Error message

Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in drupal_settings_initialize() (line 802 of /backup/agenda/public_html/includes/bootstrap.inc).

Self Report 2019

The self-report on WHS Commitments below is organized according to the 24 transformations of the Agenda for Humanity. It is based on commitments pledged at the time of report submission. Click on the 'Expand' symbol to expand each section and read the reporting inputs by transformation.

Expand All

  • 2D
    Take concrete steps to improve compliance and accountability

    Individual Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • ActionAid endorses the Call to Action on Protection from GBV in emergencies in 2016, and commits to integrate women-led community based protection mechanisms as part of its core humanitarian response programming by 2020.
    • Policy
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Gender-based violence prevention and response

    ActionAid was one of the first signatories to Call to Action on GBV when it was established in 2013. ActionAid saw the initiative as an opportunity to enable, strengthen and further its commitment to eradicate violence against women and girls and unite and gain momentum with other local and global actors working on GBV and Women’s Rights. These commitments were further backed up and extended through the World Humanitarian Summit and the Grand Bargain; ActionAid promised to measure and increase funding to local actors, especially women-led organisations, and also to support women’s leadership and capacity building. ActionAid continues to advocate on this through its meaningful engagement within the Global Protection Cluster GBV AoR and Friends of Gender Group. ActionAid also provide opportunity for local women to participate in global platforms and meetings and advocate for their voices to be heard.

    Protection against sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA)

    Internally, ActionAid recruited a Global Safeguarding lead in 2018 who has been working with a range of Federation members and working groups to strengthen, build on, and update its safeguarding policies. ActionAid has a range of critical policies that outline its approach to sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse (SHEA): Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA); Sexual Harassment Policy; and the Child and Adult at-Risk Safeguarding Policy. These are supported by the whistle blowing and complaints policy, and all of these are underpinned by the AAI Code of Conduct which clearly outlines the expected standards of behaviour for staff and other representatives. In 2018, these have been revisited, revised and added to through various consultations. A roll out plan has been established for 2019. 

    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Buy-in
    • Strengthening national/local systems
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    ActionAid has produced research showing that GBV continues to be the least funded in terms of total amount allocated in the responses and of the % of funds received. The participation of national and local organisations in the GBV sub-clusters is also limited across responses.

    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    More funding for GBV in all humanitarian responses and donors, UN and INGO support (through long term funding) the active and meaningful participation of local and national women's organisations in the GBV sub-cluster.

    Keywords

    Gender, PSEA

  • 3D
    Empower and protect women and girls

    Individual Commitments (5)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • ActionAid commits by 2020 to ensure the meaningful participation of women in all formal and informal decision making processes, ensuring that women make up at least 50% of rights-holders engaged in community decision making and consultation processes that ActionAid leads.


    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • ActionAid commits to ensure all of its humanitarian programming is gender responsive by 2020.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • ActionAid commits to ensure at least 50% of its implementing partners in humanitarian action are women-led or women's organisations by 2020.
    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • ActionAid commits to ensure at least 50% of leadership positions in humanitarian contexts are held by women by 2020, and that at least 50% of staff at all levels are women by 2020.




    • Operational
    • Leave No One Behind
    • ActionAid commits to increase funding and capacity development to local and national women's groups as equal partners in our humanitarian action.
    • Financial
    • Leave No One Behind
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Empowerment of women and girls

    ActionAid has prioritised driving women-led emergency preparedness, response and prevention in its 2017-2028 strategy. The WHS individual commitments made in 2016 are helping to make this priority a reality and is monitoring the number of women staff that work in each humanitarian response and the number of women's organisations that were partners in the responses. In 2018, half of the national and local organisations that partnered with ActionAid in humanitarian responses were women's organisations.

    Gender equality programming

    ActionAid aims that all its responses are gender transformative. It will produce in 2019 guidance to adopt a gender transformative approach in its main sectoral activities (Women-Led Community Based Protection Toolkit, A Feminist Approach to Cash Transfer Programming). The review of the needs assessment toolkit also stresses the importance of having gender analysis prior to an intervention, disaggregated data and set of standard operations such as the creation of women safe spaces and distribution of dignity kit. Almost all (92%) of the responses monitored in 2018 were gender transformative

    B. Please select if your report relates to any initiatives launched at World Humanitarian summit
    • Grand Bargain
    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Adherence to standards and/or humanitarian principles
    • Buy-in
    • Funding amounts
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    This transformation (empower and protect women and girls) is not a operational priority for the humanitarian system at field level. The barriers from the humanitarian system are compounded by country level reluctance to gender equality and women's rights by some governments and communities.

    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    There is a need to intersect the political push for localisation with this transformation, promoting a women-led localisation. Also, the humanitarian-development nexus should include a prioritisation of women-led angle in all the development and humanitarian work, supporting the preparedness, capacity and networking of women's organisations.

    Keywords

    Gender, Local action

  • 4A
    Reinforce, do not replace, national and local systems

    Individual Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • ActionAid will ensure in each response that its staff will be accompanied by front-line responders and local organisations when attending collective coordination platforms. ActionAid will also advocate for the inclusion of front-line responders and local organisations to ensure they have a seat at the table in collective response coordination processes.


