Report

by the Comptroller
and Auditor General

Department for International Development

Responding to crises

HC 612 Session 2015-16 21 January 2016

Our vision is to help the nation spend wisely.

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The National Audit Office scrutinises public spending for Parliament and is independent of government. The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), Sir Amyas Morse KCB, is an Officer of the House of Commons and leads the NAO, which employs some 810 people. The C&AG certifies the accounts of all government departments and many other public sector bodies. He has statutory authority to examine and report to Parliament on whether departments and the bodies they fund have used their resources efficiently, effectively, and with economy. Our studies evaluate the value for money of public spending, nationally and locally. Our recommendations and reports on good practice help government improve public services, and our work led to audited savings of £1.15 billion in 2014.

Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General

Ordered by the House of Commons
to be printed on 19 January 2016

This report has been prepared under Section 6 of the National Audit Act 1983 for presentation to the House of Commons in accordance with Section 9 of the Act

Sir Amyas Morse KCB
Comptroller and Auditor General
National Audit Office

18 January 2016

This report focuses on the value for money of the Department for International Development’s response to crises.

© National Audit Office 2016

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The National Audit Office study team consisted of:
Tim Bryant, Terry Caulfield and Nathalie Larsen, under the direction of Tom McDonald, with assistance from Elliot Dallen, Daniel Kintoff, Asif Malik and Peter McGrath.

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Key facts

Summary

1 Responding to humanitarian crises is one of the Department for International Development (the Department)’s main responsibilities. Crises are emergencies – caused by, for example, conflict, natural disaster, disease, or weather events – anywhere around the world which have a humanitarian consequence and which can impact on a country’s development. Crises may occur suddenly, or develop over time and become protracted.

2 Since 2011, the Department has responded to over 30 crises. It spent £1,288 million
of its 2014-15 budget of £9,519 million on humanitarian assistance – a reasonable proxy for its spending responding to crises. The number and severity of crises which have humanitarian consequences is increasing. The United Nations (UN) has said that the number of people in humanitarian need has more than doubled since 2004 to over 100 million.

3 The Department’s response to crises involves it working with a number of different types of organisation – government departments (for example, of the host country, and the Ministry of Defence and Foreign & Commonwealth Office) and partners (such as multilateral organisations, non-governmental organisations and private contractors).

4 As well as responding to individual crises, the Department aims to improve the effectiveness of the international humanitarian system by funding the activities of humanitarian organisations and through advocacy and influencing activities.

Scope of this report

5 In this report we consider the value for money of the Department’s response to crises. Specifically, we consider the Department’s:

support for its response to crises – its strategy, funding and performance;

management of its own resources; and

work with partners and the wider humanitarian community.

6 We have taken as our starting point the Department’s decision to intervene – whether by building resilience to crises or responding once a crisis occurs. We set out our audit approach and evaluative criteria in Appendix One and our evidence base in Appendix Two.

7 The Department’s crises interventions are in complex, volatile and often dangerous and unpredictable environments where it can be one of many organisations involved. This has consequences for measuring value for money. For example, it can be difficult in some circumstances for the Department to identify results and attribute them to its spending. Also, expectations of what the Department can achieve will change depending on the nature of the crisis, and how it develops. Our judgements on value for money (paragraphs 20 to 21) reflect these considerations.

8 This report considers the value for money of the Department’s overall approach to responding to crises. To make this assessment, we looked at the Department’s:

systems and processes to support its response to crises both centrally and in its country offices; and

interventions in 5 crises: in Syria, Yemen, Nepal, the Horn of Africa and Sierra Leone, drawing out lessons from each to help us reach a view about the effectiveness of the Department’s overall approach (Appendix Three summarises each case study).

Key findings

The Department’s spending and performance

9 Between 2010-11 and 2014-15, the Department’s spending on humanitarian interventions almost trebled to reach £1,288 million. Its spending on humanitarian assistance as a share of its total budget rose from 6% to 14%. The increase in the Department’s spending comes against a background of a growing number of crises. Much of the increase has been accounted for by the Department’s recent interventions in the Middle East and other countries where it did not have established development programmes, as well as its response to the Ebola outbreak (paragraphs 1.2, 1.3, and 1.10 to 1.15).

10 The Department has increased the attention it gives to building resilience to crises. In 2011, the Department committed to do more to prepare for crises and take early action in response to crises. The Department looked to embed disaster resilience at a country level, where appropriate. Our case studies highlight the practical steps the Department has taken to do this. It has also encouraged UN humanitarian organisations and the wider humanitarian sector to give a greater focus to resilience (paragraphs 2.23, 2.24 and 3.21).

11 The Department last developed organisation-wide plans for its portfolio of interventions in protracted crises in 2011. While the Department has criteria which helps it decide how to respond to sudden-onset crises, it does not have an overall policy framework for prioritising its interventions on protracted crises. Since 2011, the Department has made major additions to planned activity as it has responded to new and developing crises. The Department’s current reviews of its aid programmes present an opportunity for it to formalise its approach to its current crisis interventions and determine future priorities (paragraphs 1.15 to 1.16 and 2.4 to 2.5).

12 The Department does not have a comprehensive set of criteria which underpin whether, and then when and how, to exit from crises. Of the 32 crises that the Department has responded to since 2011, it has designed programmes to support continuing involvement in 21. On an individual basis the Department’s teams have plans for moving from a crisis response on to the next phase of its interventions. But the Department does not have a view of how its involvement across all of its crises might impact on the availability of funding for other purposes (paragraph 1.8, Figure 4, paragraphs 1.12, 1.21 and 1.22).

13 The Department’s approach to measuring performance needs to be updated given the growth of its portfolio of crisis interventions. The Department responds using a range of interventions, each of which will have different results. The diversity of crises to which the Department responds makes it difficult for it to establish aggregate measures of performance across its interventions. As a result, only 1 of its 22 performance measures for its bilateral programme relates to humanitarian spending, and is focused on people reached by emergency food assistance. The Department has plans to establish new indicators for its crises related work from 2016-17 (paragraphs 1.18 to 1.20).

Managing its own resources

14 The Department has faced challenges putting in place a sustained response to complex crises where it did not have a local presence. The Department has an effective model for responding to crises which is generally based around its country and regional offices, with support from a central team. Where it does not have such a local presence, it has to dedicate resources at pace to make sure it understands local contexts, nurture relationships with delivery partners and deploy appropriate infrastructure so its staff can work effectively (paragraphs 2.2 and 2.6, Figure 8, and paragraphs 3.3 to 3.4).

15 The Department has scaled up its capacity so that it can respond to an increasing number of crises. It has yet to identify whether it is deploying the most cost-effective combination of internal and external resources and skills. Since 2013, the Department has increased the number of its humanitarian experts. The Department needs to focus on 3 areas to make sure it has the right staff mix.

