Round Table – Humanitarian Observatories: Reforming humanitarian governance from below

In the past few months, several humanitarian observatories have been set up in DRC, Ethiopia, Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia and the Phillipines. These observatories review humanitarian action in the countries they’re located in and aim to contribute to humanitarian reform from below. This roundtable shares experiences and insights from the observatories.

Humanitarian governance is associated with many challenges related to the effectiveness of aid, accountability and trust, and the huge power imbalance between large humanitarian agencies and national aid providers, for example. The influence of actors from the countries that are mostly affected by crisis – recipients of aid, national aid providers and others – on these policies and debates is wanting.

In an era of growing humanitarian needs, international advocacy has been focused on improving the effectiveness of aid, accountability, and the role of national actors. But these initiatives usually take place at the global level. The humanitarian observatories want to turn this around and reform
humanitarianism by creating spaces for actors affected by aid interventions to monitor these in the places where they are enacted.

Humanitarian observatories are networks in which national and local actors observe how the humanitarian aid system functions in a specific context, providing an impression of the overall functioning of the system while also functioning amid all the humanitarian activities taking place. The observatories include representatives of affected communities, civil servants, members of civil society, and researchers from within and outside of academia.

The observatories have further added value beyond monitoring the state of the humanitarian aid sector. For the members, they are a space for learning, exchange, strategic thinking and action and influence.

The roundtable will present experiences and insights from the different observatories. Please join if you like to know more about the observatories, want to become part of an observatory or even start an observatory in your own country.

Organisers

Juan Aparicio Ricardo, Dorothea Hilhorst, Patrick Milabyo Kyamusugulwa, Tadesse Kassa
Woldetsadik (Coordinators of the Humanitarian Governance programme, on behalf of the entire team.)

Speakers

Juan Aparicio Ricardo, Dorothea Hilhorst, Patrick Milabyo Kyamusugulwa, Tadesse Kassa
Woldetsadik (Coordinators of the Humanitarian Governance programme, on behalf of the entire team.)