Displaying items by tag: Evaluation

The earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 was the most destructive ever to hit the island. Over 215,000 people were killed and more than 1.3 million displaced from their homes. With the destruction of the seaport, the immediate focus of the international aid response was the Toussaint Louverture International Airport (MTPP) in the centre of the capital, Port au Prince. The world responded immediately with a massive airlift. US Air Force Special Tactics Team members from the 1st Special Operations Wing re-established tower control services a mere 18 minutes after arriving at the airport, and immediately began receiving humanitarian…

The scale and scope of the humanitarian crisis in South Central Somalia challenges the humanitarian system’s capacity to deliver assistance. More than two decades of conflict, combined with cyclical, slow- and fast-onset disasters, have displaced millions of Somalis. In the absence of a central government, the few basic services available are mostly provided by humanitarian aid organisations (mainly through local staff and partners) and food crises are recurrent. Many of the lessons from this crisis can also be applied to other complex emergencies where the humanitarian response capacity has been overstretched, and where security and access constraints make it difficult…

Why is the response to drought almost always too little too late? Evaluations find the same failures and make the same recommendations again and again, and the response to the Horn crisis is no exception. The draft Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) evaluation classified it as ‘a qualified success’, and highlights the general failure of preventive action from late 2010. Much the same was said in evaluations from the Sahel in 2005 and 2010, and in Kenya in 2005/6 and 2008/9. Whilst humanitarian response is improving in many areas, drought is not one of them. Paradoxically, we are better at responding…

  Dear Madam, dear Sir,Channel Research is accepting participants for our upcoming training in:Improved Performance in Addressing Conflict: Training in Evaluation Applied To Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding initiatives23-25 May, 2012 intermediate level, BelgiumThis course is intended for people who have already engaged in evaluations, or who have carried out work in peace-building and conflict prevention. Specific experience in conflict resolution evaluation is not required. The aim is to enable professionals who will commission or carry out an evaluation to better understand the fundamental concepts used in this field and to allocate resources in an optimal way, whether this relates to…

Pakistan: Lessons from the floods The report indicates that donors should more generously support disaster preparedness and early recovery, as well as help Pakistani NGOs access funds and play a bigger role in crisis response.

Chad:  Old remedies no longer effective An HRI team visited the crisis and found that the priority in Chad should now be to cover all humanitarian needs and take the appropriate steps to assure the transition to development.  

DARA publishes the report of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) evaluation of the humanitarian response in South Central Somalia 2005-2010. The evaluation has been described as one of the most comprehensive evaluations of aid in Somalia.

Riccardo Polastro, Head of DARA’s Evaluations department, contributed the article Real Time Evaluations: contributing to system-wide learning and accountability to Humanitarian Exchange 52 on Accountability. Download the arabic translation below.

As part of its role as a neutral forum for debate, the Humanitarian Practice Network convened a public meeting on 26 October 2010 to discuss some of the lessons arising from the response to the earthquake in Haiti in January this year. The three speakers were Sir John Holmes, Director of the Ditchley Foundation and former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator; Ross Mountain, Director General of DARA International and Director of Director of DFID’s Humanitarian Emergency Response Review; and Linda Poteat, Director for Disaster Response in the Humanitarian Policy and Practice Unit at InterAction. The…

In the two decades prior to President Alvaro Uribe’s election in 2001, illicit crop production in Colombia grew from 3,500 to 144,000 hectares, representing an annual increase of 25.6%, with Colombia producing more than 70% of the world’s cocaine. This trend was coupled with a worsening of the armed conflict, which according to Uribe was due to guerrillas’ involvement in the drug trade. Drug-trafficking was deemed to constitute one of the main sources of funding for Colombia’s guerrilla groups; according to government figures, between 1991 and 1996 $470 million was raised from the illegal sale of narcotics, representing 41% of…