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EvaluationSC UK, Dafur, 2002Evaluation ofDafur EarlyWarning andFoodInformationSystemSummary of evaluation 1Save the Children UK (SCUK) recentlycommissioned an evaluation of theDarfur Food Information System (DFIS),which was established in North Darfurin 1993. This evaluation was carried out inNovember and December 2005 and covered thethird phase of the DFIS from 2002 to 2004. Bythat time, the system had expanded to monitorthe food security status of displaced Dinka inSouth Darfur and more recently had expandedinto West Darfur. During most of DFIS’s lifetime,its principal role has been to provide earlywarning of the impact of drought, the mainthreat to food security in Darfur. In 2003, armedconflict broke out in the three states of Darfuron an unprecedented scale and with ferociousintensity. Thus, DFIS had to adapt from being adrought-oriented early warning system (EWS)to one where conflict was the principal threat tofood insecurity, triggering the displacement ofover a million people. How DFIS performed inadapting to this very different context was oneof the key focus areas of the evaluation. Theevaluation also reviewed the DFIS’s effectivenessin providing early warning of droughtrelatedfood insecurity before 2003 and in triggeringtimely response.After the tragic death of SCUK staff, theorganisation decided to rapidly pull out of allthe Dafur States on 19th December 2004. As aresult, SCUK had to discontinue DFIS without aproper hand over to other actors. This evaluationalso considers the legacy of DFIS sinceSCUK withdrew from Darfur.Performance of DFIS prior to the conflict –2002 to early 2003Since 1996, DFIS has been based on theHousehold Economy Approach (HEA) methodology.The starting point was to divide ruralNorth Darfur into six ‘food economy zones(FEZ)’ and to carry out baseline profiles in each.North Dafur whereSCUK operated untilDecember 2004DFIS has been run entirely by national SCUKstaff during its lifetime, ensuring a strong senseof ownership of the system and of its methodologyby the SCUK Darfur team.It is unfortunate that some of the baselineprofiles that underpinned DFIS were written upbut not published up until 2004 - at least fouryears after they had all been completed - thusmissing opportunities to influence and inform.Nevertheless, the baseline profiles provide veryvaluable information on livelihoods in NorthDarfur and were essential to the annual villageand household survey carried out in Octobereach year. This is when HEA really came into itsown, producing a clear plan for food aid needsin each FEZ, as well as recommendations forother non-food emergency interventions. Thereis every indication that this annual assessmentwas carried out effectively, professionally andin a timely manner during the pre-conflict period.The collaboration between internationalnon-governmental organisations (INGOs), theWorld Food Programme (WFP) and governmentin the process was exemplary, under theauspices of the Food and Water EmergencyCommittee of North Darfur. In 2003, SCUKplanned a nutrition survey encompassingcausal analysis of one of the FEZs, but the fieldwork was hampered by insecurity.Market monitoring was done weeklythroughout the year as an ongoing indicator offood security status. Nutrition surveys usefullycomplemented the regular food security monitoringby confirming the existence (or otherwise)of a food crisis in a FEZ of particular concern.However, the underlying causes of malnutritionare still poorly understood for someFEZs in North Darfur.The publication of periodic DFIS bulletinsthroughout the year was the main means ofcommunicating EW messages between annualassessments. These bulletins brought togetheranalysis of all the different indicators and wereparticularly useful for trend analysis. However,presentation of the bulletins was not very compelling.Recommendations in earlier evaluationsto improve the bulletins do not seem tohave been effectively implemented.SCUK’s early warnings of annual food aidneeds in North Darfur were rarely heeded anddid not trigger a timely response from donorgovernments. A very small proportion of estimatedneeds were delivered by June/July – thecritical months – in 2001, 2002 and 2003. Thepolitical environment was simply not conduciveto a timely response.Between 2001 and 2003, DFIS’s close relationshipwith state government really paid offin terms of how the authorities, and the Wali inparticular, could use the DFIS analysis for theirown lobbying and advocacy purposes with federalgovernment and with international donors.Collaboration with federal government at atechnical level was also strong. DFIS was seento provide accurate and realistic estimates ofneed partly