Problems in Measuring the Impact of Humanitarian Interventions

This article explores efforts to assess and measure the impact of relief interventions. According to the article, a report from the Overseas Development Institute investigates the current situation in measuring and analysing the impact of humanitarian assistance focusing particularly on the health and food security/nutrition sectors. According to the report, while there are methodological and practical difficulties involved in gathering data in the environment of complex emergencies, donors and humanitarian agencies can do much more to measure what they achieve.

The report notes:

• Agencies often make bold assertions of impact on the basis of limited evidence: most recently, the unsubstantiated claim that food aid saved millions of lives in southern Africa during 2002 to 2003.
• The literature on impact assessment and evaluation presumes a predetermined role for international actors: there is little assessment of the impact of local preparedness and response.
• In many humanitarian organisations there is defensive behaviour and a culture of blame: short-term funding mechanisms dictate against a learning environment for field staff, staff turnover rates are high, training is not linked to learning and mechanisms for cross-organisational learning are poor.

The authors reccomend that:

• The humanitarian system ensures that affected populations participate in evaluation.
• Evaluations should move beyond the project level and greater investment should be made in system-wide evaluations that can ask difficult questions about the responsibility for humanitarian outcomes and the broader political dimensions within which the humanitarian system operates.
• Assessments that focus on determining the outcome of a particular intervention from inputs to impact should be complemented by approaches that start with changes in people’s lives.
• Humanitarian actors explore potential for learning from private sector experience of customer-focused approaches.

The article concludes that as expenditures on humanitarian assistance continue rising, it is time to invest more in evaluation and impact analysis, set clearer objectives for humanitarian aid, undertake more detailed assessments of risk and need, and more systematically research, record and share experience of what works and what does not.