Accountability to Humanitarian Aid Respondents: The Need for Institutional Change

“They’re sending us to die,” lamented a 40-year-old Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh facing a planned repatriation program to the country from where he had just fled. Another man nearby broke down into tears, “The military came, killed our people, set fire to our houses, and threw our kids in the fire. How can we go back?” Rohingya Muslims are an ethnic minority in Myanmar (historically known as Burma). They have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982, effectively rendering them stateless. After facing ethnic cleansing and forced deportation by the Burmese security forces, over 900,000 Rohingya fled across the border to Bangladesh.

In 2017, the Bangladesh and Myanmar governments signed a repatriation agreement. This agreement permitted the Government of Myanmar to access personal data collected by United Nations agencies to facilitate the repatriation process for Burmese refugees. In accordance with this agreement, Myanmar would issue National Verification Cards to returnees; however, Myanmar used this process as a systemic effort to strip the Rohingya of their rights, classifying known Rohingya as foreigners rather than returning citizens.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) played a key role in supporting the Bangladesh government’s response to the refugee crisis. UNHCR saw the repatriation agreement as an opportunity to both enhance the available data documenting the refugees and ensure the Bangladesh government has the necessary data for meeting the agreement. So, UNHCR advocated to the Bangladesh government for an aggressive refugee verification/registration drive with the collection of sensitive data (biometric, place of origin, family composition, etc.). This initiative was branded by the agency as one that would improve the delivery of aid services while also ensuring a refugee’s right to return. In practice, UNHCR combined two separate issues in the same form: the registration for aid services, and a consent checkbox to share collected data with Myanmar for determining repatriation eligibility.

UNHCR officials failed to recognize that refugees would perceive aid as conditional on sharing their personal data with the regime that persecuted them. Even though UNHCR claims that they asked refugees for their consent to have their data shared with the government of Myanmar, one can imagine how hard it would be to refuse a system that has a say over whether you get a meal the next day. The same system of empowerment and efficiency for the government of Bangladesh disempowered and coerced vulnerable Rohingya refugees. Due to the power dynamic of humanitarian work, crisis-affected people often have no means of exerting influence over concentrated interests such as international aid organizations and national governments. Therefore, it becomes challenging to hold these organizations accountable for their actions.

While accountability in the humanitarian space has historically referred to financial accountability to donors, greater accountability to affected people has been on the agenda for almost two decades. Major efforts include industry-wide accountability and quality certification, establishing “Accountability to Affected People” as the guiding principle for humanitarian action, and massive global commitments for adjusting programming based on feedback and local dialogue.

Critics, however, argue these developments have led to an increased reporting burden for humanitarian staff who already face severely stretched capacities, without meaningful accountability on the ground. For example, while aid agencies set up complaint boxes and hotlines, there is little clarity or effort to follow-up. Some go as far as calling these guidelines and processes box ticking exercises and examples of window-dressing. Further, recent independent evaluations of the sector acknowledge that while there has been an increase in the establishment of feedback or consultation mechanisms, there has not been a system-wide shift in how humanitarians engage with crisis-affected people. Agencies aren’t using feedback to adapt projects or providing meaningful opportunities for community decision-making.

The failure of internal procedures to incentivize increased accountability prompted the 2021 Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs to propose an independent commission for elevating the priorities and needs of affected people. The Independent Commission for Voices in Crises (ICVIC) would publicly publish data on the priorities of affected people, as collected by local networks and organizations. The Commission would also publicly grade Humanitarian Response Plans on a yearly basis according to how well programming meets the evolving needs identified by affected people. Programs that directly respond to the stated needs of crisis-affected people would receive prioritized allocations from the U.N.’s Central Emergency Response Fund. Further, while the Commission would have a reporting line to the Under-Secretary-General, its reports would not be subject to approval, thereby protecting its independence.

Participatory decision-making is the best process for ensuring accountability to affected communities. It goes beyond feedback and complaint mechanisms to having community priorities as the main steer of the project. The ICVIC can serve as the institutional push that incentivizes humanitarian actors to create response plans in accordance with participatory decision-making processes. Critics of the ICVIC speak of the creation of a cadre of humanitarian headmasters that concentrates power at a global level. However, with the institutional change of having local ICVIC chapters at the cluster level, power can be shifted closer to affected populations, while still meeting the objectives set forth by the Under-Secretary-General.

As the taskforce led by the International Federation of Red Cross and the World Food Programme evaluates the Under-Secretary-General’s suggestion, it should consider the following recommendations:

• Build local chapters with meaningful decision-making capacity within the institutional structure of the ICVIC;
• Define policies to secure leadership roles for underrepresented groups at these cluster level chapters;
• Structure processes for revolving democratic representation of affected community members at key meetings;
• Establish follow-up mechanisms to ensure the incorporation of community feedback throughout the iterative planning and implementation processes.

These institutional changes would ensure that affected people are able to voice their understanding of personal data rights, such as the consequences for providing or failing to provide personal data, protecting the right to object to data collection and the right to request access to their personal data. Further, these changes would ensure that key processes such as Data Protection Impact Assessments—which identifies the risks of collecting, processing, and transferring personal data—consider contextual threats to free and informed consent, such as the history of forced returns of Rohingya from Bangladesh to Myanmar. As a community, we must make certain that humanitarian principles are not diluted in practice; now is the time for structural reform.