    • Partnership
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Strengthening national/local leadership and systems

    ActionAid is focusing its efforts in the participation of national and local organisations, particularly women’s organisations, in the coordination and decision-making mechanisms of all responses in which it is present. These mechanisms include the sectoral UN or government clusters, Humanitarian Country Team and advisory group of Country-Based Pool Funds. The organisation is also leading with CARE the localisation task team in the GBV area of responsibility of the Global Protection Cluster. It is also one of the founding members of the Feminist Humanitarian Network. One of the network’s aim will be to gain through the advocacy and mobilisation of women and women’s organisations those spaces at national and global level.

    B. Please select if your report relates to any initiatives launched at World Humanitarian summit
    • Grand Bargain
    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Buy-in
    • Strengthening national/local systems
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    The donors, UN and INGO still have not a common approach on how to achieve this transformation. It is probably very related to the context of each response, so the way forward is to try at country level and then obtain conclusions and learnings from the global level.

    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    The discussions and solutions on this transformation have been designed at Northern capitals and UN hubs (Geneva, New York). More discussion and solutions need to be designed at national and regional level. There is also the role of the state in this transformation, which needs more discussion: it can promote a shift of power (Nepal, Indonesia) or constitute a challenge when its policies or practices are part of the root cause of a humanitarian crisis

    Keywords

    Gender, Local action, Strengthening local systems

  • 5A
    Invest in local capacities

    Individual Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • ActionAid commits to provide increased support by way of direct funding and capacity building to national and local NGOs by 2020. This support will empower and allow them to play a central role in the programming and delivering of principled and coordinated humanitarian assistance.

    • Financial
    • Invest in Humanity
    1. A. Highlight concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2018 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures as well as any good practices and examples of innovation.

    Direct funding to national/local actors

    ActionAid is setting a mechanism to monitor the humanitarian funding that goes to local and national partners in each year's humanitarian responses. The mechanism will disaggregate how much money goes to women’s organisations in each response. In 2018, more than three fourths (77%) of all the response funds went as direct as possible to local and national organisations. At the same time, ActionAid is advocating not only for more funding to local organisations but for more long-term support. That way it will be ensured that there is multi-year support to local women and youth-led organisations capable of responding to slow and sudden disasters and protracted crisis while building the communities’ resilience.

    Addressing blockages/challenges to direct investments at the national/local level

    ActionAid has addressed the blockages/challenges to direct investments at the national/local level at general and global level. For the Grand Bargain annual meeting in New York in June 2018, it produced with CARE the report “Not What She Bargained For? Gender and the Grand Bargain” which looked at the progress of the localisation workstream with a gender lens. ActionAid has been also involved in the Christian Aid led project “Accelerating Localisation through Partnerships” which has looked at funding issues related to localisation in Myanmar, Nepal and Nigeria (the project also covers South Sudan, where ActionAid is not present) and tried to find solutions in those countries.

    Capacity building of national/local actors

    ActionAid has been promoting in 2018 at global and country level the Strategic Humanitarian Assessment and Participatory Empowerment (SHAPE) Framework, which guides local organizations through a self-assessment process to recognise their capacities for responding to, leading and determining humanitarian responses, as well as identify any capacity gaps that they wish to build in order to take more power in the humanitarian system. SHAPE supported 55 partners through a capacity strengthening journey under a consortium project- Shifting the Power, funded by the Disasters Emergencies and Preparedness Programme (DEPP) and implemented across 5 countries (Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan) between 2014 and 2018.  In November 2018, working with a group of women networks, youth alliances and partners working in protracted crisis (some mobilized through NEAR by network coordinator, Elisah Mbiza), ActionAid revised the SHAPE to incorporate protection, safeguarding and Women’s Leadership into the framework. The revised SHAPE framework has been developed to work better for smaller NGOs where they may not necessarily be able to ‘tick off’ all aspects of the self-assessment framework, giving them a choice to take on assessments in selected areas they consider key to their journey.

    B. Please select if your report relates to any initiatives launched at World Humanitarian summit
    • Grand Bargain
    • NEAR - Network for Empowered Aid Response
    2. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Buy-in
    • Funding modalities (earmarking, priorities, yearly agreements, risk aversion measures)
    • Gender and/or vulnerable group inclusion
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    The main challenge is the risk aversion and preference for reactive funding in crisis from donors to fund large scale programmes that contribute to this transformation and to the localisation commitments of the Grand Bargain. There is also work to do in terms of cost structures, partnerships and role from UN and INGO.

    3. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    As said above, the localisation debate and proposals should move to specific contexts and responses in 2019. The solutions found for each country, contrasted with the solutions in another can set the direction to make collective progress in this key transformation.

    Keywords

    Gender, Local action

Attachments

  • WHS Commitments Attachments
    Transformation - 2D, 3D, 4A | Gender, Local action
  • WHS Commitments Attachments
    Transformation - 2D, 3D, 4A, 5A | Gender