August 12, 2008

NEW YORK – Marvin Parvez, Church World Service regional representative for South Asia, has earned the designation "Accountability Ambassador" from the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership, signifying that CWS -Pakistan/Afghanistan complies with HAP standards of humanitarian agency accountability to the communities in which they work.

Geneva-based HAP http://www.hapinternational.org/ is self-regulatory partnership of aid agencies working to assure that humanitarian organizations – enormously powerful because they often are the sole providers of vital resources like food, water and shelter after disasters – are accountable to the people who are supposed to benefit from their services. It currently has 22 full members, including non-governmental organizations like Church World Service-Pakistan/Afghanistan, Oxfam, World Vision, CARE International and others.

Parvez says the designation "accountability ambassador," is an acknowledgement of CWS-P/A's strong commitment to "downward accountability" – or making the agency answerable to the people who are the beneficiaries of its humanitarian programs – and his strong efforts to promote that and other HA{P principles throughout the region.

That commitment has been a hallmark of Parvez' leadership of the agency's http://www.churchworldservice.org/ disaster response, social development and capacity building work throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan. CWS has worked in the region for more than five decades. Parvez believes the HAP principles of accountability (see http://www.hapinternational.org/projects/standard/development/principles-of-accountability.aspx) – from local participation in planning, to establishing performance measures and communicating those accountability standards to beneficiaries – go a long way toward insuring that local people have significant say in what happens as they attempt to recover from disaster.

After the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan flattened villages and killed more than 20,000 people Parvez coordinated a response that ranged from feeding and housing survivors in the first days to vocational training to help young men learn skills they could use to support their families over the long term.

Humanitarian organizations in general became the subject of complaints from local people dissatisfied with programs they believed shut them out of decision making and ignored some of their cultural traditions. In a July 29, 2008 story, IRIN news service, reported that the grievances, which sometimes resulted in threats or attacks against humanitarian organizations, underscore the need for an organization like HAP.

The chief objective of CWS-P/A is to help vulnerable people improve their lives, Parvez explains. "We've found that the best way to do that is to strengthen their own ability to cope and to help them and their local organizations learn to manage disasters and to plan, implement and sustain post-disaster development.

"An important part of attaining that goal lies in making sure that organizations understand that they must respect the dignity, the desires and the rights of the people in crisis they are assisting." To that end, CWS-P/A regularly participates in or leads training seminars focused on standards for assistance to people affected by disaster and, at the next level, accountability to affected communities for the appropriateness and effectiveness of assistance offered, as defined in HAP standards.

Says Parvez, "CWS-P/A is a community-based organization. So for me, it is extremely important that we are accountable not just to donors but to the communities that we work with."

Church World Service is an international relief and development agency, funded by public donations, grants, and by 35 member denominations in the U.S.

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