Acknowledgements Foreword Overview: Promoting Freedom, Security and Opportunity Chapter 1: Promoting Democratic Governance Chapter 2: Driving Economic Growth Chapter 3: Improving People's Health Chapter 4: Mitigating and Managing Conflict Chapter 5: Providing Humanitarian Aid Chapter 6: The Full Measure of Foreign Aid Tuesday, 07-Jan-2003 08:51:05 EST

Jump to Chapter 5 Sections:
>> Humanitarian aid in the 1990's >> New humanitarian actors >> Innovations, failures and the crisis in humanitarian aid >> Evolving practices and future changes >> Looking ahead >> Background paper >> References

The code of conduct and the Sphere Project documents refer clearly to the rights of people affected by conflicts and disasters and reflect a shift in the philosophy of many aid organizations: assistance and protection are now seen as rights due, not privileges granted. From this perspective, countries and the international aid community must be held accountable not just for but actually to crisis-affected populations. Two recent initiatives, the Humanitarian Ombudsmen Project and the Humanitarian Accountability Project, take the rights of aid recipients to new levels. Both seek to create accountability mechanisms that empower humanitarian "claimants" and give them greater say in the aid process.

A recent, deeply disturbing report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Save the Children UK on sexual violence and exploitation of refugee children in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone makes clear the ease with which personnel of powerful relief organizations can prey on the populations they are intended to assist and highlights the importance of making aid agencies more accountable to aid recipients. Aid organizations need to make explicit to their workers how principles must be embraced and translate them into organizational policies, operational guidelines, and rules of behavior. Better assessment and monitoring will necessarily follow. Absent an independent body with the authority to determine compliance with principles or minimum standards and to impose sanctions, new and more rigorous selfpolicing will be required. Donor agencies that control substantial funding flows have an ethical duty to insist on high standards, whatever the attempts at self-regulatory codes.

Improving protection for civilians caught in conflicts