Accountability is a term that is thrown around ever so frequently withing NGOs and advocacy spaces. Where is the accountability? Are they being held accountable? Accountability is everything. And it is, without a doubt. The development world thrives on accountability - right from funding to project planning to monitoring and to evaluations; accountability is what keeps the process going.
But what about the communities that we source information from? It may be to harsh to put it like that, but it is probably true on so many levels.
How are we holding ourselves accountable for the communities we work in?
From supporting case studies for social media posts, to conducting high-level research, the world of development is pretty much dependent on sourcing information from it works with, or frankly, in. The use of the lived experiences of community members who are more than often underrepresented, vulnerable and marginalised, are routinely used in every organisation that works with a set or group of people. While they do need to be used, or for a better word - utilised - to further their work in protecting and encouraging the rights of said communities, and donors get the precise numbers and analysis of community behaviour during evaluations, the development sector collectively needs to stop, take a step back and ponder upon how much information are they giving back to the community.
Imagine someone taking your data, and not telling you what they’re doing with it. *Facebook* cough. Sounds familiar? Communities give away more than their experiences during this type of data mining by the development sector - they give away their trust, their protection and invisibility, and perhaps, more. However, the development sector has failed to inform communities what is being done with their information - with their images (if even taken with consent, and not being a product of ’poverty porn’), images of their homes and personal items, images of children and adolescent girls, stories of vulnerable children, adolescents and women, of Dalit and tribal communities, of the poorest of the poor,
Do projects have the capability of including an accountability mechanism or framework to give information back to communities? Yes. Do they ensure the same? Barely.
The need for functional mechanisms, and when I say functional I don’t mean tokensitic, to ensure that apart from the ‘give back’ that is expected for communities by organisations, they must also give back the information or report on what they have been using their information and data from. Activists and development workers are some of the first people who call out a Facebook, or a Twitter when inappropriate use of data turns up like a sport, but are we doing the same with our communities?
Do better.
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