Description
Humanitarian accountability standards increasingly shape organisational legitimacy, donor access, and participation within global governance, making them an important site through which power operates in the humanitarian sector. As formal accountability mechanisms become more influential, understanding who defines these standards and whose practices they privilege becomes an important question for International Relations.
This paper asks: how do organisational position and forms of capital shape engagement with international accountability standards?
Drawing on an original descriptive analysis of 273 member organisations of the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) Alliance, a global network promoting quality and accountability in humanitarian action, the paper identifies uneven patterns of participation in formal verification processes. Certification rates appear substantially lower among Southern faith-based organisations (approximately 4 to 5 per cent) than Northern faith-based organisations (approximately 35 per cent), within a membership in which faith-based organisations represent around 30 per cent.
Using a Bourdieusian framework centred on field, habitus, doxa, and capital, the paper compares four CHS Alliance member organisations to explore whether differential engagement reflects broader power relations embedded within humanitarian accountability systems. Therefore, the paper examines how standards that appear universal may privilege particular organisational forms and shape unequal access to legitimacy and recognition.