David Jones, Start Fund MEAL Manager, discusses how humanitarian responders can begin to navigate complex contexts using insight.
South Sudan is the world’s newest country, having gained its independence in 2011. Since 2013, it has experienced widespread violence. It has the highest ranking in the Fragile States Index and continues to experience the type of fragility that has become increasingly common.
The numbers paint a harrowing picture. There are 7.5 million individuals in need of humanitarian assistance and protection across the country (South Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan) and 4.9 million people experiencing severe food insecurity (Integrated Food Security Phased Classification). Prolonged conflict and complex interplays between political, sociological and economic factors underpin a set of inherently huge and relational pressures for its people. In the face of such overwhelming humanitarian demand, how can we bolster responses to ensure not only the relief of immediate suffering, but a prolonged impact?
Understanding perhaps? But how do humanitarian responders begin to navigate such a context with insight and confidence? Where is evidence coming from and what is it telling us? World Vision attempted to explore this through the development of an urban and peri-urban context analysis of Juba. The analysis was conducted following a Start Fund response to the conflict in South Sudan’s capital, Juba. The report reflects the severity of the situation that may not be surprising for those engaged with South Sudan, however it provides a level of detail that is rare… and useful. For example, the report states that over half (55%) of children reported going to sleep hungry once a week, with a further 25% reporting this twice or more per week. The rest of the report is highly illuminating, both in content and methodology. The report can be found here.
What are the challenges to using such information? Our natural reactions to pressure and complexity are remarkably similar: stress and - when productive - focus. The intimidatingly massive is broken down into smaller parts to which we feel more equipped to respond. How do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time. This is something that we can perhaps all recognise in our private lives as well as professionally.
As humanitarians we are often tasked with making decisions that have the potential to significantly affect peoples’ lives, for better and for worse. We are tasked to make such decisions within huge levels of complexity. Political, economic and societal dynamics interweave and inter-relate in an ever-moving web of connected factors. This has been become a more prominent perspective in the wake of widespread support for systems and complexity thinking. These are topics that, to me at least, can be summarised by leaning heavily on feminist and sociological sources and articulated (simply) so: everything is dynamic, complex, pluralistic and relational. Everything changes, nothing is simple, everything has different interpretations and perspectives, and nothing operates in isolation, whether cause or effect.
Within the Grand Bargain there is respect for this. The call for improved, joint and impartial needs assessments relies upon coordination and comprehension. The need for objective and context-sensitive analysis is recognised as central to developing appropriate and effective humanitarian response. To deliver the most appropriate immediate and sustained responses, we must embrace and understand high levels of complexity. With multiple actions clamouring for funding at any point, where does the investment in such analyses come from?
World Vision, which recognised a need for a greater depth of understanding, submitted an application to develop a context analysis as part of the Start Fund’s ‘1% Learning Budget’. Start Fund responses can apply for additional funding to enhance learning that is relevant to the crisis, the agency and more widely. It aims to provide a mechanism of research, reflection and learning that can enhance future responses. The resulting report continues to gain traction due to the depth and quality of its analysis. How has conflict affected infrastructure in the capital? How has it impacted children, youth and adults differently? What kind of challenges are being faced along gendered lines? Essentially it asks: what can we learn from such complexity and what can we do as a result?
The strength of this context analysis lies in identifying critical issues at both detailed and holistic levels. It explores children’s experiences in their own words through child participation sessions. It considers changes in gender dynamics, employment opportunities and resultant challenges to orthodox gendered familial roles. It shows the importance of understanding the granularity within different factors, such as age and gender, and then the significance of piecing such insights together to develop holistic responses. The explicit aim is to have the largest possible impact. The method is through coordinated and holistic interventions:
“This will require that interventions to be complementary, supplementary, and look to establish or strengthen feedback loops that intentionally support the larger system’s ability to foresee, withstand, and build back stronger from endogenous and exogenous shocks and stresses.”
Importantly the report calls for responses that principally address the most acute needs, but also that contribute to other facets of the situation. The most obvious concerns are considered in parallel to less immediate factors. These include psychosocial support and social cohesion, links with recovery programming and access to public services. It seems to take Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and turn it on its side. To some people this approach may be considered aspirational, idealistic or naive even. However, within complex emergencies, it begins to bridge the most immediate needs with those that can underpin prolonged progress, especially within contexts that have experienced so much ongoing disruption.
To produce projects that can respond with such nuance, there is a clear need to have granular and holistic information available, to which challenges of time and resource become prevalent. To return to the Grand Bargain, perhaps the most appropriate way forward lies in creating space for investigation, enhanced coordination between humanitarian (and non-humanitarian) actors, and deepening our collective knowledge through comprehension and coordination. This may be a MEAL (monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning) bias speaking, but how do you make impact? You start with insight.