Evidence

Lack of evidence makes humanitarian action less effective, less ethical and less accountable.

To improve the quality and use of evidence in humanitarian action, ALNAP has worked since 2013 to clarify what we mean by ‘evidence,’ how to assess its quality and highlight the key challenges and approaches to using evidence across different sectors and parts of the humanitarian system.

ALNAP's latest work on the topic looks at the use of evidence for humanitarian resource allocation and the issue of evidence quality and evaluation.

We also run Bridging the Evidence Gap, a quarterly webinar.

Our work on evidence began with the ALNAP 28th Annual Meeting, where Members and experts on evidence gathered to debate issues such as:

What is evidence and what do we need it for?
How good is the evidence that is currently available?
How can we improve the quality and use of evidence?
How does evidence get used by decision-makers?

The resulting study, Insufficient evidence?, built upon the insights of those conversations and identified six criteria to judge the quality of evidence that is generated and used in humanitarian action.

Jump to

'Bridging the evidence gap' webinar series

Kame Sake receives €30 per month from the Kenya Red Cross

Event

13 Dec

Putting money where it matters: What can humanitarians learn from other sectors?

13 Dec 2017

This ALNAP webinar will look at the challenges humanitarian donors and agencies face around gathering and using evidence for allocating resources.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , President of Turkey, with participants during the closing ceremony of the World Humanitarian Summit, which took place in Istanbul, Turkey, on 23-24 May. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

Blog

10 Jan 2017

'Bridging the evidence gap' webinar series

Gathering evidence in an emergency is fraught with difficulties: short timescales, political concerns, and important ethical considerations must all be taken into account.

In recent years, significant progress has been made across the humanitarian sector to fill the evidence gap. But how do we bridge the gap between high quality evidence and humanitarian practice?

Bridging the evidence gap, ALNAP's latest webinar series, highlights new tools, research and initiatives which have taken on a more evidence-driven approach to humanitarian action. Through this series we explore the methodologies and creative designs on the cutting edge and their direct relevance to practitioners. This webinar series is part of ALNAP’s continued work on evidence and evaluation. It is one of the ways in which ALNAP is delivering on our commitment to the World Humanitarian Summit on improving the use of evidence in humanitarian action.