Accountability to Affected People (AAP) is an active commitment by aid agencies to use power responsibly to take account of, give account to, and be held to account by the people they seek to assist. Systematic and coordinated community engagement ensures that aid responses and programming are accountable to affected people. In this light, system-wide accountability is essential to meeting organisational and collective commitments as outlined by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the Grand Bargain Participation Revolution (Workstream 6) and the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS).
AAP and Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) are intrinsically linked, since SEA is the most severe abuse of accountability to people in need. Protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) refers to measures taken to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse. These measures aim to ensure safe and accessible reporting, good quality assistance for survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse, and enhanced accountability among organizations, including in investigations into allegations of SEA.
Humanitarian, development and peace-building actors in these areas need to work closely together on overlapping interests and activities, to share best practices and learn from each other. The AAP/PSEA Regional Working Group aims to advocate and support the mainstreaming and integration of AAP and PSEA into all sectors of humanitarian, preparedness and development programs, in line with global guidelines.
AAP Regional Advisor: Heber Rocha Costa, heber@un.org
Regional Inter-Agency PSEA Coordinator: Pamela Marie Godoy, pamela.godoy@wfp.org
We, the IASC Principals, re-affirm our determination to achieve our vision of a humanitarian environment in which people caught up in crises are safe, respected, and can access needed protection and assistance without fear of sexual exploitation or abuse (SEA) by any aid worker and in which aid workers themselves feel supported, respected, and empowered to deliver assistance free from sexual harassment.
We recognize that sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment (SEAH) occurs everywhere and is a symptom of power imbalances that are particularly acute in humanitarian contexts and even greater for those who are systematically marginalized. Given the gender dimensions of SEA and sexual harassment, we will therefore strengthen the role of women, girls and people at risk as key partners and accelerate work to increase accountability of the aid community to the affected people. We will protect those reporting SEA and sexual harassment.
We will redouble our efforts to ensure that all our staff and affiliated personnel are aware of, and comply with, their rights to, and their responsibilities in maintaining, a workplace free of discrimination, exploitation, harassment or abuse. We will be even more proactive in improving diversity and gender parity in all our organizations, especially at the frontlines of programme delivery and at the most senior levels.
We recognize our leadership responsibility to strengthen the humanitarian community’s resolve to protect from SEA and sexual harassment to create a system of collective accountability, and we commit to provide the necessary resources to prevent and address this wrongdoing.
Read the full statement here
UNHCR and International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA) are pleased to announce the launch of the fifth round of the Interagency Community Outreach and Communication Fund on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA).
Raising community-awareness on the risks of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by aid workers and available reporting channels is critical to preventing sexual exploitation and abuse, as well as to ensuring that those affected know where and how to safely report sexual exploitation and abuse when it does take place. Local stakeholders have noted the need for effective, updated information, education and communication materials on PSEA that are tailored to local cultural contexts, operational realities, the groups that are most at risk, and which take into account aspects like languages, literacy, age and capacity.
To support NGOs in meeting these needs, the PSEA Outreach Fund will provide rapid, targeted financial support to NGOs to develop and disseminate PSEA outreach and communication materials, and to make the materials developed through the Fund available to all stakeholders for their further use or adaptation.
The online application form can be accessed on the PSEA Outreach Fund website https://www.icvanetwork.org/pseafund/ and the form is available in 3 languages - English, French and Spanish.
Application deadline is 12 August 2024 CoB CEST.
The selection of grantees will be carried by a Steering Group of experts from NGOs and UN agencies. For queries, please contact PSEAfund@icvanetwork.org
The office of Christian Saunders, the United Nations Office of Special Coordinator for Improving the UN’s Response to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OSCSEA), is inviting contributions from practitioners, academics, organizations, civil society and others, to review the Secretary-General’s Bulletin on Special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, ST/SGB/2003/13.
The revision aims to:
Please share your inputs on or before Sunday, 7 July 2024 (midnight EST) to OSCSEA@un.org and copying mara-katharina.thurnhofer@un.org and anivesh.bharadwaj@un.org
The format/file to submit the inputs can be accessed using this link
https://www.un.org/preventing-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse/call-for-inputs
World
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Guiding principles Accountability to Affected People (AAP) is an active commitment by aid agencies to use power responsibly to take account of, give account to, and be held to account by the people they seek to assist.…
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