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| >> Foreign Aid in the National Interest >> Chapter 5 >> Evolving practices and future changes |
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Jump to Chapter 5 Sections: In response to the perceived crisis in humanitarian aid, a set of initiatives is redefining the nature of humanitarian responses. Efforts are being made to:
Improving standards and accountability: Professionalizing the industryFor better or worse, humanitarian aid has become big business. Concerns about uneven performance among aid agencies, the potential negative effects of aid, and the blurring of the distinction between humanitarian and military operations has led to efforts to root aid more firmly in international humanitarian law and to set higher standards for performance and accountability. In 1994 the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-governmental Organizations in Disaster Relief issued a code of conduct for disaster assistance organizations. The code emphasizes the rights of disaster victims to assistance and affirms the independence of humanitarian actors from governments. But it has internal inconsistencies: for example, local societies must be respected, even if their values and practices violate human rights and humanitarian law. And more violated in the breach than the practice, it ignores the existence of predatory political actors in most complex emergencies. Building on the code, the Sphere Project-established in 1997 by a consortium of aid agencies- seeks to recommit agencies to principles flowing from international humanitarian, refugee, and human rights law and to set minimum standards in five core sectors: water supply and sanitation, nutrition, food, shelter and site planning, and health care.52 The resulting framework allows for more formal, consistent evaluations of aid agencies’ performance. page 2 |
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