Humanitarian impact assessment focuses on the effects of humanitarian aid, and reflects increasing concern to better understand what aid achieves.
Over the past few months, several member organisations have approached ALNAP to assist in the design and implementation of impact assessments, and also to share their ongoing efforts.
This ALNAP resource page brings all of this information together to make sure this effort is visible and available to others across the network. To discuss this aspect of ALNAP's work or to share thoughts, ideas or to begin a discussion, please visit our Humanitairian Impact Assessment forum area.
Impact Assessment of the Humanitarian System at Country Level
Following an inter-agency meeting involving UNICEF, CARE, ECB and others, in June 2009, OCHA commissioned an Evaluability Assessment for Impact Evaluation of the Humanitarian System at the Country Level. An options paper was presented to interested parties for discussion at the 25th ALNAP Meeting in London, November 2009.
The paper considers the challenges to conducting impact evaluations in a humanitarian environment at the project, agency and system level; the different models/approaches to impact evaluation and the strengths and weaknesses of each model. The paper also looks beyond the institutional context to the beneficiary level. A community of interest emerging from that meeting is now preparing to develop the project further.
Key documents: Joint humanitarian impact evaluation: Options paper 11/09
Contacts: Tony Beck, Consultant - tonybeck@shaw.ca; Scott Green, OCHA, green10@un.org; Kimberley Leitz, OCHA - lietz@un.org
UNICEF - Children and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami: An Impact Evaluation of UNICEF Response in Indonesia, Maldives and Sri Lanka
Between July 2008 and April 2009 UNICEF conducted three evaluations to determine the impact of UNICEF response to the 2005 tsunami in Indonesia, Maldives and Sri Lanka.
The evaluations focused mainly on results achieved through tsunami recovery and early development responses and sought to draw lessons and recommendations that will be useful for strengthening both recovery/ transition and on-going development programming and policies. Ultimately these studies will contribute to an improvement in the well-being and rights of children and women within these countries and elsewhere.
The report of this project will be published in December 2009
Contact: Krishna Belbase, Senior Evaluation Specialist, New York - kbelbase@unicef.org
World Food Programme - Impact of humanitarian assistance on livelihoods affected by humanitarian crisis in Uganda
Emergency Capacity Building Project - Impact Measurement and Accountability in Emergencies
The six agencies that make up the ECB Project are working to ensure that their commitments to hold themselves accountable to communities affected by emergencies translate into changed practice in the field.
Phase I of this project resulted in the‘Good Enough Guide’ which encourages humanitarian agencies to do what is safe, essential, quick and simple in complex emergency situations, to ensure that staff take some initial, practical steps towards accountability to disaster-affected people.
In phase II of the project, key accountability and impact measurement tools contained in the Guide are being tested in the field by member agencies, in Bolivia, Bangladesh, the Horn of Africa, Indonesia and Niger. In addition, project scoping is underway to identify new joint accountability and impact initiatives between ECB agencies and partners.
Contact: Andrea Stewart, ECB Communications Manager- andrea.stewart@co.care.org
TRIAMS - Tsunami Recovery Impact Assessment and Monitoring System
The Tsunami Recovery Impact Assessment and Monitoring System (TRIAMS) is a sub-regional initiative that defined, promoted and supported a common system to monitor recovery activities and assess their overall impact in the four countries most affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami – Indonesia, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
The purpose of the TRIAMS initiative is to assist governments, aid agencies and affected populations in assessing and monitoring the rate and direction of tsunami recovery in the countries covered over a period of five years.
Tufts Participatory Impact Assessments
The Feinstein International Center has been developing and adapting participatory approaches to measure the impact of livelihoods based interventions since the early nineties. Drawing upon this experience, the Tufts guide aims to provide practitioners with a broad framework for carrying out project level Participatory Impact Assessments (PIA) of livelihoods interventions in the humanitarian sector. Other than in some health, nutrition, and water interventions in which indicators of project performance should relate to international standards, for many interventions there are no 'gold standards' for measuring project impact.
The Tufts guide aims to bridge this gap by outlining a tried and tested approach to measuring the impact of livelihoods projects. The tools in the guide have been field tested over the past two years in a major research effort, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and involving five major humanitarian NGOs working across Africa.
Key contact: Peter Walker Peter.Walker@tufts.edu Director, Feinstein International Center
Alnap research has identfied a number of completed humanitarian impact initiatives, all of which have valuable insights for the sector.
