Building accountability to affected populations into humanitarian evaluations

Panel Chair: Helen Wedgwood, WFP
 

1. The Framework - Implications of incorporating Accountability to Affected Populations into Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation
   
   Presenter: Scott Green, OCHA Office of Evaluation (on behalf of IASC IAHE SG)
   
   While most of the AAP subject matter may be outside evaluation per se, these developments will ultimately impact on inter-agency evaluative work by the member agencies of the IASC, individual agency evaluations and other organisations.
    

2. The Practice - Implications for and experience of conducting evaluations that engage affected people: Challenges and Opportunities

   Presenter: Shagufta Jeelani, Mercy Corps International

   Integrating AAP into humanitarian evaluations carries implications for all stages of evaluation from planning, scope, data collection and analysis, to dissemination, communication and follow-up. Consulting and engaging more systematically with beneficiaries/non-beneficiaries may appear straightforward but has obvious time and cost repercussions, and particular challenges in humanitarian settings. Creating mechanisms for evaluation feedback and accountability to affected populations, and involving them in subsequent decisions also requires careful attention, and carries time and cost implications – scarce commodities in
   evaluation-in-practice.

   This presentation aims to open this discussion by sharing experience from evaluation practice and approaches to incorporating AAP within the EEA. This discussion forum is participatory to enable the sharing of diverse experiences on mainstreaming AAP principles into evaluation, aiming to bring forth key issues and changes needed in centralised and decentralised evaluation functions.
    

3. Challenges and opportunities in getting to the heart of the human experience of disasters and the humanitarian response

   Presenter: Ben Allen, Action Against Hunger, ACF International

   Evaluation frameworks (such as IAHE and ALNAP’s) are necessary and useful tools for guidance on evaluation practice. But programmes are made up of people and engagement with them will determine the success of a humanitarian evaluation. People are products of their culture and their environment, so evaluators must chose carefully the appropriate methodological approach to ensure representative and accurate data is obtained from the affected population. Adapted and flexible ‘person-led’ approaches are required to ensure evaluations engage successfully with affected people, in often unpredictable environments.

   This presentation explores some key principals necessary for going beyond the formality of evaluations matrices, inception reports and FGD questionnaires, and getting to the heart of the community experience, by being respectful, opportunistic and recognising the limits of planning. With examples from a range of contexts (such as Angola, Philippines and Kurdistan) it shows how these principals allow for an organic and authentic understanding of the human experience of humanitarian disasters and subsequent programmes, whilst making efficiency gains and ensuring a ‘light’ evaluation footprint.
    

4. Q&A