CIDA: Analysis of Humanitarian Needs

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CIDA Analysis of Humanitarian Needs

• Good Humanitarian Donorship Initiative (GHD)
• Geneva, January 27, 2009

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Overview Approaches to better allocations
according to humanitarian needs

• Humanitarian Needs Index (HNI)-Data sources and
  methodology
• Calibration of Natural Disasters
• Calibration of Protracted Emergencies-Key
  Challenges
• Next Steps and ways forward

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CIDAs Humanitarian Needs Index

• What we trying to achieve
• The HNI is a tool to measure comparability
  between emergencies through an analysis of
  mortality and morbidity data
• A subjective weighting of relevant humanitarian
  needs indicators--limits analysis to those deemed
  most relevant and relies on data collected at
  regional level
• HNI determines a relative ranking of emergencies
  anchored around average levels of need

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CIDAs Humanitarian Needs Index

• Sources of information
• The CE-DAT is maintained by the Centre for
  Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED)
  and derives information from field surveys
  conducted by humanitarian organizations (crude
  mortality rate under-5 mortality rate global
  acute malnutrition severe acute malnutrition
  and vaccination coverage) and also the IDMC for
  IDP data
• Practical use for decision-making
• Results of this analysis have been used during
  the last two annual CIDA reviews to help inform
  our funding decisions. The results of the
  analysis are compared and triangulated with other
  qualitative and quantitative data.

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Limitations Next Steps of HNI

• Reliability and validity of the data
• Capacity and expertise for carrying out surveys?
• Consistent and coherent methodologies?
• Subjectivity in interpreting the data
• Different interpretations of need
• Selection and weighting of indicators

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Calibration Table for Natural Disasters

• CIDA/IHA has also developed a method for
  comparing the severity of different natural
  disasters (severity is defined as number of
  people affected or number of people requiring
  life-saving assistance)
• Measures of Severity for calibration affected
  displaced or evacuated dead hectares of
  lost crops homes fully or partially damaged
  people targeted for emergency food assistance
  and people targeted for other core-life saving
  humanitarian assistance

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Strengths Weaknesses of Natural Disasters
Calibration Table

• Strengthens needs-based decision making
  improves consistency
• Enhances transparency to internal external
  audiences provides a record of decision making
• However,
• Data are often incomplete or not available in a
  timely fashion
• Definitions not consistent across organizations
  making data comparisons difficult

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Calibration Table for Protracted Emergencies

• There is an important debate and no clear
  agreement on what indicators to use Fragile
  state index Human Development Index Proportion
  of the population under 1 US a day Current
  allocations of international food aid or of
  people below the poverty line?
• More complex and difficult to develop than
  Natural Disasters Calibration Table
• Further development of HNI favoured over
  Calibration Table for Protracted Emergencies.

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Next Steps and Ways Forward

• CIDA acknowledges that the HNI has important
  limitations (inherent subjectivity, data
  limitations, etc..)
• Epidemiologists at CRED are supportive of this
  work and have offered technical suggestions to
  improve the methodology CIDA is making on-going
  improvements
• CIDA pursues this initiative to make a
  contribution to dialogue around needs
• CIDA will continue to develop and refine
  calibration for natural disasters