Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
Our Commitment:
We are committed to impartiality.
The assistance provided is intended
for the most vulnerable. Project
participants are selected on the
basis of need alone, regardless of
their race, religion or nationality.
Demisse, a severely malnourished 3 year old child in
southern Ethiopia, included in a food aid programme based
on selection criteria which target households with
malnourished children
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Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
The issues
Impartiality is a non-negotiable standard in all of Tearfund’s work. Impartiality
means providing assistance to project participants on the basis of need alone.
The opposite to impartiality is partiality, which means showing favouritism or
preference to one group over another. Partiality can be shown in these ways:
 Political beliefs: selecting beneficiaries based on their political beliefs or with
a view to persuading them to change political beliefs, rather than based on
need alone.
 Religion: seeking to favour people based on their religious beliefs or with the
intention of encouraging them to change religious beliefs on the condition of
receiving assistance, rather than based on need alone.
 Ethnicity: favouring one ethnic group or tribe over another simply because
they belong to this group, rather than based on need.
 Gender: favouring men over women or women over men simply because of
their gender, rather than their need.
 Age: favouring certain age groups simply because of their age and not because
of their need.
 Ability: favouring or neglecting people who are less-abled (physically or
mentally), purely on the basis of ability, not on basis of need.
Biblical foundations
The commitment to impartiality is a foundational Christian principle and the
Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) provides a compelling example
where assistance was provided to a person in need regardless of religion and
ethnicity. In the parable, the two characters came from ethnic groups who were
enemies. Jesus deliberately chose the Samaritan, hated by the Jews, to
demonstrate that love and compassion should be shown to anyone in need,
regardless of nationality, race, creed, social status or political affiliation - not
just to those the same as us.
Good Practice commitments
Alongside the commitment to select beneficiaries on the basis of need alone,
comes a commitment to targeting those in greatest need. Projects must be
careful to avoid generalisations, assuming that all community members have been
affected in the same way.
Impartiality and targeting are expressed differently, depending upon the
circumstances and the type of project. In longer-term development programming,
clear selection criteria should be developed, in partnership with the community,
to ensure that the neediest in that community benefit from the project activity.
Those criteria should be openly made known to everyone. This is linked to
Standard 3: Accountability.
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Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
After a disaster, it is often the case that all people do have the same need – for
shelter, food or clean water. However, it will soon become clear that some
individuals in the community have been affected more than others; some are able
to recover quickly, using resources of their own, while others are much more
vulnerable. For example, some will have assets to sell, or an undamaged brick
house, whilst others have no assets and a house in ruins. Good targeting seeks out
the most vulnerable for inclusion in the participant list. The best way of achieving
this is by involving the community in selecting who, amongst themselves, is the
most vulnerable.
Sometimes, Impartiality & Targeting have to be applied in specific ways:
a. Specialised target groups
Some organisations have a mandate to support a certain group, such as children
or the elderly; they are mandated to work only with this specific group. Principles
of impartiality and targeting can still be applied, but for selecting beneficiaries
within that particular group.
b. Specialised sector of activity
Some projects have clear selection criteria built in to their design, e.g. admission
for therapeutic feeding is based on standard weight for height measurements,
and only those within those criteria are admitted. In the majority of cases,
selection criteria need to be discussed and agreed with the host community, so
that there is a common understanding about which selection criteria are being
used.
c. Specialised livelihood group
A livelihoods project, by its very nature, may focus upon 1 specific livelihood –
e.g. cattle keepers or farmers. The inputs/activities would be inappropriate for
other livelihoods. However, as with (a), principles can still be applied in making
selections from within this group.
d. Sustainability concerns
Success in an agricultural project usually depends upon acceptance and continued
use of new crops or cultivation practices. When introducing change, it may not be
appropriate to target the poorest of the poor, but rather to target farming
families that are motivated to try these new practices. Such an approach needs
to be clearly articulated and beneficiary selection criteria agreed with the
community so that expectations are clear to everyone.
Impartiality is also central to international humanitarian codes and standards (see
Red Cross Code of Conduct page 149) and is an expectation of all institutional
donors. The expectation upon churches would be for them to share resources
amongst the neediest people, including both believers and non-believers.
