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Professionalising the Humanitarian Sector: Challenges and Solutions

Explore the challenges in professionalising the humanitarian sector, addressing key values, knowledge, and skills required. Discover the importance of certification and systematic learning to enhance professionalism. Find out why professionalisation is crucial in improving the quality and effectiveness of humanitarian responses.

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Professionalising the Humanitarian Sector: Challenges and Solutions

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  1. What’s the Challenge? • Research methodology and scope • What is a Profession? • Key values, knowledge & skills • Problems with present trainings All Photos: IRIN or RedR

  2. Professionalising the Humanitarian Sector • Little universally recognised qualifications • Diminishing individual professional integrity • Lack of systematic and applied learning • Unsystematic personal accountability • Shallow basis for state and employer trust

  3. Research Methodology • Literature review • Professionalisation • Certification • Humanitarian Aid Quality programmes • Focus groups • Individual interviews • On-Line surveys

  4. Research Methodology

  5. Demographics of the on-line respondents P 4&5

  6. Geography of the on-line respondents P 4&5

  7. What did we find? • Professionalism • Core values, knowledge and skills • Present training opportunities

  8. Why bother? • Life & death service • Humanitarian workers need to be more professional because their actions and decisions affect so many lives, sometimes in very dramatic ways

  9. Why bother? • Values matter • A more professional practice would be more relevant, more effective and more efficient in keeping the human dimension at the centre of its practice

  10. Why bother? • Quality matters • It will improve the quality of people who are applying and securing jobs, which ultimately will improve the humanitarian response.

  11. Criteria for a modern profession • Monopoly on specialised knowledge • Knowledge used in an altruistic fashion • Therefore autonomy to self regulate • Responsibility to expand the Knowledge • Responsive to the users of the profession P 6

  12. Who is a professional humanitarian worker? Nutritionists Accountants Professional Humanitarian Workers Drivers Enumerators Wat/San Public Health Workers Logistics P 12

  13. Professional Feedback System Academia Knowledge repository Formal qualifications Research Primary Clients Receive services Feedback on services The profession Field practice Testing knowledge Self regulation

  14. Professional Competencies Experience Knowledge Skills Values P 7

  15. Professionalisation – Yes or No? P 21

  16. 10% dissenters Too complex Entrench Northern exclusivity Foster a mercenary attitude At heart humanitarianism is an act of political solidarity so a professional model is inappropriate A woman with a child on her back getting her rations at Oromi IDP camp, Kitgum District in northern Uganda. Credit: ManoocherDeghati/IRIN

  17. Why bother with a profession? P 30

  18. Key values for all humanitarian workers P 30

  19. Key knowledge for all humanitarian workers P 31

  20. Key skills for all humanitarian workers P 32

  21. Why we need certificates • “I first of all want to know, do they have the practical skills, then, do they have the technical skills and lastly, do they have a Masters?” • “After many of the INGOs left, the local staff were left with nothing – no references, no certification, no jobs. How can they prove they worked in the response?”

  22. Most wanted competency certificate P 39

  23. Individual Professionalism • Certified, guaranteed • Safeguards integrity • Promotes competence • Supports evidence-based learning • Personally accountable to the clients

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