because of its methodology. Butfederal government’s overall willingness torespond to food crises and food insecurity inDarfur was limited.The negative impact of a consistently lateresponse to food crises in Darfur included distressmigration, high malnutrition rates andreduced cultivation because of food shortagesin the early 2000s. As is typical for most EWS,DFIS’s focus was biased towards informationgathering and analysis with much less attentionpaid to communication and advocacy. Giventhe hostile political environment that DFIS wasoperating within, there needed to be a muchgreater investment in advocacy (and persuasiveoral presentations rather than written reports)than was actually the case. This would haverequired organisational commitment at all levels:in Darfur, Khartoum and London.Technical support and capacity building ofDFIS partners has been a prominent feature ofits work. As a result, SCUK has built up a cadreof individuals in North Darfur – in governmentand in INGOs – with a good understanding offood security and of HEA, and has built a senseof ownership of the DFIS approach. The challengewith government was how to buildcapacity in a sustainable way when governmentdepartments were so poorly resourced interms of basic infrastructure, such as computersand transport. Also, as government officialsbecame more skilled, many sought work withinternational agencies. The one gap in DFIS’scapacity-building work was with local communitybased organisations (CBOs) and NGOs,some of which enjoy much greater access torural areas and local communities during thecurrent conflict than government staff.Performance of DFIS once conflict becamethe principal threat to food insecurity, 2003-2005During 2003/04, SCUK’s programme in Darfurwent through a major transformation to adaptto a large-scale and highly politicised, conflictrelatedemergency. By all accounts, this was avery painful transition, ridden with tensionbetween incoming international staff and longtermnational staff, unclear management structuresand the emergence of dysfunctional parallelsystems. This seriously inhibited DFIS’s performance.19
Methodologically, it really struggled toadapt. A major gap was the lack of anyassessment of DFIS’s capacity to adapt tothis escalating conflict environment, norwas consideration given to bringing inexternal expertise, despite the limitedexpertise in-country to work in such a politicisedconflict environment. Erroneously, thefocus of the country programme was onlongterm issues of vulnerability and foodsecurity in Darfur. But fortuitously thismeant that an external consultant wasbrought in during 2004 to support DFIS toaddress underlying issues of vulnerability.Adapting to the new conflict environmentwas not part of the consultant’s terms of reference,although this soon became central toher role. This input was critical but was late.For example, not until mid-2004 did theHEA methodology adapt to doing rapidassessments. Yet these were needed frommid-2003. When rapid assessments werecarried out, the reports were strong andwell-written. Meanwhile the DFIS bulletinswere not. They tended to follow the old formatso they were neither compelling norclear in terms of their key message. A muchsharper and tighter analysis was needed. Inshort, the key early warning/monitoringrole that SCUK could have played during2004 was not fully realised.In order to respect humanitarian principleswhen conflict broke out, and to protectSCUK’s independence, DFIS needed toadapt institutionally to this changed andhighly politicised environment. Mostnotably it needed to distance itself from government,one of the key actors in the conflict.Unfortunately this took a long time to happen,dangerously affecting perceptions ofSCUK. Such an adjustment in institutionalrelationships would never have been easyand could only have been managed by anexpatriate presence. It was too much to haveasked of national staff who had spent yearsbuilding those relationships.Despite these shortcomings, there is evidencethat DFIS played a valuable role earlyon in the conflict, briefing incoming agenciesand providing time-series data (e.g.market price data) on demand. Althoughslow to be written up, its database on livelihoodsbefore the conflict is invaluable forcomparative purposes to understand howlivelihoods have been affected by the conflict,and is being used as such by a smallnumber of international agencies.SCUK’s withdrawal from Darfur waslamented, without exception, by all agenciesinterviewed during this evaluation. It hasleft a gap in information collection andanalysis at state-level that has not yet beenfilled, as most agencies focus on informationcollection in their own particular geographicarea of coverage. Unfortunately