Old: Conflict in the Sudan

ok! some success! i have a map which actually shows where Nuba is! Hurrah! still feeling way out of my depth, it's such a big situation!

i also have extensive sudan stats, At Risk - which includes a section on the drought in '88-'89 not '83-'87

so, for the context, i am going to say abit about:

(*) stats
(*) the impacts of the '88-'89 drought
(*) the famine in Bahr El Ghazal
(*) the genocide in Nuba
(*) IDP situation

i know this all needs to be only brief.

think we have given ourselves a very interesting situation to investigate. options for varying the response seem to be very limited. evaluations seem to agree that OLS is the only way Hum Ass could have been provided and the main problems with Ass were due to restrictions on OLS.

so, basically, in terms of response we can only really take OLS as a given and say what could have been improved outside of restrictions on OLS. Poor co-ordination and coherence seems a big issue.

i also think we are being a bit narrow minded with our focus on certain evaluations. there are many available and the exec summaries, findings and TOR supply all of the information that we require for a simple evaluation. in depth evaluations of in depth evaluations does not seem useful as the whole point of exec summaries, findings and TOR is to remove the need for in depth understanding.

i have the appropriate parts of DEC and CARE, we need to find a few more, i reckon (see ALNAP link below). Brief but broad. The more different evaluations with different perspectives we get i think the better. the focus on what they are actually evaluating should come later and much easier.

hope that meets with at least partital agreement.

i hope to knock up a bit about geography today and significant events/aspects of the crisis.

hope all is good with you guys

am still a bit confused about evaluation of evaluations versus evaluation of response.

for part 2 we are looking at the criteria i suggested below to evaluate the evaluation approaches of each organisation. however, in part 3 it is necessary to use information in all evaluations to identify +/- aspects of the different responses? true?

so, while i may be evaluating the DEC evaluation i still need to note the +/- of all the interventions mentioned in the DEC evaluation so as to aid part 3. Likewise, while Sandy is looking at the DANIDA evaluation, she still needs to be aware of what they are saying about OLS as it was part-funded by DANIDA even tho she is not actually interested in WFP evaluation.

that's correct isn't it? so me reading DANIDA and noting what they say about OLS is pointless cos Sandy should really be doing that as it is her evaluation.

Essentially we each have our own evaluation but we are all concern with all responses but from different perspectives?

results for Sudan country search on ALNAP dBase

ALNAP

no luck for MSF, we may have to look at the DEC evaluation instead. Phil was involved with all of them!

have download all executive summaries, findings and TOR where available for relevant evaluations.

should i crack on with WFP/OLS as it seems the most pressing or have you started it em?

MSF-B and WFP evaluations distinctly unavailable - think we may have to do with the DEC evaluation

other than that:

I am doing paragraphs on the famine in Bahr E G and genocide in Nuba. Impact of the 83-87 drought. Camps around Khartoum.

i'll also look into geography and stats.

i'll also try to figure out what evaluations we can get!

DANIDA

Who - Danish offical humanitarian assistance

How - Works through implementing Organizations (no direct involvement) inc. UN agencies, Danish and INGOs etc.

For - emergency relief and other forms of humanitarian assistance.

Evaluation Objectives - relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and impact
- provide reccomendations
- assess usefulness on 1996 OLS evaluation and if reccomendations had been acted upon.

Eval of all of Danida in the 1990's and Sudan was one of the sample case studies selected. Commissioned to Overseas Development Institute - UK. Completed as a part of larger evluation with final outcome to be a synthesis report.

Evaluation undertaken in 2 parts by 2 teams

S sudan - 16 days - 5 sites - 2 people
N sudan - refused visas and entry - 1 person - 7 days - Kartoum and Wau

Team used - Good practise review on 'Evaluating Humanitarian Assistance Programmes in Complex Emergencies (Hallam 1988)

Focused on - famine in Bahr El Ghazal 1998 as a case study

Major limitations
- lack of entry to N sudan
- seven yr span - info not available - fieldworkers not available for interviews
- reliance on documentation and correspondance from others rather than collecting own info.
- lack of monitoring due to nature of funding implenting agencies - often had to rely on evaluation done by NGOs in any were done.
- timing - peak of Kosovo restrictions on resources and access to NGOs
- inconsistance of data cos it was from differnet sources.

Thats the basic outline as for its usefulness thats alot more work.
I'll have to use the blue book as a framework, i have read it but i'll apply it to this evaluation, focusing on part 4 and part 5.

Not sure how long that will take, there is a party tonight and its debs last day tomoz so realistically dont expect anything till monday.

Hope is going well your end, sandy

if em is looking at OLS for part one maybe em should look at WFP (OLS) for the evaluation? i am lookin for the MSF-B and WFP evaluations

p.s. we're on google :D ! so i am going to edit the colourful language!

So many Questions Phil,

WPF and MSF evaluations - any luck? It might be worth emailing Phil O'Keefe or Andrew to see if they know how to get hold of them.

I guess we all have stuff on the what and where, i'm not to worried about that bit and we can formalize it together. Probably best just to do a rought draft of what you know, i've looked more into the background n root causes then what faction did what to whom.

