By drawing on experiences of (at times inadequate) account- ability practices we argue that access, power and trust are significant to the success or failure of accountability practices in humanitarian aid, and these in turn are shaped by local and global asymmetries. We highlight how accountability operates throughout implementation processes in humanitarian aid delivery. [...] Across different categories of aid providers, we find some similarities in terms of the challeng- es which they face in relation to when putting accountability into practice. [...] Access – Power – Trust Relationships between different actors involved in the provision, channeling and receipt of hu- manitarian aid are central to how accountability practices operate. [...] More specifically our data suggest that these relationships, where account- ability practices may succeed or fail, shape, and are shaped by, access, power and trust, in the following ways: • Access to aid donors and recipient com- munities is extremely asymmetrical. [...] These three examples illustrate these challenges with access, power and trust in humanitar- ian aid in the context of protracted internal displacement. [...] A challenge for accountability thus lies in recipi- ents lacking access to donors, and access which they know how to use, in order to be able to raise their concerns. We find that the space for reflection on ac- countability in a crisis situation is limited, but increases over time as the situation normal- izes, even when displacement continues. In the initial moments of crisis there is littl [...] A member of an implementing organization describes the challenges of bringing together a group of Northern Muslims in Puttalam to dis- cuss their needs and voice their concerns, as an accountability practice. [...] As any humanitarian crisis may become protracted, there is a need for aid actors to com- mit to accountability goals, both foregrounding bottom-up voices and perspectives, and opening for the possibility of a longer-term view, beyond an ‘immediate relief’ perspective, right from the beginning. [...] Names of specific organizations are not used in this policy brief, for anonymity and overall research ethics-related reasons – given the con- text where politics and politicization and risks to minority communities remain. 2. [...] Fostering Accountability-Conducive Relationships Across different humanitarian actors, we have identified some similarities in terms of chal- lenges to fostering accountability-conducive re- lationships. We find that building relationships of trust through attending to aid recipients’ concerns holds the potential to improve how accountability practices work, as trust and ac- countability are
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