Achieving impactful, localised AAP in Myanmar: recalibrating the existing approach

This article explores factors affecting the overall integration and mainstreaming of the response-wide accountability to affected people (AAP) in Myanmar since the internal conflict escalated in 2021. The military seized control in 2021, resulting in the violent crackdown on protests against the de facto government, displacing nearly 1.2 million people in the process.

Understanding longstanding barriers

From August to November 2022, in partnership with the subnational implementing and operational partners of the Protection, Camp Coordination/Camp Management and Shelter clusters, a series of localised AAP capacity-building sessions, community consultations and tools The AAP tools that were tested include the Rapid Information, Communication, and Accountability Assessment (RICAA) and the Community Consultations on the Response Actions (CORA). Both tools have been developed and localised in partnership with civil society organisations (CSOs). validations were conducted in the following critical areas: Lashio (Shan North), Myitkyina (Kachin), and Taunggyi (Shan). These are critical and contested areas between the de facto government of Myanmar and the National Unity Government (also known as the People’s Defence Force), which was formed in September 2021 by ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) political leaders, activists, and other minority groups to serve as the parallel government against the junta.

Due to access and security issues, an online contextualised training was provided to the Northeast Region, which includes local partners from Chin, Sagaing, and Magway. All United Nations agencies and international non-governmental organisations are dependent on local partners working in all three states. CSOs Due to security concerns including harassment and intimidation, even CSOs based in the Northwest Region have to conduct more discreet community engagement activities. supporting the subnational protection coordination mechanism in the Northeast Region conducted various community consultations in geographically isolated areas and stressed the gaps in dealing with feedback and making the feedback system more responsive.

Among the general feedback received is that while the humanitarian community in Myanmar may have made efforts to advance AAP in 2022, including the establishment of the national AAP working group, a collective AAP mechanism with a responsive system has not been rolled out to at-risk communities and affected populations in a systematic, predictable and inclusive manner. Despite the creation of a ‘collective’ AAP workplan and several agencies investing in small projects to improve the process, people in need still have very little influence over the design of humanitarian interventions. Even the multi-sectoral needs assessment (MSNA) conducted in 2022 under the Myanmar Humanitarian Fund Multi-sectoral needs assessment (on behalf of the HCT and Inter-Cluster Coordination Group), Bulletin Report (pp. 1–6, 2022). was criticised by implementing partners for not sufficiently consulting persons with disabilities, people with special needs and other vulnerable groups of affected people. The inclusion of some accountability questions in the assessment itself was characterised as an afterthought or part of a tick-box exercise to ensure there were AAP components in the assessment.

Adding to this is the unnecessary pressure of adapting and translating into Burmese various global guidelines, protocols, and other technical components on AAP. Contextualising these to address both immediate lifesaving needs and those that arise as people’s circumstances change, takes time. More time is lost in bureaucratic processes: for example, each agency within the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) has its own interpretation of what constitutes collective AAP, resulting in a disjointed approach. This is particularly egregious given that local actors are mostly excluded from providing crucial input, so international agencies end up coordinating AAP in Myanmar. This also means that local actors have less access to funding. The final straw is that this fragmentation exists alongside a genuine demand for AAP that far exceeds the supply, resulting in significant gaps in coverage.

Overall, the recurring challenges and gaps that hinder an impactful AAP in Myanmar are enormous but not surprising since the focus is more on the technical process rather than the outcomes. Based on feedback from the people consulted and local partners trained on contextualised AAP, the following concerns are apparent:

• The national AAP platform has limited capacity to support subnational working groups/task forces. These groups need consistent strong leadership and guidance from the HCT.
• Working group members at the national and subnational level have limited capacities and resources.
• The AAP capacity-building programme currently provided (mostly conducted online and based on the global context) needs to be further simplified and contextualised to make it more relevant and useful to local implementing partners.
• AAP activities or workplans are not attuned to the realities on the ground. There are no common service platforms or tools being used to conduct collective assessments and enact community consultations, and thereby close the feedback loop.
• There is too much focus on the establishment of community feedback mechanisms (CFMs) and not enough on supporting them with an efficient and functioning system. The recurring issue here is that most CFMs are more project- or aid-specific rather than collective in approach.
• There is competing/conflicting jargon, such as Communicating with Communities (CwC) and Community Engagement and Accountability (CEA). These persist alongside ‘AAP’ and are used by agencies when creating additional technical working groups or task forces on the ground.
• AAP is presented in the Humanitarian Response Plan as a collection of activity-based interventions with set indicators, rather than based on the preferences of at-risk communities and the evolving needs of affected people.
• Myanmar’s Humanitarian Response Plan remains underfunded with most agencies forced to do specific project-based accountability work, as opposed to working collectively across a concrete common service platform, for a systematic and predictable process at the local level.
• AAP in Myanmar is structured as a standard hierarchical coordination mechanism, where the national-level structure is seen as the core platform and the subnational as the support platform. This is not conducive to a more localised or contextualised approach.
• Security concerns and restrictions in contested areas of the country have limited the deployment of aid workers from international organisations and restricted access to affected communities.

