It is widely accepted that an accountable humanitarian system—one that places decision-making power in the hands of people affected by crisis—is central to effective humanitarian action. Yet too often, the way the humanitarian system works—characterized by pre-defined calls for sector-specific project proposals, complex coordination frameworks, language barriers, and a proliferation of single-agency accountability initiatives—undermines its flexibility and limits its ability to collectively engage with and respond to community needs and priorities. Affected communities have voiced frustration over lack of progress, as feedback mechanisms often yield few results.
Diffa Region, Niger
Young children in N’Guigmi, Diffa benefit from Niger’s Flagship Initiative. As part of the Flagship Initiative, community consultations were held to better understand and address the needs of local communities affected by displacement and insecurity. These consultations are a crucial step toward strengthening community resilience and ensuring that humanitarian aid is aligned with local priorities.
OCHA/Temur Sharopov- In Venezuela, an inter-agency ‘contact line’ makes it possible for people’s feedback to reach humanitarian decision-makers. The contact line offers five ways for affected people to share their concerns and request support. After a successful pilot in two municipalities, the Humanitarian Coordinator rallied UN representatives to scale the approach nationally with dedicated human and financial resources. The contact line now includes 11 UN agencies, covers all 23 states and the Capital District, and offers 19 referral and assistance routes connected to the humanitarian architecture. Since the contact line began in 2021, usage has continued to grow with over 43,000 people to date—88 per cent of them women—accessing it to ask about humanitarian programmes and available solutions.
Caracas, Venezuela
A community member in the neighbourhood of Petare learns about the contact line, the services it offers and humanitarian principles.
OCHA/Gabriela Bello- In Afghanistan, the Community Voices and Accountability Platform has enabled humanitarian partners to adjust responses and reallocate funds based on community feedback. A complementary validation system enables affected people to access and discuss feedback with the humanitarian community, ensuring decision-making is genuinely informed by those impacted by crisis. As a result, the 2025 humanitarian needs and response planning process has been directly shaped by community input, focusing on critical issues such as aid selection criteria, outreach to women and persons with disabilities, and the balance between addressing immediate needs and providing sustainable support. The Afghanistan Humanitarian Country Team has also reinforced its commitment to safe, inclusive and accountable humanitarian action by establishing and monitoring the Afghanistan Accountability Index.
Herat, Afghanistan
Members of the Accountability to Affected People Working Group conduct a discussion with a group of men, respecting local customs and cultural practices, as part of broader community consultations with those affected by the Herat earthquake. The goal was to understand the community's priorities in the critical first days after the disaster.
UNFPA Afghanistan/Abdul Wasi Stanikzai.- In OPT, the Humanitarian Service Directory consolidates key service information, frequently asked questions, verified communication channels and awareness raising materials for humanitarians to package, amplify and share information with affected people. It supports helpline operators manage high volumes of inquiries more quickly and enables more efficient referrals and complaints-handling. The directory has addressed operational challenges such as inconsistent service data, communication gaps, high staff turnover and variations in information across geographical areas. Developed through stakeholder consultations, it has strengthened collective AAP efforts throughout the humanitarian response.
However, the humanitarian system has a long way to go in truly placing people at the centre of its responses. This was highlighted in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s (IASC) independent review of humanitarian response to internal displacement , which found that too often the IASC humanitarian system is more focused on internal processes than on meaningfully engaging the people it aims to help. The Emergency Relief Coordinator’s Flagship Initiative was launched in 2023 to redesign humanitarian action from the ground up. One year into its implementation, in the four pilot countries of Colombia, Niger, the Philippines and South Sudan, the initiative is shifting the drivers of humanitarian action, organizing assistance around the priorities of crisis-affected communities rather than those of aid providers.
Listening and empowering communities to shape their own futures
The Flagship Initiative, launched in 2023, aims to reshape humanitarian action by prioritizing the needs and aspirations of crisis-affected communities. South Sudan is one of the pilot countries for this initiative.
In Taragok, Jonglei State, humanitarian agencies met with displaced people to hear their concerns. The message was clear: they didn’t want food aid. After three years of living on handouts and being uprooted from home, they yearned to return to farming and provide for themselves.
The agencies listened and took the feedback seriously. Some received seeds and tools from aid agencies and were able to harvest a good crop. Humanitarian agencies had successfully lobbied local government and community leaders to allocate land to displaced people. With land secured, the community took charge of the rest.
A year later, in October 2024, humanitarian workers revisited Taragok to hear how things had progressed from the same group of people. The message this time was strikingly different: “The harvest was good, and we have food for our families. We have also assisted our neighbours who did not participate in our first farming season,” said Mary Achol. Evidence of a bumper harvest, mainly of sorghum, was everywhere. “From 2020 to 2023, we relied on humanitarian assistance, including food aid, with no obvious impact on our well-being,” Achol reflected.
This shift from passive recipients of food aid to active participants in their own recovery, has transformed the lives of over 400 families. Those who were once dependent on food aid are now providers for themselves and even others.
This is just the beginning in Taragok. In the coming season, 200 more families will join the journey toward self-sufficiency, clearing land and planting vegetables, ground nuts, maize and of course, even more sorghum.
Strengthening Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) coordination in high-risk humanitarian environments
Countering sexual exploitation and abuse remains an integral priority and responsibility of the humanitarian community. Combatting sexual exploitation and abuse in high-risk humanitarian environments is still a challenge due to insufficient dedicated staff, financial constraints and ineffective in-country coordination.
The Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Capacity Project (PSEACap), an Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC)-endorsed mechanism, deploys PSEA experts to countries deemed high-risk by the Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Risk Overview (SEARO) Index. So far, nine humanitarian operations have benefitted from these sustained two-year deployments, establishing or strengthening PSEA networks and developing action plans to strengthen survivor support, prevention measures and accountability.
For example, in Somalia, ranked 3rd on the 2024 SEARO Index, multiple factors—prolonged conflict and displacement, underfunding, limited humanitarian access, a patriarchal culture and stigma surrounding sexual exploitation and abuse—have led to significant underreporting. The deployment of the PSEACap coordinator revitalized and transformed the Somalia PSEA Network, decentralizing it and making it representative of all actors involved in the humanitarian response. The sustained support allowed sufficient time to assess in-country sexual exploitation and abuse risks for evidence-based prevention, train 135 focal points, integrate PSEA into the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP), and facilitate inter-agency referral procedures for complaints as well as service referrals for survivors.
In 2025, 15 PSEACap Coordinators will be deployed for two-year assignments to high-risk countries.
The past two years have seen some progress incollective Accountability to Affected People (AAP), which addresses these issues by going beyond a single humanitarian entity to align systems and decision-making processes around people’s priorities, perceptions and feedback. In 2023 and 2024, the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) allocated $8.6 million through its window to catalyze collective AAP in 16 humanitarian operations. The funding is meant to ensure affected people and the organizations representing them are not simply consulted but are treated as equal partners and included in project design, implementation and evaluation. The grants also emphasize actively including individuals who are marginalized due to identity, disability, ethnicity and other diversities in humanitarian decision-making. CERF funding is already delivering results:
References
- Toll-free phone calls, WhatsApp, SMS, email, and face-to-face interactions.
- A collective AAP platform, led by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), that brings community feedback and complaints from various channels to a centralized data system to allow humanitarian and development actors and decision makers to course correct the response-based community guidance.
- A similar project used in refugee situations is the UNCHR.Help website, which provides tailored information for refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless people on help and services available to them according to their country of residence.
- Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Myanmar, Somalia and Sudan.
- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Yemen.