Achieving the right mix between its own staff and contractors. The Department has a contract with a provider for humanitarian professionals to supplement its internal capacity. The Department spent £16 million in the 12 months to August 2015 on contract staff who have been invaluable in supporting its response in Syria, Nepal, Yemen, and Sierra Leone. Contractors provide the Department with access to expertise that its own staff do not have, which can be used flexibly. Contractors can be expensive when deployed for long periods, and may lack experience of working within the Department and across government. Limits on the Department’s internal costs may be an incentive for its teams to use contractors (paragraphs 2.8 to 2.9).

Making use of its internal capacity. It used its staff flexibly to support its successful response to the Ebola outbreak, moving 164 people who volunteered to assist from other parts of the Department to increase capacity. This approach was necessary in the circumstances, but highlighted some areas on which it might wish to focus when it considers its future staff mix (paragraph 2.13).

Identifying the range of skills it needs to respond to emergency situations and established crises. For example, as the Department responds to more complex crises caused by conflict, it needs to deploy individuals who have diplomatic and influencing skills as well humanitarian and conflict expertise (paragraph 3.19 and Figure 13).

16 While the Department has a well developed approach to monitoring the progress of its interventions, there are gaps in its knowledge. The Department monitors its partners’ performance, and reviews the progress of individual interventions and assesses them once completed. In autumn 2015, the Department started to bring together cost and performance information for each of its crises. However, whilst it has established an approach for looking at performance across its portfolio of sudden-onset interventions to identify lessons, it does not have such a structured approach for its protracted interventions. The Department’s response to the Ebola outbreak highlighted the need to assess the impact on its planned programmes of redirecting its financial and human resources to emerging crises (paragraphs 2.14 and 2.25 to 2.28).

Working with partners and the wider humanitarian sector

17 The Department has forged good working relationships with other government departments. Our case studies show the importance of the Department working well with the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. This includes making use of military assets and personnel when responding to the Ebola outbreak and making use of diplomatic and military skills alongside the Department’s humanitarian expertise to influence the Lebanese government (paragraphs 3.17 to 3.19, and Figure 13).

18 The Department could do more to manage the risks to value for money of working through partners. The Department has mechanisms that focus on both the cost and benefits of working with its partners: for example, its increasing use of multi-year rather than single year funding. We have identified 3 areas which present risks to value for money.

Two of our case studies show that where the Department works with a large number of partners it has not always been able to map the relationships between them to understand where and how its money is spent (paragraph 3.5).

For many of its interventions, the Department does not have a good understanding of how much of its funding benefits recipients and how much goes to meet costs partners incur in supporting the delivery of assistance, such as security and monitoring (paragraphs 3.10 and 3.14).

The Department has been innovative, introducing multi-year humanitarian funding agreements with many of its ‘first tier’ partners. The agreements help them invest in, for example, interventions which support longer-term goals such as building resilience and programming. However, many of its ‘first tier’ partners do not adopt a similar approach to funding ‘second tier’ partners, which limits the benefits (paragraphs 3.15 to 3.16).

19 The Department does not systematically assess the impact of its efforts to improve the global humanitarian system. The Department seeks to influence the global humanitarian system to make it fast, effective, accountable and offer value for money. Multilateral organisations with a role in responding to crises told us that the Department’s contribution to the development of humanitarian policy and the system was either fairly or very effective. However, the Department has not established measures to capture its influence. It does plan to measure progress against its 4 priorities for the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 (paragraphs 3.20 to 3.24).

Conclusion on value for money

20 The Department now spends over £1 billion each year responding to crises in complex and dynamic environments. Securing value for money in this context is inherently challenging for the Department. It is well positioned to identify and then respond quickly to sudden-onset crises, and has established longer-term interventions for the more stable protracted crises, making it well placed to achieve value for money in those cases. However, the Department’s management of its more fluid and protracted crises has yet to reach a similar level of maturity.

21 Faced with multiple crises, the Department is choosing to respond to an increasing number of them. At the same time, its budget is no longer increasing at the same rate. If the Department is to secure value for money across this growing portfolio of crisis interventions, it needs to make sure its approach to allocating resources, monitoring performance, and planning for effective exit or transition keeps pace with these changes. It also needs to understand in greater detail what impact its crisis interventions have on other areas of its business.

Recommendations

22 Our recommendations are designed to strengthen the Department’s approach to intervening in crises, complementing its existing lesson learning processes and internal reviews.

a The Department should have a stronger portfolio approach to managing and monitoring its increasing range of crisis interventions. The Department is spending more – in absolute and relative terms – on crisis interventions. It needs to:

build on its existing decision-making tools to establish frameworks that both guide the nature and length of its interventions on protracted crises and help it prioritise between different crises;

bring together data on the costs and performance of its crisis interventions, to help it identify cost-effective responses and demonstrate what it has achieved; and

take account of opportunity costs when it decides on whether and how to intervene in new or developing crises.

b The Department should make sure it can establish a basic operating capability quickly when it needs to sustain a response to a complex crisis in a location where it does not have a presence. The Department has been able to respond well to natural disasters in countries where it does not have an office. However, it has faced delays in setting up a more sustainable local presence to support its interventions in more complex crises.

c The Department should, in the context of an increasing number and range of crises, take stock of its workforce planning needs and the systems that support them. In particular, it should look to the lessons arising from its staffing of its response to the Ebola outbreak, including addressing weaknesses it has identified. And it should use the retendering of its contract for staff to complement its own to address some of the limitations in that contract.

d The Department should assess the impact that a major crisis has on those parts of its business that release resources to support the response. When the Department reallocates staff and funding to a major crisis, this impacts on the progress of planned programmes. Tracking and, where possible, quantifying this impact will help the Department to prioritise between future crises and ongoing development programmes.

e The Department should map the delivery chain for its interventions in crises, showing which organisations in complex delivery chains are in receipt of the Department’s money and how much they receive. Such information will help the Department to assess risk and monitor performance.

f Whenever the Department provides multi-year funding to ‘first tier’ delivery partners, it should put pressure on them to adopt a similar approach to funding ‘second tier’ partners. As a first step, the Department should collect information on the extent to which ‘first tier’ partners are not passing on the benefits of multi-year funding. It should then include change in this area in its wider influencing strategies for the relevant multilateral organisations.

g The Department should assess its impact on the global humanitarian system more rigorously. The Department’s humanitarian policy has a clear focus on improving the way the global humanitarian system operates. Recognising the sometimes intangible nature of the changes that could result from this ambition, the Department could do more to assess its impact on the system. Its piloting of a results framework, which includes indicators which several humanitarian multilateral organisations are encouraged to achieve, should help it make this assessment. It also needs to capture its progress against the 4 policy priorities which it aims to advance during, and following, the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016.

Part One

Supporting its response to crises

1.1 This part of the report covers:

how the Department for International Development (the Department) responds to different types of crises;

its spending on humanitarian assistance;

its performance; and

how it moves from an emergency response to longer-term support.

