Evaluation of OCHA Response to the Syria Crisis

The Syria crisis has been arguably the worst humanitarian crisis of the twenty-first century so far. Over 200,000 people have died in fighting during the five-year conflict and over half the country’s population is displaced. In August 2015, the number of refugees passed 4 million.

The response to the Syria crisis has been one of the largest in living memory, with appeals routinely in the billions of dollars. Delivering aid inside Syria has proven highly challenging, with fighting parties obstructing aid and civilians under constant attack.

This evaluation of the response of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to the Syria crisis is part of a wider initiative by the UN and humanitarian partners to take stock of the work to date. It is also part of a recent corporate commitment to evaluation under the OCHA 2014-17 Strategic Plan. It examines the period from the middle of 2011, when the conflict started, to August 2015, when the evaluation took place.

The following sections present findings in four key areas of inquiry: OCHA’s role in global and country-level leadership, strategy setting, OCHA’s role in enabling the humanitarian system’s response, and management.