Minimum capacities and resources to balance AAP and make the system accountable

To complement the contextualised training and community consultations, extensive mapping was conducted by the Protection Cluster from July–September 2021 on behalf of the national AAP working group. The mapping indicated that there are nine United Nations (UN) agencies, 30 international non-governmental organisations, and at least six national/local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and CSOs engaged in AAP activities in Myanmar. Microsoft Power BI (in-country mapping of AAP activities, September 2022).

The mapping results showed that most humanitarian agencies focused on the following AAP activities: communication, community engagement/consultation, diversity and inclusion, community participation and localisation, and improving feedback mechanisms.

While service mapping is important, it doesn’t show whether those activities are making the overall humanitarian system more accountable. The question is how willing is the humanitarian community in Myanmar to think outside the box to design a practical and impactful approach to AAP, making best use of minimum resources and capacities?

Understanding the decentralisation chokepoints and supporting more localised actions are crucial to increasing the impact of AAP efforts. Vitally, decentralisation and localisation cannot be conflated: the former could occur without any meaningful progress toward the latter if agencies were to simply hand over necessary roles and functions from national to subnational entities. This might lessen agencies’ roles but do very little to transform the AAP system as it currently stands. The involvement of local actors is therefore essential to moving AAP towards more outcome-oriented action.

Decentralising collective AAP coordination and implementation

Since Haiti’s earthquake (2010), the Philippine’s Typhoon Haiyan (2013), Nepal’s earthquake (2015), and Bangladesh/Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis (2016–present), the establishment of national AAP working groups has become a staple or mandatory activity in convening and coordinating collective efforts on communication, community engagement, participation and accountability. In recent humanitarian responses in other countries or regions across the globe, the scope of AAP has expanded to focus on localisation, diversity, and inclusion. The was the case in the Philippines (Marawi siege, 2017 and Covid-19 response, 2019–2021), Myanmar (armed conflict and displacement, 2022), and Indonesia (Sulawesi earthquake, 2018).

Overall success varies according to which metrics are used: the capacities or resources of responding agencies; responsiveness of the AAP workplan versus impactful activities addressing both lifesaving and evolving needs of the affected communities; geographical focus (usually at the national level, and less engaged at the subnational or community level); and the reliability of the trusted or preferred community feedback mechanisms.

The case of Myanmar is no different. This provides a good example of a national AAP working group where most members have limited AAP capacities and resources, are less present in critical regions in Myanmar, and are highly overstretched when it comes to exercising its strategic role and adding value to existing operational working group(s) at the subnational level.

In contrast to this typical national–subnational relationship is the Central Rakhine State CwC/AAP subnational working group It was established as early as 2019 and evolved from CwC to a more AAP-focused field-level working group in 2022. Other subnational areas considered this the model when it comes to a more decentralised approach on AAP coordination and operational implementation. and, potentially, the AAP-dedicated task forces in other states such as in Myitkyina, Lashio, Taunggyi, and other areas in the southeast. In these areas, where the level of coordination and implementation is highly dependent on more decentralised and localised operations, there is a more focused and direct AAP engagement with at-risk communities. The mapping indicated that each of these states has the minimum capacities required – such as a number of agencies with dedicated services – and resources, and the ability to engage in and sustain protracted responses. In short, this is the kind of ground-level working group that must be supported, and can be adapted or replicated in other areas.

However, we need to break the habit of creating technical working groups as an automatic response, or as an afterthought to try to make AAP in humanitarian interventions more visible. The current practice of establishing working groups at the national level and expanding them at the subnational level has sometimes become a performative exercise, the main purpose of which is to demonstrate how quickly humanitarians have taken collective action on AAP.

This was the situation in Myanmar. There were good intentions to convene agencies, but less consideration given to whether these agencies had the interest as well as the minimal resources and capacities necessary for the AAP working group to be effective. With limited capacities and resources, the national AAP working group in Myanmar is dependent on big and interested agencies to provide some support to keep it going and make it more visible and impactful. Critical here is the fact that any working group should function as a common service platform that can change course and ensure that all members can sustain their engagement. Usually this takes time and is quite challenging; instead, agencies often implement the most convenient and self-serving solution. Therefore, establishing a cross-cutting thematic working group would be an investment towards true corrective action, rather than more of the same (i.e., merely identifying and implementing AAP activities).

