Layla Haso is the Accountability to Affected People Advisor to the Deputy Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria¡¯s cross-border operations for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). And she is chair of the Inter-Agency AAP Task Force.
In this interview, she tells us about the new ¡°validation mechanism¡± that places affected communities at the centre of decision-making:
What led to the creation of a ¡®validation mechanism¡¯ in the way you communicate with local communities?
For years, OCHA colleagues across operations have been working to enhance our accountability to affected people, which set the ground for the changes we are making today.
When I joined the Accountability to Affected People (AAP) Task Force in 2023, the first thing I did was review the entire AAP architecture already in place.
That¡¯s how we got to the Safe Line ¨C a pilot interagency hotline allowing us to hear directly from the communities.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, misinformation was rampant, so we also implemented the Rumour Tracker, a communication tool designed to track the information circulating on social media to ensure it accurately reflected the reality on the ground.?
But a huge gap persisted: consulting people within the community, not just listen to them. It¡¯s part of the trust building process ¨C letting them know how we use their feedback.
We realized that communities mainly placed their trust in civil defence and volunteer groups, rather than in NGOs, which are our implementing partners.
In Syria alone, there are over 300 volunteer groups, so first we mapped them out, then we began training these volunteer groups by explaining the concept of coordination and the role of OCHA.
As a result, we now have clustered volunteer groups into a Local Community of Practice Working Group which operates independently from NGOs but understands how decisions are made and is actively engaged with this system.
Give us a practical example.
Let¡¯s take the example of dignified shelters. Last year, people expressed their concerns that the shelters became unbearably hot because of the materials used. We informed the cluster and invited Local Community of Practice Working Group to validate their guidelines for dignified shelters using our new system.
Community representatives brought along a trusted engineer from their community. I made sure they included at least one woman and an elder.
Participants voted for their preferred shelter design. Surprisingly, everyone was in favour of concrete shelters, the most cost-effective option.
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