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Individual Commitment

Core Commitment

• What led your organization to make the commitment?

  In 2016, the IRC had 22 resettlement offices across the US and provided technical expertise to countries outside the US on resettlement and integration. Abroad, more than 60% of displaced persons live in urban settings and the majority in situations of protracted displacement. Financing, policies, and planning to support refugees are not fit to support the “new normal.” There is also a gap in generating, sharing, and using evidence, to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of programs and policies in humanitarian settings. To date, IRC has or is conducting 78 research studies, including 38 impact evaluations across 28 conflict-affected countries.

• Achievements at a glance

  In 2016, IRC opened resettlement offices in four new US states. The change in administration and lowering of the admissions ceiling means IRC has only opened one new site in 2017. Implementation of the European Resettlement and Integration Technical Assistance (EURITA) project, funded by the US government started. Over 20 months, the EURITA project provides technical assistance on resettlement and integration in ten European countries.
  
  The Global Alliance for Urban Crises arose out of consultations for the WHS and was formally launched there with more than 65 members. IRC remains a committed Steering Group member and contributes additional resources to the Alliance.
  
  On protracted displacement the IRC is a co-chair of the ReDSS and the Displacement Solutions Platform and engages in CRRF pilots in the Horn of Africa. IRC is building the evidence base on four strategic priority areas, among others, across various crisis-affected contexts and sharing our learning.

• How is your organization assessing progress

  All IRC domestic offices are monitored internally within three years. For the ten EURITA countries, participants will commit to action plans. As a member of the Urban Alliance Steering Group, IRC will advance work plans with milestones. IRC will support CRRF Task Team progress at global and country level to ensure norms and standards being set to achieve the ambitions of the New York Declaration by conducting joint analysis and setting collective outcome goals. The IRC has established internal metrics of success and targets for increasing the percentage of our programming that is evidence based and/or evidence generating.

• Challenges faced in implementation

  Despite the history of bipartisan support for refugee resettlement in the US, the political climate has thrust the resettlement program to the spotlight. Anti-refugee rhetoric has had a damaging impact on the program. In several of the EURITA countries, stakeholders are struggling to provide basic protection and shy away from discussing permanent resettlement and integration.
  
  The Global Alliance requires resources and commitments from stakeholders beyond the humanitarian sector. The persistence if siloed responses is difficult to break and the CRRF must address planning and budgeting systems. External resourcing constrains limit evidence generation in humanitarian settings.

• Next step to advance implementation in 2017

  IRC will continue to fundraise for resettlement, advocate for an increase in refugee admissions in the US, and provide technical assistance in ten countries. IRC will continue as a Steering Group Member of the Alliance, contribute additional resources to ensure the Alliance is sustainable and impactful by 2017. The CRRF and proposed Global Compact on Refugees in 2018 can secure best practices; IRC will continue to invest in evidence from field-proven practice. We will continue building partnerships with peer implementing organizations and academic institutions to jointly build the evidence base in humanitarian settings.

• If you had one message for the annual report on what is most needed to advance the transformation 'Reduce and address displacement', what would it be

  The numbers of crisis affected is at a global record high. The need for meaningful and actionable evidence has never been more essential. Through our resettlement work in the US and Europe and our policy work in urban and protracted displacement contexts, the IRC is striving to meet today’s challenges.

• Cross cutting issues

  ☑People-centred approach ☑ Refugees ☑ Urban

• Specific initiatives

  ☑Commitment to Action: Transcending the humanitarian - development divide ☑ Global Alliance for Urban Crises ☑ Grand Bargain

• Other related Agenda for Humanity transformations

  ☑4A - Reinforce, do not replace, national and local systems ☑ 4C - Deliver collective outcomes: transcend humanitarian-development divides

Individual Commitment

• What led your organization to make the commitment?

  IRC’s distinct mandate is to work in crisis settings, and education is one of our core organizational outcomes. We run education programs in twenty countries; in 2015, we reached 1.3 million children. We recognize that education in emergencies suffers not only from a lack of funding but from a system not matched to the needs and realities of children in crisis. The Education Cannot Wait Fund has a prime opportunity to not only bring in more resources, but to demonstrate how aid can be used more effectively by being outcomes-driven, investing in evidence, and modeling transparency.