To lessen the coordination burden, it is imperative to allow the existing subnational groups in Myanmar to develop and continue to deal with the access, safety and rights issues in their respective areas. This means that collective AAP will be more area-specific rather than the ideal whole-of-country response. Coordination mechanisms will have less of a humanitarian and more of a hybrid character: UN agencies and international NGOs working more with national and local staff, and in particular CSOs. Following this approach will mean that the national AAP working group will hand over most of its functions to the subnational level. This will enable national NGOs and CSOs willing to take on more roles to expand their level of engagement.

Rather than pretending that adding another set of questions on AAP to MSNAs makes them more consultative, establishing a ‘smart’ and more inclusive process of monitoring and sustaining subnational AAP groups and their activities is more likely to achieve this. The creation of ground-level AAP working groups, networks and task forces is dependent on the interest, capacities and resources of certain clusters, agencies, and implementing or operational partners. Not all agencies or clusters have the capacity to offer the full range of AAP services and support. We need to support what each can offer, especially at the subnational level where larger organisations’ fundraising support is key.

Localised AAP: directly addressing feedback and maximising trusted/preferred channels

Key to a more impactful localisation of AAP in Myanmar is responding agencies exerting more effort to make sense of how people are using the information they have received and understanding how that information can be translated into positive actions. In an ideal scenario, service users would have the capacity to provide inclusive feedback while at the same time establishing genuine connections with AAP providers to ensure that humanitarian agencies have the resources to respond accordingly.

Most of the time when engaging with at-risk communities, responding agencies confuse capturing feedback with addressing it. But this former element is just one facet of AAP. Humanitarians must close the loop by actually addressing the feedback, including by providing lifesaving information that is both accessible and inclusive and therefore fit for purpose.

According to local partners, the humanitarian community is fixated on trying to amplify community voices by conducting various types of assessments. This results in community consultation fatigue, which is compounded by the proliferation in the camps of community feedback mechanisms that are unable to respond to or address feedback received.

The existing CFMs trusted and preferred by affected and displaced people in most of the camps are help desks, hotlines, suggestion boxes and information boards. However, none of these CFMs have well-functioning or responsive systems when it comes to receiving, recording, referring, responding, and reporting. The issue is not about setting up trusted or preferred CFMs and making them visible or accessible, but rather ensuring that they are responsive when it comes to addressing feedback and that agencies are mindful of the likely impacts of how people are using information and providing feedback.

Based on the consultations, most local partners and affected people argued that engaging them in numerous coordination platforms (meaning countless meetings); translating global guidelines and protocols into the local language; being provided with a series of capacity-building sessions (numerous online trainings that need further contextualising and localising); being consulted in mapping exercises (lots of data collection and templates); and being ‘chosen’ to work on a particular project (usually advocacy campaigns, for the greatest visibility and to demonstrate that local CSOs are part of collaborations) does not mean the approach is ‘localised’. It is a disservice to local actors and affected people when they could contribute in a much more impactful way.

Moving forward: ‘disrupting’ the system can be an opportunity

The AAP system in Myanmar does not necessarily need a complete overhaul. But if going back to the drawing board could result in a system which is more responsive to affected communities’ expressed needs, then it is imperative that we do so.

In Myanmar, local partners and affected communities have already reminded the humanitarian community that part of the system is not working. We cannot continue to implement the kind of inadequate AAP present in Myanmar, which does not centre at-risk communities and instead prioritises convenience on the part of responding agencies. It is inexcusable for humanitarians to blindly defend this system simply because it suits us.

To say that those involved in AAP should and must be good ‘change enablers’ is an understatement of what we should be doing in the first place. We cannot demand or consistently push for a participation revolution, if after a year of mainstreaming AAP, we are still focusing on processes rather than on being accountable.

It is not only local partners and affected communities who have reason to be distressed by the lack of real change when it comes to overall accountability in AAP response. The entire humanitarian community should be alarmed considering that we still associate AAP simply with collecting communities’ perceptions and feedback rather than acting in response to it. Carrying out assessments and conducting community consultations to highlight or amplify community voices through dashboards, reports and other digital platforms does not make us collectively responsive and is of no value at all to at-risk and affected people. In most cases it is actually a waste of their time since their ‘engagement’ in these processes does not guarantee that feedback will be addressed or addressed appropriately. Feedback is not just for the consumption of humanitarian agencies, at the expense of at-risk communities. The humanitarian system must stop approaching accountability to affected people as a tick-box exercise.

Gil Francis G. Arevalo served as the specialist/coordinator for the UNHCR/Protection Cluster in Myanmar from March 2022–January 2023, supporting the mainstreaming and localisation of AAP initiatives across the country including technical support to the local partners and the AAP national platform. Currently, Gil is the Emergency Specialist on AAP at the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia (ROSA).

Gil can be contacted via gfarevalo@gmail.com.