Independent Evaluation of the Linkage of Humanitarian Aid and Development Cooperation at the Swiss Development Cooperation
In 2017, Nordic Consulting Group was commissioned by the SDC to carry out an independent evaluation of the linkage (‘nexus’) between humanitarian aid and development cooperation. The mandate was: to assess the performance of SDC strategies, programmes and partnerships in linking humanitarian aid and development cooperation (operational); to analyse to what extent the working procedures, funding procedures/set-up and ways of collaboration are adequate for implementing this linkage in practice (institutional); and to compare the SDC’s performance with international practices (benchmarking).
The evaluation process included close involvement with the SDC’s Core Learning Partnership comprising staff from all SDC departments, from both head office and the field. It was conducted with field visits to Haiti, the Horn of Africa, Mali and Myanmar as well as remote data collection in Pakistan and South Sudan, a large number of individual and group interviews as well as an e-survey.
The period under review was from 2013 to 2017 to assess recent developments as a basis for drawing up the new dispatch. Therefore, the evaluation was to assess to what extent the SDC’s operational instruments and institutional processes ensure that humanitarian strategies and programmes adopt a systems change perspective, taking into account the corresponding development requirements and objectives. With a particular focus on protracted crisis situations, the SDC’s actions are expected to facilitate the interface between relief and development. In turn, development actions include activities to respond to conflict and to reduce disaster risks.
Nordic Consulting Group’s team was spearheaded by Anne-Lise Klausen as Team Leader with the participation of Team Members: Mathias Kjær, Ananda S. Millard, Tasneem Mowjee, Maja Pedersen and Niels Harild.
The final evaluation can be consulted and downloaded on the following link: https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/studien.survey-id-1053.html