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Self Report 2018

The self-report on WHS Commitments below is organized according to the 24 transformations of the Agenda for Humanity. It is based on commitments pledged at the time of report submission. Click on the 'Expand' symbol to expand each section and read the reporting inputs by transformation.

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  • 2A
    Respect and protect civilians and civilian objects in the conduct of hostilities

    Individual Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility
    • The ALNAP Secretariat commits to achieving a stronger evidence base to inform programming and decision making on protection, first by developing and piloting the first ever guide to evaluating humanitarian protection by 2018, and second by working with the ICRC and other agencies involved in updating the monitoring and evaluation chapter of the Professional Standards for protection work.
    • Operational
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity

    Core Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Core Responsibility
    • Commit to promote and enhance the protection of civilians and civilian objects, especially in the conduct of hostilities, for instance by working to prevent civilian harm resulting from the use of wide-area explosive weapons in populated areas, and by sparing civilian infrastructure from military use in the conduct of military operations.
    • Uphold the Norms that Safeguard Humanity
    1. Highlight the concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2017 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures.

    The Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance (ALNAP) Secretariat implemented several activities to develop and pilot the first ever guide to evaluating humanitarian protection. 

    ALNAP carried out three workshops on the pilot guide and one pilot case in Turkey, in partnership with the Danish Refugee Council. Findings were integrated from the three workshops, one pilot case, individual feedback sessions and review of evaluations published since the pilot guide. These findings will be combined with the updates from the revised International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Guide, the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) Protection Mainstreaming Toolkit, and ALNAP’s Evaluation of Humanitarian Action (EHA) Guide. 

    The ALNAP Secretariat plans to finalise and publish the Evaluation of Protection Guide in 2018. Key stakeholders, including ICRC, IrishAid, Danish Refugee Council (DRC) and InterAction remain engaged with ALNAP on the production of the final Evaluation of Protection Guide.

    2. A. How are you measuring progress toward achieving your commitments? Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Through existing, internal systems or frameworks for monitoring, reporting and/or evaluation.
    B. How are you assessing whether progress on commitments is leading toward change in the direction of the transformation?

    As the guide is not yet published, ALNAP currently assesses progress and the potential contribution of the guide through internal stakeholder feedback on the revisions.

    3. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Buy-in
    B. How are these challenges impacting achievement of this transformation?

    Buy-in: the lack of previous work on evaluation of protection meant that no strong core stakeholder group had been formed. It was therefore difficult to pull together a cross section of evaluation and protection expertise to contribute to the guide testing.

    4. Highlight actions planned for 2018 to advance implementation of your commitments in order to achieve this transformation.

    The guide will be finalised and published in 2018. Dissemination activities will aim to bring in new stakeholders from the evaluation community in order to build momentum on this issue.

    5. What steps or actions are needed to make collective progress to achieve this transformation?

    Increased engagement from evaluation and protection communities and a renewed emphasis on clarifying the definition of success in protection in order to enable clearer evaluation results.

    6. List any good practice or examples of innovation undertaken individually or in cooperation with others to advance this transformation.

    The results-based protection work undertaken by InterAction is an innovative approach to understanding the complexity of protection and providing measurable outcome definitions. This work has been highlighted in the revised evaluation of protection guide.

    Keywords

    Protection

  • 4C
    Deliver collective outcomes: transcend humanitarian-development divides

    Joint Commitments (1)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility

    • Commit to taking concrete steps to ensure that humanitarian action is based on high quality evidence. We will do this by investing in research and the collection, synthesis and analysis of data, by improving the quality and accessibility of this evidence, and by adopting better practices and systems to use and value evidence. We commit to developing this more evidence-based humanitarian sector through collaborations that are multi-national, multi-organisational and multi-sectoral.


    • Policy
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    Partners: IMPACT Initiatives, World Vision International, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) - University of Manchester, Public Health in Humanitarian Crises Group - London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action (CERAH), International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), Wiley, Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP), School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University, Cochrane, Queen’s University Belfast, REACH Initiatives, ELRHA, Georgetown University, The Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS), Groupe URD, Center for Refugee and Disaster Response - Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

    Individual Commitments (6)

    • Commitment
    • Commitment Type
    • Core Responsibility

    • The ALNAP Secretariat commits to incorporating the themes from the World Humanitarian Summit commitments into its 2018 SOHS report, examining the relationship between these themes and any measured changes in humanitarian performance over time. The report will support a better understanding of any improvements that emerge from the WHS and to what extent progress is being made across the core commitments.


