*Evaluating protection in humanitarian action: Decision-making processes, common issues and challenges/ ANAP 22.06.16*
INTRODUCTION SECTION 1: Why an evaluating humanitarian action companion guide on protection? How can people and communities at risk in situation of crisis and conflict be better protected? And what role can humanitarian agencies and their staff play in helping bringing about such protection on the ground? (Slim and Bonwick, 2005: 11) Despite the stated centrality of protection in humanitarian action (IASC, 2013) and a growing attention to protection activities, the evaluation of protection has received relatively little attention. This pilot guide seeks to fill this gap, providing insights and guidance to those evaluating protection in the context of humanitarian action. Evaluating protection in the context of humanitarian action can be seen as a nascent but growing subset of practice within the broader fields of Evaluation of Humanitarian Action (EHA) and the evaluation of protection outside of humanitarian action. The scoping paper that led to the development of this pilot guide (Bonino, 2014) highlighted that compared to aspects of EHA practice, and for which more evaluation-specific guidance is available, there is a dearth of understanding and guidance in relation to evaluating protection in humanitarian action. For example, a brief review of inter-agency guidance materials on humanitarian evaluation (Bonino, 2014: 38-41) uncovered the rather different and varying ways in which protection in humanitarian action has been dealt with in humanitarian evaluation guidance as: • One of the cross-cutting issues that humanitarian evaluations can examine (IASC, 2011) • As a programme theme with initiatives that are solely focused on protection • An overarching theme that all humanitarian evaluators should consider to some extent in their EHA work – regardless whether it is explicitly requested in the evaluation terms of reference (Hallam, 1998). Evaluation guidance focusing on protection in humanitarian action is limited, fragmented and confined to agency-, sector- and theme-specific programming manuals that often give limited overall guidance on the specific challenges of looking at protection. The practice of evaluating protection (either as a primary or secondary line of evaluation inquiry) appears rather dispersed and inconsistent . This pilot guide, a companion to the ALNAP EHA guide (Cosgrave and Buchanan-Smith, 2016), offers evaluation-specific insights that can speak to the diverse membership within the ALNAP network who work within and around protection, both as specialists and ‘generalists’. It does not attempt to define protection but is rather intended as support for evaluators and evaluation managers involved in analysing interventions that take their points of departure from a variety of definitions. It can be noted that the Global Protection Cluster describes this broad scope of protection as consisting of: an objective, a legal responsibility and a multi-sector activity to (1) prevent or stop violations of rights, (2) ensure a remedy to violations- including the delivery of life-saving goods and services- and (3) promote respect for rights and the rule of law. (GPC, 2015) -- To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/southsudankob View this message at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/southsudankob/topic-id/message-id For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/SouthSudanKob. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SouthSudanKob/CAJb14opzBApPOYY2xGDugxXH882HqcAGOiaHMWApi1K_p%3Du7Ow%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