the waythat SCUK withdrew did not help to bridgethis gap. Withdrawal appears to havebecome a logistics exercise in which strategicdecisions about handover to other agenciesand even protection of the SCUKresource base, were overlooked. In short,SCUK has not left behind a functioninginformation system in Darfur.1The Darfur Early Warning and Food InformationSystem. Final Evaluation of Phase 111. By MargieBuchanan-SmithEvaluation of use of IFEtraining materialsBy Chloe AngoodAn evaluation was recently conductedof two training modules (Module 1and 2) on Infant Feeding inEmergencies (IFE) developed by theIFE Core Group (UNICEF, WHO, WFP,UNHCR, IBFAN-GIFA, CARE USA, FondationTerre des hommes and ENN) and produced bythe ENN 1 . The purpose of the training modulesis to prepare emergency relief staff to safeguardmaternal and child health in emergencies byensuring appropriate infant feeding. Module 1is aimed at emergency relief staff while Module2 is more specifically designed for health andnutrition workers directly involved with caregiversand infants. Both modules are availablein print, online and on CD.MethodThe evaluation was conducted betweenFebruary and May 2006 and covered the periodApril 2005 – April 2006. It involved an analysisof ENN’s distribution database, downloadsfrom the ENN website, and an email surveytargeting 100 recipients. Thirty-four recipientsresponded to this email (one third of all recipients).Answers were clarified through furtheremails and telephone calls.Main findingsEvaluationChloe has a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree in Development Studies, withan emphasis on HIV/AIDS, nutrition and agriculture. Following 3 years as a programmeco-ordinator for the NGO, Viva Network, in Zimbabwe, she worked forthe HQ offices of Viva Network (programme management and training) and forMango (recruitment). She is currently studying for a MSc in Public HealthNutrition at the University of Southampton and working part-time for the ENN.Figure 1 Use of materials by respondents2520151050None Own interest On file/in libraryPassed to otherorganisationsDistribution of training materialsThe print materials and CDs were distributedon request by the ENN. A discretionary subsidisedcharge was applied, although the materialswere available free to individuals or agencieswho could not afford to pay for them.Overall, 169 copies of Module 1 and 826 ofModule 2 and 47 CDs were distributed to 28organisations (including UN organisations,local and international NGOs, training andresearch institutions) and 13 individuals in 46different countries. In addition, 1755 itemswere downloaded from ENN’s websitebetween December 2005 and April 2006. Therelatively small number of CDs requested maybe due to lack of marketing as the CDs hadbeen developed and produced by the ENN inhouseon a ‘shoe-string’ budget, with no fundingfor larger scale production and distribution.The majority of the materials (90%) were distributedto IFE Core Group members, mainlyUNICEF, UNHCR, IBFAN-GIFA and CAREUSA. The materials were mostly used internallyby these organisations, in regional and fieldcentres, or were distributed to partners. In someinstances, the materials were shared withdonors to highlight the work of the IFE CoreGroup and in one case cited, to successfullyfundraise for continued agency participation inthe IFE Core Group.Only 10% of the print materials were disseminateddirectly to recipients outside of the IFECore Group. Donor agencies did not feature onthe print distribution list but were targeted bysome IFE Core Group members and at thelaunch of the materials at the UN SCN meetingin 2005.Downloading Module 2 from ENN’s websitemay well be a more practical means of access foragencies – web access was identified as a significantaccess point in a previous evaluation ofModule 1. However, even allowing for that, amore proactive targeting of field level operationsis needed.Uses of materialsThe materials have been used in a variety ofways (See figure 1) in different contexts. Theseinclude:• Training field practitioners. For example,UNHCR in Ethiopia used Module 2 to trainfield personnel in seven refugee camps,including doctors, nurses, midwives,community health agents and traditionalbirth attendants.• Producing other training courses and materials.For example, IBFAN-Asia Pacific usedModules 1 and 2 to develop guidelines fortheir partners in how to survey calamitystruck areas following the Asian tsunami.• As an advocacy tool for policy change(see box 1).1See Modules 1 and 2 online at www.ennonline.net and contactdetails at the end for print copies.Advocacy/awarenessraisingTrainingothersCreating othermaterialsno. respondents20
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