Responding to different types of crises

1.2 The number and severity of crises that have humanitarian consequences and impede the progress of developing countries is increasing. The causes of crises include conflict, natural disaster, weather events (such as droughts) and outbreaks of disease. Crises can threaten people’s health, safety, security, wellbeing, and livelihoods, and undermine development. The United Nations (UN) has said that the number of people in humanitarian need has more than doubled since 2004 to over 100 million. It also estimates that the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalised violence, or human rights violations rose from 43.3 million in 2009 to 59.5 million in 2014.1

1.3 The Department leads the UK government’s response to humanitarian emergencies. Responding to humanitarian crises is one of the Department’s main responsibilities. In 2013, the Secretary of State for International Development set ‘leading on emergencies’ as one of the Department’s 3 priorities.

1.4 In November 2015, the Department and HM Treasury published a new strategy for UK aid.2 The strategy looked to align the government’s work addressing poverty and stability. The strategy set out 4 strategic objectives, including strengthening resilience and response to crises. The key components for this objective are set out in Figure 1. The Department seeks to build the resilience3 of developing countries (for example, through programmes which help them to prepare for a disaster, and having good systems in place to respond when they occur) and respond rapidly and decisively to save lives when crises occur.

1.5 The Department provides its crisis response through a range of organisations, including non-governmental organisations and contractors. It often involves other government departments in its response, most frequently the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence. The United Kingdom’s response is often part of an international response coordinated by the UN (Figure 2).

1.6 The Department’s humanitarian policy was last set out in full in 2011,4 following on from an independent review of the UK’s humanitarian emergency response.5 The Department’s policy included 7 goals for improving the effectiveness of the UK’s humanitarian support. For example, building its capacity and strengthening the wider international humanitarian system. The Department’s teams told us that the goals remain relevant to their work (Figure 3).

1.7 In 2014, the Department refreshed its humanitarian policy. It emphasised aspects of its 7 goals – in particular, the importance of preparing for crises, building resilience and being innovative. It also added requirements to:

support countries so they could manage natural disasters by themselves;

make sure the aid it provides is driven by the needs of the most vulnerable; and

take a long-term approach to predictable and protracted problems by linking humanitarian and development assistance.

The Department has not taken a systematic approach to assessing or reporting its overall progress against its policy. The Department is planning to prepare a new humanitarian policy in 2016.

1.8 Since 2011, the Department had responded in some form to 32 crises of varying lengths (Figure 4). By December 2015, it had exited from 11 of these crises. For the other 21, the Department had designed programmes to support its continuing assistance. For 13 of these crises, its response has lasted 3 or more years. In addition to responding crises, the Department was also assisting countries to prepare for and build resilience to disasters, and recover from crises. Increasingly, the Department is supporting interventions in locations where there is ongoing conflict.

1.9 The Department responds to a wide range of crises, from those caused by sudden-onset natural disasters to more fluid and protracted crises. Fluid and protracted crises are often caused by conflict, and thus the Department’s interventions can be in highly volatile environments where those delivering assistance face a wide range of risks to their safety. We examined the Department’s interventions in 5 crises that had different causes.

A sudden-onset crisis caused by a natural disaster – the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.

A protracted crisis caused by conflict and food insecurity – the Horn of Africa, with a focus on Kenya and Somalia.

A protracted crisis characterised by conflict and mass migration – the Syria crisis, with a focus on Lebanon.

A health crisis – the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.

An ongoing crisis in Yemen – an emergency caused by conflict in addition to a pre-existing protracted crisis caused by, for example, food insecurity and poor governance.

Across these case studies the Department’s interventions covered the different stages of its crisis response from preparation through to recovery (see Figure 5). Appendix Three provides a fuller summary of each case study.

Increasing spending on humanitarian assistance

1.10 The Department’s spending on humanitarian assistance is the best proxy for the amount it spends on crises. Between 2010-11 and 2014-15, the Department’s spending on humanitarian assistance increased by almost 200% to reach £1,288 million (Figure 6).6 The Department did not anticipate this increase in its humanitarian spending in 2011, when it last developed organisation wide plans for its crisis interventions as part of comprehensive reviews of its aid programmes.

1.11 The growth in the Department’s humanitarian spending was possible because the Department, unlike some other donors, does not have separate ring-fenced budgets for its humanitarian and development activities. Other organisations told us that the Department’s budgetary flexibility and its scope to work across humanitarian and development interventions was a strength.

1.12 The Department’s humanitarian spending increased most rapidly in 2013-14, when it spent £477 million more than in 2012-13. This spending increase was enabled by the growth of the Department’s overall budget by a third in 2013-14. The Department’s annual budget has now stabilised at around £10 billion. Further growth in its crisis activities is therefore likely to impact on the sums available for its development programme, which focuses on long-term poverty alleviation.

1.13 Most of the growth in the Department’s humanitarian assistance between 2010-11 and 2014-15 has been in bilateral aid – spending it has earmarked for a particular country, region, or programme. It has put in place major programmes to respond to the Syria crisis (£653 million spent up to March 2015),7 Ebola (£244 million spent in 2014-15), and the South Sudan crisis (£249 million spent up to March 2015). Humanitarian assistance accounted for 14% of the Department’s budget in 2014-15, up from 6% in 2010-11. Around 85% of the Department’s country or region specific humanitarian assistance goes to protracted crises.8

1.14 The growth in the Department’s spending has seen the UK’s share of total donor country humanitarian assistance rise from 9% in 2011 to 13% in 2014.9 The UK was the second largest humanitarian donor behind the United States of America in 2014. Of the 20 largest humanitarian donors, the UK was seventh when ranked on spending as a percentage of gross national income.

1.15 The Department’s bilateral humanitarian programme has broadened. It now needs to establish and manage new programmes in countries where it has not previously operated. In 2011-12, all but £30 million of the Department’s humanitarian assistance went to its 28 priority countries where it had an established local presence. Its subsequent responses to the Syria crisis, the crisis in Sahel region of West Africa, and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, has seen its spending in non-priority countries rise to an average of £400 million in 2013-14 and 2014-15.

1.16 The Department is considering the future shape of its crisis response programme as part of wider reviews of its bilateral and multilateral aid programmes. These reviews, which are due to be completed at the start of 2016, will inform how the Department allocates its budget from 2016-17 to 2019-20. The reviews provide a mechanism for the Department to reassess its portfolio of crisis interventions.

1.17 In 2013, the Committee of Public Accounts reported that the Department’s 2011 review of its multilateral aid programme was a significant step forward in assessing the performance of multilateral organisations.10 The Committee recommended that the Department increase its use of the comparisons of bilateral and multilateral aid. The Department’s current reviews of its aid programmes, provide an opportunity for it to compare bilateral and humanitarian options for responding to crises.

