Social Science for Community Engagement in Humanitarian Action Project (SS4CE in HA) is an initiative launched at the end of 2020, funded by the Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs, USAID. The main objectives focus on co-creation of global goods, designed as a collaborative approach that connects with global humanitarian and public health system-wide existing mechanisms that harness active participation of humanitarian organizations, academic institutions and donors. The processes undertaken for the development of global goods are also further framed in the ‘decolonization of aid agenda’ and provide clear recommendations for the implementation of actions that drive people-centred and community-led humanitarian and development programs. As envisioned, the project has made substantive progress towards systematically aligning social science informed community engagement actions to humanitarian architecture, tailored to different elements and enablers of the humanitarian program cycle (HPC).
The mapping of ethics for the application of SS4CE in HA was conducted through a partnership with Sonar-Global, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) of Brazil and members of Technical Working Group-1 (TWG-1). This analysis was envisioned to review existing ethics guidelines and approaches currently applied in the humanitarian system and academic world, related to social sciences and community engagement in humanitarian action (HA). By reviewing the content of identified guidelines and literature it challenges the status-quo of humanitarian programmes, wherein at-risk and affected communities’ engagement continues to be notional and reinforces capacity gaps to engage communities in their social-cultural realms. This underpins the necessity to have increasingly adaptive HA that is contextually specific, sensitive to vulnerabilities and power relations, and planned in consultation with at-risk and affected communities and local institutions based on social, and interdisciplinary, science evidence. Community engagement, informed by social sciences, addresses participation issues and the immediate needs of the affected communities but also strengthens community systems where marginalised groups become equal partners in finding solutions, having wider knowledge and understanding of social science disciplines’ conceptual frameworks (e.g., historical, political, sociological, economical) and providing pathways to deal with systemic fallacies and challenges (i.e., social justice, gender equity, decolonization and localization).