Vision

The fundamental shared value of all members of the NGDO Platform (hereinafter “the Platform”) is respect for human dignity and human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Members work together to protect and promote individual human rights, to improve the situation of vulnerable and excluded groups, and to achieve global justice.

Path to achieving the vision

• Members consider the impact of their activities on the human dignity and human rights of all individuals and groups with whom they cooperate, with special regard for the dignity and rights of vulnerable and excluded groups.
• Members continuously raise the awareness of their staff, members, supporters, volunteers and partners about human rights, a human-rights–based approach to development, and the social responsibility involved in pursuing global justice.
• In their activities, members strive to include vulnerable and excluded groups.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• All documents of Platform members (project and programme documents, monitoring and evaluation reports, strategic and operational plans, etc.) are built on the principle of respect for human dignity and human rights in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• No project or programme of a member organization, nor any of its parts or activities, nor any conduct of the organization’s staff, knowingly and intentionally violates the human rights of the persons concerned.

Vision

In their work, Platform members respect a non-discriminatory approach and equality between women and men at every stage. They implement practices supporting diversity, equality, impartiality and non-discrimination, while respecting the values and culture of target countries.

Path to achieving the vision

• Platform members apply a non-discriminatory and gender-equal approach in their programmes and projects to all target groups of their interventions without exclusion, and they support their local partners in adopting the same approach.
• Through their conduct and internal rules, Platform members support gender equality and the efforts of women to exercise their rights.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• Platform members do not exclude any individual or group from their development and educational interventions on the basis of sex, race or ethnicity, age or religion.

Vision

Platform members are aware of their shared responsibility for shaping the public perception of the usefulness and effectiveness of development cooperation and global responsibility, and therefore they present their work transparently — both in terms of the goals, processes and results of their activities. They maintain a clear management structure, transparent funding of their activities, and a transparent selection of partners, staff and service providers. This information is made available to the public to the extent needed.

Path to achieving the vision

• Platform members proactively disclose information about their activities, finances, partners and donors. Member organizations publicly subscribe to the rules, standards and codes that guide their work.
• Platform members publish contact details for the organization’s management on their website.
• On request, Platform members are willing to share the results of audits and evaluations of their programmes and projects.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• Platform members always provide truthful and undistorted information about their activities and partners.
• Member organizations publicly disclose information about the sources of funding for their activities and how the funds raised are used (for example, in an annual report and/or on their website).
• Specific information about the management structure of the organization and its composition can be found on member organizations’ websites.

Vision

Platform members strive, through their activities and in a participatory manner, to bring about lasting change in the lives of the people they work with. They draw on the potential of the target groups and systematically expand it through their activities. Platform members take full responsibility for both the positive and negative impacts of their interventions and design those interventions so that the impact extends beyond the time horizon of their own engagement, while at the same time managing resources efficiently so that the impact is commensurate with the resources spent.

Platform members are aware of global interconnections and the possible impacts of their actions on the lives of people in developing countries. In addition to development cooperation and global education, they place importance on the concept of policy coherence for development.

Path to achieving the vision

• Platform members consider the long-term impacts of their interventions on the lives of the people they work with, at the planning, implementation and evaluation stages of their projects and programmes, and they act in line with the national policies of partner countries.
• Internal evaluations of projects and programmes include a participatory assessment of the expected and possible impacts after interventions end.
• Platform members support the advocacy activities of the Platform at national and European level aimed at policy coherence for development.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• Platform members actively address any potential negative consequences of their work and seek to remedy them as soon as possible.
• Member organizations publicly report the ratio of resources covering operating costs to resources used for work with target groups.
• For their projects and programmes, member organizations consider so-called exit strategies — i.e. models of sustainability and ways of handing activities over to local partners after their engagement in a partner country/specific locality ends.

Vision

All development interventions of Platform members, as well as their global-education activities in Slovakia, take into account the environment in which they take place. One of the goals of these activities is also to support local communities in preserving biological diversity and limiting damage to the environment’s ecological integrity.

Path to achieving the vision

• Member organizations give preference to environmentally friendly solutions in their work.
• Platform members train their staff and volunteers about the possible impacts of development activities on the environment.
• Members also include education on responsible environmental behaviour in their work with target groups.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• Through their activities, Platform members do not knowingly contribute to the deterioration of the environment in the areas where they operate.

Vision

Platform members treat all of their staff (those working at the organization’s headquarters, those deployed abroad, local staff, and the staff of local partners) fairly, and create suitable conditions for their work — including ensuring fair remuneration for the work performed.

Path to achieving the vision

• Member organizations ensure that all staff have the conditions they need to do their work and pay appropriate attention to staff safety.
• Members respect the qualifications, expertise and capacity of their (especially local) staff.
• Platform members also pay their local staff remuneration commensurate with the work they do, in line with local salary and financial conditions and according to the organization’s means (so that their salary policy does not create inflationary spiral effects or a “brain drain”).
• Member organizations encourage their local partners (and, within joint projects and programmes, create space for them) to apply to their own staff the rules described above that member organizations apply in relation to their own staff.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• Member organizations cooperate with or employ all of their staff in accordance with the laws and labour regulations in force in the country where they operate.
• Platform members provide all of their staff with remuneration and related payments (taxes, levies, etc.) on time and in line with the laws of the country of operation.
• Member organizations create conditions for strengthening the professional capacity of their local staff as well as the staff of local partners.

Vision

Member organizations consider it important and useful to provide truthful and sensitive information about their activities and about the living conditions of the communities they work with. In doing so, they refuse to use stereotypical images and messages, because they are aware that doing so demeans the human dignity of the people they work with.