Achieving results

1.18 The Department tracks results at a programme level for its crises, illustrated through our case studies (Figure 7). For example:

In Sierra Leone, the Department’s main target was beds provided, which it achieved. The Ebola team also reported against a target for the percentage of burials that were safe, which was close to being achieved.

In the Horn of Africa, the Department’s targets for Kenya included the numbers of malnourished children that its programmes reached, which it exceeded, and the number of people receiving cash transfers, which it was just short of. For Somalia, the Department had achieved its 2014 targets for people receiving cash transfers and benefiting from resilience projects.

1.19 In line with its normal practice for sudden onset crises, the Department did not set targets for its initial response to the Nepal earthquake. It did monitor progress of its activities supporting its earthquake response. In Syria, the Department did not set targets covering its overall response to the Syria crisis but did set targets for individual projects. As the Department moves to long-term interventions for refugees in countries neighbouring Syria, there should be greater scope to set programme level targets.

1.20 The Department has not been able to capture results in a way that gives it a good view of its achievements across the portfolio of its crisis interventions. The diversity of the crises the Department responds to makes it difficult to establish aggregate measures of performance. In 2011, the Department established 22 corporate indicators for its bilateral programme for the period to 2014-15, of which 1 was directly linked to humanitarian assistance. The indicator covers people reached by emergency food assistance which accounts for around a quarter of the Department’s bilateral humanitarian assistance. Because of the often unplanned nature of humanitarian responses, it was not appropriate for the Department to set a target for the indicator. The indicator therefore has limits in assessing the Department’s performance. The Department now plans to establish 1 or more corporate level indicators to cover its crisis related work for the period from 2016-17.

Moving from an emergency response to longer-term support

1.21 Exit strategies can include stopping support after an immediate emergency has passed. But in many cases the Department’s aim is to transition to its own development and resilience programmes which deliver long-term sustained benefits. Strategies may also include encouraging and supporting governments and other actors to build resilience.

1.22 The Department has strategies in place for exiting from its emergency response in some but not all of our case studies. The Department is not currently planning to withdraw its support in any of these cases. The Department therefore has an ongoing financial commitment.

In 3 of our case studies the Department had strategies for transitioning some or all of its emergency response. These strategies included: securing a safe re-opening of essential education and health services in Sierra Leone; enhancing Nepal’s resilience to future shocks; and building government of Kenya ownership and funding of, and capacity to deliver, a programme designed by the Department which supports poor households in Kenya.

As the crises in Syria and Yemen continue to escalate, the Department’s main focus has been on developing its humanitarian programmes (in Yemen the Department has also sought to influence the policy agenda, such as political reform). For both crises the Department had undertaken some longer-term planning but had not developed exit strategies. For Syria, for example, the Department has undertaken scenario planning. In each case, the actual outcome had matched or exceeded the worst case scenario it had considered. By January 2015, the Department had began planning for the support that it would provide refugees in the region up until 2020. In March 2015, the Department identified the elements it considered needed to be in place for stabilisation and reconstruction, should a political settlement bring conflict to an end in Yemen. For example, supporting the return of displaced people, stabilising the currency, providing basic security, and restoring basic services in health and education.

1 UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends Report: World at War, June 2015.

2 HM Treasury and the Department for International Development, UK aid: tackling global challenges in the national interest, November 2015, Cm 9163.

3 For example, resilience to an earthquake might involve developing infrastructure which might withstand shocks and developing a government’s capacity to respond by training its employees. Paragraphs 2.23 to 2.24 explain resilience in greater detail.

4 Department for International Development, Saving lives, preventing suffering and building resilience: The UK Government’s Humanitarian Policy, 2011.

5 Humanitarian Emergency Response Review, Chaired by Lord (Paddy) Ashdown, 2011.

6 The Department’s spending on humanitarian assistance includes spending on preparedness, resilience, responding to sudden-onset crises and protracted crises, and reconstruction.

7 The Department has committed to spend £1,100 million in responding to the Syria crisis.

8 Most but not all spending is earmarked for responding to crises in specific countries or regions.

9 Based on data reported by Global Humanitarian Assistance accessed 11 December 2015. Available at: www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/data-guides

10 Committee of Public Accounts, The Department for International Development: The multilateral aid review, Twenty-sixth Report of Session 2012-13, HC 660, January 2013.

Part Two

Managing its own resources

2.1 This part of the report covers:

how the Department for International Development (the Department) organises its crisis response;

how it allocates staff to a crisis intervention;

how it funds its interventions;

the systems it has in place to support a quick response;

how it builds resilience;

how it monitors its interventions; and

how it manages fraud and aid diversion risk.

Organising the Department’s response

2.2 Decisions on whether and how the UK should respond to a crisis are taken at different levels in the Department, depending on the nature of the crisis. For protracted crises, the responsibility usually rests with the Department’s relevant country or regional team to recommend to Ministers whether the Department should respond and how. Support may be provided by a London based central team, known as the Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department (CHASE). For sudden-onset crises, there will be discussions between CHASE, country offices, and regional departments to decide or recommend to Ministers a response from the Department.

2.3 The Department, through CHASE, provides guidance to its teams on resilience, preparedness, humanitarian response and funding. Responding to our survey, 73% of country and regional teams were fairly or very satisfied with the guidance available. 50% of teams had used the funding guidance, but only 13% have used the preparedness planning kit despite its relevance for all teams.

2.4 The Department has a broad framework for deciding whether the UK should respond to a sudden-onset crisis and the scale of the response. The framework focuses on humanitarian impact (such as the underlying vulnerability of the affected population), the position of the affected country (for example, that it has requested assistance), whether other donors have reacted to the event, and whether there is alignment with the UK government’s wider interests.

2.5 Many of the factors which help guide the Department’s decisions to intervene in sudden-onset crises are relevant to protracted crises. The Department does not have a similar framework for deciding whether to intervene, or continue to intervene, in such crises. The Department told us that these decisions are often taken by a country or regional office, rather than centrally. It also said that through its professional groups – for example, humanitarian advisers – it learns lessons from previous interventions. As humanitarian needs continue to increase, the Department will need a clear framework to help it prioritise between competing pressures from different crises andtrade-offs between its crises and other activities.

2.6 The Department has been able to respond well to natural disasters in countries where it does not have an office. For example. its response in the Philippines to the impact of Typhoon Haiyan.11 The Department however has encountered challenges when intervening in such circumstances where it lacks a local presence and a sustained response to a complex crisis has been needed (Figure 8).

Allocating staff to a crisis

2.7 The Department employs a range of skills when responding to crises, drawing on staff from CHASE, country teams and advisory cadres, such as:

core staff – humanitarian advisers and programme managers who support the development of humanitarian policy; design humanitarian and resilience programmes; select, and then manage the relationships with, partners; and monitor progress and budgets;

support staff – for example, staff who work in finance and human resources; and

specialist staff – for example, health advisers for Ebola, livelihoods advisers in Kenya and conflict advisers for Yemen and Syria.

