Social Sciences for Community Engagement in Humanitarian Action: Vision Paper on the Role of Community Engagement to attaining Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) and Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) In Humanitarian Outcomes

This paper seeks to present a vision on the role of Community Engagement (CE) to attaining Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) and Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) towards contributing to humanitarian outcomes. It emphasises on the need to standardise terminologies, including objectives, methods and outcomes used to engage crisis affected communities and the role CE plays in humanitarian programming. The development of the document was carried out by members of the Technical Working Group-3, as part of the Social Science for Community Engagement in Humanitarian Action project. It seeks to contribute to the development of a common vision of CE to achieve AAP and SBC during humanitarian action. This vision was developed through the facilitation of a consultation process among multiple humanitarian actors (see Box xxx). The process involved establishing a common understanding on the evolution of CE and integration of actions within the humanitarian sector, as well as harmonising the way in which CE can be and is used towards the progress and achievement of AAP and SBC across multiple institutions and stakeholders. In the following sections the paper outlines the rationale for this ‘vision’ that entails a conceptualization of the three main concepts. It also presents a Theory of Change to provide further ideas on the harmonisation of the role of CE for AAP and SBC and the intended actions to better contribute and advance humanitarian outcomes.