Founded in 2014, HERE-Geneva turns ten in November this year. The system and its internal dynamics have changed very little over the past decade. From the start, HERE focused precisely on this discrepancy between policy and practice, building evidence and putting forward constructive analyses of where the gaps are and where gains can be made for governments and agencies to fulfil their humanitarian responsibilities and commitments.

In the lead-up to our anniversary, join us as we look back on previous work, highlighting the lessons and recommendations that past pieces have brought up and exploring any outcomes, follow-up, or lack thereof. This episode is but one of many components of our retrospective.

In the wake of the latest inter-agency humanitarian evaluation, which found that the UN-led response in Northern Ethiopia amounted to system failure, Lewis Sida and Julia Steets join Ed Schenkenberg, HERE-Geneva’s Executive Director, to discuss such evaluations: their value and purpose, their follow-up, and their future. All three participants have experience with inter-agency humanitarian evaluations, also known as IAHEs.

One of few ways available to independently assess collective humanitarian action, IAHEs are automatically triggered when the global body for humanitarian coordination, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, decides to call on the humanitarian system to mobilise its operational capacity. An obligation of external evaluation follows from this decision. IAHEs are not an in-depth evaluation of any one sector or of the performance of a specific organisation, but they look at how humanitarian organisations, especially those of the UN family, worked together in achieving better results for people affected by crises.

This podcast episode ties in with HERE’s anniversary message on evaluations. The full retrospective is available here.