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Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
Close links to other Quality Standards
Our Impartiality and Targeting commitment has close links with:
 Values, e.g. the Micah Network value of Equity (all of equal value to God);
 Accountability, as information on our commitment to impartiality should
be publicly available;
 Gender, as our commitment is to the most vulnerable – whether men,
women, girls or boys;
 HIV, as our commitment is to the most vulnerable – including vulnerability
to HIV and people living with HIV;
 Conflict, in ensuring our impartiality is clearly understood in conflict
situations.
Where to look for more information:
 Sphere handbook: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in
Humanitarian Response (includes Targeting):
http://www.ifrc.org/PageFiles/95530/The-Sphere-Project-Handbook20111.pdf
 Red Cross Code of Conduct: http://www.ifrc.org/en/publications-andreports/code-of-conduct/
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Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
Practical Steps for carrying out our Impartiality commitment
Identification
Step 1: Carry out a thorough
analysis to understand the
different ways in which people
are poor, needy and vulnerable
to shocks in the community
Step 2: Agree with the
community the criteria to be
used for identifying those who
are most vulnerable and the
assistance to be provided
Design
Step 3: Ensure that the
selection criteria and
assistance to be provided are
clearly understood and
communicated by the project
staff and community
Implementation
Step 4: Monitor the project to
ensure that the selection
criteria continue to be
appropriate and inputs are
reaching the most vulnerable
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Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
Step 1: Carry out a thorough
analysis to understand the
different ways in which people
are poor, needy and vulnerable
to shocks in the community
Remember that individuals in a community have varying degrees of poverty and
have different vulnerabilities to shocks & hazards. We must be careful not to
exclude certain groups, particularly those who are less visible (for example in
some communities, the elderly, disabled or women may spend most of their
time in the homes and will not be a visible presence during assessments).
Step 2: Agree with the
community the criteria to be
used for identifying those who
are most vulnerable and the
assistance to be provided
Deciding the selection criteria for people to receive the
benefits of a project is one of the most important decisions in the whole
project cycle, and the criteria should never be agreed by the NGO alone but
agreed with the community. Such groups might include the elderly, femaleheaded households, the disabled, malnourished children, and women.
An important task for the local church is to be an advocate on behalf of the
poor and marginalised. Local churches with this vision are often well placed to
know who are the most vulnerable in their communities, and can help to ensure
these individuals or groups are not overlooked.
While there may be pressure to spread the available assistance as widely as
possible in order to reach as many people as possible, it is critical that the
assistance has a positive impact for the recipients – if it is spread too thinly, the
help becomes meaningless or token. Careful discussion is therefore needed to
agree the selection criteria, to keep the focus on the most vulnerable and
ensure that the assistance provided is proportional to the level of need.
When distributing food in a relief project, avoid using an average household size
to calculate the amount of food per household. Good targeting criteria would
calculate the food ration on the basis of number of people per household.
Bigger families would therefore receive more, smaller families receive less.
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Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
Step 3: Ensure that the
selection criteria and
assistance to be provided are
clearly understood and
communicated by the project
staff and community
Misunderstandings and conflict can arise within a community when selection
criteria are not clearly understood. Remember that many will be unable to
read, so allow for this in your communication plan.
Step 4: Monitor the project to
ensure that the selection
criteria continue to be
appropriate and are reaching
the most vulnerable
As well as checking to ensure that the
project is indeed reaching the most
vulnerable, check too that the
targeting approach isn’t creating other
tensions or new vulnerabilities.
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Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
Project Examples
In the Darfur conflict, where many nomadic groups felt ignored by the aid
community, projects aimed to demonstrate impartiality by targeting farming
communities and nomadic communities alike.
In order to target the most vulnerable in the Indonesia Tsunami response, as
part of the process to select beneficiary households to receive a new home,
names and photos of proposed families were placed on a notice board and
the community asked to contact the staff if any families were not from the
community or already had a house, or if other eligible families were missing.
On the east coast of Sri Lanka a Community Based Organisation (CBO)
requested that they be allowed to select who would participate in a
livelihood programme. Partner staff were willing to do this, but firstly they
worked with the CBO on drawing up criteria for selecting the
participants. In this way the CBO came to agree the criteria for selection
and were able to follow them, enabling the poorer families of the village to
be chosen when previously they said that “those with strong voices would
have prevailed”.
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