'Accountability': what do crisis-affected people think?
Speakers:
Margie Buchanan-Smith – Author of 'Case study of AAP in the Haiyan response'
Dr Jonathan Corpus Ong – Author of 'Obliged to be grateful: how local communities experienced humanitarian actors in the Haiyan response' and Lecturer in Media and Communication, University of Leicester
Nicholas van Praag – Groundtruth Programme Head, Keystone
Chair:
Wendy Fenton – Humanitarian Practice Network Coordinator
Description
For at least two decades humanitarian agencies have aspired to be more accountable to people affected by crises, but progress has been limited. Recent commitments to improving ‘accountability to affected people’ (AAP) by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee and the formation of the Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) network have sought to turn rhetoric into reality.
These commitments were put to the test in recent crises. This event will present state of the art learning from the response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and Ebola in West Africa. How well did international humanitarian agencies put their pledges into action and engage differently with affected people?
The event will explore what affected people think of accountability efforts and compares their perspectives with those of the agencies themselves. It will investigate the factors that hindered or helped agencies in putting accountability at the center of their work. It will explore new and innovative collective approaches and innovations that have the potential to inform the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016.
Refreshments will be available from 15:30.