On 23 February
2005, eight weeks after the devastating earthquake and tsunamis the
previous December, a group of predominantly humanitarian agencies
met in Geneva. Aware of the added value joint evaluation can bring
to the humanitarian sector, their intention was to create a
sectorwide, multi-agency process whereby participating agencies
would collaborate on evaluations of the tsunami response in order
to optimise sector learning. It was hoped that this collaboration
would reduce the need for individual agency evaluations as well as
duplication of effort.
Another significant intention was to focus collaborative efforts
on recurring systemic problems in humanitarian action, with
analysis concentrated at the policy rather than programmatic
level.
In the wake of this meeting, many of the participating agencies
joined together to form the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition (TEC).
This independent learning and accountability initiative represents
the most intensive study of a humanitarian response since
the Rwanda multi-donor evaluation in the
mid-1990s. It is also the first time since then that the sector
has sought to scrutinise itself as a whole. The TEC is managed
by
a
Core Management Group (CMG) of agencies and
the ALNAP Secretariat (Active
Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in humanitarian
action) is the facilitating platform for the TEC.
The primary aim of the TEC is to improve the quality of
humanitarian action - including the linkages to longer term
recovery and development - by learning lessons from the
international response to the tsunami. To optimise this learning,
TEC member
agencies have worked together by sponsoring
five joint thematic
evaluations on selected aspects of the response. It is the
reports from these five studies that form the basis of the TEC's
Synthesis Report.
In addition to its primary aim, the TEC has a further two
aims:
-
To provide accountability to both donor and affected-country
populations for the overall response: The TEC is doing this by, for
example, producing a number of different reports in addition to its
Synthesis Report that are suitable for public consumption, and by
holding a number
of
evaluation
feedback workshops to validate and create ownership of TEC
findings.
- Testing the TEC approach as a possible model for future joint
collaborative evaluation: In order to achieve this, the TEC has
already organised two learning reviews. Further reviews will be
undertaken over the lifetime of the
TEC.