IASC Real Time Evaluation (IASC RTE) of the Humanitarian Response to the Horn of Africa Drought Crisis 2011: Regional Mechanisms and Support during the Response

As required under the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Guidelines, the Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC) called for an independent real time evaluation RTE) of Inter-agency (IA) response to the food security crisis and famine in the Horn of Africa during 2011. While the IASC conducted separate assessments (RTEs) of the response in each of the severely-affected countries (Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia), it was felt that an assessment of the regional dimension of the response in various countries will be in order, as this crisis had several cross-country issues involved in build-up to the scaling up of humanitarian response. Several support structures, processes and mechanisms in the region have had a bearing on the country-led response, and this regional RTE was tasked to examine these in real time. Specifically, the regional RTE focused on the following:

1. asses the added value of regional coordination mechanism and comment of the regional structures and mechanisms that exist;

2. examine the leadership during the response in terms of bringing about coherence, complementarity and synergy in different country-responses, especially with regard to issues of cross-country nature; and

3. assess the systems and processes for flow of information and communication between different countries on issues of direct relevance to the response in each country. The field work for the evaluation was carried out during November-December 2011.