Accountability to affected populations in practice

The Technical Cooperation project “Improving Nutrition and Food Security in the most vulnerable communities of Gedo, Bay and Bakool Regions” was formulated as an emergency response to the poor nutrition and food security situation in Somalia in 2002. The objective of the project was to improve the nutritional status of the most vulnerable households through rapid impact food security micro projects at community level, as well as the promotion of better practices for improved nutrition.

This example of FAO’s project from more than a decade ago, highlights how a number of elements of good AAP practice were embedded in FAO programmes already at a time when Accountability to Affected Population hadn’t been an institutionalized concept.

In this case FAO team put in place a number of methodologies to be accountable to and include populations in the programme that are worth highlighting and sharing.

High insecurity and the consequent difficulties in accessing project sites was one of the main constraints to the implementation of the project. The strategy adopted was to deliver activities through local field staff who were able to access the project areas at all times, following a remote management model. This approach, alongside the flexibility left to the design of each single micro project, resulted in a number of different activities tailored to local contexts and needs, in line with good AAP practices.