AlertNet member People In Aid is an international network of agencies promoting better management and support of people working in aid and development. Its executive director Jonathan Potter writes that exposure of the sexual exploitation of refugees in West Africa illustrates the need for stronger management systems that will enhance the impact made by relief organisations.

The UNHCR/Save the Children report on sexual exploitation of refugees in West Africa made me recoil. I have not seen the full report and cannot vouch for the truth of the revelations, but the allegations outraged me on behalf of those with whom we are all trying to work.

Much will be written about accountability to beneficiaries in the coming months and the Humanitarian Accountability Project (HAP) has started a discussion on its website (www.hapgeneva.org). Much should also be written about agency management of staff – but will it be written? And what will actually be done?

This is probably just the most public exposé of weaknesses in a sector reliant on self-regulation. Without broaching the argument of whether donors or others will begin to impose quality standards, let’s look at some of the issues this case brings up in relation to agency management of staff:

• Management of national staff is recognised as being fraught with difficulties and issues are, therefore, often avoided. The report implies that it is primarily "local employees" responsible for the deplorable actions. True or not, agencies must look at whether they treat locally recruited staff as equitably as their expatriates. They are, after all, the likely future of the aid and development workforce so surely should be getting the same, if not more, attention in terms of training, career options and reward structures.
• Management and training of staff has been deprioritised for too long by agencies more concerned with donor accountability and funding ratios. Screening, recruitment, values induction, briefing, training, supervision, performance appraisal, personal and operational debriefing. These, and more, are going to make your staff more motivated, better prepared and more effective. Your staff deserve some investment since they are, after all, those you rely on to achieve your mission using your donors’ money. Disciplinary procedures must be strong, and carefully explained, too.
• Very few agencies have human resource experience in the field, and many have none back in head office. Is this a matter of costs or evidence of deprioritisation of a duty of care to staff? Whichever, ways must be found to address essential areas such as those listed above. Take briefing, for example: the families of the telecoms engineers who were executed in Chechnya are pursuing a claim in the British courts on the basis that they were not briefed properly. Can your agency afford such a claim on its purse or its profile?
• As in other areas of agency work, human resources policies may exist but are not implemented. Top-down procedures do not always gain buy-in, so involve your staff. Survey your staff -- on whether they know about, for example, disciplinary procedures; consult staff -- over policy creation, to build awareness and ownership of it; establish a staff group -- to help you draw up plans for implementing important policies; communicate with staff -- so that they know a policy on, for example, child protection is not a piece of paper, but a key operating procedure with sanctions for deviation.
• What say does an agency have over the activities or attitudes of employees expressed in their own free time? A robust performance management system, which all agencies should implement with all staff, should look at the extent to which the staff member shares the values of the organisation. On a different level, it is, for example, illegal for a Briton to have sex with an underage child overseas and law-breaking is most definitely a concern of the employer.

People In Aid, an inter-agency self-regulatory initiative and a global quality standard concerned with human resource management in the sector, will be looking at itself as well as a result of these revelations.

• We already have a workshop on work-life balance for aid workers scheduled for May 10 in London.
• The week before the report was released we held a round table on "national staff: off the map?" Participating agencies differed in their priorities (pensions, appraisals, glass ceilings…) but agreed they had to do more. Any agency is welcome to participate in the next steps.
• We are already revising the People In Aid Code of Best Practice. While national staff issues will be more explicitly addressed, we must see whether other areas need to be included. Whistleblowing probably deserves an explicit mention; more issues should be included in the back-up materials on training, e.g. the handling of power relationships; perhaps we must look deeper into staff/volunteer responsibility towards employer, rather than just the other way around. We welcome input, and case studies of best practice which agencies want to share with the sector.
• We must all place more emphasis on persuading donors to accept training lines in agency proposal budgets.

Finally, please let's raise our eyes from West Africa. There are millions of actual and potential refugees and vulnerable people around the world; there are hundreds of agencies likely to be working with them, employing thousands of staff and volunteers. Whatever the resolution of the dreadful situation in West Africa, please let all agencies strengthen their management systems NOW so this doesn’t happen again. People In Aid would be pleased to help.

• Jonathan Potter can be contacted at jonathan@peopleinaid.org.