The Global Study on Consultation with and Participation By Beneficiaries and Affected Populations is an inter-agency iniative aimed at improving the mechanisms though which the "targets of aid" can be better involved in the design, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of humanitarian aid. It is based on a series of case studies which should cover a significant degree of cultural/political diversity and a number of contexts representing the "aid environment":

• complex emergencies;
• post-crisis reconstruction;
• natural disasters

Afghanistan was considered to be a very interesting case for the Global Study for a number of reasons:

• It is the current centre of attention of the aid community;
• It is a very diversified context where consultation and participation are deeply rooted in the cultural and social fabric;
• It is an area where all kinds of practices are mixed : from pure emergency interventions related to natural disaster and war to near-development or reconstruction approaches.

In the middle of the post-emergency action that followed the post-11^th September events, two earthquakes affected the mountainous area of Nahrin, north of the Salang Pass. How did the aid actors intervene in this situation, taking into account the Afghan set-up ? How were consultation and participation issues tackled in the emergency and reconstruction phases following the earthquake ?

Groupe URD, which had already planned a mission in Afghanistan with a component on consultation and participation, proposed to enlarge the scope of the mission to ensure that a case study could be prepared for the Global Study at a limited cost (one air ticket plus one person for 5 weeks, all the other costs- logistics, etc.- being covered by URD’s own budget).

The methodology was based on two elements :

• an attempt to understand consultation and participation mechanisms within the general context of international emergency and post-emergency assistance in Afghanistan;
• a focused study on how these mechanisms were applied specifically in the area affected by the earthquakes.

During each phase of the study, individual interviews with agency personnel and beneficiaries, as well as focus groups were carried out, in addition to the literature review and site visits. Attention was paid to ensure that international and Afghan staff who were involved in the operation were traced and met, a task that proved itself to be both very important and time consuming (people have been sometimes removed from the concerned area and assigned to work stations outside the earthquake affected area).

Three elements were considered as central to the study :

• consultation and participation of beneficiaries and affected populations at the different phases of the project cycle;
• consultation and participation in relation to the different organisational levels of the Afghan society (from individual to traditional "shuras", from local NGOs to political and administrative strata);
• consultation and participation of beneficiaries and affected populations in relation to sector-based interventions (health, food, human rights, shelter, etc.).

Three elements are key to understand how the mission was actually undertaken.

Communication : The mission paid due attention to the wide distribution of a 2 page leaflet on ALNAP’s Global Study, a document on ALNAP prepared by the Network’s Secretariat, and the mission's Terms of Reference in relation to the Global Study. By doing so, the mission disseminated information both on ALNAP's identity and on the concept of the Global Study;

Field work : While only one person of the team was under the Global Study per se, all five mission members had the "consultation and participation issue" high on their research agenda. This enabled a quite rich "harvest of information and facts", which will contribute to make this case study extremely useful for the Global Study.

Findings : A wealth of information has been collected on how the social fabric of the Afghan society, aid agendas and the design, planning and delivery of assistance are inter-acting. This became much more explicit when the study focused more narrowly on the earthquake affected area.

A full Monograph is currently being prepared.

La Fontaine des Marins

27/8/2002

François Grünewald

Global Study Project Director

Groupe URD