Placing Accountability at the Heart of Humanitarian Assistance; Lessons from the Listen Learn Act project

All too often, humanitarian actors fail to adequately consult with affected populations who are given too few opportunities to offer their perspectives on the assistance they receive or the agencies that provide it. Delivered through a partnership between DanChurchAid (DCA), Save the Children Denmark and Ground Truth Solutions, and using the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) – the accountability component of the Sphere handbook - as a foundation, the Listen Learn Act (LLA) project has been piloting an innovative method of regular and systematic information gathering and analysis to provide a ‘heartbeat’ or vital sign for agencies to know how they are meeting people's basic expectations.
Linked to a process of engaging communities on the issues they raise and a commitment to feeding back on corrective actions, this initiative offers an important benchmark for ‘closing the loop’. This report provides an overview and analysis of findings from the project and offers critical reflections from practitioners piloting the initiative in Ethiopia, Lebanon, Mali and Nepal.