TWO-YEAR EVALUATION

As requested by the General Assembly (A/RES/60/124), the Secretary-General commissioned an independent review of the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) in 2008, at the end of the second year of operation. 

The evaluation found that CERF has proven itself as a valuable and impartial tool, becoming in a short time-frame an essential feature of international humanitarian action and complementing other humanitarian financing mechanisms.  It concluded that the Fund helped to accelerate response and increase coverage of needs, in addition to serving as a catalyst for improved field-level coordination, and evidence-based prioritization.  The evaluation also outlined several challenges and presented a series of thirty-seven recommendations.   

In response to the recommendations presented in the Two-year Evaluation, a management response matrix was developed with inputs from a wide-range of stakeholders.  The matrix details the response and action to be taken for each recommendation, and serves as a ‘road map’ for the work that needs to be undertaken until the next review of the Fund, planned for 2011.  

INTERIM REVIEW

OCHA commissioned an independent interim review of the grant component of the CERF.  The purpose of the review was to take stock of the CERF’s first year of operations, with the aim of contributing to strengthening the effectiveness of the mechanism and its potential impact on overall humanitarian response.

The Interim Review concluded that significant progress had been made in the implementation of CERF in its first year of operations.  However, there were a number of issues which needed to be clarified, including ensuring a common understanding of the scope of the CERF, providing more effective management of the CERF, strengthening working relationships with UN agencies, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the NGO community, and finally, providing more effective and transparent information on CERF.   

The review presented fifteen recommendations for consideration.  A management response matrix was developed in December 2007 and updated in February 2009.  

Recommendations that were accepted but partially implemented were subsumed under the management response matrix of the Two-year Evaluation.  







[Last updated on 11 May 2009]