“It’s recommendations will help the humanitarian community incorporate key lessons learned into its future disaster response efforts.” Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, to the General Assembly on Pakistan, last March
DARA is one of the few organizations in the world to have direct experience in conducting Real-Time Evaluations. These are carried out during the early implementation stages of a humanitarian operation, feeding back findings and influencing decision-making in a real-time manner for immediate use by the client. In the case of Inter-Agency RTEs, the whole humanitarian system benefits from this real-time learning. Real-time evaluations contribute to improved accountability.
We have specific expertise in IA RTEs, an initiative of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC). IA RTEs provide snapshots of the current situation and seek to unlock inter-agency coordination problems or operational bottlenecks and provide real-time learning to the field. They are intended for sudden-onset disasters, or protracted crises undergoing a phase of rapid deterioration or escalating violence.
Out of the eight IA RTEs, DARA has carried out four, beginning with the real-time evaluation of the humanitarian response to the cyclone and floods in Mozambique, one of the first of its kind and a pilot RTE for a broader programme of such evaluations.
Helicopter carry the first Non food Items to be distributed near the Zambezi Delta following the 2007 Mozambique floods © Riccardo Polastro, DARA
Other IA RTEs carried out by DARA:
- Inter-Agency Real-Time Evaluation (IA-RTE) of the humanitarian response to floods in Pakistan
- Inter-Agency Real-Time Evaluation of the humanitarian response to Pakistan’s 2009-2010 Displacement Crisis
- Inter-Agency Real Time Evaluation (IA-RTE) of the Humanitarian Response to Typhoons Ketsana and Parma in the Philippines
For each of our RTEs we carry out workshops with all the humanitarian stakeholders involved in disaster response (donors, governments, Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement national societies, UN agencies and local and international NGOs). The purpose of these is to validate conclusions and recommendations and build ownership of the whole evaluation process.
For more information see ALNAP’s Guide to Real-time Evaluations of Humanitarian Action, the first sector-wide guide to Real-Time Evaluations.
