BANGKOK — Information hubs, surveys, call centers, and anonymous ballot boxes have existed for years as ways for aid groups to communicate with and receive feedback from affected communities. Now, they’re being called into question — along with the strategies that presented them as catch-all communication solutions in the first place.
None of these mechanisms are obsolete, and each has had a role to play in the decades of progress on feedback and accountability in global aid work. As groups race to respond to the latest outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, it’s lessons from communication and engagement with communities in West Africa they take with them. In Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees are currently bracing for cyclone season inside bamboo and tarpaulin shelters, communication alone can be life saving.
The so-called “Grand Bargain” of 2016 committed the humanitarian sector to “include the people affected by humanitarian crises” in their decisions and to ensure that “design and management decisions are responsive to the views of affected communities and people.” Yet too often, mechanisms to do this are still implemented as optional “add-ons,” conducted at the late stages of a response — or not funded at all, according to David Loquercio, who recently stepped down from CHS Alliance to lead the International Committee of the Red Cross’ growing Accountability to Affected People team.