Why Do Accountability? A Business Case From Sri Lanka

he need for increased NGO Accountability to disaster survivors has been noted repeatedly in major evaluations and momentum is growing for NGOs to be more accountable. For World Vision, the major reason to be accountable is to help disaster survivors achieve their rights and to improve the quality of services provided to them. However in order to stimulate organizational change and to better understand what accountability can look on the ground, a business case was developed on why we should have empowered humanitarian accountability teams in the field and what is needed to make them work. This focussed on what was beneficial for World Vision’s operations and was based upon a series of staff interviews that formed a case study of the (Sri) Lanka Tsunami Response Team (LTRT). These advantages and enabling factors can easily be replicated into other programs.