Communities are innately able and have the right to be engaged as active participants
in interventions, and they have the voice to ask and have answered any questions related
to the response. This includes questions on basic quality criteria such as relevance,
effectiveness, targeting, transparency and timeliness.
In practice, this community voice is however not systematically inclusive, not systematically
listened to and not systematically responded to. The upward nature of the aid system,
the results and data-focused nature of operations have all contributed to this ironic
dehumanization of the humanitarian sector; the pendulum has swung too far towards
data and results. There is a clear need to bring the ‘human’ back into humanitarian, and
indeed into development and policy and peacekeeping, to ensure quality results are
aimed for, delivered and measured in partnership with communities themselves.