Summary of findings of emergency response evaluations

In order to establish a groundwork for the examination of humanitarian performance in emergencies, we reviewed three different types of evaluation published in the period 2008-12: InterAgency
Real-Time Evaluations (IA-RTEs), evaluations of emergency operations conducted by individual agencies, and evaluations conducted by MSF of its own emergency operations. Only
evaluations that focussed on specific emergency operations during situations of conflict and displacement were included in the review, and reviews of more protracted humanitarian
responses were excluded. For evaluations, searches were conducted using the ALNAP Evaluative Reports Database as well as the public evaluations databases of CARE, UNICEF, WFP, UNHCR,
the IFRC, the IASC, and several institutes known to carry out evaluations of humanitarian operations (DARA, GPPi and Groupe URD). In order to identify MSF evaluations, the websites of the
Vienna Evaluation Unit, Epicentre, the MSF Field Research website and the intranet site Tukul were explored; a request was also sent to emergency desks in order to identify any unpublished
reports. In total, 26 evaluations were reviewed, comprising 5 IA-RTEs, 17 evaluations conducted by individual agencies, and 4 evaluations conducted by MSF.