• Achievements at a glance

  The IRC participated in three consultations and one direct conversation with Boston Consulting Group to influence the operational model and results framework of Education Cannot Wait. Through these, IRC’s senior research advisor for education, acting director of business development, senior director of education and education policy advisor shared IRC’s main messages and example of our “outcomes and evidence framework”. This tool identifies the outcomes in education we want to see, outlines the pathways to achieve these outcome, maps the evidence supporting these theories of change, and includes guidance on which indicators should be used to measure progress.

• How is your organization assessing progress

  Our commitment aligns with our overall organizational strategy towards which we are continuously assessing progress. Country offices have developed their own strategic action plans, which are reviewed regularly, and we’ve set universal expectations that all country programs must reach, which include designing programs based on evidence and which generate evidence. We have regular reviews of metrics (organization-wide and country-specific) and organizational dashboards representing progress. At HQ, we track and report on all education-related external-facing activities (publications and events) through which we share our research plans and findings and the evidence we generate.

• Challenges faced in implementation

  The massive number of children in crisis in need of quality education, and the lack of available resources, is a significant challenge to reaching children at scale with education opportunities. Further, policy barriers present additional challenges to providing a range of solutions that meet the distinct needs of children in crisis. The difficulty of conducting research in conflict settings is another obstacle to generating the evidence the sector needs.

• Next step to advance implementation in 2017

  The IRC is committed to generating evidence on what works to help children in crisis access safe, quality education and gain learning outcomes necessary to succeed in school and in life. We are currently conducting rigorous research on low-cost, targeted interventions to help children gain literacy, numeracy and social-emotional skills, and have plans to share our findings widely with policymakers and practitioners. Our research will include implementation research and measurement research so we learn and share not only if interventions are effective, but under what conditions, and how we assess success.

• If you had one message for the annual report on what is most needed to advance the transformation 'Eliminate gaps in education for children, adolescents and young people', what would it be

  We need better aid for education in emergencies which means defining and measuring progress towards meaningful outcomes; investing in generating evidence, and in evidence-based programs when possible; and demonstrating best use of resources through cost-analysis and transparency about where funds are going and with what results.

• Cross cutting issues

  ☑Refugees

• Specific initiatives

  ☑Commitment to Action: Transcending the humanitarian - development divide ☑ Education Cannot Wait

• Other related Agenda for Humanity transformations

  ☑3A - Reduce and address displacement ☑ 5E - Diversify the resource base and increase cost-efficiency

Individual Commitment

Core Commitment

• What led your organization to make the commitment?

  In the IRC2020 strategy, the IRC developed a systematic way to focus on clearly defined outcomes that can be consistently measured across all the contexts. With the Outcomes and Evidence Framework (OEF), our staff and partners identify feasible outcomes and explore theories of change for program planning. The framework can be used to advocate for/demonstrate the necessity of multi-year planning and funding. The IRC focuses on changing policy and practice so that refugees are provided assistance to live in dignity and be self-reliant in displacement and to find durable solutions. Collective outcomes shared by all stakeholders are central to this.

• Achievements at a glance

  IRC has developed an interactive outcomes and evidence framework (iOEF) that contains the tools needed to design effective programs. IRC staff have access to (i) outcome definitions and indicators for measuring those outcomes, (ii) theories of change that describe the pathways for achieving those outcomes and (iii) the best available quantitative evidence on interventions that can contribute to that outcome. In the last quarter of 2016 alone, the iOEF had over 2000 users from 98 different countries, and shared the iOEF in large public forums. We have engaged key peers in exploring how to use and improve the framework for designing and reporting on multi-year programs using common outcomes, theories of change and metrics/indicators.
  
  The June 2016 launch of the Tanzania Solutions Alliance was supported by the IRC country and regional team. We have and will continue to encourage the Alliance to use collective outcomes in seeking solutions.
  

• How is your organization assessing progress

  IRC is monitoring where and how a Solutions Alliance approach to protracted settings can contribute to improved outcomes for refugees and hosting communities and bridge the humanitarian-development divide.

• Challenges faced in implementation

  There are challenges in rolling out the Outcomes and Evidence Framework across the organization and it requires significant time, effort and resources. Second, greater investment in evidence generation is needed. Finally, rigid donor frameworks and short-term project based funding limit our staff’s ability to effectively design programs based on the theories of change and use indicators to measure progress. In the search for durable solutions, the persistence of mandate and population-driven responses by various agencies and donors is difficult to break. Significant organizational effort is still required to change planning and financing systems.

