missed opportunities

September 2014 , Nairobi

Agenda

• Context• Findings• Conclusions

“…a fundamental reorientation from supplying aid to supporting and

facilitating communities’ own relief and recovery priorities.…”

In 2006, the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition called for:

For example in Haiti“….INGOs were not making use of local partnerships….

Local relationships are critical to understanding the context, shaping and informing the response, and

encouraging local acceptance of assistance….. Few of these relationships are in place… a serious lack

of connectedness to the context persists…”

ECB Independent Joint Evaluation

This call has had little impact on the formal policies and practices that shape the

humanitarian system

The Ashdown Review flagged this as an issue and linked it directly to funding

“the funding of national and local NGOs by DFID remains a hit and miss. It is not a conscious strategy, but more of a by-product”

The role of local partners in providingaid in humanitarian crises remains

a major systemic issue for the sector

• More and better local engagement is seen to pose threats to the status quo of the sector, in terms of resource distribution, power and control

• Contrasts with many of the most successful change efforts in the sector have been characterized by incremental changes

The Research programme

• Focus on partnerships of 5 UK NGOs in 4 emergency settings

– Haiti, Kenya, Pakistan floods, DRC

• Interviews, document and evaluation review

• 4 month research phase

Used OECD criteria for analysing contribution of partnerships to aid effectiveness, benchmarked against

system-wide performance

The research used the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development -OECD-DAC Criteria for Aid Effectiveness

• Relevance/Appropriateness

• Effectiveness

• Efficiency

• Coverage

• Connectedness

Do partnershipsenhance the relevance and

appropriateness of aid?

• Conventional aid delivery approaches are often criticized for their lack of relevance and appropriateness, and the evidence shows that well-designed partnerships can help address these issues.

• Partnerships can ensure program design that is contextually appropriate, culturally sensitive, responsive to needs, and based on communities’ own understanding

• Relevance and appropriateness was the area most strongly identified as a beneficial outcome of partnerships

• Potential contribution of partnerships: Strong

• Overall system performance: Moderate

Do partnerships enhancethe effectiveness of aid?

• Partner-based responses can be fast, responsive, and well prepared for action

• Partner-based responses can contribute to accountability and community engagement

• Issues of coordination, learning and human resources are as much a problem for partners as they are for the wider system

• Potential contribution of partnerships: Good

• Overall system performance: Moderate

Do partnershipsenhance the efficiency of aid?

• Efficiency should not be reduced to a simplistic assessment of how cheap a response can be, but should be based on an understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses of partnership work in different settings

• Cost savings of partnerships can be considerable, in terms of staff costs, but most other aspects of financing a humanitarian response are at parity with international efforts

• There are costs of partnerships that must be considered in any efficiency assessment include setting up, maintaining and ongoing capacity support.

• Potential contribution of partnerships: Moderate

• Overall system performance: Moderate

Do partnershipsenhance the coverage of aid?

• Coverage is a major limiting factor for partnerships, as seen by partnership-focused agencies and direct delivery organisations alike.

• Partners themselves suggest that the issue is less about delivering effective programmes at scale, and more about spending.

• There is a need for the humanitarian sector to engage more closely with larger national NGOs / governmental ancillaries and network bodies on issues of scale and coverage.

• Potential contribution of partnerships: Moderate

• Overall system performance: Poor

Do partnershipsenhance the connectedness of aid?

• National partners can clearly help to smooth the links between resilience, preparedness, response, recovery and development

• They cannot do this unless funding NGOs and donors put their house in order – otherwise the institutional divides simply get transferred down the system

• The resilience agenda has potential to address this issue, but more needs to be done to position it as a means of bridging the humanitarian development divide if it is going to tap this potential

• Potential contribution of partnerships: Good

• Overall system performance: Moderate

Summary

• The diagram shows clearly that the potential for the partnership approach is strongest in three specific areas: relevance/appropriateness, effectiveness and connectedness. In these areas, partnerships were making the most consistent and unambiguous contribution to humanitarian performance.

• In the other two areas, the picture was rather more nuanced and involved both potential and also some considerable challenges.

• This illustrative diagram should not be taken to mean that by investing in partnerships these problems will be simply or easily resolved. Nor, should it be taken to mean that partnerships couldn’t contribute positively to coverage or efficiency. Rather, the comparison is to show that there are clearly areas where the sector as a whole is not performing as might be wished, and where partnership efforts – on the basis of evidence from five agencies in four major emergency responses – have potential to help enhance performance

Conclusions

• Factors beyond the sector are pushing for a greater localisation of humanitarian aid

• Within the sector, while there has been some rhetoric, funding and structures still give preference to international actors over national ones

• There is evidence, scope and space for a renewed focus on capacity and partnerships

Recommendations• Investing in change

– Investments in national and local partnerships as priority for donors– A multi-donor fund for disaster management capacity building

• Setting the agenda– Southern partnerships to be central to humanitarian policy agendas– Partnerships role in resilience acknowledged and integrated

• Building knowledge and shared understanding– Build the evidence base through case studies from across the sector.– Establish a knowledge platform on capacity and partnerships

• Strengthening practices– Strengthen use of capacity assessments in humanitarian responses– Partnerships need to move from ‘bilateral’ to networked efforts

“The vision expressed by many of those interviewed was for …a humanitarian sector which is a more democratic, balanced and accountable

endeavor, where capacities are fully considered as well as needs, and where the emphasis is less on

assistance and more on cooperation...”

this vision is achievable, if we have the necessary collective political and institutional will.

Thank you!

Building the future of the system

APPENDIX

The full report is available in ALNAP website below : http://www.alnap.org/resource/8890.aspx