I’ve been doing some work on certification processes in the humanitarian sector – coming soon to a disaster response near you! There are a few different outfits doing R&D on the issue, notably ELRHA (on individual certification) and SCHR (on organisational certification), and it’s from research carried out by SCHR that I’ve adapted the table below.
Legal Foundations |
Normative Values & Principles |
International Humanitarian Law (IHL) |
|
Programme areas |
Process areas |
Sphere Common and Technical Standards Education (INEE) Livestock (LEGS) Accountability to affected populations (HAP) Protection (ICRC) Gender (IASC Guidelines for GBV Interventions, etc) Vulnerable Groups (HelpAge, Handicap International, etc) Camp Management (Camp Management Project) |
Finance (Mango) HR (People in Aid) Staff health (Interhealth) Staff security (EISF; International NGO Safety and Security Association) Logistics (Humanitarian Logistics Certification Program) Needs Assessment (ACAPS) Quality Management (Quality Compas) Various others (RedR, etc) |
The table shows the range of existing laws, principles, standards and guidance in the humanitarian sector; it’s not exhaustive, but it is exhausting. It’s worth noting that SPHERE, HAP and People In Aid are merging (in some nebulous way) to create a combined standard – the first fruits of that process can be seen at www.jointstandards.org.
The first thing that occurred to me after I’d finished adapting the table was: holy shit, that’s a lot of policy wonkiness for your average NGO to get through. An amazing amount of high-quality work has been done in developing basic standards to ensure that collectively we get things done right, but the sheer scale of this should give you a clue as to why we find it difficult to implement all of them.
Take your average small NGO doing community-based work when a disaster hits. How easy do you think it’s going to be for them to meet all the requirements laid out in the documents listed in that table? It’s unfair to expect them to manage that, but it’s also unfair to expect them to stand to one side when the circus of bigger agencies rolls into town.
In some ways it’s also unfair to expect individual staff within those bigger agencies to be aware of, subscribe to and successfully implement all of those standards. The reason that it’s unfair is because UN, NGO and Red Cross staff tend to fill multiple roles at any given time; as a result, they don’t just have to apply one professional standard, but a multitude.
I’ve always been pro-certification, since it’s an inevitable part of professionalising the sector that we should welcome. The problem for me is how to develop and implement individual and organisational certification that enables us to do better work, rather than erecting new obstacles both for existing and new organisations. The next couple of years will see whether we get it right.
UPDATE: Just noticed this discussion on reasons not to professionalise on Aidsource.