Are Humanitarian Agencies Making a Difference?

A humanitarian evaluations series presented by the HUMANITARIAN COALITION with collaboration from the School of International Development and Global Studies (SIDGS) at the University of Ottawa

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Tuesday, December 13, 2011
University of Ottawa
12th floor, Desmarais Building (room 12102)

Join us for discussions on humanitarian program evaluations, where practitioners, academics, government representatives and students gather to further our field.
 
The event is free and lunch is included, however places are limited so be sure to register at:
 http://hcevaluationseries.eventbrite.com

This event will be streamed live on this page

FIRST SESSION:

Two Years, Three Major Disasters: Results from Responses in Haiti, Pakistan, and East Africa

10:00 am – 12:00 pm
 
Speakers:
Vincent Koch , lead evaluator for the HUMANITARIAN COALITION’s evaluations in Haiti and Pakistan
Deborah Clifton , HUMANITARIAN COALITION evaluator for the real-time review in East Africa, conducted jointly with the Disasters Emergency Committee (UK)

Session moderator:
Pierre Beaudet, Professor, School of International Development and Globalization, University of Ottawa

Accountability and lessons learning are essential to the work of any humanitarian agency. With its commitment to transparency, the HUMANITARIAN COALITION will share the results of its final evaluations of member agency responses in both Haiti and Pakistan, as well as the results of its Real-Time Review in East Africa (a joint initiative with the Disasters Emergency Committee, UK) – all conducted in October - November 2011. These evaluations are now ready to be made public so that Canadian practitioners, experts and all who are interested in the future of humanitarian aid can benefit from an emerging collective approach to lessons learning.

Schedule:
10:00-10:45: Presentation of results and findings in Pakistan, Haiti and East Africa
10:45-11:15: Moderated discussion with the audience on the on-going situation in Haiti, Pakistan, East Africa
11:15-11:30: The experience of joint evaluations with the Disasters Emergency Committee (UK)
11:30-11:45: The experience of multi-agency evaluations with the HUMANITARIAN COALITION
11:45-12:00: Open question period with participants

LUNCH: (included) Room  12110

 

SECOND SESSION:

Humanitarian Relief - What Impacts? Experts discuss the evaluation of humanitarian interventions, how they are conducted and what is done with the results.

1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
 
Speakers:
Francois Audet, Executive Director of the Canadian Research Institute on Humanitarian Crisis and Aid
Jock Baker , independent consultant and CARE International focal point on humanitarian policy
Scott Green, Chief of Evaluation at the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Ian Smillie , development consultant and author
Hunter McGill, consultant in international development policy and professor at the University of Ottawa

Session moderator:
Nicolas Moyer, Executive Director of the HUMANITARIAN COALITION

How do we measure the success of a food distribution months after it has been conducted, or what good has been done from setting up hygiene promotion programs after a flood?  Expert panellists will examine approaches for tackling the unique challenges of evaluating the impact of humanitarian programs and what is done with the results once collected.  International experts will also discuss the opportunities and challenges of multi-agency evaluations.

Schedule:
13:00-13:45: Presentations:
•    The state of humanitarian evaluations in Canada – François Audet
•    Challenges and approaches to interagency evaluations: the differences between the UN system and the NGO model – Scott Green and Jock Baker
The speakers will describe challenges and latest approaches, from a UN and NGO perspective, on interagency evaluations and impact measurement, based on OCHA’s and the ECB project’s experience in joint humanitarian evaluations and impact measurement research.
13:45-14:00: Open question period
14:00-14:30: Debate – topic: “Be it resolved that Canadian organisations should not collaborate with each other on humanitarian program evaluations”
Debaters: Ian Smillie and Hunter McGill
14:35-14:50: Audience reflections and reactions to the arguments raised in the debate
14:50-15:00: Closing remarks and questions

 

PRESENTATIONS

(Click on titles to download PDF, or alternatively, visit our Scribd page )

Deborah Clifton: DEC-HC Real Time Evaluation : East Africa Crisis response 2011
Vincent Koch: HC Final Evaluations in Haiti and Pakistan 2011
François Audet: Setting the scene: The state of humanitarian evaluations in Canada
Jock Baker: The Emergency Capacity Building (ECB) Project approach to Joint Evaluations & Impact Measurement
Scott Green: Joint Humanitarian Evaluations: Opportunities and Challenges

Speakers

FIRST SESSION:

DEBORAH CLIFTON Deborah Clifton
Deborah Clifton first worked overseas as a CUSO volunteer in the 1980’s, working with the Justice Department in Papua New Guinea to set up community-based correctional services, and raise awareness about violence against women.  She spent 6 years with social services in the Baffin Region, before joining Oxfam GB, initially as a gender advisor, where she carried out gender assessments on Oxfam programs in Albania, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.  Subsequently moving to humanitarian program management, Deborah was responsible for some of Oxfam's largest emergency programs, including northern Uganda, the Pakistan earthquake, and Aceh tsunami responses.  Most recently she has worked as an IASC Gender Advisor (‘GenCap’), capacity-building advisors working to ensure gender equality is addressed in all sectors of UN emergency response.  Her GenCap deployments have included Iraq, Pakistan, and the Pacific Region.

