Final Essay: Humanitarian Action interventions are of a different nature than regular

interventions. This implies that there are additional challenges and considerations to be
dealt with before, during and after the evaluation process. Critically discuss these.

Ana Carolina Dias Ribeiro – 78323

Mestrado em Ação Humanitária

Avaliação Participativa em Ação Humanitária

Janeiro, 2022
Humanitarian Action interventions are of a different nature than regular interventions. This
implies that there are additional challenges and considerations to be dealt with before, during
and after the evaluation process. Critically discuss these.

According to lessons learned from development studies, humanitarian actors are

beginning to recognize that the impact of their work is more valuable than just measuring
production in material terms. Seeing as a whole, recognition is not only in evaluation practices
that do not always provide useful information to professionals, but also how assessments are
conducted and that can determine the type of information collected. By implication, the
incorporation of the beneficiaries' perspectives into the evaluation processes cannot be done
without a reassessment of the evaluation objectives.

While development lessons are drawn in many projects that are revealing for
humanitarian assessment approaches, there are points that create some divergence and others
that relate to conventional modes of humanitarian assistance. Organizations such as the UNHCR
(The UN Refugee Agency) are often centralized and bureaucratic, have a function of the political
and economic framework that they are obliged to operate, as well as in their organizational
culture. One thing we can repair is that humanitarian assistance is a process that starts from the
top down, as humanitarian agencies do not usually consult or involve members of an affected
area. Thus, it creates an insight into the affected population and beneficiaries.

Accountability has been designed in an upward way for donors, trustees, and
stakeholders. The need for accountability for those who receive the sustenance has arisen only
in recent years.

The institution's objectives are unrelated to learning lessons and responsibilities. The
lessons within the program, at the time of evaluation is critical, in the middle of the period,
changes can be made to the program and can still be tapes changes while a final evaluation only
offers perspectives of lessons for the future.

Governance assessments tend to have a technical language that is based on setting fixed
objectives to understand the form achieved by implementers. A more scientific approach has
been common, in the evaluation teams that are able to investigate the results under the
resource controlled by the program.

Any evaluation of a humanitarian action requires both the economic and political
partner analysis inhabited by those who employ it. Without the beneficiary's contribution, the

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assessment eventually becomes counterproductive. If an impact assessment is carried out it is
advised that the beneficiaries are involved in the process.

Something that can be said about the guidelines of donors and agencies is the need for
more participatory evaluation processes, something that did not happen in the past. That is,
there needs to be a greater participation of the locals.

Something that needs to be considered when we talk about Humanitarian intervention

is that we never know how we are going to find the place, whether it is a natural catastrophe or
a human catastrophe. There is a need to assess the damage done to have an insight into which
organizations are best to intervene in the space.

Right when you arrive in the country it is necessary to consider the conditions of space
and from there give tasks to each organization, for example, if it is a natural disaster, to
understand the conditions of the land, to understand if there are people who are dissaved, if
there are people in the strophes.

To understand all this, it is necessary to start bringing supplies and other needs to
distribute to the population. Health is another crucial step in these cases. Creating field hospitals
and providing medical care is important for the population to be health-prevented.

Volunteers are other people who are imposing for humanitarian intervention, as they
help in distribution and many end up using their formations to help the professionals who are
intervening.

In addition to the before and during, it is also necessary the after. Once you have
intervened as much as possible, it is necessary to continue what has been done. It is therefore
necessary to give training to local people.

When a disaster happens something that should happen early on, is to use local
resources, that is, to use the information given by locals who often know what better option to
use than to be using airplane means between another options.

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Bibliography

• Taylor, A. J., & Cuny, F. C. (1979). The Evaluation of Humanitarian

Assistance. Disasters, 3(1), 37–42. Available: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-

7717.1979.tb00196.x

• Slim, H., Bonwick, A., & Humanitarian, I. (2006). Protection: an ALNAP guide for

humanitarian agencies. Alnap.

• Heintze, H.-J., Zwitter, A., & McDermott, R. (2016). The humanitarian challenge and

the aims and scope of the Journal of International Humanitarian Action. Journal of

International Humanitarian Action, 1(1). Available: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41018-

016-0005-9