Quality & partnerships: the challenges facing Action contre la Faim in Ukraine

ACF is very attached to the quality of its activities in general and evaluates these based on established quality standards such as the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS). Its emergency response strategy includes systematic evaluations which allow it to analyse its operations. In Ukraine, a real-time evaluation is being carried out to learn lessons from the first three months of the response. The main focus will be operational performance and it will aim to highlight systemic and contextual problems as well as opportunities and lessons. It will help to reinforce the experience of the organisation, which continually needs to adapt to the changing context on the ground.

The ‘Ukraine response’: working in partnership 

Action contre la Faim was present in Ukraine from 2015 to 2019. It had not had any activities there since, but it was still registered in the country. When its staff were deployed at the end of February 2022, its strategy was to support local initiatives. The organisation had understood that Ukrainian civil society was sufficiently strong and that it was important to avoid ‘duplication’. The aim was therefore to identify local partners and work with, and through, them. At the same time, direct operations remained possible if they were needed.

ACF often conducts operations via partners and has a ‘Partnerships’ policy, even though this approach is not always recommended or possible in emergency contexts. In countries where the organisation has been working for a long time, emergency preparedness plans are established and updated each year, and operational methods are discussed with the partner organisations. Developing a partnership takes time, so if the operational methods are not decided in advance, this can hold up the delivery of assistance. For the Ukraine response, it took several weeks to meet the partners, understand their values and needs, and establish a common response strategy. The whole process took longer than usual as ACF and the civil society organisations were unfamiliar with each other’s way of working. As always, procedures and a validation system were put in place to ensure that activities were transparent, ethical and accountable, as well as neutral, which is so crucial in the Ukrainian context. Again, clearly explaining the organisation’s position took time. The presence of so many international aid organisations took up even more time as it required particularly complex coordination.

A variety of actors with different strengths

In addition to international humanitarian organisations, this crisis has involved a myriad of other actors with different and sometimes overlapping operations. These aid initiatives sometimes had their own funds and technical capacity from the private sector, a dimension that also had to be taken into account in analysing the assistance. Individual civil society and volunteer initiatives raised many questions in relation to neutrality, protection, ethics and quality of aid. For example, the mountains of clothes that arrived in Poland subsequently had to be managed, or the fact that the refugees were welcomed by volunteers with candyfloss and sweets which, according to the doctors in the transit centres, often made children sick. Worse still, the spontaneity of the assistance meant that malicious networks were able to take advantage of the situation, with refugees not knowing who they should speak to when they needed help.

However, it is important to mention how active private actors were, which is not typical in international humanitarian responses. In Poland, in the transit centres, for example, telephone operators provided refugees with SIM cards so that they could stay in touch with their loved ones. For its part, Action contre la Faim worked with a company in Ukraine that had made metal barriers before the conflict. It allowed its kitchens to be used by a network of volunteers to prepare hot meals and deliver these to people who were isolated, unable to move or living in the metro.

Businesses and private actors are not very familiar with international aid donors. Working with them is therefore a challenge for ACF. For example, it is rare for institutional donor funds to be used for a partnership with a private actor as donors tend to want to work with formally recognised civil society organisations. Some donors therefore suggested to ACF that it should consider the partner as a supplier. But the organisation did not want to give them this role because this would have meant being in the position of a client and would have given a commercial dimension to the partnership, whereas this was not the case. ACF wanted to help to produce meals and contribute to this effort, either by providing financial support or expertise in setting up projects. The objective was not to formalise the relationship with a contract, but to promote this work, without any lucrative dimension. Unfortunately, very few donors were open to this approach, which nevertheless allowed up to 17 000 hot meals to be distributed per day.

From the beginning, ACF was aware of the need to support volunteers due to the difficulty of the context. Working day and night, combined with the emotional impact, rapidly caused fatigue, and sometimes even exhaustion. International NGOs have a role to play here in terms of long-term aid, and though they can be criticised for being too slow or procedural, using their professional apparatus to relay spontaneous initiatives has its advantages. Volunteers have to eventually go back to work, and the arrival of professionals means that there are people present for a certain duration, who rotate and who are trained in providing assistance to people in distress.