It is difficult to map the exact number of staff involved in responding to crises. Some might work within a permanent humanitarian team, supplemented by temporary or
part-time appointments.

2.8 The Department has recently increased the number of humanitarian advisors it employs, in line with the rising number and scale of crises to which it is responding. As at November 2015, it employed 35 advisers, up from 14 in 2013, but was 1 adviser below its complement. The Department’s partners we spoke to held the Department’s advisers in high regard.

2.9 The Department has established a contract with a provider for humanitarian professionals to supplement its internal capacity. The contract was first let in 1992 and was last retendered in 2011. The contract has stayed with the same provider. In the 12 months to August 2015, the Department paid a total of £16 million for staff provided by the contractor.12 The Department has relied on these flexible contract staff in London and overseas as an integral component of its responses to crises, such as in Syria, the Ebola outbreak, Yemen and Nepal. The Department’s staff and partners have highlighted the contract as a strength, commending the contracted staffs’ humanitarian and field expertise. Contract staff can be deployed at short notice. The costs of contract staff do not count towards the Department’s internal operating costs which are limited by HM Treasury.

2.10 We have identified advantages and disadvantages of the Department’s use of the contract as set out in Figure 9.

2.11 During its response to the Syria crisis, the Department learned that when deploying contract staff a close relationship with the London team – ideally through a posting in London before field deployment – is important to a successful partnership between civil servants across government and contract staff. The Department’s Syria team considered it was too reliant on contracted staff in the early stages of the response. As a consequence, it lacked some institutional knowledge and required more management input because of the contracted staff’s operating constraints.

2.12 The Department is retendering its contract for humanitarian support. It aims to have a new contract in place by February 2017. As part of ensuring value for money in the retendering process, the Department is looking to address specific concerns that contractors are incentivised to sign short-term agreements that represent reduced value for money compared to longer-term agreements.

2.13 The Department has recently increased capacity on one response by using its staff flexibly. It surged 252 staff when responding to the Ebola outbreak – 164 volunteered from across the Department; 75 were from the contract for additional staff (paragraph 2.9), and 13 from the UK government’s Stabilisation Unit.13 This approach was necessary in the circumstances and showed how the Department was able to adapt, which was reliant on the goodwill of its staff and the areas from which they were released. Its own lesson learning exercise highlighted some weaknesses in its approach. For example, staff turnover was high and other areas of the Department had to cope with gaps in their provision. The Department’s human resource systems were not as flexible as the circumstances demanded.

2.14 Since its response to the Ebola outbreak, the Department has reconsidered whether it should establish a pre-agreed roster of staff. The Department told us that it rejected the idea as it considered the administrative cost of maintaining a roster disproportionate to its impact. It also identified a diffculty in predicting the skills necessary to respond to a future crisis.

2.15 The Department’s response to the Ebola outbreak is likely to have had an impact on its other programmes. Teams from which staff surged had to cover the staff cost themselves. Additional workload was absorbed by other staff or mitigated by reprioritisation. The Department has not assessed the impact of these transfers on teams and their work. The Department is considering its approach to staffing its various parts of the business including its response to crises. For example, it is completing a review of how it organises its staff; how it establishes internal surge capacity; the skills it requires; and the options for reducing its operating costs.

Different funding routes

2.16 The Department’s approach to funding its response to crises encourages its teams to plan ahead for their interventions where practical. The Department also aims to balance the risks of holding a large unallocated contingency against having to fund emerging crises by taking resources from planned programmes. By comparison, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees does not hold contingency funds. Instead it reallocates its resources or carries out additional fundraising appeals to fund emerging needs.

2.17 When a crisis is protracted, the Department’s teams are expected to follow its normal business planning procedures and budget for their interventions. Some teams have developed innovative approaches by building financial flexibility into budgets which enable them to respond to sudden spikes in need.

In Somalia, the Department has set aside £10 million each year to fund activities ahead of a crisis maturing or fund rapid response in the event of a sudden-onset shock.

In Kenya, the Hunger Safety Net Programme can scale up in response to predictable and monitored weather shocks by delivering an emergency cash transfer to additional beneficiaries when early warning triggers for droughts are activated.

2.18 For a sudden-onset crisis which has not been reflected in the budget approvals process the Department has a number of options.

Initially, the country or regional team responsible for responding identifies available funding from its existing resources – either from underspends or through reprogramming.

Where this is not sufficient, the team responsible for the response can draw on the Department’s central contingency fund or, in exceptional circumstances, on contingency funding held by CHASE dedicated to supporting sudden-onset crises. The central contingency for 2014-15 was £446 million, of which the Department spent a total of £422 million, 42% of which supported crises. In the same period, the CHASE contingency consisted of £25 million, of which £19 million was spent mainly on emergency needs in Iraq and Gaza.

2.19 The central contingency provided £94 million to the Ebola response in 2014-15 but this was not enough to fund the full response so the Department allocated £150 million of funding from other programmes. In November 2015, the government announced that, as part of its plans for strengthening resilience and the UK’s response to crisis, a new £500 million crisis reserve would be established. The Department and other public bodies will be able to draw on this reserve.

2.20 The Department has also developed arrangements that enable its delivery partners to respond more quickly to crises. For example, it:

introduced the Rapid Response Facility for large crises which, when activated by the Secretary of State, enables the Department to commit funding to pre-approved partners within 72 hours;

supported the establishment of the Start Fund, a multi-donor funded, non-governmental organisation managed fund that provides fast and direct funding to other non-governmental organisations for small scale, typically ‘under the radar’, crises within 72 hours; and

is the main contributor to the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund whose money is set aside for immediate use at the onset of emergencies or rapidly deteriorating situations, and can be released to partners within 48 hours.

Systems to support a quick response

2.21 Overall, the processes supporting a rapid response to sudden-onset disasters appear appropriate. There were no major problems in the Nepal earthquake response, and its partners praised the Department for the speed of its response and of its funding. We looked at 4 elements of the support for its interventions.

Tracking whether a risk will occur. The Department has developed early warning systems to track risks. Centrally, CHASE tracks risks across the globe that the Department may have to respond to such as El Niño. The Department’s country teams track risks affecting its priority countries. For example, the Department’s Somalia team has developed a set of early warning indicators.

Deciding whether to intervene when a crisis does occur. The Department uses its early warning indicators to inform its decisions on when to intervene to support communities ahead of an anticipated shock (paragraph 2.17). It has also promoted the use of such indicators among other organisations providing crisis response in Somalia.

Establishing needs. The Department has a sound approach to establishing needs in sudden-onset as well as protracted crises. It uses its own people on the ground; deploys experts to assess damage and needs when necessary; takes advantage of the needs assessments carried out by UN agencies; and draws effectively upon its relationships with partners and other agencies that are assessing the situation, as seen in Nepal and Yemen. It also uses these relationships effectively when designing its response and understanding what role it can play as part of the wider international community.