VINCENT KOCH Vincent_Koch
Vincent Koch (Ir.) (1965) Studied Environmental Studies at the Agricultural University in Wageningen, The Netherlands. He is specialised in (waste) Water Purification, Tropical Hygiene, Household Sciences and Extension Sciences.  In 1992 he worked for Doctors without Borders in Rwanda where he stayed until 1994. Since then he has been working in a large number of emergency and post-emergency situations. Since 1996 he works as a humanitarian manager at field and capital level. From 2002 to 2003 he was Country Director for Oxfam GB in Afghanistan. Since 2005 he works part-time for the Oxfam GB Humanitarian Department, providing management and coaching services. He works regularly as an independent consultant for Evaluations, Strategy Development and Partner Training.  He currently lives in France.

 

SECOND SESSION:

FRANÇOIS AUDET Francois Audet
 Francois Audet is the Executive Director of the Canadian Research Institute on Humanitarian Crisis and Aid (OCCAH) and has over fifteen years experience in humanitarian action. He was previously Head of the Regional Delegation of East Africa and the Indian Ocean for the Canadian Red Cross and he also served as program Director for CARE Canada. He has participated in over hundred humanitarian and technical support in Haiti, Colombia, Somalia and the Darfur region. He also worked several years in Latin America and Southeast Asia on behalf of the Canadian Centre for International Study and Cooperation, where he served as chief humanitarian aid projects in Honduras and Vietnam. He holds a master’s degree in environmental science, he is currently a PhD candidate in political science at UQAM where he is associate researcher at the Canada Research Chair in Canadian Foreign and Defence Policy (PEDC), and explores the issues of effectiveness of the humanitarian aid.

JOCK BAKER Jock Baker
Jock Baker currently divides his time between independent consulting and with CARE International’s Secretariat in Switzerland, where he is the focal point for developing CARE’s humanitarian policy and guidance in program quality, accountability, and programming.  Jock joined CARE in 2001 following a career as a full-time independent consultant and almost two decades of field-based assignments in Africa, Asia and the Pacific with different United Nations agencies and international NGOs.  He has led a number of thematic studies and evaluations on topics covering climate change adaptation, humanitarian reform, post-conflict recovery, gender equality programming, microfinance, disaster risk reduction and good humanitarian donorship.  He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Edinburgh and a Master’s degree in Economics from the London School of Economics & Political Science.  

SCOTT GREEN Scott Green
Scott Green is the Chief of Evaluation at the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in New York a post he has occupied since 2008.  Scott leads OCHA's efforts develop system-wide humanitarian evaluation capacities and provides strategic direction to OCHA's evaluation function.   He is currently the Chair of the Inter Agency Standing Committee's Working Group on real-time evaluations, and he also served this year as the Chair of the Steering Committee for the UN General Assembly-mandated Five-Year Evaluation of the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).  Scott has long experience in both evaluation and in humanitarian affairs.  Prior to joining OCHA, he served as Senior Evaluation Advisor at the UN Population Fund where he led evaluation missions in many crisis-affected countries; Scott has also worked on evaluations of various UN reform initiative.  He has also served in the Office of Evaluation at the World Food Programme in Rome Italy where he led up evaluations of major humanitarian operations.

Lead Debaters:


IAN SMILLIE Ian Smillie
Ian Smillie was a founder of the Canadian NGO, Inter Pares in 1975, and was Executive Director of CUSO from 1979 to 1983. He has worked on projects with the Humanitarianism and War Project at Tufts University (now the Feinstein International Center) since 1997 and was an adjunct professor at Tulane University from 1998 to 2001. As a development consultant he has worked for many Canadian, American and European organizations. His latest books are The Charity of Nations: Humanitarian Action in a Calculating World (with Larry Minear, 2005), Freedom From Want: The Remarkable Story of BRAC (2009) and Blood on the Stone: Greed, Corruption and War in the Global Diamond Trade (2010). Ian Smillie was a founder-participant in the 50-member ‘Kimberley Process’ (representing more than 75 governments) which has developed and is managing a global certification system to halt the traffic in ‘conflict diamonds’. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2003.

HUNTER MCGILL Hunter McGill
Hunter McGill joined University of Ottawa School of International Development and Globalisation Studies (SIDGS) after an extensive career as an international development practitioner with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). During his career at CIDA he served as director for bilateral programmes for Zimbabwe and Zambia and Jamaica and Belize, and as director-general for humanitarian aid and peacebuilding. At the OECD he was head of the division responsible for peer reviews and evaluation, supporting discussions at the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). He is currently a consultant in international development policy, with clients including Irish Aid, GTZ, the World Bank and CIDA. His expertise lies particularly in the areas of humanitarian aid policy, good practice for bilateral donors and aid effectiveness.