Does need matter? Needs assessments and decision‐making among major humanitarian health agencies

Abstract

Disasters of physical origin, including earthquakes, floods, landslides, tidal waves, tropical storms, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, have affected millions of people globally over the past 100 years. Proportionately, there is far greater likelihood of being affected by such disasters in low-income countries than in high-income countries. Furthermore, low-income countries are in need of international assistance following disasters more often than high-income countries. The funding of international humanitarian assistance has increased from USD 12.9 billion in 2006 to an estimated USD 16.7 billion in 2010. The majority of this funding is channelled through humanitarian agencies and is supposed to be distributed based on the need of those affected, as assessed using needs assessments. Such needs assessments may be used to inform decisions internally, to influence others, to justify response decisions, and to obtain funding. Little is known about the quality of needs assessments in practical applications. Consequently, this paper reports on and analyses the views of operational decision-makers in major health-related humanitarian agencies on needs assessments.

Applied ethics and allocation of foreign aid: disparity in pretensions and practice

“…We argue that allocation should be based on results of a needs assessment, rather than political considerations. Apparently, in the case of humanitarian assistance, needs assessment is not the most important factor for decision on allocation (Schreeb et al., ; Gerdin et al., ). The OECD report Towards Better Humanitarian Donorship: 12 Lessons from DAC Peer Reviews argues for the establishment of criteria that contribute to ‘impartial, equitable and proportionate resource allocations, to avoid the politicisation of aid, and to protect against “forgotten emergencies”’ (2012: 22).…”

“…The main principles for allocation of resources are outlined in the Code of Conduct for The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief, the Principles and Good Practice of Humanitarian Donorship, and the Sphere Project's Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response. According to all of these, provision of humanitarian aid should be guided by need (Gerdin et al., ()). Research on the factors that influence allocation of humanitarian assistance alone is more recent and less prevalent than research that focuses on foreign aid in general, or development aid in particular.…”

Public health information in crisis-affected populations: a review of methods and their use for advocacy and action

“…14 These assessments rely on mainly non-representative sampling and reports of key informants, but nevertheless collect and produce mainly quantitative rather than qualitative information. There is limited evidence that these assessments improve or indeed guide humanitarian interventions 15 , and that the benefit of generating any quantitative data outweighs the harm of data being obfuscatingly inaccurate. Moreover, many assessments after recent sudden onset disasters have been completed 30-50d after disaster onset.…”

Toward a dynamic balanced scorecard model for humanitarian relief organizations’ performance management

“…Therefore, an accurate needs assessment followed by an accurate delivery of relief items is critically important for the success of relief operations. This relies on the availability of information sharing infrastructure (Zhang et al, 2002;Darcy and Hofmann, 2003) and the level of training of employees who collect needs assessment information (Gerdin et al, 2014).…”

“…Therefore, an accurate needs assessment followed by an accurate delivery of relief items is critically important for the success of relief operations. This relies on the availability of information sharing infrastructure (Zhang et al, 2002;Darcy and Hofmann, 2003) and the level of training of employees who collect needs assessment information (Gerdin et al, 2014). Donor management activities (providing feedback to donors in terms of statistics, pictures, and testimonials) is critically important for HOs to ensure a steady flow of funding for sustainable operations and an increased amount of donations (Sargeant et al, 2006).…”