Description

Can community-based approaches to the targeting of humanitarian assistance in complex emergencies improve participation and reduce targeting error? Although most of the literature suggests that community-based targeting works best in slow-onset emergencies with no conflict or displacement, participatory approaches to targeting assistance have been attempted in complex emergencies, either directly (through elected relief committees) or indirectly (often through unelected but representative leaders)?

The population of Southern Sudan was caught in a civil war from 1983 to 2005. During the war, several major famines led to a massive food aid intervention by the World Food Programme—intervention that continues to the present.

Much of this food was delivered to vulnerable people by air drops, with the actual targeting of assistance on the ground left to local leaders and traditional authorities. The main objective of targeting was to minimize exclusion.

In the post-war era, however, the food aid program is shifting.

There is still a general distribution modality for dealing with emergencies, and it has been adapted to accommodate the large flow of returned refugees and displaced people, going home after years or decades of being gone. But the post-war targeting of food assistance is more administratively managed, and less participatory—contrary to what much of the literature suggests. This more administrative approach to targeting is the result of post war policy of the new Government of Southern Sudan.

Targeting has been subject to constraints in Southern Sudan by diversion or taxation of food, limited information systems or analytical capacity, logistics, and the speed of donor responses to requests. The impact of targeting is strongly affected by the practice of sharing food aid by recipient communities. A fair amount of community-based targeting took place during the war through the most localized institutions of the Chieftaincy system, which proved sufficiently accountable for the most part to ensure that assistance got to vulnerable people. The main exception to this observation in some cases was internally displaced people, particularly those displaced away from their own traditional leadership. Other mechanisms—relief committees and local administration—did not work as well. Several examples provide ample evidence to suggest that participatory methods could improve targeting and reduce targeting error in the post-war era—as well as address some salient protection concerns—where authorities and chiefs are willing to promote this approach.

This research, which considered targeting practices both retrospectively (during the war) and currently, is one case in a study commissioned by the World Food Programme to investigate the participation of recipient communities in the targeting and management of humanitarian assistance in complex emergencies.