Review of the concept of participation and participatory approaches in the aid sector

One of the commitments of the Grand Bargain launched at the Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 was a ‘participation revolution’, with the objective of including the people who receive aid in the decisions that affect their lives.

More than five years later, it seems that this revolution has not happened in practice. Accountability is still strongly orientated towards donors, and aid beneficiaries seem to still have little influence over the goods and services they receive. There also does not seem to be a shared vision of the concept of participation among international aid actors, with approaches that vary from one actor to another.

More than ten years after the publication of the Participation Handbook, the concept of participation also needs to be revisited from the perspective of recent trends and changes in the sector, such as localisation, the development of new technologies, and the emergence of new terms such as collective accountability or community commitment.

Without aiming to conduct an exhaustive review of participation in the aid sector, the study will aim to contribute to discussions about this issue and will ask how we are doing in terms of theory and approaches. It will:

• Underline the main issues at stake, the key components of the notion of participation, and links with other related notions;
• Analyse the concept of participation from the view of recent changes in the sector – localisation, new technologies, etc.;
• Analyse different attitudes and approaches to participation among aid actors, and highlight any differences and similarities;
• Identify the factors that encourage aid actors to develop participatory approaches.