure of quality must be connected to the questions and concerns that communities raise with aid workers via CFMs. Teams also need more field time carved out in budgets to create space for more localized qualitative monitoring (e.g., to allow more conversations with communities) to ensure a reality check on MEAL processes. 9. Conversations with communities matter Information is king, but we fail by offering information that communities don’t want or need. In my experience, the sector still too often fears the media, other than for polished stories. Huge communications teams produce slick fundraising content, while too often I have seen minuscule amounts of funding allocated to ensure life-saving information is exchanged with communities. We need this exchange of information and conversations with communities to be budgeted as a minimum standard. 10. Donors must step up to their commitments Donors must demonstrate steps to relinquish power: One way is to stop relegating community engagement and accountability discussions to the end of proposals as tick boxes. Donors have power to ensure local staff and community members are included in design processes, and that local networks are funded. It should be a donor requirement that more funds are dedicated for local organization inclusion, and that the quality of responses is measured by communities first. The quality of every aid dollar spent on interventions suffers without local ownership. We need to nurture a culture of community ownership that moves away from box-ticking for managers and donors. It’s time to bring the “human” back into humanitarian — and it’s long overdue that we make deliberate design choices and concerted plans to achieve a participation revolution.