Building Effective Monitoring and Beneficiary Accountability Systems for Remotely-managed Humanitarian and Development Projects, in Insecure Locations
- Project Summary
Project Start Date / 16 August 2011
Project End Date / 15 February 2012 (6 month project duration)
Project Coordinator / Bryony Norman, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer,
Tearfund Disaster Management Team, Afghanistan
Funding Source / Humanitarian Innovations Fund (
Total Budget / £20,000.00
Project Stakeholders / Humanitarian and Development Non-Government Organisations (local, national and international levels);
United Nations (UN) Agencies;
Institutional Donor Agencies;
Research and Good Practice Agencies (both consortia and individual agencies);
Humanitarian Innovations Fund (HIF).
Project Overview / A duel-purpose project, designed to research the issues faced by humanitarian and development organisations, donors and UN agencies, that currently implemented (or are considering implemented) remote-management strategies as a response to high insecurity in project location areas, in regards to monitoring and beneficiary accountability practice. This research will feed into the brainstorming and innovative development of solutions and practices which will address the issues raised with regard to monitoring and beneficiary accountability practice. A final report, detailing the research produced, issues faced by individual agencies, and potential solutions that can be used to address these issues, will be developed and published, in order to make it widely disseminated to different humanitarian and development agencies.
Whilst there is a strong focus in this project on remote-management approaches and strategies in Afghanistan (and the impact that these have on monitoring and beneficiary accountability), humanitarian and development organisations from Darfur, the Republic of South Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, have also been invited to participate in the research.
The project seeks to be as demand-led by humanitarian and development actors as possible, so as to ensure that the research and proposed solutions to address and enhance project monitoring and beneficiary accountability, can be as useful and relevant as possible to individual humanitarian and development agencies. To this end, individual humanitarian and development organisations, institutional donors, research and good practice organisations, have all been invited to participate in a combination of individual interviews and focus group discussions at key stages in the research and innovation processes of this project.
- Project Context and Background
Deterioration in security across Afghanistan, in conjunction with a rising number of violent attacks against humanitarian workers, has led increasing numbers of humanitarian agencies to adopt systems of remote management as a way of continuing humanitarian assistance to civilian populations, whilst removing portions of their staff from harm’s way[1]. UN OCHA state that “violent attacks against aid workers [have] tripled in the last decade”[2].What was initially a reactive and temporary response by humanitarian agencies to high insecurity is now considered a permanent way of working in some areas. Tearfund, like other agencies, has now been operating remotely in Kandahar for approximately 3 years.
Tearfund has operated in Kandahar since 2001 with senior project staff initially based in situ and able to visit project beneficiaries. Following the kidnap of an expatriate NGO worker in Kandahar in 2008, Tearfund and other agencies moved to a system of remote management. Tearfund relocated its Area Coordinator to Kabul and insecurity limits their ability to safely visit project beneficiaries. This practice is not unusual in Afghanistan, as well as in many other insecure locations across the world (agencies in Somalia, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Darfur are operating projects remotely).
This has significant implications for project monitoring and, therefore, on the assurance of project quality in insecure areas. Where senior project staff cannot directly monitor project activities and meet beneficiaries, there is a reliance on local project staff, who are themselves implementing the project, to also monitor it. There is currently a huge gap in published research addressing the issues faced by humanitarian agencies who are attempting to monitor projects remotely and attempting to improve and enhance beneficiary accountability practices in remotely-managed project locations. While the Humanitarian Practitioners’ Network (HPN) has published guidelines on remote management[3], limited guidance is provided on remote monitoring. Likewise, Oxfam International collaborated in 2009 with Merlin to develop a discussion paper for the Somalia NGO Consortium which focused on remote programming modalities. A briefing paper, developed by G. Hansen, also aimed to address remote management, focusing on operational modalities in Iraq (2008). Though many of these existing publications pay some attention to the issue of remote monitoring, it is only done so as an aspect of the wider issue of remote management, and research and guidance on the issue is highly limited[4]. A Humanitarian Outcomes paper, published in early 2010, noted that “shifting to remote management [means] accepting an unavoidable lowering of technical sophistication and versatility, as well as for programme monitoring and evaluation standards”[5], but failed to identify any stringent guidelines or procedures to address this issue.An opportunity therefore exists to capture current practices and to critically evaluate remote monitoring practices so as to determine the extent to which recent adaptations are meeting the challenge of ensuring quality project implementation in insecure areas. Alongside ground breaking remote monitoring systems that have yet to be widely disseminated there exists ample scope for innovation of new practices.
- Project Approach and Methodology
This project will deliver innovation by researching other agencies’ current approaches to remote monitoring and beneficiary accountability (both within and outside of Afghanistan), and by identifying solutions which will enable them to tighten or implement more effective and quality-assuring remote monitoring systems. The project will be demand-led through collaboration with these humanitarian actors. The project facilitator will use individual interviews, focus group discussions, baseline assessments, and email and skype consultations in order to identify the issues related to the successful monitoring of remotely-managed projects, and to identify, test and select innovative solutions. Learning reviews will be conducted regularly in order to draw out key learning and recommendations from the process, which will be fed back into the future stages of the project.