Em it seems you are left with OLS, hope thats cool. Just a why it was felt necessary, what it was trying to do and some of its good and bad points, there is too much info to go into much depth, so probably best just to give an overview and some examples.

I think Nuba needs to be meantioned as an extra element of the conflict. Just a paragraph or two, saying why it is 'special' and what happened and is happening there. I think it is still excluded from the peace talks.

Not read anything about ICRC but i think best to leave it for now and get on with what we have got. It probably is worth looking into what they were doing cos they are one of the big ones.

Right so i'll crack on with Danida and i'll try to have something to put on the blog in the next to days. I'll draft something to test the framework works so we can all evaluate the evaluations in a similar style.

Glad you dont think i'm being bossy, but not really sure that this is 'my baby'. I am doing a lot of reading around the humanitarian assistance subject, so i should be able to add some 'cross cutting' issues and other frameworks to the response section. Looking forward to that bit.

I think we are getting somewhere.

Sandy

edit: sorry, italics doing head in!

i have edited the blog format so that the individual posts are defined/separated more clearly ;)

right - OLS was criticised hugely for legitimising human rights abuses and for doing work that the GoS should have been doing

OLS was UNICEF and WFP - two UN agencies. There action was limited by agreements with GoS and SPLA/SSIM this included no access to Nuba

oxfam and ICRC worked outside the OLS mandate - sandy mentions oxfam below, what were ICRC doing? did they manage to be impartial?
__________________________________________________________________

email from Sandy:

Ok, Phil i completely agree this is a shit assignment, but we'll figure it
out.

I like your summary, that you put on the blog, i think that it is a good
framework to go with.

The first part isnt a problem, pretty much standard research. As for what
the humantarian assiastance was given. Stress OLS why is was used and how it
worked and some examples (breifly) of other relief programmes.

As for the evaluations has anyone got copies of the others? i havent really
looked cos my internet access is slow and expensive, well relatively, this
will cost more than my breakfast even though its only 50p.

Here is what i will do.
I got the Why and i'll write two paragraphs on two Projects that oxfam did.
I'll do the when as well, cos i've already started it. That leaves OLS, the
drought and the famine and some examples of what happened. We cant cover
all of it so there is no point trying to.

Also i'll go through the danida report using the criteria that you put on
the Blog. Can you two get the other evaluations off the internet? the MSF
one would be good cos they f***ed up, we can probably just write up three
evaluations and say that there is a fourth unless you want to do all four.

As for the response system, we can use the reccommendations from the
evaluations to figure that out but for now i suggest we leave it and
concentrate on the first two parts.

We also need a paragraph on geography, and population stats etc. A good
politacal map would also be useful. I'm not trying to be bossy but i just
want to sort out which bits i can do out here, and get a move on with this.

Let me know what you think,

Sandy
__________________________________________________________________

I'll crack into the geography, the famine and drought and the genocide in Nuba - how's that? do i need to talk about pop displacement from Nuba and the Khartoum refugee camps?

That leaves OLS to be covered in Part 1

as for part two - going with what Sandy said - i think we should try and get the WFP evaluation (which occurs to me is about OLS) and the MSF-B evaluation cos as Sandy puts it so well "they f***ed up" - forget the DEC evaluation.

that gives one each. sandy seems to be somewhere other than where she normally is but is loath to say so, so i figure she'll have to cover the DANIDA eval as she has it. That leaves Paters and I to cover MSF-B and WFP.

Are we getting somewhere?

i have loads on the why and the what - from the disaster and development book by phil and neil - inc refusal of the north to recognise islam in the south

the SPLA/SSIM split was in 1991 after the imposition of shari'a law - which i guess made SSIM want to split from the North for once and for all whereas the SPLA was fighting for a unified sudan.

the evaluations is the bit that worries me - we need the WFP one!

Good plan Phil, i have the Why pretty much covered, i have written some more to go with what i published the other day.

As for the What and When, i still think that we should just summerize the timeline given at the back of Danida evaluation.

Relief web gives some of the later developments and a copy of the memoradum of understanding. http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/vLCE/Sudan?OpenDocument&StartKey=Sudan&Expandview

Significant events, obviously the famine and then perhaps just one or two examples of some of the stuff that happened out there using the news reports you found.

right,

i have had the following thoughts, in terms of what we need to know and do:

1) context of emergency - obvious but...

- what happened? - the war N vs S
- why? - politics and resources, religion and ethnicity
- when? - 1983 to now
- where? - main humanitarian areas - the South and Khartoum
- significant events?
+ Drought 1983-1987
+ Famine in Bahr El Ghazal 1998

2) evaluations

- what is each evaluating?
+ organisation
+ area
+ time period
- what were the criteria? - 4 c's etc
- how were the criteria applied?
- did the evaluation miss anything? - e.g. cross cutting themes - could be a big issue and critique for below
- usefulness for guiding future policy

3) Response system

- what were the responses?
- how good were they? see evaluations!
- what were the main criticisms in the evaluations?
- what other weakness are present that the evaluations missed through poor appraisal of issues identified in above?
- how could the responses be improved?
+ M and E
+use of standards - which ones?