Path to achieving the vision

• In their public communication, Platform members seek to provide a comprehensive picture of their work with local communities and of the conditions in which those communities live, without limiting themselves to the negative aspects.
• In their public communication (not only for the purposes of fundraising from donors), Platform members prefer positive donor motivation to fundraising techniques that rely on emotional manipulation.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• Platform members do not use depictions or descriptions of extreme suffering for the purpose of raising funds for their work.

Vision

Platform members build transparent, open and equal relationships with their partners based on shared development goals and values, mutual respect, trust, independence, mutual support and solidarity. They therefore share with their partners all information relating to joint projects, programmes and activities. Platform members fully respect the differing views, positions and experience of their partners and make decisions about joint projects and programmes together with them.

Path to achieving the vision

• Member organizations seek to support the development of their local partners, their capacities and their expertise. In locations or thematic areas where such partners do not yet exist, they seek to bring new partnerships into being and to develop them.
• Platform members strive to keep one another informed about their ongoing and planned activities so that their work can achieve synergies. Platform members gather concrete examples of incoherent policies from their local partners and, together with the NGDO Platform, work to remedy them.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• Platform members do not misuse information about, or knowledge of, grant systems for their own benefit at the expense of their partners.
• Platform members provide partner organizations with complete documentation (including the overall budget) and information relating to joint projects or programmes in a language the partner understands.

Vision

Corruption is illegal conduct that undermines the functioning of the state and its institutions in every country and prevents fair access to the distribution of resources. In addition, by its very methods, it calls into question the goals that member organizations pursue in their work. Platform members therefore commit, through their conduct, to zero tolerance of corrupt behaviour, and they will use all available means to prevent corruption within their own ranks and in their environment.

Path to achieving the vision

• Member organizations introduce anti-corruption control mechanisms into their internal rules and directives.
• Member organizations regularly train their staff and local partners on the need for an active stance against corruption.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• Platform members do not use, and do not tolerate, corrupt practices when raising funds for their work or when implementing their projects and programmes. The exception is extreme situations that lead to threats to the safety or lives of staff.

Vision

The goal of the development interventions of Platform members is also to support the empowerment and accountability of people and their full involvement in the design and implementation of development initiatives that affect their lives. Therefore, target groups must be actively and fully involved in all parts of the project cycle, and the projects and programmes carried out must fully reflect the real needs of local communities and their active engagement in achieving the goals of the interventions.

Path to achieving the vision

• Impulses for development interventions come from the target community itself. Member organizations avoid donor-driven projects and programmes that are designed primarily to satisfy the interests of a donor.
• Platform members involve the local community in carrying out activities and, through capacity-building, gradually hand the implementation of activities over to the local community, thereby ensuring the sustainability of the project beyond the project/programme period.
• Monitoring and evaluation of activities is carried out with the active participation of target groups, with the aim of learning from previous project implementation.

Minimum criteria for Platform members

• Platform members plan, prepare, carry out and evaluate development interventions only after appropriate consultations with the target group about the goals and methods of the intervention.

Platform members believe in the capacity for self-regulation, and the purpose of these rules is by no means to problematize, persecute or publicly pillory members who fall short in fulfilling these commitments. However, the binding force of any document depends on an effective control mechanism and the setting of possible sanctions arising from its violation. The degree to which the principles set out above are observed will be assessed in two ways:

Self-assessment (online form)

Platform member organizations undertake to carry out a truthful and realistic self-assessment of the degree to which they observe the principles of this Code in their work via an online form in the internal section of the Platform’s website, at least once a year. The results of this assessment are not public and serve only the organization that carries out the assessment, for its own use and reflection on how to further improve its observance of the principles of this Code in the next period. The Secretariat and Board of the Platform may use information from these assessments in anonymized form, for internal purposes of further refining this Code or the assessment system.

Ethics and Accountability Commission

Role and composition of the Commission

The Ethics and Accountability Commission (hereinafter the “Commission”) is established to assess specific conduct of a member organization and its (non-)compliance with the “Minimum criteria for Platform members” set out above. The Commission does not proactively seek out matters to address; it convenes only on the basis of a complaint from a Platform member organization, an external evaluator of a project or programme of a member organization, or a complaint from the public.

The Commission is composed of four representatives of Platform member organizations elected by the General Assembly for a two-year term, and one representative of the Platform Secretariat. The Commission decides on the (non-)compliance of a member organization’s conduct with the “Minimum criteria for Platform members” and on any sanction by majority vote of all members of the Commission, after careful consideration, which as a rule includes obtaining a statement (in person or in writing) from the member organization being assessed.

Sanctions for violations of the Code

The sanctions for violations of the “Minimum criteria for Platform members”, on which the Commission decides, are:

1. A written notice of non-compliance with the Code
2. A request for swift remedy
3. A proposal to the Platform’s General Assembly for the expulsion of the member organization

In the case of sanctions (a) and (b), the member organization concerned may appeal against the Commission’s decision; at the second instance, the General Assembly decides on compliance of the conduct with the “Minimum criteria for Platform members” of this Code by majority vote of the regular members present. Sanction (c), on the basis of a proposal from the Commission, is decided by the General Assembly by majority vote of the regular members present.

• This Code in no way replaces — but rather complements — the internal rules and directives that govern Platform members in the areas it covers. On the contrary, member organizations are encouraged to draw up their own codes of ethical conduct covering specific areas of their work.
• This document becomes valid and binding on all Platform members on the day of its approval by the Platform’s General Assembly. It takes effect six months after its approval by the General Assembly; member organizations may use this transitional period to bring their work into line with the criteria set out in this document.

Elected by the General Assembly on 11 November 2014:

• Nora Beňáková, People in Peril Association
• Allan Bussard, Integra Foundation
• Marián Čaučík, eRko – HKSD / Dobrá novina
• Andrea Girmanová, NGDO Platform Secretariat
• Andrej Návojský, Milan Šimečka Foundation