A Selection of TEC Findings and Recommendations Relevant to GHD Principles February 2006 Montreux Niels Dabelstein The Tsunami Evaluation Coalition

The response to the Tsunami was the biggest (and fastest) international response to a natural disaster on record, and an unprecedented number of countries contributed to the response. The relief phase was effective in ensuring that immediate survival needs were met – through a mixture of immediate local assistance and international assistance in the first weeks. The scale of the Tsunami response acted as a giant lens, illuminating faults in the global system for humanitarian provision. The Tsunami Evaluation Coalition

Findings and recommendations from the five TEC thematic evaluations against key GHD principles: Strengthening capacity Donor funding (flexible, timely, predictable, long-term, proportionate) Needs assessment Standards and implementation Learning and accountability The Tsunami Evaluation Coalition

Strengthening Capacity 1.Focus on direct implementation mitigated against capacity strengthening 1.International humanitarian standards cannot be met in the current institutional set up.. emphasis needs to shift from delivery to support. 2.It may pay more to prepare national counterparts than to invest in our own readiness to intervene forever. 3.A fundamental reorientation of the humanitarian sector is required to recognize that ownership of humanitarian assistance belongs to beneficiaries; that local and national capacities are the starting point and other players’ roles are to support and build them.

Donor Funding 1.A real system of decision-making based on humanitarian principles was lacking. Rather, funding was driven by politics, funds, the media and contextual opportunism. 1.Donors are pushing agencies into claiming they can do more than they have the remotest possibility of doing 2.Donor timeframes hampered a coordinated approach. Subsequently coordination and linkages between relief and recovery were not well- established. There is a need for functional links between relief and development within many donor agencies.

Donor Funding 4.At the macro level, appeals are not a coherent way of responding to humanitarian emergencies, or of ensuring effective and impartial allocation between different emergencies. More flexibility is needed. 5.Need of larger multilateral emergency fund, and a reduced reliance on appeals. Criteria for allocation must be transparent, accountability defined and standardized. 6.Funding structures need to allow for ‘pooling’ so that agencies can transfer funds that are in excess of their own capacity.

Needs Assessment All studies recognise that in the immediate phase funding was driven by politics, funds, the media and contextual opportunism and not allocated according to need. Past this immediate phase donors should, for example: 1.Join forces for the initial needs assessment – to be carried out jointly with national authorities. 2.Stop dispatching their own assessment missions and rather rely on supporting the relevant UN and national entities to do this. 3.Simultaneously reform their own decision-making processes to make the response more evidence friendly/needs based. 4.Assist national authorities to make greater use of remote sensing when access is difficult. 5.Past the acute emergency phase make their funding conditional on solid, documented needs assessments. 6.Establish a fund exclusively for assessment purposes.

Implementation 1.Greater use of NGO consortia, and pooled funding through national governments, should be explored. 2.Military logistics were invaluable in the acute phase, but not all were essential to the relief effort. 3.The coordinated use of cash grants and loans provided through existing institutions are potentially a more effective and efficient way of funding recovery and reconstruction than direct implementation by international and national agencies. 4.Little evidence of cross-sectoral integrated resource allocation. 5.Partnerships with local communities are compromised when key decisions made at international HQs and in donor agencies.

Learning and Accountability 1.Generous levels of funding provided flexibility. - And created obstacles to field level learning. 2.Tracking funds improved, but still difficult. 3.Transaction costs/overhead charges not transparent 4.Donors persisted in highlighting their own individual contributions. 5.Staff time taken up for visiting delegations

Change advocated by all five studies will require a major adjustment in attitude and practice among humanitarian actors leading to real accountability and cooperation.