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Published on 1 February 2006

Widely criticized for being too little too late, the international response to last year’s food crisis in Niger prompted many international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) to closely examine their involvement. In October, CARE, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Save the Children (Save) and World Vision (WV) sponsored a multi-agency evaluation of their emergency response programs in Niger. The findings were made public in December. Reasoning that it would provide a more global perspective on the potential and actual impacts of the INGO emergency response, the agencies undertook a joint evaluation, rather than individual evaluations. The evaluation was led by an independent evaluator with humanitarian expertise, and some support from the Emergency Capacity Building Project’s accountability initiative, which plans to share what was learned from this evaluation.

One of the more glaring findings of the joint evaluation is the need for better collaboration:

The team noted that the [IWG] Partners were reactive with regard to interagency coordination such that the lack of an effective NGO forum in Niger is a serious weakness in effective programming… opportunities were lost for recognition of Partners’ comparative advantages, establishment of joint advocacy positions and for peer training.  The latter would have been invaluable prior to the emergency intervention.

Fortunately, both the evaluation process and the recommendations have provided impetus for addressing some of the very issues the evaluation cites, and have also led to a better understanding of the context of the response. All this has brought about important improvements in the INGO community’s planning and implementation of emergency mitigation and response activities.

For one, the evaluation has served to bring INGOs together for the purposes of communication, coordination, and advocacy.  This has led to:

Regular INGO meetings: CARE and Save organized bi-weekly meetings of INGOs in October to share quantitative and qualitative reports and discuss the scaling-up and targeting of nutrition activities. These meetings, which are now periodic and are led by different INGOs on a rotating basis. They have helped INGOs lobby the Government of Niger (GoN) and the World Food Program (WFP) for support in specific areas, especially those regarding nutrition.

Partnership with WFP: Following recommendations from the evaluation, CARE and CRS are
working with WFP to align their emergency rehabilitation goals and activities, especially through
implementing Food-For-Work activities and stocking cereal banks with WFP resources.  Several INGOs, including Save and WV, are meeting with WFP and UNICEF to coordinate a new round of food distribution. Discussions include how to work together geographically and support other partners where capacity to distribute is lacking, and how to develop a set of common indicators to identify zones for targeting.

Joint work on a national nutritional recuperation plan: INGOs now regularly attend national health and nutrition coordination meetings, originally sponsored by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, but now managed by the Ministry of Health.  Furthermore, these organizations are working together to develop a unified national action plan for nutritional recuperation.  Regional coordination meetings: INGOs now regularly attend regional coordination meetings, which are held monthly or quarterly around the issues of food security and nutrition. For example, a recent Zinder
Region Health Partners Coordination Meeting included representatives of the World Health Organization, WFP, UNICEF, CARE, CRS, Helen Keller International, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Human Appeal International, and Doctors Without Borders (Belgium and Switzerland).

Shared technical expertise and local knowledge: Increased communication with partners has allowed a greater sharing of technical expertise and local knowledge.  The Ministry of Health and Doctors Without Borders, for example, helped train CARE agents to identify the various types of malnutrition and to treat moderate malnutrition. In the Zinder region, CRS trained staff of NGO GOAL in the implementation of voucher fairs for the purpose of rebuilding communities’ assets in agriculture and livestock. The GoN, Save, CARE, CRS, WV and several local NGOs worked together on food distributions which were coordinated at weekly WFP and government meetings from August through October. In addition, the evaluation has helped development actors better understand and agree upon the complexity of the 2005 emergency in Niger: that it was a combination of chronic food insecurity combined with a quick-onset food crisis and an ongoing nutrition crisis that rendered three million in acute need of outside help. An appreciation of these three facets of the crisis continues to increase the impact of recovery and mitigation efforts as well as preparation for future crises.

Better advocacy for uniform vulnerability indicators: CARE has doubled its advocacy efforts with the GoN to establish comprehensive and uniform indicators for monitoring vulnerability. Including health, nutrition, income, and animal husbandry statistics with existing agricultural production indicators will
get development actors from various sectors more involved and improve the quality and quantity of data. With results and updates that are universally agreed upon, the GoN and INGOs will be able to be better able advocate for international assistance to reduce the vulnerability of Nigeriens.

Increased emphasis on water and sanitation:
Recognizing the strong link between nutrition and water and sanitation, CRS is developing a water and sanitation project that aims to provide vulnerable communities throughout CRS intervention areas with increased and year-round access to potable water year.  CRS is also providing these communities with more latrines and stepping up education on positive hygienic practices.

Integration of nutrition into development programming:
Internally, CARE has established a nutrition working group to explore ways of incorporating nutritional education and/or recuperation in all general program activities, from civil society and youth groups, to animal husbandry, and agriculture, to micro-credit and enterprise. WV is planning to incorporate nutritional education and community-based risk awareness, among other aspects of nutritional programming, into its long-term development projects.  Individual evaluations are better able to examine the complexity of logistics, monitoring, human resource, and financial management activities, and the extent to which regular program activities mitigate crises. These aspects are important to evaluate and improve; however, they often distract us from focusing on the larger picture of how collaboration, coordination, and advocacy can improve INGO responses before, during, and after a crisis. The Niger multiagency evaluation has helped the agencies keep their focus on these larger goals.

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