That&${esc.hash}39;s the kind of question the Sphere handbook could help with.
Sphere? What&${esc.hash}39;s that?It&${esc.hash}39;s a project to make aid agencies more professional and accountable in their disaster response.
You mean aid agencies have their own laws?Not exactly. It&${esc.hash}39;s more like a voluntary code of conduct and a set of values that organisations can sign up to, but no one polices whether they keep their word.
Is this really necessary? Surely do-gooders can&${esc.hash}39;t go wrong if their hearts are in the right place...Sometimes people&${esc.hash}39;s desire to respond generously to disasters can be misguided, and even cause more harm than good. For example, sending used clothes and out-of-date medicines around the world can clog up valuable distribution channels as well as being inappropriate and downright insulting.
And who hasn&${esc.hash}39;t seen scenes of aid workers throwing food out of the back of a truck to desperate crowds? Apart from being extremely undignified, it&${esc.hash}39;s a method that&${esc.hash}39;s unlikely to get food to the people most in need, who are probably least able to fight for their share. Building latrines too far away from housing could put women and children at risk of sexual attack. That&${esc.hash}39;s just a few examples.
Over the past decade, there has been a major attempt to professionalise the aid industry -- and especially the world of emergency relief. NGOs and U.N. agencies are trying to become more accountable. This means being accountable to the governments and donors who give them money so they can allocate resources to the best effect. It also means being accountable to the people they want to help, by consulting about what they want and taking more care to respect the dignity of people receiving aid.
The most prominent attempt to do this to date is called The Sphere Project.
You still haven&${esc.hash}39;t told me what Sphere is??The most concrete part of it is a handbook that includes a humanitarian charter based on international legal principles, a set of minimum standards for disaster aid, indicators to judge whether they have been met and a code of conduct for operating in disaster response. It&${esc.hash}39;s the bestseller on the list of development and aid books distributed by British NGO Oxfam.
Most agencies used to have their own handbooks for this kind of thing, so one of the ideas of Sphere was to come up with one that could be used by everyone, building on the joint knowledge and experience of a range of relief organisations.
The handbook provides checklists for assessing what needs to be done at the scene of an emergency. It suggests what should be taken into consideration when deciding what issues to address. The indicators help plan projects so resources can be allocated effectively, and the handbook also sets out how to evaluate a relief programme.
What are "minimum standards"?They&${esc.hash}39;re technical guidelines in:
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Water, sanitation and hygiene
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Food security, nutrition and food aid
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Shelter
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Health
There&${esc.hash}39;s also a chapter about standards that apply to all sectors of relief, in order to take into account the particular needs of more vulnerable and marginalised groups such as children, older people, people living with HIV and people with disabilities.
I still don&${esc.hash}39;t see what practical use this could be??It provides tools to help relief agencies decide, among other things:
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What would be useful qualifications in candidates for staff for a food programme.
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How much distance there should be between housing and rubbish containers.
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What the calorie intake should be per person receiving food aid.
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Which vitamin supplements could significantly improve public health.
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What to think about when designing housing for people in cold climates.
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Why women&${esc.hash}39;s need require particular consideration.
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What the possible environmental consequences of a disaster could be.
And this charter, what is it?It&${esc.hash}39;s based on three principles in international law:
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The right to life with dignity
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The distinction between combatants and non-combatants
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The right for people not to be forced to return to an unsafe place. This is called non-refoulement, in the language of refugee rights.
What does the code of conduct say?It has 10 points.
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People have a right to humanitarian assistance.
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Aid priorities should be calculated on the basis of needs alone, regardless of race, religion or nationality.
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Aid will not be used to further a political or religious standpoint.
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We shall endeavour not to act as instruments of government foreign policy.
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We shall respect culture and custom.
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We shall attempt to build disaster response on local capacities.
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Ways shall be found to involve programme beneficiaries in the management of relief aid.
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Relief aid must strive to reduce future vulnerabilities to disaster as well as meeting basic needs.
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We hold ourselves accountable to both those we seek to assist and those from whom we accept resources.
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In our information, publicity and advertising activities, we shall recognise disaster victims as dignified humans, not hopeless objects.
Is this handbook some kind of sacred text, written in stone?No. The charter and the code of conduct haven&${esc.hash}39;t changed, but the minimum standards have been revised several times after consultation with NGOs around the world. The process of revising the handbook is now over, and the current phase of the project is scheduled to end in April 2005.
There&${esc.hash}39;s still a chance the handbook could be revised or updated again, but this isn&${esc.hash}39;t likely to be more often than every three or four years.
And what will happen next?After consultations that have been going on all through 2004, Sphere&${esc.hash}39;s proponents have decided it needs a coordination office to support people using it. This will continue to operate from Geneva, using the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) as its base. It will have only one permanent worker, funded by NGOs, who will be responsible for continuity and keeping the Sphere website going.
The Geneva office will host a meeting towards the end of 2004 to bring together Southern representatives working with Sphere in their own countries.
If more funds are raised, one or two more staff could expand the website, with a database to make it easier to find out who&${esc.hash}39;s doing what with Sphere around the world and improve links between people.
Who polices it?No one. There was originally an idea for some kind of ombudsman, but this eventually became the Humanitarian Accountability Project, which supports NGOs that wish to hold their own operations to account.
And which organisations are proponents of Sphere?It was initiated by the U.S. NGO umbrella organisation InterAction and the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR), which groups CARE, Caritas, the IFRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Lutheran World Federation, Oxfam, Save the Children, and the World Council of Churches.
The Management Committee includes representatives from InterAction and NGOs who are in SCHR, apart from M??decins sans Fronti??res (MSF), which is no longer part of Sphere. There are also representatives from the International Council of Voluntary Associations and VOICE.
Many other NGOs use and promote Sphere.
In its new phase, the Management Board will be composed of representatives from around the world.
Are there any other standards I should know about?There is another code to guide people using photographs in their publicity, called Gemini, and there is a code for organisations working on HIV issues.
Go further: - TALKING POINT-Aid agencies hammer out standards (French version)
- Critics find fault with Sphere standards for relief work
- New scheme aims to hold agencies accountable
- NGOs still fail standards on appeal images
- QUIZ-How well do you know your Sphere standards?
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