Briefing Note | Eyes and Ears on the Ground: Monitoring Aid in Insecure Environments

This research aimed to improve the monitoring of humanitarian assistance in insecure
environments with a focus on Afghanistan, South Central Somalia, South Sudan and Syria. It had two main goals: first, to assess available options for aid agencies to monitor assistance, given the constraints that insecurity entails, and second, to identify principles of good practice and particular aspects where monitoring approaches could be improved.

Humanitarian agencies have been working with different approaches to mitigate gaps in
current practice and to address the challenges posed by insecurity. The research focused on three of those, as prioritised with learning partners in countries: responding to community feedback in insecure settings; utilising third parties to monitor where access is constrained; and using technologies for monitoring. This paper describes its main findings based on over 250 interviews, 65 focus group discussions, a review of over 300 M&E documents and an online survey.