Currently endorsed definitions of accountability to affected people continue to reinforce and be reflective of realities in which humanitarian organisations and donors hold power over crisis affected people...
A locally led humanitarian system that is accountable to people at risk or affected by crisis is also one where communities have agency and voice over humanitarian interventions that respond to their needs.
Start Network has launched three new grants that will enable members to access funds in order to accelerate locally led anticipatory action and community-led approaches to monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning.
The Community Led Approaches to MEAL Grant enables people affected by or at-risk of crises to have more of a say in monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning.
The humanitarian sector aims to be locally led and therefore, it is important that the humanitarian sector listens to organisations acting at the local scale, so we can learn from their experiences and adapt to meet their needs. Over recent years, Start Network has engaged local and national non-governmental organisations through interviews and surveys to determine ways in which humanitarian structures can do better to support them. Gathering perceptions from non-governmental organisations has led to some pertinent findings related to exclusionary practices that some organisations acting at the local scale experience and led to some key recommendations that humanitarian actors can begin to implement in order to build equitable partnerships. While more in-depth research on these systemic issues continues to be conducted by Start Network and other organisations, we hope that this overview can assist international actors to begin positively disrupting the traditional systems that create barriers to equity within crisis response.
In 2019, Start Fund Bangladesh opened up its membership to 26 local and national organisations enabling them to access direct funding and become involved in decision-making around funding and responses. As a direct result, 80% of all Start Fund Bangladesh funding had been awarded directly to local and national organisations in 2020. This directive to shift the power has also been explored in other ways. For example, Start Fund Bangladesh has also been working to encourage INGOs who have local implementing partners to share overhead costs so that these can be used to grow and strengthen local organisations. To understand more about further changes that Start Fund Bangladesh could make, we listened to some of the reflections of Sina Chowdhury and Sirajul Islam who work for two of the local organisations that joined in 2019. The verbatim quotes from the interviews provide a powerful and rich narrative around their experience working with Start Fund Bangladesh and as humanitarians and have led us to formulate three main lessons for the Start Network: BE MORE INCLUSIVE TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE; UPSKILL TO EMPOWER; and CHAMPION FOR CHANGE. This report would be of interest to all those working towards a system change to a more locally led humanitarian system that is more accountable to those affected by crisis.