Approving a response. The Department has approval systems in place that support a rapid response to crises. For an emergency response, standard processes are altered and funding is approved through a submission to Ministers. A business case is then completed and approved over a longer period. Delivery plans and due diligence can also be completed after approval and disbursal of funds. However, a quarter of the Department’s teams who had responded to a crisis in the past 3 years told us that they spent too much time seeking approvals. Similarly, during the Ebola crisis the team responsible commented that preparing numerous submissions to Ministers amounted to large amounts of staff time that could be reduced if some decisions could be taken at a lower level.

2.22 However, the Department needs to do more to make sure that its processes and funding arrangements for protracted crises are equally supportive. For example, the unit established by the Department to respond to the Syria crisis experienced challenges with its financial and information management systems that were not flexible enough to map financial allocations across partners to the sectors they were spent in, such as food security or education. This drove the team to create offline systems to use for programme management. Similarly, prior to the Syria crisis, the Department did not have agreed approaches for monitoring and evaluation and risk management tailored to interventions in protracted, conflict-environments, which could have been used by the team and saved time and effort.

Building resilience

2.23 In 2011, in response to the Humanitarian Emergency Response Review, the Department committed to do more to prepare for crises and take action early by building resilience.14 Key elements of this commitment has included: carrying out multi-hazard risk assessments, adapting existing programmes to support disaster resilience and creating disaster resilience strategies. As of November 2015, it had made good progress and created strategies and carried out assessments in 22 of its 28 priority countries. The Department considered that the remaining 6 countries did not need such a strategy. In addition, the Department has commissioned research to assess savings which might accrue from investing in preparedness and resilience.

2.24 Our case studies highlight the impact of the Department’s resilience programmes.

The Hunger Safety Net Programme in Kenya looks to build resilience through cash transfers that reduce the vulnerability of households to disasters. By providing predictable cash transfers it has, for example, helped families reduce uncertainty around access to food. Scaling up payments when there are weather shocks has helped to reduce short-term responses – such as selling livestock, an asset for families – which might have longer-term consequences. This programme is part of a broader package of support to build resilient livelihoods in Kenya.

The Department’s climate and resilience programmes in Nepal are an example of enhancing resilience to disaster through strengthening the institutional architecture. The Department trained staff working for the Nepalese government, volunteers for emergency response, and communities in preparedness. It also built an area at the airport from which its response to an earthquake could be run and stockpiled material that it might need. The Department has completed a lessons learned exercise which concluded that its resilience programme and planning had made a difference in the very early stages of the 2015 earthquake. It also highlighted that more needed to be done by the country team to prepare for the wider response coordinated from London.

Monitoring its interventions

2.25 The Department’s approach to reviewing performance is extensive and varies depending on the environment in which it operates. Generally, the Department’s oversight focuses on individual programmes within a crisis response. In most circumstances, it will oversee a programme through a continuous cycle of quarterly or six-monthly progress reports and annual reviews. An annual review captures the programme’s performance against targets and agreed previous actions. It should also seek feedback from beneficiaries, as the Department requires staff to “ensure that the views and experiences of citizens and beneficiaries inform the design and delivery of our programmes”. Where possible, such as in the case study projects in Kenya, the review team will meet with beneficiary representatives directly.

2.26 In other cases, where the review team is constrained by access issues, such as in Somalia and Syria, the Department will rely on one or more of the following: partners’ feedback mechanisms, mobile technology, and third party monitoring. The Department may also carry out a lessons learned exercise, or an evaluation of its response and its different programmes after a certain amount of time has passed. This decision is made on a case-by-case basis.

2.27 As the Department is increasingly responding to crises in fragile and conflict-afflicted states, access to the ground where programmes are being carried out is increasingly constrained by security concerns. In these cases, it is difficult for the Department to oversee its performance directly. It is has therefore developed some innovative approaches to supplementing the assurance it can take from those delivering assistance.

In Somalia, the Department uses third parties to monitor its programmes. The third parties use mobile phones to collect information from people who should be receiving assistance. The location of the data is marked and can be used for real time monitoring of programme delivery and evaluation.

In Yemen, the Department uses third parties to help verify the results from its interventions. The third parties collect information through interviews and observation, and compares it to other data sources, such as geographically specific information.

In Syria, the Department has designed a third party feedback mechanism, building on lessons from Somalia and Yemen.

2.28 We have identified 2 areas where the Department could do more to improve its oversight of performance.

Understanding its performance and results across an entire response to a crisis, not just its individual components. The Department could build on initiatives from its response to the Ebola outbreak (a weekly dashboard was produced which drew together performance) and to the Syria crisis (a results database has been developed that displays and aggregates performance across partners and sectors geographically).

Understanding performance across its portfolio of crisis interventions. The Department has a structured approach to reviewing the performance of its individual crisis interventions. However, the Department has not had a formal central repository of information on cost and performance across all its crisis interventions to aid comparisons and lesson learning. It has brought together information on its sudden-onset interventions for this purpose. It has yet to do the same for protracted crises.

Managing fraud and aid diversion risk

2.29 The Department has a zero tolerance policy to fraud.15 Its aim is to do everything it can to prevent, detect and, if found, respond robustly to fraud. The Department recognises that the nature of some humanitarian assistance, such as commodities and cash transfers, as well as the reality of working in conflict zones, can increase the risk of fraud.

2.30 When the Department’s teams and partners identify instances of potential fraud they are required to inform the Department’s central fraud investigation team. The small number of instances of potential fraud that we were made aware of during this study had been reported to the investigation team.

2.31 The Department tracks individual cases of, and total losses from, fraud. In 2014-15, the Department completed 123 fraud investigations. The gross level of losses16 identified on these cases was low: £2.3 million, 0.02% of its annual spending. The Department successfully recovered £1.6 million, two-thirds of gross losses. In the 3 previous years, the gross value of identified losses had ranged from 0.01% to 0.04% of the Department’s spending. The Department does not routinely analyse its information on fraud on a sectoral basis, including how much arises from its crises interventions.

2.32 The Department analysed 57 of the fraud cases it closed between April 2014 and January 2015. Of these cases, 17 occurred on humanitarian programmes in countries covered by our 5 case studies, of which 16 occurred on programmes the Department established in response to the Syria crisis. These 16 cases resulted in total unrecovered losses of £0.15 million. The largest loss was on a theft of non-food items from a warehouse in northern Syria. Some items were returned, but the Department had to write-off items worth £0.07 million.

2.33 Our case studies provided examples of the difficult judgements that the Department can face when weighing-up the benefits of intervening in fragile states against the risks of fraud (Figure 10).

11 Rapid Review of DFID’s Humanitarian Response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, Independent Commission for Aid Impact, March 2014.

