Executive Summary Part A: Afghanistan Country Programme

AuthorDirectorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) (European Commission), Landell Mills International
Pages16-28
Final Evaluation Report: Part A- Afghanistan Country Programme Evaluation
16
Part A Afghanistan Country Programme
Evaluation
Executive Summary Part A: Afghanistan Country
Programme
Introduction
The Directorate General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid (DG ECHO) commissioned
an independent evaluation of its humanitarian actions in Afghanistan for the period 2014-2018, combined
with an evaluation of DG ECHO’s global partnership with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). While
these two strands of the combined evaluation were undertaken by the same team and ran in parallel,
they constitute two different subjects of analysis. This part (Part A) of the report presents the
methodology, findings, conclusions and recommendations of the Afghanistan country evaluation,
conducted during January-April 2019, with an intensive field visit undertaken during March-April. The
report on NRC partnership is presented in Part B.
Objectives, methodology and context
The evaluation’s objectives were to: (a) assess performance, including identifying internal and external
enabling factors, and challenges to delivery of assistance and protection to people affected by conflict
and disasters, and (b) identify lessons and good practices, using the following evaluation criteria:
a) Relevance
b) Coherence, both internally and with interventions by other donors
c) Effectiveness (including in respect to advocacy and visibility)
d) Efficiency
e) EU added-value; and
f) Sustainability through contribution to humanitarian-development nexus.
The evaluation followed a mixed methods approach. This involved document research, purposively
selected key informant interviews with major stakeholders, visits to project sites/communities and
beneficiary interviews. Besides extensive desk research covering 56 published documents and over 150
pieces of grey literature, a total of 86 key informant interviews and 19 group discussions with communities
were conducted during the evaluation. Field visits covered activities of 16 partners who accounted for
€161.3 million (88.67 %) of the total €181.9 million grants contracted by DG ECHO during the evaluation
period. Findings and conclusions presented here are drawn from all of these methods and multiple
sources, analysed for their strength of evidence and triangulated.
Afghanistan is a country in protracted conflict and is likely to remain so in the foreseeable future.
Both the scale and nature of displacement have changed, with the latter becoming more protracted and
with multiple waves of displacement over time. Increased insecurity and increasing territorial control by
Armed Opposition Groups (AOG) of large parts of the country will require changes to the way
humanitarian and development assistance is delivered in future.
Afghanistan is as much a development crisis as it is a protection crisis. Although development
efforts immediately after the fall of Taliban made enormous strides in increasing access to health,

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