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About the mission

The Accountability & Quality Assurance Initiative (AQA) was conceived in October 2017 to address the challenges faced in ensuring that humanitarian WASH responses meet the minimum standards and expectations of quality for people affected by crisis.

The initial phase of the project started in 2018 and was completed in 2019. It was implemented on behalf of the Global WASH Cluster as a collaboration between Oxfam, Solidarités International, Tufts University and UNICEF as the Cluster Lead Agency and funding agency. The objective was to provide UNICEF, NCPs (National WASH Coordination Platforms) and WASH partners with a Accountability and Quality Assurance (AQA) system that is based on communities’ inputs and feedback, and which encourages participation and accountability of WASH Partners.

The first phase of the project consisted in (i) a comprehensive desk review, (ii) developing an understanding of the current best practices in quality assurance, (iii) crossed comparing this to the systems in place at the response level and (iv) developing the core documents of the initiative.

The second phase of the project, that took place in 2020, focused on (i) participation, engagement and dissemination of the system developed among various stakeholders at global, regional and national level, (ii) support to countries (mainly remote) and (iii) improvement and further development of guidance, tools and training packages to support set up and early implementation.

The third phase of the project, funded by BHA, in partnership with Oxfam, started in January 2022 and is ongoing. It aimed at achieving the 3 following objectives:

1. WASH NCPs in the pilot countries are trained and equipped with contextually adapted guidance and tools to support the implementation of effective AQA systems,
2. WASH NCPs in the pilot countries implement effective and contextually adapted AQA systems integrated into Humanitarian Program Cycle (HPC) workflows
3. Lessons learned, good practices and technical resources are accessible for WASH NCPs, partners, and key stakeholders, integrated into Strategic Operational Frameworks (SOFs) in the pilot countries and used across the WASH sector

Several countries were selected to pilot this phase: Burkina Faso, Mali, Venezuela, Mozambique, Sudan, Bangladesh (Cox’s Baazar), Myanmar, South Sudan, Northwest Syria and Yemen. Additional countries (Somalia, Cameroun, CAR, Ethiopia, Somalia) are currently under discussion. A training package was also developed with the support of RedR, both for face-2-face sessions and online self-paced one. This will help support the continuous roll out of the initiative.

By the end of this phae, WASH National Humanitarian Coordination Platforms (WASH NCPs) in 10 priority Global WASH Clusters countries have set-up an effective, routine, and collective mechanism to identify and meet standards for quality and accountability to affected populations, highlighting issues to be addressed using a continual improvement process over time.

The current BHA funding will strengthen the implementation in the pilot countries and extend it to other countries. It will enable to reinforce the monitoring and evaluation aspects, as well as the information management elements.