Building acceptance and negotiating access

1Acceptance cannot be taken for granted

Acceptance is the active or passive consent of the actors who can harm the organisation. It cannot be decreed: it is built and maintained, and it can be lost in a single day.

It rests on several pillars:

• Principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality, independence, understood and perceived as real.
• The quality and relevance of programmes: aid that is useful, fair and well targeted.
• Accountability: communities know what they can expect and can complain.
• Staff behaviour: respect, discretion, no arrogance, no exploitation or abuse.
• Dialogue with all actors who have influence, including non-state armed groups.
• Consistency: the same criteria everywhere, the same message to everyone.

Acceptance is often local and personal: it depends on a team, on a respected manager. It is not automatically transferred from one area to another, or from one person to another.

2What destroys acceptance

Losses of acceptance often come from the organisation itself:

• Targeting perceived as unfair or captured by an elite or a group.
• Recruitment perceived as favouring a clan or excluding the local population.
• Broken promises, programmes stopped without explanation.
• Visible association with a party to the conflict (military escorts, armed forces logos, presence at publicised military meetings).
• Personal behaviour: dangerous driving, conspicuous alcohol consumption in a conservative context, relationships seen as inappropriate.
• Careless public communication: a headquarters press release or a social media post read locally as taking sides.

One tweet from headquarters can undo months of acceptance work in the field: external communication is part of risk management.

3Measuring acceptance

Acceptance is too often assumed ("people like us"). It can be measured with indicators:

• Do communities and leaders know the organisation, its activities and its principles? (perception surveys, interviews)
• Does the organisation receive spontaneous warnings ("don't go that way tomorrow")?
• Are its access requests granted, and how quickly?
• Do the complaints received concern the quality of the aid or the presence of the organisation itself?
• Do incidents target it more or less than other comparable organisations?

Example. Perception survey of 300 people in two districts: district A, 78% know the organisation and 70% consider the aid "fair"; district B, 41% know it and 35% consider the aid "fair". Acceptance is clearly weaker in B, where the team nonetheless felt "well accepted". Actions: community meetings, dissemination of targeting criteria, review of lists with committees, more balanced local recruitment.

4Negotiating access: preparation

Humanitarian negotiation aims to obtain access to populations, the security of teams and respect for principles, in a dialogue that is often asymmetrical. Structured methods (for example those of the Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation, CCHN) stress preparation:

• Analysis of the counterpart: interests, motivations, norms, constraints, network, whom they themselves have to convince.
• Analysis of your own mandate: what you can offer, what you cannot.
• Red lines set and approved in advance by line management: no payments, no diversion of aid, no imposed beneficiary list, no escort by the armed group if it compromises neutrality.
• Negotiation space: the points open to exchange (timetable, modalities, communication, choice of sites).
• Team: who negotiates (an accepted person, language, profile), who supports, who decides.
• Plan B: what do you do if it fails? (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)

5Negotiating access: conduct and follow-up

Principles of conduct:

• Start by building the relationship and trust; listen before asking.
• Talk about the needs of the populations that the counterpart claims to defend: many armed actors want to be seen as protecting "their" population.
• Explain the principles in concrete terms: impartiality = aid according to need, for everyone; neutrality = not taking sides, including against them.
• Never promise what you cannot deliver; never give in on a red line under pressure: ask for time and refer upwards.
• Keep a record of what is agreed, and inform the other actors concerned if necessary, without putting anyone in danger.

Follow-up. An access agreement is tested in practice: do the teams actually get through? Are commitments kept on both sides? Any violation (taxation, diversion, threats) is analysed and met with a proportionate response: reminder, partial suspension, total suspension, coordination with other organisations to prevent a group from playing the NGOs off against one another.

6Coordination and common positions

Negotiating alone exposes the organisation to demands it cannot refuse without risk, or that another organisation will accept. Coordination strengthens everyone's position:

• Common operating rules (ground rules) between organisations in an area: no payments at checkpoints, no armed escorts except in exceptional cases, collective refusal of imposed lists.
• Access working groups led by OCHA, which monitor access constraints and carry joint advocacy.
• NGO security forums that share information and analysis.

Limits: coordination must not cost each organisation its independence, nor associate it with political positions. Some organisations, such as the ICRC, conduct their own confidential negotiations. Coordination is about principles and practices, not blind alignment.