Evaluating humanitarian action: ask the experts

How do we know if our humanitarian efforts are successful? Evaluation is a key way of finding out.

Evaluation of humanitarian action has grown to become an integral part of the way the humanitarian system operates, significantly improving learning and accountability across the sector.

The knowledge generated from evaluating humanitarian action helps build the body of evidence on what works, and what does not. And it enables stakeholders to answer the vital questions: ‘How are we really doing?’ and ‘So what?’

For the last six years, ALNAP has been developing the first Evaluating Humanitarian Action Guide to help humanitarian actors increase the quality and usefulness of evaluating findings and results. This event launched the Guide and looked at some of the key issues in evaluating humanitarian action today, such as how we can better involve people affected by crises, the value of independent evaluations and how to encourage uptake.

This event is part of a global series of events addressing key issues in humanitarian evaluation, see www.alnap.org/eha for updates.