AMEND CONTENT

3. CARE’s Humanitarian Accountability Framework (HAF)

CARE is committed to a wide range of internal and interagency policies and standards. Central to these standards and policies is our commitment to being directly accountable for the quality of our work by making certain that communities affected by disasters have a say in planning, implementing and judging CARE’s response. However, the large number of different standards and accountability initiatives can be confusing.

In order to simplify their application CARE’s Humanitarian Accountability Framework (HAF), first developed in 2010 and then revised in 2016:

  • shows how they relate to each other, rather than providing an entirely new set of standards or benchmarks
  • clarifies what CARE staff (CO staff, Lead Members, CEG, CARE members) will actually be held accountable for during emergency responses
  • defines compliance systems to ensure implementation of the HAF is driven by senior management, who are expected to model appropriate behaviours to ensure genuine accountability
  • is a policy statement and framework on quality and accountability for CARE’s humanitarian mandate. It sets out how accountability is a constant, guiding principle in CARE’s humanitarian work which, when applied at every stage of the programme cycle, provides an essential means of achieving high programme quality standards and greatest impact.

Therefore, the HAF has three components which are described in more detail in the following sections:

  • COMMITMENTS on Humanitarian Quality and Accountability (see section 4.)
  • TARGETS for CARE’s Humanitarian Performance (see section 5)

ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM for monitoring compliance with commitments and performance against targets (see section 6)

All CARE staff and offices should understand and comply with the HAF in the design, delivery and review of humanitarian programming. Compliance requires meaningful engagement with and the empowerment of people affected by crisis, partners and CARE staff. The HAF, as such, prescribes a culture of transparency and learning to drive real-time and long-term improvements in CARE’s responses to humanitarian crises. The HAF is also a vehicle for bringing CARE together in focus, coherence and consistency to achieve high quality, accountable humanitarian programming across the globe.

For more information and documentation related to the HAF go to HAF folder in Minerva.