Project implementation has been planned across5 separate processes, as follows:
1 / Research (2 months) / Individual research-based interviews with project stakeholders will be facilitated in the first 2 months of the project. Standardised questionnaires for each group of project stakeholders have been developed in order to standardise interviews, and to support the analysis of research data. Interviews with the following project stakeholders have been arranged:- 20 Humanitarian and/or Development NGOs or UN agencies (local, national and international) currently operating in Afghanistan;
- 12 Humanitarian and/or Development NGOs or UN agencies (local, national and international) currently operating in Darfur, the Republic of South Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan or Sri Lanka;
- 6 Good Practice and/or Research Consortia or Individual Agencies (including HAP International, ALNAP, BOND, the Overseas Development Institute, the Afghan Public Policy and Research Organisation, Samuel Hall Research Consultancy);
- 5 Institutional Donor Agencies (based in and supporting programmes in Afghanistan).
Review of existing research and interest into the issues of remote monitoring and accountability will also be undertaken (including contact with Once Removed paper authors).
2 / Consultation (1 month) / Data from each individual interview will be analysed and documented. A report summarising the predominant issues related to monitoring and beneficiary accountability that are faced by humanitarian and development actors, because of the constraints of remote-management strategies, will be developed and presented to those actors who are based in Afghanistan at a focus group discussion meeting. Opportunity will be provided at this meeting for the representatives from each participating humanitarian and development organisation to comment on the research and feedback to the project coordinator. The report will be circulated by email to humanitarian and development actors outside of Afghanistan, and will also be followed up by skype and phone calls, and by face-to-face meetings with UK-based Head Office personnel, where necessary. (Circulation to HAP, ALNAP, and BOND will be included in this).
The consultation process will be used to refine the research report, and to identify obvious ‘solutions’ which can be developed in the next process.
3 / Development of Practical Solutions (1.5 months) / The project coordinator will utilise the research collected from individual interviews and focus group discussions in order to identify different practical solutions to address the issues faced by humanitarian and development actors, related to monitoring and accountability in remotely-managed project locations. Solutions will aim to be as practical as possible, and some will begin to be piloted by Tearfund’s Kandahar project team, for further research and testing purposes (this will include a further visit to Kandahar’s project location by the project coordinator). At least 5 separate solutions should be identified. The project coordinator will ensure the participation of at least 5 individual humanitarian and/or development organisations within Afghanistan, 3 outside of Afghanistan, and at least 2 separate research and/or good practice institutions (1 within Afghanistan and 1 internationally). The project coordinator will also work closely with representatives from CAFOD UK and Tear Australia, as they seek to research and identify solutions for similar issues.
A set of practical guidelines, detailing each individual identified solution will be developed.
4 / Consultation on Developed Solutions (1 month) / A further focus group discussion, based in Afghanistan, will be coordinated in order for the practical guidelines to be presented to wider project stakeholders. Opportunity will be provided during this discussion for individual project stakeholders to comment and feedback on the proposed solutions. Focus of discussion will address the practicality and feasibility of the solutions, the impact of the solutions (whether they will truly work), the costing to support the solutions. Opportunity to feed in other comments will also be included.
The practical guidelines will also be circulated to humanitarian and/or development actors outside of Afghanistan, in order to support the consultation with those actors who are not based in Afghanistan. Likewise, it is assumed that a trip to the UK in order to meet with UK-based Head Office personnel of organisations will be undertaken (these will include meetings with ALNAP, and BOND, where relevant).This trip is planned for mid-December 2011.
5 / Finalisation of Research, Case Studies and Developed Solutions (1 month) / This will complete the project. Learning, research, feedback from throughout the project process will feed into a final report, detailing the research findings from the project, case studies proposed by NGOs, as well as the developed solutions. A final focus group discussion will be scheduled in order to present this report (which will also be shared by email with organisations outside of Afghanistan). External publication will be sought, and currently the Overseas Development Institute, HAP International, as well as the Humanitarian Innovations Fund, are interested in publishing the report.
1
[1]Once Removed: Lessons and Challenges in Remote Management of Humanitarian Operations for Insecure Areas, Humanitarian Outcomes Paper, February 2010
[2]Afghanistan: Humanitarian work most dangerous in ten years, One World Article, April 2011.
[3] Humanitarian Exchange 47: Security; GPR 8: Operational Security Management in Violent Environments.
[4] The Humanitarian Outcomes paper (2010) includes a chapter on Programme Quality and Effectiveness. The research that is included here is a useful introduction to the issues related to remote monitoring, and will be used as part of the research for this project. Contact will be made with the project facilitators for this publication, in order to invite comments and shared-learning on the issues of remote monitoring.
[5]Once Removed… Humanitarian Outcomes Paper, 2010