ALNAP's new work plan and budget 2023-25

Between 2023- 25, ALNAP will continue its work to improve the quality and performance of humanitarian action, ensuring the international humanitarian system benefits from the sector’s collective experience, knowledge and learning and is better able to provide principled assistance and protection to the most vulnerable people affected by crises. Find out more in our newly-published work plan and budget.

Between now and 2025, ALNAP will focus its efforts on issues that resonate across all constituencies of the humanitarian sector and are critical to its improved performance.

Sticking points

We will use our sector-wide mandate to make sense of existing evidence, fill gaps where necessary, and make connections between decision-makers and those innovating to overcome sticking points on localisation, Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) and the Nexus. 

OECD DAC criteria 

ALNAP will also consult monitoring and evaluation staff globally, hosting critical and sensitive discussions on how the humanitarian sector decides to measure its performance before developing updated, relevant and practical guidance on how to apply the OECD/DAC criteria in humanitarian contexts. 

Overcoming three key sticking points  

Based on insights from our research on learning and performance and discussions with members, ALNAP has identified priority issues that resonate consistently across the humanitarian sector.  

Between 2023-25, ALNAP will prioritise addressing these sticking points. There are three issues where we have seen little progress despite high levels of commitment and a wealth of learning: localisation, AAP and the Nexus. 

In the coming year, on these three issues, ALNAP will support the sector to:  

• realise the untapped potential of existing evidence to inform changes in global policy and action
• identify gaps in evidence which need to be filled to enable progress and work with members to address these sticking points
• convene decision-makers and those making progress on sticking point issues to discuss what works in different contexts and the action needed to enable sector-wide change. 

Updating our guidance on applying the OECD DAC criteria 

How, and on what basis, the humanitarian sector decides to measure its performance is a critical and sensitive discussion relevant to humanitarians across the world.  

Since their publication in 1991, the evaluation criteria of the OECD DAC (Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) have formed the backbone of evaluation design, thinking and conceptualisation in the development sector.  

In 2006, ALNAP published guidance to help evaluation professionals apply the criteria more effectively in humanitarian settings. It remains one of ALNAP’s most popular publications, cited in thousands of evaluations and research reports.  

Between 2023–25, ALNAP will update its 2006 guidance to reflect the most recent revision to the DAC criteria (2019).  

Working with a global advisory group representing diverse actors from across the sector and informed by an in-depth review of how the DAC evaluation criteria have been applied, ALNAP will convene the sector through a range of consultation processes across the world to hear views on the guidance and what should and should not be included in the updated version. 

We would like to hear from those who are working on the frontline of humanitarian action during this process. 

These sensitive and important consultations will take us to the heart of key questions around how the sector measures its performance, how it understands and defines ‘quality’ and who gets to shape those decisions.  

ALNAP is well placed to manage this process, given both our previous experience of creating guidance and our reach through our members and wider networks.  

The resulting guidance and training will be critical in supporting the sector’s collective action to learn from and improve its performance.