    • Policy
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    • ALNAP commits to furthering a humanitarian understanding of urban contexts through original research which looks at how humanitarians understand urban systems and stakeholders, and through supporting the work of ALNAP members and other humanitarian actors.


    • Operational
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    • ALNAP commits to working with the Global Alliance for Urban Crises to harness ALNAP's existing digital community of practice, online portal and webinar series and expand the reach and accessibility of these mechanisms, in order to meet the growing needs around evidence and knowledge management for humanitarian action in urban contexts.


    • Operational
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    • ALNAP will continue to support the humanitarian community, and in particular the Global Clusters and those elements of the humanitarian system concerned with the coordination of humanitarian action, by undertaking research and convening events to address the main constraints to effective coordination. ALNAP will make concrete recommendations for improving coordination before the end of 2016, and will work with key stakeholders to support the implementation of these recommendations.


    • Policy
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    • Since its inception in 1997, ALNAP has been supporting system-wide humanitarian learning through its Humanitarian Evaluation and Learning Portal (HELP) which is the largest and most comprehensive humanitarian knowledge bank of its kind, currently with 10,904 unique resources. In order to meet the increasing knowledge demands for the future of humanitarian action, ALNAP commits to updating the HELP with an enhanced digital platform for more intuitive searching and information sharing.


    • Operational
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need

    • The ALNAP Secretariat commits to achieving better utilisation and quality of evidence from evaluations, through two concrete actions: 1) continuing to develop, pilot and disseminate comprehensive guidance material on evaluation of humanitarian action for the benefit of the whole humanitarian sector, 2) facilitating peer-learning exchanges and the sharing of good practice examples across all types of humanitarian agencies.


    • Policy
    • Change People's Lives: From Delivering Aid to Ending Need
    1. Highlight the concrete actions taken between 1 January – 31 December 2017 to implement the commitments which contribute to achieving this transformation. Be as specific as possible and include any relevant data/figures.

    Other-4C

    Improving the Evidence Base for Humanitarian Action: In 2017, the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance (ALNAP) overhauled its online knowledge resource platform, the Humanitarian Evaluation, Learning and Performance (HELP) Library. The HELP Library is the single largest repository of evaluations and formal research outputs in the humanitarian system. It now holds nearly 14,300 evaluations and learning resources, an increase of over 2,000 since December 2016.

    ALNAP also redesigned its popular Syria Evaluation Portal, which now features over 1,600 resources.

    Major research for the State of the Humanitarian System 2018 Report was undertaken in 2017. In keeping with ALNAP’s evidence commitment, this research was undertaken in collaboration with local research groups and the number of crisis affected people who participated in focus groups, interviews and surveys more than tripled. 

    ALNAP produced recommendations and a practical guidance note on establishing context-sensitive coordination structures and worked closely with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) to present these in multiple fora, including the Global Clusters.

    2. A. How are you measuring progress toward achieving your commitments? Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Through existing, internal systems or frameworks for monitoring, reporting and/or evaluation.
    B. How are you assessing whether progress on commitments is leading toward change in the direction of the transformation?

    ALNAP uses a four-tier system to assess its impact: Quality, Awareness, Engagement and Uptake. Uptake is monitored qualitatively and ALNAP maintains an internal database of stories and examples of how research findings are used by humanitarian agencies in their operations and policies.

    3. A. Please select no more than 3 key challenges faced in implementing the commitments related to this transformation. Only the categories selected by the organisation will be seen below.
    • Buy-in
    • Multi-stakeholder coordination
    4. Highlight actions planned for 2018 to advance implementation of your commitments in order to achieve this transformation.

    The State of the Humanitarian System report (SOHS) will be launched in December 2018, with at least 12 launch events planned worldwide. ALNAP members will host many of these and each launch will offer the space for attendees to reflect on the specific issues and challenges facing the delivery of humanitarian assistance in their country or region.

    ALNAP will also publish its feasibility study on monitoring progress in the WHS, which could be potentially used in future efforts to monitor collective performance.