Humanitarian standards survey calls for NGO participation

The Joint Standards Initiative (JSI) – a partnership of three leading standards groups – has launched a survey to canvass opinion from across the NGO community.

 

The survey calls on all aid groups and personnel to share their views on the “use, relevance and future of standards.”

 

Following the rise of a more professionalized NGO sector, the JSI collaboration brought together Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP), People in Aid and the Sphere Project to establish common guidelines for all field staff. This was a response to an increased proliferation of standards across the industry, with some estimates that seventy standards initiatives had been formed to ensure quality and accountability in aid work.

 

The focus is now on refining a coherent set of principles, shared among all humanitarian organizations and consistently applied.

 

In recent years, other consultations have taken place to evolve the standards landscape. In 2011, the Sphere Project released a handbook expanding the operating principles of humanitarian standards to include protection for civilians. The previous year saw HAP release its own charter dealing with the broad issues of accountability and quality in humanitarian activities.

 

The new survey asks participants to share their experiences of working under existing standards, using the feedback to better shape the standards agenda.

 

The survey can be taken in the following languages: Arabic, English, French and Spanish.

 

Email Glenn O’Neil at oneil@owlre.com with any problems accessing the survey. Contact Julien Schopp at jschopp@interaction.org with any queries on InterAction’s participation in JSI.