The Danish Refugee Council wishes to be accountable to those we try to help. We seek to achieve this by involving them through information, participation and a complaints-handling procedure.

DRC’s international assistance is in compliance with the HAP 2007 Standard in Humanitarian Accountability and Quality Management. One important accountability instrument is informing our beneficiaries and stakeholders about our Humanitarian Accountability Framework - in other words what they should hold us accountable for.

A Humanitarian Accountability Framework (HAF) is a statement defining standards and procedures specifying how we in DRC ensure accountability to our stakeholders. DRC’s accountability framework comprises a global HAF which applies to all international operations in DRC, and local HAFs which define country-specific accountability commitments in addition to the global HAF. The global HAF can de downloaded from the link to the right. The local HAFs can be downloaded from the descriptions pages of regions and countries in which we operate.

Status of June 2010
DRC’s international operations were certified under the HAP Standard for the first time in 2007 and re-certified for another three years in June 2010. Before the recertification, DRC had addressed 8 Corrective Action Requested points from the 2007 certification and carried out accountability self-assessments in 23 country operations. The recertification is based on an independent audit carried out at DRC’s Copenhagen head office and at DRC’s country office in Kosovo, following the ISO 19011:2002 Auditor Standard.

New Accountability Improvement Plan (AIP)
The re-certification audit resulted in 3 CARs, which are included in DRC’s revised Accountability Improvement Plan. The AIP also comprises DRC’s Strategic Focal Areas for internal development, identified through DRC’s local and global strategic planning process. The new AIP is available for download at the top of the right side box.