KEY FINDINGS
In April 2017 the Inter-Agency Common Feedback Project (CFP) completed 2100 Community Perception Surveys at the household level with community members randomly selected from throughout the 14 priority earthquake affected districts on protection related issues. This was further supplemented by focus group discussion in Sindhupalchok, Kavrepalanchok, Nuwakot and Rasuwa.
Despite the fact that three months have passed since the last data on protection issues was collected, only minor improvements are observed in this report on communities’ perceptions of tension, violence, mistreatment and discrimination within their communities related to recovery and reconstruction support. Furthermore, there is no significant increase in the low percentage of people who are prepared to give feedback to government or I/NGOs. Generally speaking there has been an improvement in how communities perceive reconstruction. However, protection related issues remain key concerns for earthquake affected communities and the CFP has discovered that communities perceptions of protection issues have been improving less quickly than other considerations.
Perceptions of violence and mistreatment within communities are quite low, at 10 and 7 percent respectively, which is encouraging. However, perceptions of tension and exclusion/discrimination are relatively high, at 42 and 33 percent respectively, which is a continuing concern. The main reasons for discrimination cited by respondents include problems with documentation, political interference and joint families.
Focus group discussions and other forms of qualitative feedback have drawn attention to significant inconsistencies in beneficiary lists, where in some cases all sons of a joint family are included separately on the list, but single women headed households have been excluded. In a focus group discussion in Nuwakot, participants felt that beneficiary selection was discriminatory, because neighbours whose homes were equally damaged did not receive equal support. Because they could not see any reason for this, they felt there was some discrimination, and they claimed it fostered ill will between fellow community members. This would indicate either that selection of beneficiaries was not based on rigorous criteria, or that the criteria was not discussed with and vetted by the community. Lack of proper communication with communities can often lead to feelings that some are being excluded unfairly.
Unfortunately, the proportion of respondents indicating they have provided feedback to either government or I/NGOs has seen limited improvement. Despite the fact that most I/NGOs have some type of feedback mechanism in place, only a small percentage of the earthquake affected population seem to be making use of them.
Recommendations
Ensure feedback mechanisms are well-know, accessible and encouraged. This includes ensuring all parts of a project/programme, from senior managers to implementing partners, understand the importance and utility of feedback. Staff should understand that feedback is positive and helps direct the programme to make it more effective, it is not an evaluation of their performance. Affected communities should be able to easily identify, access and understand feedback mechanisms, and feel encouraged to use them by receiving follow up from the respective agency.
Ensure beneficiary selections criteria is communicated properly with the communities organisations are active in. Ideally, criteria should be discussed and vetted by the community from the first stages so that they feel a sense of ownership in those decisions. This might help to lessen or prevent future intra-communal tensions.