• Next step to advance implementation in 2017

  The iOEF is the basis of country programs’ strategic action plans for the next 4 years. Each country has identified 3-5 priority outcomes and will use the corresponding indicators to measure progress each year. Our technical units are developing and issuing program guidance based on evidence. IRC continues as the civil society representative to the (now) Governing Board of the Solutions Alliance. In this capacity, the IRC will continue to seek partnerships and adopt practices which promote the Solutions Alliance approach in existing and new contexts.
  
  

• If you had one message for the annual report on what is most needed to advance the transformation 'Deliver collective outcomes: transcend humanitarian-development divides', what would it be

  The IRC will continue to advocate for and advance practice on using collective outcomes to improve programming and its impact, and enhance collaboration in response to humanitarian and refugee crises.
  
  

• Cross cutting issues

  ☑Innovation ☑ Refugees

• Specific initiatives

  ☑Commitment to Action: Transcending the humanitarian - development divide ☑ Grand Bargain

• Other related Agenda for Humanity transformations

  ☑3A - Reduce and address displacement ☑ 5D - Finance outcomes, not fragmentation: shift from funding to financing

Core Commitment

• What led your organization to make the commitment?

  The IRC seeks to support positive and meaningful changes in the lives of those we serve. In order to achieve this, it would be necessary to focus on clearly defined and measurable outcomes and to choose the most effective interventions for achieving those outcomes. Within the humanitarian industry, it is standard practice to emphasize inputs and activities and to measure ‘success’ by counting outputs. Delivering outputs is insufficient for making meaningful improvements in people’s lives; it requires an outcome-driven and evidenced-based approach to programming.

• Achievements at a glance

  Prior to our IRC2020 strategy, of which this commitment is a part, the IRC had made several steps towards an outcome-driven evidence-based approach. For example, our education work shifted from a focus on access (addressing the problem of children not being in schools) to a focus on learning. We pulled on evidence from other fields, such as neuroscience, to shape our strategies. We redefined our education outcome to not just focus on academic learning but also on social emotional learning to ensure that children have not only the skills they need in school but in life more generally (conflict resolution, controlling impulses etc.). Other examples of focusing on outcomes and developing evidence-based strategies can be found in our earlier work around child protection, women’s empowerment and violence prevention.

• How is your organization assessing progress

  IRC has developed an interactive outcomes and evidence framework (iOEF) that contains the tools needed to design effective programs. IRC staff at HQ and across 30 countries, have access to (i) outcome definitions and indicators for how to measure those outcomes, (ii) theories of change that describe the pathways for achieving those outcomes and (iii) the best available quantitative evidence on interventions that can contribute to that outcome. The iOEF was rolled out through workshops, webinars and conferences inside and outside the IRC. In the last quarter of 2016 alone, the iOEF had over 2000 users from 98 different countries.

• Challenges faced in implementation

  Rolling out this framework across the organization requires significant time, effort and resources. We successfully obtained funding to develop the framework, however, providing sufficient training and continuous mentoring to country-level staff who are steeped in responding to an increasing number of humanitarian crises is costly. Second, despite extensive efforts to synthesize evidence, there remain significant gaps around what works in conflict-affected contexts. Investment in evidence generation is needed. Finally, donor frameworks and short-term funding limit the ability to effectively design programs based on the theories of change with sufficient time to develop and use indicators to measure progress.

• Next step to advance implementation in 2017

  As the iOEF continues to be rolled out, all IRC country programs have used the outcomes in the iOEF as the basis of their strategic action plans for the next 4 years. Each country has identified 3-5 priority outcomes and will use the corresponding indicators to measure progress each year. Together with technical teams, our country programs are beginning to use the theories of change to develop programmatic strategies. Our technical units are developing and issuing program guidance based on evidence. We have developed metrics and will start to measure progress more systematically later this year.

• Cross cutting issues

  ☑Innovation

• Specific initiatives

  ☑Grand Bargain

• Other related Agenda for Humanity transformations

  ☑4C - Deliver collective outcomes: transcend humanitarian-development divides ☑ 5E - Diversify the resource base and increase cost-efficiency