Evaluation of Multi-year Planning - February 2017

A number of inter-agency commitments have been developed post-Summit and MYP is a central component of the proposals therein, with a proposal that the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can act as a common framework for humanitarian and development actors to work towards the overall goal of meeting needs while contributing to a reduction in people’s risks and vulnerabilities and an increase in their resilience. Agencies are already meeting and working together on MYP-related issues1. Thus the evaluation is timely and there is great scope to build on the post-WHS appetite for change.

The WHS, of course, did not start the process of the development of multi-year time frames. There has been much work on this issue over a number of years. Indeed, the Terms of Reference (ToR) for this evaluation state that, by 2015, there were fifteen multi-year humanitarian plans, including a transitional plan.

The evaluation is formative, with an emphasis on building understanding and learning in order to allow for correcting mistakes, adapting approaches and building on the successes of current experiences with MYP. The findings are based on triangulated evidence collected through visits to three country case-studies (Haiti, Somalia, and a counter factual, Myanmar), visits to OCHA HQ (New York and Geneva), remote interviews for Sahel, oPt, South Sudan and Iraq and as well as post-WHS interviews to assess changes in the system. The focus of the evaluation is multi-year planning rather than multi-year financing or multi-year programming, although it is recognised that the three are mutually supportive and brought together explicitly in the HRP model.