Shock-Responsive Social Protection Systems (SRSP) and efforts to link humanitarian assistance and social protection are hot on the agenda, driven in part by a huge expansion of cash-based assistance in response to Covid-19. These linkages are part of efforts to make sense of commitments to the nexus, as well as donors’ hopes of finding an exit from long-running support in protracted crises.
The explosion of new resources from all angles is an indicator of just how prominent the issue has become – every day brings a new resource from the likes of the Social Protection community of practice, the World Bank, the Social Protection Approaches to COVID-19: Expert advice helpline (BASIC SPACE), think tanks like ODI, or a number of UN agencies (UNICEF and the World Food Programme leading the charge).
Beyond technocratic solutions
Efforts to link social protection and humanitarian assistance, particularly cash-based aid, and the push for locally-led responses, imply a need to link how accountability is approached. This is especially important in fragile and conflict-affected contexts where the citizen-state relationship is complex or fragmented. And yet with all the talk of “people-centred aid” and “meaningful participation,” accountability is still on aid providers’ terms, as the Grand Bargain report sharply stated.
There is a continued focus on accountability standards and checklists, which the Humanitarian Advisory Group noted keeps overall accountability efforts “stuck in the weeds.” On the social protection side, even technocratic approaches to accountability such as grievance mechanisms have not been prioritised for SRSP systems during Covid-19 (Oxford Policy Management). All the things we know are important for assistance that puts people first – such as co-designing programmes, ensuring access to accurate information, and the ability to shape the assistance on offer (outlined by the CDAC Network) – go beyond technocratic solutions.
We started looking at how humanitarian and social protection approaches to accountability are connected or disconnected as part of the BASIC research programme. Despite all the attention to SRSP as part of the humanitarian, development and peace nexus this is an oddly neglected topic. There are disconnects in the language and the approach that risk failing to connect but also risk focusing on technocratic linkages and failing to examine the more fundamental issues of politics and principle.
Speaking different languages: a risk of loss in translation
The language used and, to an extent, the approach between humanitarian accountability and accountability for social protection are quite different. Humanitarian organisations talk about accountability to affected populations (AAP) and social protection actors speak of social accountability. These have quite different starting points and underpinnings. Social accountability is about supporting the ability of people to hold states to account for delivering on people’s right to social protection. AAP is more about the ability of recipients of humanitarian aid to hold the organisations providing it to account. Social accountability is therefore much more explicitly rights-based and political, linked to states and government systems for delivery, while AAP focuses on the more direct aid provider-recipient relationships.
Comparing key components of social accountability & accountability to affected populations
| Social accountability | Accountability to affected populations (AAP) | |
| Duty bearer | The state – SP actors and others in Government. | Aid providers – humanitarian agencies (UN, NGO – often with an emphasis on international actors). |
| Rights holder | The focus is on citizens and on the rights of citizens to social protection and assistance
This includes via intermediated action (e.g., civil society organisations). |
The focus is on recipients or “beneficiaries” of humanitarian aid.
Although AAP references affected people or populations, the focus remains on people “receiving aid”. |
| Framing principles and standards | Depending on the country, embedded in legislation and/or within sector or programme specific service standards and charters. | Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP) standards – evolved into Core Humanitarian Standards, valid across humanitarian action. |
| Language around rationale and objectives | Assistance is framed as a right and states as duty bearers in fulfilling peoples’ rights, often alongside protection commitments. | Assistance is framed around need and vulnerability with aid agencies meeting humanitarian imperatives when states are overwhelmed or unwilling to act. |
| Role of the state | State-centric and about the people’s ability to hold state to account and state duties to provide assistance and inform people. | Focused on direct accountability between aid agencies and aid recipients with the state largely absent. |
| Social contract | Social accountability seen as part of a process by which social protection contributes to a social contract between a state and its citizens. | Social contract language largely absent. |
| Frontline staff | Social workers, programme staff (permanent). | Protection case workers, organisation-specific staff (temporary). |
Sources: Barca 2021; CHS 2020; Seyfert et al. 2019; Sabates-Wheeler et al. 2019; Grandvoinnet et al. 2015.
Different in theory but similar in practice?
In practice, however, when you look at what donor-supported social assistance programmes in crises and humanitarian cash projects actually do in relation to accountability, things look much more similar. Social protection actors talk about grievance and redress mechanisms (GRM), and humanitarian actors talk about feedback and complaints, but both are focused on setting up hotlines and other technical and increasingly digital tools for people to complain or provide feedback about assistance they are getting.
In both humanitarian and social protection programmes, there is a risk that accountability becomes a box-ticked exercise to satisfy donor requirements that generates reams of little analysed data, with limited feedback loops and not much sign of meaningful participation that really enables people affected by crisis to engage with and shape the assistance being provided.
Where we go from here
Thinking harder about the disconnects between humanitarian and social protection approaches to accountability matters. Without getting more explicit about the differences we risk eliding them in a fuzzy, technical, and apolitical approach to linking hotlines.
Humanitarian actors should be more engaged with the politics of accountability and think about what that means for supporting processes that enable people in crises to hold duty bearers, especially governments, to account. Perhaps the focus should be about unpacking the relationship between those with the responsibility to support people in crisis and who the “community” really is, understanding how they are already organised and the different ways in which people participate. This means understanding power dynamics and the plurality of perspectives, going beyond equating localisation with implementation to considering how humanitarian actors, whether local or international, might better support civic engagement and inclusion (especially if people of concern are not citizens).
Social protection actors should consider what “putting people first” means in a crisis – taking a hard look at the heterogeneity of “the state” in fragile and conflict-affected places and the relationships between state actors and citizens when states are abusive, parties to conflicts or deliberately excluding people from assistance. Social protection and humanitarian actors can and will maintain distinct identities, mandates, and roles but both need to grapple with the politics of how to engage with states in conflicts and what that means for how states and aid agencies can be held more accountable to supporting people in times of crisis. In the end, accountability should reinforce humanitarian assistance that is coherent with national priorities but also complements social protection when these systems exclude or fall short of supporting certain groups.
