Humanitarian Assistance: Assessing Performance, Evidence-based Decision-making, Reform Progress

1. ALNAP has issued the first The State of the Humanitarian System: Assessing Performance and Progress (Jan. 2010). This pilot report's objective, as indicated in the executive summary, was:

to provide a system-level mapping and assessment of international humanitarian assistance. To this end, the report 1) defines key criteria for assessing system performance and progress, 2) assesses the system’s performance over the past two years against these criteria, 3) presents new, previously unavailable descriptive statistics and 4) highlights some new initiatives in policy and practice.

The introduction describes the scope and methodology used, chapter 2 reviews the composition of the humanitarian system, and chapter 3 assesses performance. The plan is to repeat this assessment on a biennial basis.

2. A recent HPN Network Paper examines "Evidence-based Decision-making in Humanitarian Assistance" (Dec. 2009). The report "highlights key concepts in evidence-based practices, examines recommendations from recent published humanitarian reviews, and presents options to strengthen evidence-based decision-making in the design, implementation and evaluation of humanitarian assistance."

3. The most recent edition of Humanitarian Exchange includes an article entitled "Humanitarian reform: a progress report," which highlights findings from the Synthesis Report Review of Engagement of NGOs with the Humanitarian Reform Process.

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