Lessons Learned: the Darfur experience

 In recent years, lesson-learning has become part of the mantra of humanitarian action. Organisations involved in assistance and protection activities routinely speak of how the international response to a given crisis will reap the benefits of experience. ‘We will not make the same mistakes again’, they say, as they suit up for the next crisis. Given the humanitarian hyperactivity years of the post-Cold-War era, the wealth of experience available for appropriation is arguably sizeable. 

This chapter analyses the humanitarian sector’s assessment of its response to the Darfur crisis, up to early 2005. It tests the hypothesis that lessons identified in previous humanitarian action have been incorporated into the Darfur response. It reaches the judgement that the humanitarian enterprise acquitted itself poorly during the two years beginning in March 2003, despite encountering challenges, admittedly formidable, with which it was already familiar from the Sudan and other conflict settings. The purpose of the present exercise – like that of the Review overall and of ALNAP itself – is to stimulate reflection by the humanitarian sector on its activities with a view to enhancing performance and promoting learning and accountability.