participates in that debate, evolve historically and can themselves be the
object of a political struggle.^20Dorothea Hilhorst echoes this last point, that though these discussions do not often
admit to it, they are highly political.^21 Professional humanitarians have often been
the subjects of the political struggle for accountability, and now the problem of
harm leads them to place themselves as its objects as well, in a discussion that
emphasises rights, justice, and the role of states, and will be unfolded in the course
of this and the following chapter.
Van Brabant’s criteria are straightforward enough as a description of what
accountability means. It may be possible to define accountability within very
specific contexts (although real accountability for action remains elusive). But in the
broader context of humanitarianism, it is incredibly hard to define who is
accountable to whom, and how. Certainly, the practical accountability of
humanitarian NGOs is far from fitting the five criteria outlined by Van Brabant.
Janice Stein notes that: “[accountability] is by definition relational: one party is
accountable to another. Standards are determined in negotiation with another, or
imposed by one on another, rather than internally established.”^22 She presents an
even simpler way of capturing accountability, arguing that accountability can be
summed up by the questions: “To whom am I accountable? For what? How is my
performance monitored or measured? What are the consequences of a failure to
meet expectations?”^23
It might be assumed that if the problem is the capacity of humanitarian
action to lead to harm and not be held to account, the relationship with those who
either benefit from or are harmed by humanitarian action would be determinate.
That is, that professional humanitarians would be accountable to recipients of aid
for the consequences of humanitarian action. But it is not always as simple as that.
In practice, it is often the relationship with donors, rather than recipients of aid,
20
21 Ibid.
Dorothea Hilhorst, "Being Good at Doing Good? Quality and Accountability of
Humanitarian NGOs", 22 Disasters 26, no. 3 (2002): 197.
23 Stein, "Humanitarian Organizations", 125.
Ibid.