12 The contract is known as CHASE Operations Team, or CHASE OT. Between 2015 and August 2015, the Department was provided with 67 consultants – 55 based overseas and 12 in the UK. The government’s Stabilisation Unit also has a contract with the same supplier.

13 A government agency supporting its efforts to tackle instability overseas.

14 The Department’s defines disaster resilience as follows: “Disaster Resilience is the ability of countries, communities and households to manage change, by maintaining or transforming living standards in the face of shocks or stresses – such as earthquakes, drought or violent conflict – without compromising their long-term prospects.”

15 The Department defines fraud as an intentional act of dishonesty by one or more individuals internal or external to the Department with the intent of making a gain for themselves or anyone else, or inflicting a loss (or risk of loss) on another. The Department’s definition includes aid that is diverted for use by terrorist organisations.

16 The values for gross losses include the Department’s estimate of its share of some proven frauds on UN and other pooled funds it contributes to alongside other donors. The Department is not always able to obtain sufficient information to estimate its loss on such frauds.

Part Three

Working with partners and the wider humanitarian sector

3.1 This part of the report covers how the Department for International Development (the Department):

establishes and manages delivery chains;

manages its portfolio of interventions with partners;

understands the costs incurred by non-governmental organisations;

uses multi-year funding;

works with other government departments; and

influences the international humanitarian system.

3.2 In 2014-15, the Department provided over £1,000 million to its partners for crisis interventions. The Department routes most of its bilateral humanitarian assistance through UN bodies and other multilateral organisations involved in crisis response – some £578 million in 2014-15 (Figure 11).

Establishing and managing delivery chains

3.3 The Department’s approach to selecting partners differs depending on the nature of a crisis. In a sudden-onset natural disaster the Department usually selects from a standard set of partners, such as the Rapid Response Facility (paragraph 2.20). For other crises, the relevant country and regional team will be responsible for identifying and assessing partners.

3.4 The Department can face challenges selecting partners when establishing new programmes in complex and challenging environments.

For its response to the Ebola outbreak the Department looked to work with one partner with experience of treating people with Ebola but was unable to do so. The Department then contracted with Save the Children which did not have experience of dealing with this type of crisis, but was willing to work with the Department.

Using multiple partners can spread the risks to successful delivery and improve the Department’s ability to reach communities in locations where access is limited, but can make programme management more difficult. In its initial response to the Syria crisis, the Department found that it did not have enough staff to oversee its partners to the level the Department’s teams normally achieve, increasing risks of non-delivery and to value for money. The Department’s Syria team responded to these risks. They reduced the complexity of their programme by cutting the number of separate grant agreements from around 78 to 25 which has made the Syria programme easier to manage.

3.5 The Department should be able to identify all the organisations in a delivery chain and the funding that each receives. Its humanitarian programmes often involve the partners it directly funds and oversees – ‘first tier partners’ – using their own partners to deliver assistance (Figure 12). Our case studies provided examples of the Department mapping where and how its money had been used. However, the Department had not always done so.

3.6 The Department’s internal auditors found that the delivery chains for the Somalia and Syria programmes could not be mapped due to the Department delivering through a large number of partners. In such complex programmes, the Department may lose sight of where funding is going, which brings oversight risks. Long, complex delivery chains can also increase the costs of delivering humanitarian assistance.

Improving management of a portfolio of interventions with partners

3.7 Over the last 5 years, 4 UN bodies have accounted for half of all the Department’s bilateral spending on humanitarian assistance. In total these 4 organisations received £453 million of bilateral funding in 2014-15 to respond to specific crises (Figure 11).

3.8 The Department has not managed its full range of interventions with the 4 UN bodies on a portfolio basis, which brings risks to lesson learning. The Department’s country teams decide whether to support the country-specific activities of UN bodies. The Department has central policies which inform local decision-making. But it does not systematically look across its portfolio of interventions to identify whether there are particular types of interventions where a UN organisation performs well, or whether there are approaches to the Department’s funding and engagement with organisations that are more successful. The Department is changing its oversight of humanitarian multilateral organisations to consider both the coherence of the range of activities it is supporting and the performance of the organisations across those activities.

3.9 The Department’s mechanisms for influencing the cost of bilateral programmes delivered through UN bodies are limited, despite the scale of its funding. UN bodies do not usually compete for work and they have standard organisation-wide policies on cost recovery rates and reporting procedures which are applied by their local offices.

3.10 UN bodies told us that the Department was a well-regarded but demanding donor. They said there could be high transaction costs in working with the Department as it sought detailed reporting on projects and undertook a range of assessments of their performance and systems, including their approach to managing supply chains. Despite exercising this challenge, the Department has not usually been able to identify how much of its funding benefits recipients, and how much goes to meet the support costs of UN bodies and their partners. The Department has plans in place to encourage UN bodies to improve their reporting of costs.

3.11 There is evidence that UN agencies can do more to manage costs. For example, the UN Board of Auditors has reported that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees can improve its understanding, control and external reporting of its internal costs and the costs of its implementing partners.17

Improving its understanding of the costs incurred by non-governmental organisations

3.12 Non-governmental organisations are important partners for the Department. In the 2 years to 2014-15, the Department’s humanitarian funding of non-governmental organisations quadrupled to £284 million (Figure 11), mostly as a result of its responses to the Syria and Ebola crises.

3.13 The Department is developing a new approach to budgeting to improve its understanding of the costs of delivering humanitarian assistance via non-governmental organisations. If successful, this approach would help it understand costs and set benchmarks to inform its selection and management of partners.

3.14 The Department’s teams in Kenya and Somalia have made progress in adopting the new approach to budgeting for protracted crises. The initial data they have obtained indicate that around 65% to 78% of the Department’s funding goes to meet the direct costs of providing assistance, such as staff (for example, doctors and nurses) and commodities. The remainder goes on costs incurred by partners in supporting the provision of assistance – such as security, support staff, and monitoring and evaluation – and a contribution to partners’ central administration costs, such as IT infrastructure and facilities.

Securing the benefits of multi-year funding

3.15 The Department is moving from annual to multi-year agreements with many organisations responding to protracted crises. The Department’s partners told us multi-year agreements help them to invest in relationships, staff and the type of programming needed to deliver longer-term goals such as resilience and capability. The agreements also have the potential to allow for experimentation and cut transaction costs.

3.16 To secure more of the potential benefits of a multi-year approach to funding, the Department must address 2 issues.

The Department and its partners must be able to adapt programmes, for example, in response to changes to the risks faced by the communities the Department is seeking to assist. The Department has made progress on adaptability by, for example, building in contingency within project budgets (paragraph 2.17).

The Department does not have a strategy for encouraging ‘first tier’ providers to fund their own partners on a multi-year basis. The Department must decide how to respond when ‘first tier’ partners do not pass on the benefits of multi-year funding to their downstream partners. Country-based staff from 2 UN bodies told us, for example, that their organisations’ procedures do not allow them to enter into multi-year agreements with their partners.

