Relinquishing the leadership of Ground Truth Solutions (GTS) to Meg Sattler got me thinking about what we have achieved in trying to forge a humanitarian system that is more responsive to the real needs of people it’s meant to benefit. 

There is a lot of talk about accountability to affected people and a profusion of mechanisms supposed to make it happen, yet there is little evidence of meaningful improvement. After more than a decade of effort, why have we failed to make accountability happen?

For all the earnest talk about reforming the humanitarian system, there is little to show for it. This collective inaction problem is entrenched but there is a pathway to change – if we are prepared to adopt a less prescriptive approach.

No activity is complete without its own dedicated podcast. Lars Peter Nissen, who directs ACAPS, is at the origin of many original ideas on humanitarian affairs and his new podcast, the Trumanitarian, is his foray into this space.

Pollsters are struggling to explain why they were so off the mark in what they predicted would be a convincing victory for now President-Elect Joe Biden.

Back in the early days of Ground Truth Solutions (GTS), the field director of an international relief agency was incredulous when told that our work entailed tracking how people affected by humanitarian crises perceive the provision of aid. ‘Why should I care about the perceptions of affected people?’, he asked.

More often than not, I bristle when asked whether Ground Truth Solutions (GTS) makes a difference in improving the lives of crisis-affected people. The implication seems to be that we have failed to deliver if our efforts have not yet put them in the driver’s seat of humanitarian action.

As we grapple with the twin health and economic crises created by COVID-19, nowhere is this challenge greater than in the camps and shanty towns that are home to the world’s 70 million refugees and displaced people.

Several years ago in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp I witnessed a refugee official glad-handing Syrian refugees as he went about his daily rounds, the very picture, to me at least, of a trusting relationship. Later, back in Amman, I described the scene to a Syrian refugee friend. Talking is good, she told me, but it’s not enough. Amidst the skewed power dynamics in the humanitarian space, there’s more to relations between aid providers and recipients than meets the eye.