Over the past decade, protection in humanitarian crises has grown significantly as a sector. As a recent review pointed out, however, the assessment of protection and activities has not been adequately covered in debates on evaluation of humanitarian action. Although we know evaluation is important, we still do not have clear agreements on what constitutes success and how to measure it. Yet, being able to gauge success (or lack thereof) will clearly have an impact on how we proceed in future crises.
Community based protection in the DRC
Oxfam’s protection programme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has certainly faced challenges in evaluating its effectiveness and progress. Since 2009, Oxfam has provided support to Community Protection Committees (“committees”) in the DRC to identify protection threats, ranging from illegal road barriers, taxes and forced work, to early marriage and others forms of gender-based violence. Once these threats are identified, the committees engage with local civilian and military authorities on actions to address the threats through positive dialogue, local awareness-raising and advocacy actions.
Crucial for evaluation, and particularly Results-Based Management approaches, is determining what realistic changes a programme is seeking to achieve.
