Accountability to Affected People Working Group

The Afghanistan Accountability to Affected People Working Group (AAP WG) replaces the former Community Engagement Working Group and reflects the commitment by the Humanitarian Country Team, the Inter-Cluster coordination Team, UN agencies and NGO partners to put crisis-affected people at the centre of programme decision-making. The Working Group's key functions include training humanitarian responders and others on collective AAP and coordinating shared resources and creating tools for collective AAP. Working Group co-leads are ACBAR, BBC Media Action and UNHCR. The AAP WG and its three sub-working groups support accountability practices, policies and activities that turn national and global commitments into local action that engages even the most marginalised of communities in Afghanistan. The three sub-working groups are:

Communications with Communities, which focuses on participatory information provision (BBC Media Action and FAO co-leads)
Risk Communication and Community Engagement (COVID-19 and other outbreak diseases), which collaborates with the Ministry of Public Health to promote health-seeking actions through respectfully listening to people's concerns, fears and questions about health risks and returning accurate, relevant and standardised information throughout the country (WHO and NRC co-leads)
Feedback and Response Mechanism, which supports collective feedback-response systems and processes (DRC and UN Women co-leads)

The AAP Working Group strives to have national NGOs and crisis-affected community members be active and equal partners in accountability activities. WG meetings generally are the second Monday of every month from 2-4 p.m., Kabul time and ad hoc as needed. Sub-Working Group meetings are called as needed.

(The photo at the top is of an OCHA-FAO Focus Group Discussion with especially marginalized women, including widows and single mothers, held in Herat Province.)