Adapting to emergency contexts: rapid impact projects

Action contre la Faim adopted a flexible approach between what it was possible to do and the resources made available to the organisations on the ground. Thus, in order to accompany spontaneous local activities as well as possible, the organisation adjusted its usual practices by developing rapid-impact projects. These are based on very small amounts of funding per partner (less than 20 000 euros) and a very short period (less than 3 months). They make it possible to observe the partner at work, and improve understanding of each other’s capacities and way of working. They help to test ways of managing the partnership. And they are a way of ascertaining the added value of working together and the possible need to develop a joint action plan between the organisations.

Before deciding to take part in a short project, ACF discusses minimal compliance. That is to say, it screens staff members and establishes the terms required for the partnership agreement based on discussions between the parties. Minimal compliance means, for example, financial transparency, respecting its Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse policy or the principles of neutrality and impartiality. To support its staff in this area, special directives have been developed for the Ukrainian context. To date, 8 rapid impact projects have been launched for around 100 000 euros.

As the months have passed, partnerships have become stronger, with more activities and increased funding. Three months into the war, partnership strategies have even been established. Though ACF has been flexible in terms of the reports it has asked its partners to provide, it has been strict in terms of respecting its principles, particularly in terms of transparency and accountability towards beneficiaries. The partners, for their part, understand what ACF expects of them even though they find the reporting that international organisations engage in extremely demanding given the tools and human resources that it requires. The projects also involve donors who require actors to report on their activities using precise indicators (number of beneficiaries in relation to sex, age, etc.).

As the context has evolved rapidly, ACF has had to adapt its approach over time. At the beginning of the conflict, assistance was needed in the west and staff on the ground did not know if it would be possible to gain access to the east. The organisation thought that the security situation would be too dangerous and that it would be complicated to gain authorisations to travel. Going into ‘grey areas’ to assist the response is one of ACF’s priorities, but due to the situation, solid security systems need to be developed to gain access and for logistics. As a new actor in this context, this takes time, particularly in terms of the rules of engagement to protect civilians and humanitarians, which are not yet very clear in these areas due to the conflict. ACF is currently developing its capacity to take action in the east and south of the country while trying to gain access to the most difficult areas.

The complexity of humanitarian principles in times of war: ACF’s red line

For Action contre la Faim, as it says in its Charter of Principles, ‘a victim is a victim’. The organisation therefore maintains strict neutrality in terms of politics and religion even though it does sometimes denounce human rights violations and obstacles to humanitarian operations. At the same time, it is very complicated to talk about the principle of neutrality in a country that is mobilised in a war effort.

The army has an important protection role in Ukrainian society which can be explained by a long military heritage. For example, when you pay your electricity bill over the phone there are adverts that ask for a donation to be made to the army for humanitarian action. The territory where ACF is present is subject to martial law where the authorities can ask any actor to give part of the work that they do. What is more, the majority of ACF’s action is taken via partners, many of whom are public services who take part in the war effort, and can be mobilised.

For all these reasons, humanitarian action is not exempt from providing aid to army forces, even though ACF would refuse to do this. As such, repairing a water distribution system with the company Vodokanal can obviously, eventually, lead to the armed forces receiving water. The same can be said of the assistance to municipal authorities in organising temporary shelters as those who fight during the day are also those who take shelter with their families in the evening. Without forgetting that stock of any kind – whether food or material goods – can be requisitioned by the government at any time.

There might be more room for manoeuvre with civil society partners, but, here again, it is not so simple. For example, if we consider a partner whose activities include the knitting of camouflaged netting by elderly people, what should be done when the same organisation also provides medical care and food to thousands of people? As a guideline, ACF specifies that assistance is for civilians and that all collaboration stops if an activity is officially for the war effort or to gather arms and munitions. The organisation informed its donors about this on arrival in Ukraine and they have been flexible because they are not neutral either. ACF reinforces its neutrality in relation to them by repeating that its Charter of Principles states that ‘a victim is a victim’, and by campaigning to have access to all people in need.

Conclusion

Action contre la Faim’s assistance in Ukraine in 2022 has therefore been very specific – unique even. From the beginning of its involvement, it has worked in partnership with a large number of actors of very different kinds, whether private, public (11 municipal authorities and Vodokanal), NGOs or citizen-based initiatives. Six months since it began its operations, ACF has already collaborated with thirty-two partners.

This unprecedented rapidity was made possible by the capacity of civil society and private organisations to organise in the face of the crisis and new threats. The support provided by ACF has been well received in general by the different stakeholders. Significant motivation and solidarity have helped to establish the common ground required to assist people in need.

Virginie Brision is Emergency Monitoring, Systems and Analytics Advisor at Action contre la Faim.