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Maggie Beirne raises key accountability issues for those like me who shuttle between practice and theory and domestic as well as international human rights activities. We have many competing, and contradicting, obligations beginning with those wish to serve through private and public funders, and successive layers of local, national, and international law. For the case in point I note a "Community Needs Assessment of NYC's Arab American Community" as the basis for domestic violence prevention sponsored by a non-profit group, funded by a private foundation for a program in a New York State District Attorney's Office and Family Court. Adding to the complexity of efforts to provide assistance to women and children are national issues/constraints such as immigration and national security impacts.

Accountability is a multidimensional concept that generates very intense and interesting discussions, as seen in this forum and in previous debates held by the ICHRP and other groups. In my view, there is a crucial element that we should not go unnoticed: Human Rights organizations must link the notion of accountability with the idea of impact assessment.

This is something already covered by the 2006 INGO Accountability Charter, which states (in the section about "good governance") that:
"We should be held responsible for our actions and achievements. We will do this by: having a clear mission, organisational structure and decision-making processes; by acting in accordance with stated values and agreed procedures; by ensuring that our programmes achieve outcomes that are consistent with our mission; and by reporting on these outcomes in an open and accurate manner."

Human Rights organizations are still in the early stages of the adoption of the self impact assessment as one of the pillars of their strategic and operational planning. In this regard, Human Rights groups could take some lessons from the work done by Development NGOs, which started some years earlier implementing some methodologies to assess their own impact on people´s lives. A good example of this learning process is the adoption by Amnesty International in 2008 of the "Dimensions of Change" methodology, a tool that Save the Children had already working with approximately since 2003.

In a post on the blog of the One World Trust on Feb 12 Robert Lloyd touches on what I think is an important grounding for the more 'practical' work that CSOs are engaged in vis-a-vis accountability. He suggests that linking human rights and accountability is important to ensure that debates and practices are couched in a clear understanding and appreciation of 'power'.

A particularly important way in which this link can be practically strengthened is by supporting the work with 'citizenship' training; an understanding of their rights as beneficiaries/stakeholders, their entitlements, and how best to access their entitlements. Although this is not always possible for organisations that are not involved in the delivery of goods and services it is nonetheless important to imbue the work of CSOs with a strong 'citizenship and rights' component.

NGOs Accountability is as necessary as UN forces accountability. Nevertheless, the main issue is the criteria on which NGOs are selected to get a right to be involved in crisis? and who does the follow up? If these two questions can be answered properly then accountability will be a non issue.

It would be interesting to see a few thoughts on moving forward from how CSOs strengthen their accountability to how we can engage more effectively with policy makers and legislators to contribute towards a favourable environment in which these efforts can be received.

Let me first say that I have been involved with the Declaration of Human Rights and the affirmation of the Responsibilities that are associated with those rights - since the association was first made at the Vienna Conference. My contribution to the dialogue is contained in the preamble.

I think this discussion is a distraction from the important issues. Not that it is not important - it is. But as a subset of the larger issues of the day - such issues being addressed by the business community in small way through the current implementation of the ISO 26000 Standard. In a recent Mexico /Canada dialogue on the Standard - it was pointed out that the NGO community also had to be involved with the same basic understandings being asked for in the Standards. THIS is in my humble opinion the discussion of human rights - but within the context of all that the Copenhagen Accords are intended to resolve.

The UN may do its best to ignore that it has embraced the ISO 26000 Standard and it fails to discuss it openly. This Forum may be one of the vehicles for such discussion - for what does it matter that NGO's have NO reporting function to the UN even when carrying such labels as: Peace Messenger of the United Nations, NGO with Consultative Status ECOSOC, or UNDPI, or UNESCO.

The ISO 26000 Standard as formal guidelines ought to be an a priori discussion in measuring the accountability of the NGO community. As we have been asking the business community - "Please identify your intentions" with regards to the Standard - and every NGO participating in this discussion ought to express their intention too!

Toute organisation œuvrant dans le sens de la protection des Droits de l'Homme joue un rôle essentiel dans un monde où les politiques et les dirigeants se croient investis du droit de régir la planète sans considération pour les populations. Il faut des organes de rappel à l'ordre pour ramener l'éthique, le bon sens et la morale dans les négociations. A ce titre votre rôle est primordial. Merci

The contributions are thought-provoking and helpfully set out some of the challenges explored in previous debates around human rights NGOs and accountability.

Speaking from my own direct experience as a practitioner on the ground, I believe that the accountability issues raised for “human rights NGOs” to be distinct from those of other NGOs for an array of reasons, but not least because the latter often work thanks to government funding and so must be prepared to account to government for the use of all such monies. Human rights groups, particularly those who foreswear government funding so as to ensure their real and perceived independence from government, should not hand over to the authorities other levers of influence and control without very clear reasoning. The issues raised for international human rights NGOs are also quite distinct from those raised for domestic human rights NGOs. Moreover, it is not clear to me why there is often such a clear distinction drawn between the concerns about excessive state interference on the part of domestic human rights NGOs in more and in less repressive societies. To my mind, giving government access to organisational membership lists for the American Civil Liberties Union is likely to pose different concerns than it would, say, for a US group providing welfare services to the elderly. While handing over such records is more immediately problematic in countries where human rights defenders are at serious risk, the “chilling” effect of such powers in less repressive societies is unavoidable.

Assumptions are sometimes made about the need for accountability by domestic human rights groups at the very least to, say, the victims of human rights abuses; but in a divided society, maybe a human rights group is only effective when it is not “accountable” in any narrow understanding of that term to those it is working for and with. Thus, maybe such groups have a duty to provide the space in which victims can speak out and secure remedies, rather than to embrace, or appear to embrace, the political or other objectives of those same victims?

As to the role of the ICHRP in encouraging debate on this issue, I agree that the Council can perform a very valid function in encouraging the debate, and in summarising the exchanges in due course. From the perspective of human rights NGOs at the coalface, I would have warmly welcomed a toolbox which facilitated an internal organisational reflection on how to live out the human rights principle of accountability in our internal and external relationships with the numerous stakeholders interested in our work. What I would have objected to was any naïve though well-intentioned formulation that claimed universal application and did little more than give critics of human rights work another weapon to their armoury!