Accountability to Affected Populations - Use of AAP Indicators in Multi-sector Needs Assessments (Training Modules)

What is AAP? What does it mean in practice?

Accountability to Affected Populations is an active commitment to use power responsibly by taking account of, giving account to, and being held to account by the people humanitarian organizations seek to assist.

AAP is about power, and how power is used in practice. Unequal power relations are at the heart of the matter. A focus on AAP represents a fundamental shift in attitudes and mindset. In the past, humanitarians often saw themselves as primarily accountable to donors, whose money they were using to run programmes. Of course, accountability to donors is still important, but AAP is about putting affected people at the centre of a response. The women, men, boys and girls affected by a humanitarian response have a right to information in order to make decisions; they have a right to participate in designing and shaping programmes that affect their lives, individually and collectively; and they have a right to tell us whether or not we – the humanitarian community (international and national staff, contractors and volunteers) – are doing a good job.

In 2017, REACH and the Global AAP Task Force developed a menu of core AAP indicators and questions for interagency needs assessments, in support of the Grand Bargain Workstream on Joint Needs Assessments and in line with the Ethos principles developed by the Workstream. These indicators were piloted in the 2017 Ukraine MSNA and further rolled out in 2018 and 2019 MSNAs. Following an initial review and refinement of the AAP indicator menu, REACH, with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), has produced a training module to assist humanitarian actors in incorporating global AAP indicators in all inter-agency coordinated or joint needs assessments designed to inform the Humanitarian Programme Cycle, such as MSNAs. The production of this training module also addresses specific AAP criteria outlined in the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) methodology, which was developed to assess the quality of coordinated multi-sector needs assessments. These criteria include participation, context specificity, and active dissemination. This two-hour training module is designed for enumerators and assessment teams. The complete package of materials includes this guidance note, presentation slides with embedded facilitator notes, and a case study exercise on AAP in Action. On completing the training, participants will understand the centrality of AAP and why AAP indicators should be included in inter-agency coordinated/joint needs assessments.