Working with other departments

3.17 The Department often obtains assistance from other departments in responding to humanitarian crises. Across our case studies the Department worked with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and several other departments.

3.18 The Department has used military assistance on 8 occasions since 2010, including 5 times in the last 2 years. The use of military assets is governed by a memorandum of understanding which requires the Department to reimburse the Ministry of Defence for the marginal costs it incurs in assisting the Department. The marginal cost of the 8 interventions to the Ministry of Defence was around £44 million; with support provided during the Ebola outbreak currently estimated at around £24 million.

3.19 Our case studies highlight how the Department uses military assistance and diplomatic channels as part of a cross government response to achieving humanitarian and wider policy goals (Figure 13).

Influencing the international humanitarian system

3.20 The Department’s 2011 humanitarian policy set a goal for it to strengthen international leadership and partnerships (Figure 3). It has sought to champion reform of the international humanitarian system so it is fast, effective, accountable and offers value for money.

3.21 Multilateral organisations and non-governmental organisations involved in crisis response told us that, in their view, the Department was either very or fairly effective in contributing to the development of international humanitarian policy and the humanitarian system. They told us the Department was active in key policy debates – including increasing the attention given to building resilience – supported innovation and was a leader among donors.

3.22 The Department does not itself have a structured approach for assessing its impact on the humanitarian system. The Department provided us with examples of where it had encouraged and supported change, such as the increasing focus on resilience. But it did not have well-defined measures for capturing progress against its objectives for the humanitarian system.

3.23 In its 2013 report on the Department’s 2011 multilateral aid review, the Committee of Public Accounts recommended that the Department map out roles of multilateral organisations, highlighting gaps, overlaps and linkages, to help the Department to make informed decisions on who can best deliver its objectives (paragraph 1.17).18 The Department has 3 streams of work underway which give greater focus to humanitarian system-wide issues.

In 2015-16, the Department is piloting a new funding approach which provides UN organisations and funds with incentives to collaborate on system-wide reforms, as well as their own results. This new funding approach is innovative and is one of the Department’s main policy priorities.

The Department is developing its understanding of the humanitarian system. As part of its 2015-16 multilateral aid review it is mapping the system’s strengths and weaknesses. The Department is also commissioning an independent review of the functioning, financing and incentives, internal relationships and accountability of the humanitarian system. The Department expects the review’s findings to inform both its multilateral and bilateral aid reviews.

The Department is supporting the 4 largest UN humanitarian agencies to coordinate and cooperate in making preparations for emergencies in 29 high-risk countries.

3.24 The Department sees the first World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 as an important opportunity for it to influence wider humanitarian policy and practice. The Department is developing a strategy to support the 4 policy priorities it has for the Summit:

increasing the international community’s commitment to protection of civilians and international humanitarian law;

shifting the focus of the international community from responding to the aftermath of natural disasters to building resilience and preparedness;

developing new ways of financing crisis response which reflects that people are often displaced for many years; and

increasing the focus on girls and women.

The Department plans to establish measures to assess what it achieves at the Summit.

17 General Assembly Official Records Seventieth Session Supplement No. 5F, Voluntary funds administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Financial report and audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2014, Report of the Board of Auditors.

18 HC Committee of Public Accounts, The Department for International Development: The multilateral aid review, Twenty-sixth Report of Session 2012-13, HC 660, January 2013.

Appendix One

Our audit approach

1 This study focuses on the value for money of the Department for International Development (the Department)’s response to crises. It examines the Department’s:

support for its response to crises;

control of its internal resources; and

work with partners and the wider humanitarian community.

2 We applied an analytical framework with evaluative criteria to determine whether the Department had put in place effective systems for managing its response to crises. This included examining the range of the Department’s interventions from preparing for crises, providing an emergency response and aiding countries and communities to recover. We covered the Department’s processes for resourcing its crisis response, managing partners and assessing results.

3 Our audit approach is summarised in Figure 14. Our evidence base is described in Appendix Two.

Appendix Two

Our evidence base

1 We reached our independent conclusions on the Department for International Development (the Department)’s response to crises following our analysis of evidence collected between April and October 2015.

2 Our audit approach is outlined in Appendix One. Our main evidence sources were:

Quantitative analysis of key data supplied by the Department on humanitarian spending.

Semi-structured interviews with:

Senior Conflict, Humanitarian, Security (CHASE) staff, the Department’s central team responsible for responding to crises;

Staff with responsibility for: the development of humanitarian policy; the design and implementation of programmes; and the management of the Department’s relationship with its partners; and

Relevant central teams, including those responsible for procurement; finance and corporate performance; internal audit; evaluation; relationships with multilateral and non-governmental organisations; as well as staff specialised in economics and aid diversion.

A review of the Department’s key documents, including internal papers relating to decisions about, and guidance on, responding to crises; business plans and performance reviews.

An online survey of all the Department’s country and regional teams to request their views on the Department’s humanitarian policy goals, guidance and support, as well as both their own and central capacity to respond to crises. This survey was conducted from 29 June to 17 July 2015, although we accepted some later responses. We sent the survey to 38 teams, including those responsible for the 28 countries the Department has identified as priorities for its bilateral programmes. We received 36 responses (95%), including 26 from teams covering the priority countries.

A consultation with stakeholders, including the Overseas Development Institute, UK Aid Network, Disasters Emergency Committee, Oxford Brookes University’s, Centre for Development and Emergency Practice, and the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance.

A written consultation, or discussions with, other large humanitarian donors including Canada, Denmark, the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (known as ECHO), Norway, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States of America and.

A written consultation with multilateral and non-governmental organisations, including the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO); the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Care International; and Oxfam.

3 We completed 5 case studies to examine the Department’s response to crises that had different causes.

A sudden-onset crisis caused by a natural disaster – the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.

A protracted crisis caused by conflict and food insecurity – the Horn of Africa, with a focus on Kenya and Somalia.

A protracted crisis characterised by conflict and mass migration – the Syria crisis, with a focus on Lebanon.

A health crisis – the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.

An ongoing crisis in Yemen – an emergency caused by conflict in addition to a pre-existing protracted crisis caused by, for example, food insecurity and poor governance.

4 We selected these case studies to make sure we covered a range of different types of crises, a range of different types of response from the Department; and materiality. For each case study, we: reviewed relevant programme documents; interviewed programme staff from the Department and collected funding information.

5 Our case study approach included field visits to Kenya and Lebanon. We selected these countries to visit based on project suitability, materiality and security considerations. In addition to interviewing the Department’s staff in-country, we also interviewed multilateral and non-governmental delivery partners, other donors, domestic national and local-level government officials and beneficiaries.

Appendix Three

Case studies of the Department’s interventions in crises

Each case study includes a map. The country borders on these maps do not necessarily reflect the UK Government’s official position.

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