FIVE-YEAR EVALUATION OF THE CENTRAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE FUND
The General Assembly-mandated five-year evaluation of the CERF was undertaken by Channel Research, an independent development consulting and evaluation firm. The evaluation provides an independent assessment of the CERF over the period from 2006 until 2010. It highlights the CERF’s strengths and weaknesses and provides recommendations at the policy and operational levels to improve its effectiveness.
The CERF five-year evaluation was carried out by a team of twelve independent consultants over an eight-month period. Data was collected through 16 case studies, based on seven field missions (Afghanistan, Kenya, Niger, the occupied Palestinian territory, Pakistan, the Philippines and Somalia (the Somalia study was conducted from Kenya)) where the CERF has funded humanitarian programmes and a desk-based review of CERFoperations in nine other countries (Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Guatemala, Lesotho, Mongolia and Nepal). The country studies was supplemented by visits to UN headquarters in Geneva, Rome and New York and to six donor agency headquarters.
In line with OCHA’s Guidelines on Management Response and Follow-Up to Evaluations, the CERF Secretariat developed OCHA’s Management Response Plan (MRP) to the five-year evaluation in consultation with a variety of stakeholders both inside and outside of the UN Secretariat, and the MRP was then approved by the Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Ms. Valerie Amos. Implementation of the follow-up actions contained in the MRP will be tracked by the CERF Secretariat and the MRP periodically updated before the meetings of the CERF Advisory Group.
Country Reports for the 5-Year Evaluation of CERF
INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF THE VALUE ADDED OF THE CERF IN BOLIVIA, COLOMBIA, ETHIOPIA AND ZIMBABWE 2011
Following endorsement by the CERF Advisory Group of the draft Performance and Accountability Framework (PAF) at its July 2010 meeting, the CERF Secretariat finalized the PAF in August 2010. Amongst other things, the PAF foresees three to five country-level reviews of the value added of the CERF per year to be conducted by independent evaluation experts. In April 2011, the CERF Secretariat commissioned Tasneem Mowjee and Glyn Taylor, independent humanitarian consultants, to conduct country-level reviews of the CERF in Bolivia, Colombia, Ethiopia and Myanmar.
Field visits for the review in Bolivia, Colombia and Ethiopia took place in April and May. Due to the inability to obtain a visa, the fourth country was changed from Myanmar to Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe review took place in August.
CHAD
John Watt - Independent Humanitarian Consultant
December 2010 |
MAURITANIA
John Watt - Independent Humanitarian Consultant
December 2010 |
SRI LANKA
John Watt - Independent Humanitarian Consultant
November 2010 |
INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF THE VALUE ADDED OF THE CERF IN CHAD, MAURITANIA AND SRI LANKA
Following endorsement by the CERF Advisory Group of the draft Performance and Accountability Framework (PAF) at its July 2010 meeting, the CERF Secretariat finalized the PAF in August 2010. Amongst other things, the PAF foresees three to five country-level reviews of the value added of the CERF per year to be conducted by independent evaluation experts. The CERF Secretariat commissioned John Watts, an independent consultant from the United Kingdom, to conduct country-level reviews of the CERF in Chad, Mauritania and Sri Lanka in October 2010. Reviews were to employ the methodology tested in the pilot study of the value added of the CERF in Kenya in early 2010. Countries were chosen so as to reflect recipients of both large and small amounts of CERF funding, natural as well as man-made disaster and to avoid duplication with countries selected for the CERF five-year evaluation. The reviews largely focussed on activities in 2009 based on the 2009 annual report of the RC/HCs due in March 2010.
 |
EVALUATION OF FAO INTERVENTIONS FUNDED BY THE CERF
In 2010, FAO completed an evaluation of CERF-funded projects implemented by FAO from 2006 to 2009. This is the first time an agency has engaged in such an exercise and will contribute to the General Assembly mandated five-year evaluation of the CERF which has just commenced. The evaluation intends to contribute to improved relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of emergency activities carried out by FAO with CERF funding. The stated aim of the report is to provide feedback and guidance to FAO’s management on operational processes, constraints and projects achievements, to account for the use of CERF funds to the CERF Secretariat, the ERC, donors, governments of countries affected by crises and other stakeholders.
Since the inception of CERF, CERF has provided over $166 million in funding to FAO projects. The total number of projects covered in the evaluation is 28, approximately one fifth of the 160 CERF-funded projects implemented by FAO from 2006 to 2009. The evaluation demonstrates that the CERF has enhanced FAO’s response capacity over the past five years by providing reliable, rapid and predictable funding, which has helped save lives and restores livelihoods in crisis situations.
INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF THE VALUE ADDED OF THE CERF IN KENYA
At the request of the CERF Advisory Group, the CERF Secretariat developed a draft Performance and Accountability Framework (PAF) and commissioned an independent reviewer to evaluate the effectiveness of PAF in one country. After analysing CERF funding, the CERF Secretariat selected Kenya for this review as humanitarian agencies in Kenya have been consistently one of the highest recipients of CERF funding.
This review aimed to assess individual indicators in the PAF and to test the PAF’s overall feasibility. The review demonstrated that it is perfectly feasible to use the draft PAF for country reviews and found that the indicators are a helpful way to structure the review. The review found that the CERF has added value for UN agencies by providing funding early on in the year; filling funding gaps; enabling agencies to leverage funding from other donors; complementing other donor funds; and being flexible. Additionally, the evaluation showed that the CERF Secretariat has simplified both narrative and financial reporting formats. Lastly, it was indicated that while the CERF has supported coordination among sector groups, it appears to be unrealistic to expect it to strengthen humanitarian response capacity due to the short-term nature of CERF funding.
PERFORMANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY FRAMEWORK
Performance and Accountability Framework (PAF) was established at the request of private donor and Member States as a means for formalizing a clear set of accountability mechanisms and reporting processes. The CERF Secretariat, and by extension the Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC), will use the PAF to clarify performance expectations and management accountabilities among different actors and will report according to the mechanisms established in the framework.
The purpose of PAF is to ensure that the flexibility and straightforward nature of the Fund is complemented by an appropriate level of transparency and accountability. The PAF makes use of a logic model approach as a means of clarifying accountability and performance expectations around a set of agreed CERF outputs, outcomes and impacts. The development of the PAF has helped to identify gaps in the information being collected, and to provide options for filling these gaps.
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.
EVALUATION OF THE CERF
In May 2009, CERF contributed nearly $2 million to FAO’s regional project for Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi which allowed for aerial survey and operations to be quickly and effectively expanded for locust control. The specific objective of the regional CERF project was to mitigate the chances of swarms leaving the outbreak areas by strengthening the response capacity of IRLCO-CSA and the national plant protection agencies in Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique to effectively cope with developing Red Locust threats with special attention to the safeguard of human and environment health. In September 2009, FAO concluded an evaluation of the project. Evaluators concluded that the CERF responded swiftly to the request for emergency funding from FAO/IRLCO-CSA and that ultimately, the objective of the CERF project was essentially achieved in that there were no swarm escapes from any of the potential outbreak areas; threats to national and regional food security were minimized, and an estimated 598,000 hectors of food crops were protected in Tanzania alone.
Updated 6 January 2012