On Wednesday, 25 February 2015, PHAP hosted an online introductory briefing on the topic of its Third Exchange Hub: Measuring success in protection programming. Participants learned more about the current status of two key initiatives in this area: InterAction’s Results-Based Protection Program and ALNAP’s program on Evaluating protection in humanitarian action.
The event included short briefings from Francesca Bonino, Research Fellow at ALNAP and head of their program on evaluating protection, and Jessica Lenz, Senior Program Manager with InterAction who leads the Results-Based Protection program.
Francesca focused on evaluation and on ALNAP’s ongoing initiative to develop and pilot guidance for evaluators looking at protection in humanitarian contexts. It gives an overview of what are the main challenges that confront humanitarian evaluators and evaluation commissioning agencies when they look at protection. The presentation touches on the perceived gaps that have been noticed by ALNAP members when they evaluate protection in humanitarian action and concludes with some preliminary observations of what could be done to start addressing those gaps.
Jessica focused on InterAction's Results-Based Protection Program that launched in 2012. This program is bringing together experts and experienced practitioners to actively contribute to identification, review, testing, and documentation of key elements supporting results-based approaches. A key element of a results-based approach identified during the first phase of this program is that a response is heavily dependent on a comprehensive protection analysis that includes the perspective of the affected population. The program is currently exploring the key characteristics within program design and an interagency protection strategy that lead to protection outcomes.