Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluations of Large Scale System-Wide Emergencies (IAHEs)

The present Guidelines specify the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders and provide a set of  operating procedures for IAHEs. They are intended to help support and guide the management and conduct of IAHEs, only. In addition to IAHEs, the Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation Steering Group may initiate other types of evaluative activities.

The procedures and methodologies prescribed by these Guidelines will apply
in both natural disaster and complex emergency situations. For the sake of brevity and clarity, the Guidelines are based on the assumption of an emergency in a single national context. Hence some aspects, namely around key stakeholders (such as in-country advisory groups and HCTs) will need to be modified in the case of disasters involving cross-border operations. To this end, the Guidelines include the following templates for use in IAHEs:

1. Standard Terms of Reference
2. An outline for the inception report
3. An outline for the evaluation report
4. A check list of roles and responsibilities

These Guidelines will be revised in 2015 based on feedback on their use.

An IAHE is an independent assessment of results of the collective humanitarian response by member organizations of the IASC to a specific crisis. IAHEs evaluate the extent to which planned collective results have been achieved and how humanitarian reform efforts have contributed to that achievement. IAHEs are not an in-depth evaluation of any one sector or of the performance of a specific agency, and, as such, cannot replace any other form of agency-specific humanitarian evaluation, joint or otherwise, which may be undertaken or required.

IAHEs follow agreed norms and standards for evaluation that emphasize:

1) the independence of the evaluation team;

2) the application of evaluation methodology; and

3) the full disclosure of results. IAHEs have a clear scope (defined in the TOR and inception report) with regard to the period, geographic area(s) and target groups to be covered by the evaluation