- May 19, 2026
The following is a reflection on the findings of the April 2026 QAS Survey for the ADRRN network members synthesized by ADRRN’s Quality and Accountability (Q&A) Hub which is led by Community World Service Asia, Pakistan.
Across Asia and the Pacific, something interesting is happening in the quality, accountability, and safeguarding space. Organisations know what good looks like. They have the policies, the codes of conduct, the training schedules. Many can cite CHS commitments and Sphere standards fluently. And yet, when you ask them honestly how well they are doing, the answer is consistent: we are getting there, but we are not there yet.
That is, in essence, what 29 organisations across 11 countries told the ADRRN Q&A Hub in April 2026. The survey set out to understand the state of Quality, Accountability, and Safeguarding practice across the network. What it found was not a picture of failure. It was a picture of genuine effort running into structural walls.
The foundation is there. The cracks are visible.
93 per cent of respondents said they use QAS standards when developing their policies and strategies. 27 of 29 organisations have a safeguarding or PSEA policy in place. Nearly all have a code of conduct. On the surface, this looks like a sector that has done its homework.
But dig into the numbers and a different story emerges. The average self-rating across safeguarding, feedback use, and overall QAS practice sits between 3.69 and 3.83 out of 5. These are not bad scores. But they cluster around the middle, around growing but not yet comprehensive.
There is also something worth noting about who rated themselves. The organisations that responded to this survey are, almost by definition, already engaged with quality and accountability. That matters when reading these scores. ALNAP’s State of the Humanitarian System report found a mismatch between efforts to improve accountability and only modest progress on meaningful accountability in practice, pointing to a widening gap between the expectations crisis-affected people have for their own agency in responses and the opportunities afforded by agencies. When ALNAP returned findings to community participants, limited progress on accountability came as no surprise to them. Communities called for accountability to go beyond communication to actually closing the feedback loop.
The self-rated 3.8 in this survey reflects how an already-engaged group of organisations sees itself. What communities experience may look different. That gap is the work.
The budget gap is the binding constraint, but not in the way you might expect.
Here is the sharpest finding in the survey: only 5 of 29 organisations have a dedicated budget line for QAS activities. At the same time, 26 of 29 (90 per cent) cite limited funding as their top barrier to implementation.
Read that again. Nearly every organisation says funding is the problem. But almost none of them have separated a budget for the very activities they say they cannot afford.
This is a costing and planning gap. Many organisations simply do not know how to present QAS as a standalone budget item in a proposal. Accountability activities get absorbed into programme costs, becoming invisible and therefore vulnerable, the moment budgets tighten.
That kind of intentionality is exactly what is needed, and exactly what most organisations have not yet built into their planning processes. The implication is important: solving the QAS funding problem is not only about convincing donors to give more. It is about helping organisations articulate what they need and what it costs.
The feedback loop problem
12 of 29 organisations rated themselves at 2 or 3 out of 5 for using community feedback to improve programmes. Feedback is being collected. It is not always used.
This is one of the most consistent findings across accountability surveys globally, and it showed up here, too. Organisations build the channel, the complaint box, the hotline, the community meeting, but the harder work of closing the loop, of telling communities what happened with what they said, remains underdone.
What is less visible in the data, but present in the open responses, is a deeper problem: communities sometimes do not trust that their feedback will lead to anything. This is not a systems problem. It is a relationship problem. And it requires a different kind of investment, in consistency, in communication, in following through visibly and repeatedly over time.
Global standards, local realities
Perhaps the most human theme running through the survey is the tension between global frameworks and local reality. Multiple respondents from national and local NGOs described the same experience: they understand the standards, they believe in them, but applying them in their specific context — with their specific resources, languages, cultural dynamics, and governance environments — requires translation that the standards themselves do not always provide.
Another respondent asked for guidance documents simple enough to be used as a field reference during challenging situations. A third noted that for organisations working under de facto authorities or in constrained governance environments, general QAS tools simply do not address the realities on the ground.
This is not a criticism of Sphere or CHS. It is a signal that contextualisation support is not a nice-to-have. It is what the network is asking for most clearly.
What the network wants from the Q&A Hub
The survey asked organisations what support would be most useful. The responses were remarkably consistent. Training and workshops came first (21 responses). Practical tools and guidelines came second (18). Peer learning and exchange came third (17).
What stands out is the preference for learning with peers over receiving guidance from above. Organisations want to solve problems together, share what has worked, and build on each other’s experience, not be handed another framework to implement.
On thematic focus, organisational accountability systems topped the list, followed by safeguarding and PSEA, participation and inclusion, and leadership and accountability. GESI (Gender Equality and Social Inclusion) was the second-highest current organisational priority, yet respondents noted it is not yet systematically embedded across the network. The message was direct: GESI and PSEA should not be add-ons to Hub outputs; they should run through everything.
What this means
The survey does not paint a picture of a network in crisis. It paints a picture of a network that is serious, self-aware, and stuck on some very specific and solvable problems.
The ask is not for more frameworks. It is for help applying the ones that already exist. It is for peer learning that respects what organisations already know. It is for costing support that helps QAS become visible in budgets. It is for tools that work in Urdu, Dari, Bangla, and not just in English. It is for a Hub that functions as a practical support structure, not a standard-setting body. That is a reasonable ask. It is also a good summary of what accountability actually means.
Read the full survey results here
