Principles for Ethical Humanitarian Innovation - Draft Principles based on joint HIP-WHS Oxford Workshop

These principles were drafted based on an initial World Humanitarian Summit workshop convened at the University of Oxford on 27 April 2015 by the Humanitarian Innovation Project based at the Refugee Studies Centre.

The workshop included the participation of ICRC, UNHCR, UNICEF, OCHA, the World Humanitarian Summit secretariat, DFID, Save the Children, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, as well as a range of academics with expertise in areas such as medical ethics, business ethics, humanitarian ethics, innovation management, and humanitarian practice. Funding support for the workshop was provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) & the University of Oxford’s ESRC Impact Acceleration Account and Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF).

Direct link:

https://phap.org/sites/phap.org/files/civicrm/persist/contribute/files/Principles%20for%20Ethical%20Humanitarian%20Innovation%20-%20final%20paper.pdf

Draft principles:

Principle 1 (“Humanitarian Purpose”): Humanitarian Innovation has a humanitarian purpose.

Principle 2 (“Primary Relationship”): The primary relationship of concern for humanitarian innovation must be the provider/recipient relationship.

Principle 3 (“Autonomy”): All humanitarian innovation must be conducted with the aim of promoting the rights, dignity and capabilities of the recipient population.

Principle 4 (“Maleficence”): Innovation must be based on a ‘do no harm’ principle.

Principle 5 (“Experimentation”): Experimentation, piloting and trials must be undertaken in conformity with internationally recognized ethical standards.

Principle 6 (“Justice”): Equity and fairness should underpin the distribution of benefits, costs, and risks resulting from innovation.

Principle 7 (“Accountability”): Engagement in humanitarian innovation constitutes an obligation to ensure accountability to recipient populations, including establishing process for complaint and recourse relating to unforeseen consequences and maleficence.
Humanitarian innovation should take account of the