Evaluating humanitarian action

Humanitarian action is any activity taken with the objective of saving lives, alleviating suffering, and maintaining human dignity during and after human-induced crises and disasters resulting from natural hazards. Humanitarian action also includes prevention and preparation for these.  Humanitarian action includes both the provision of assistance (such as food, healthcare and shelter) and the protection of crisis-affected populations from violations of their rights (as defined by human rights law, international humanitarian law, and refugee law, see ALNAP, 2016). Different types of evaluation are used in humanitarian action for different purposes, including rapid internal reviews to improve implementation in real time and discrete external evaluations intended to draw out lessons learned with the broader aim of improving policy and practice, and enhancing accountability. The evaluation of humanitarian action (EHA) mostly focuses on evaluating humanitarian projects or programmes funded by an individual donor, although some work has also evaluated the multiple efforts of several actors in response to the same crisis.