The Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP) is a formal partnership of member agencies that share a commitment to making humanitarian action accountable to disaster survivors.
HAP believes that humanitarian agencies should be accountable to all relevant stakeholders, including donors, staff and relevant authorities. However, because disaster survivors are typically amongst the least able to demand accountability, our partnership is founded upon the principles that humanitarian agencies must make an especially concerted and conscious effort to be accountable to their intended beneficiaries, most often the disaster survivors.
As the humanitarian sector’s first self-regulatory body, HAP was set up in 2003 to define, research, promote and support good practices of accountability and quality management, and to certify its members accordingly. We do this through building the capacity of our members, especially in new emergency situations; through the identification of affordable good practices of accountability; through reviewing complaints made against humanitarian agencies; through monitoring compliance with the HAP Standard in Humanitarian Accountability and Quality Management and through a voluntary quality assurance certification scheme.