Background
The goal of USAID’s humanitarian assistance is to protect and help all people affected by disaster or conflict to meet their basic needs and live with dignity, as well as to reduce risks, support early recovery, and enhance the resilience of populations living in vulnerable situations so they can better manage shocks and stresses. We provide this assistance in accordance with the internationally recognized humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, as well as best practices honed over several decades of working in conflict and rapid-onset disaster settings. In recent years, the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance globally has skyrocketed, and while funding has increased considerably, gaps remain. Given this, USAID works to safely deliver the most effective and high-quality humanitarian assistance possible, while also safeguarding these resources from diversion.
Whether aid is stolen, diverted, misused, or misappropriated, the outcome may be prolonged and protracted human suffering. Corruption is not a victimless crime, and this is especially true in emergency relief situations. Indeed, the true costs of corruption extend far beyond financial implications into loss of human dignity, erosion of trust in government, violence against affected populations, and even excess mortality. For example, corruption in the construction of buildings and infrastructure in the short-term, including the use of shoddy materials or shortcuts, may lead to increased risk of disaster and lives lost due to rapid-onset events like earthquakes and storms in the future.
While fighting corruption is not an explicit objective of our humanitarian funding or activities, it remains essential to good management and administration. Over the past decade, USAID and our partners have Kenyans register community members in Natundu Village, Isiolo County, to receive emergency relief items or cash transfer. Lameck Ododo/Action Against Hunger developed and instituted a number of measures to counter corruption and ensure that assistance is, in fact, received by those in need. Contexts experiencing humanitarian crises are often prone to corruption risks, and humanitarian actors must be cognizant of this. By applying an anti-corruption lens to our analyses, strategies, and operations, we can strive to make sure that life-saving yet finite resources reach disaster- and conflict- affected communities, while also protecting aid workers and preserving access to hard-to-reach communities.
Purpose, Definition, and Problem Analysis
The purpose of this handbook, dedicated specifically to the humanitarian sector, is to assist staff in USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), in USAID Missions where BHA implements programs, USAID’s humanitarian implementing partners, and other practitioners in understanding how to apply an anti-corruption mindset to humanitarian assistance efforts. It explains how anti-corruption efforts can be integrated into humanitarian assistance, and are already integrated in many ways, given the overlap among many humanitarian best practices and the goal of anti-corruption—that is, delivering aid to the intended recipients.
Preventing and countering corruption is a top USAID priority as well as one of the principles that guides USAID’s humanitarian work, which represents a large and, in recent years, growing percentage of the Agency’s budget. This handbook builds on the USAID Anti-Corruption Policy and its definition of corruption: the abuse of entrusted power or influence for personal or political gain. At the heart of this definition is the exploitation of power—both formal and informal—to divert, misappropriate, or capture resources, goods, and access that should be used in service of the public good. This definition recognizes that corruption can take multiple forms, all of which carry significant societal and human costs. These costs are often magnified in humanitarian settings, particularly for marginalized persons1 and people living in vulnerable situations.
