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
Quality Standards Field Guide – First Edition, December 2009
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, such as in the following 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 a
view to 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.
Biblical foundations
The commitment to impartiality is a foundational Christian principle and the
Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 provides a compelling example where
assistance was provided to a person in need regardless of religion and ethnicity
(in the parable, the two characters also come from ethnic groups who were
enemies).
Good Practice commitments
Given that project participants are to be selected on the basis of need alone,
with impartiality 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. In an emergency situation
individuals in a community are affected in different ways; some are able to cope
better or may have resources of their own to draw on, while others are much
more vulnerable. We must therefore seek out the most vulnerable in our
projects.
Some organisations have a mandate to support a certain group, such as elderly or
children. This obviously has a bearing on their approach to impartiality, as they
are mandated to work only with this specific group (although the principles of
impartiality and targeting still apply for selecting beneficiaries within that
group).
Some projects have clear selection criteria as part of their design, e.g. admission
for therapeutic feeding is based on standard weight for height measurements, but
in the majority of cases selection criteria need to be discussed and agreed with
the community. In some situations, it may be appropriate to target the majority
Quality Standards Field Guide – First Edition, December 2009
Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
population in a community or area, or even to target the entire population, whilst
in other situations it is more appropriate to target a specific number within a
community based on clear criteria.
For some projects which are aiming at bringing about long-term changes, for
example with agricultural practices, it may not be appropriate to target the
poorest of the poor but to target farming families that are motivated to try new
approaches. 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 136) and is an expectation of all institutional
donors.
Close links to other Quality Standards
There are close links with Values, as Impartiality is a core value; Accountability,
as we need to make information on our commitment to impartiality 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; and Conflict, in ensuring
our impartiality is clearly understood in conflict situations.
Where to look for more information:
• Sphere handbook: Minimum Standards Common to all Sectors (includes
Targeting)
• Red Cross Code of Conduct
Quality Standards Field Guide – First Edition, December 2009
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
have been made vulnerable as
a result of the emergency
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 these
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 are reaching
the most vulnerable
Quality Standards Field Guide – First Edition, December 2009
Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
Step 1: Carry out a thorough
analysis to understand the
different ways in which people
have been made vulnerable as
a result of the emergency
Remember that individuals in a community will have been affected in different
ways and will have different vulnerabilities. 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 may include the elderly, female-headed households, the disabled,
malnourished children, and women.
An important role that the local church can play is that of advocate on behalf of
the poor and marginalised. Local churches with a vision for the role they should
play in their community are often well placed to know who are the most
vulnerable in their communities due to their community knowledge 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 that the
assistance given has a positive impact for the recipients – if it is spread too thin
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 relief items such as food to families, avoid using an average
household size to calculate the ration size whenever possible. Giving a ration
which varies in size based on each individual family size is a much more
accurate targeting method.
Quality Standards Field Guide – First Edition, December 2009
Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
Step 3: Ensure that these
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.
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.
Quality Standards Field Guide – First Edition, December 2009
Standard 2: Impartiality and Targeting
Project Examples
In the Darfur conflict, Sudan, where many nomadic groups have 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”.
Quality Standards Field Guide – First Edition, December 2009