ALNAP

06/10/2026

🔴 Join us TOMORROW for the upcoming EvalforEarth–ALNAP session:

"From Evaluation to Action: Navigating Constraints and Uptake of Evaluations in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings".

📅 7 October 2026
▶️ 13:00–14:30 UK | 14:00–15:30 Rome/CAT
💻 Online

As humanitarian needs intensify amid increasingly complex crises and shrinking resources, the demand for credible, timely and useful evidence continues to grow. Yet evaluations in fragile and conflict-affected settings face distinct operational, ethical and methodological challenges.

How do evaluators and commissioners work with limited access, security risks, data scarcity, political sensitivities and constrained budgets, while still producing evaluations that are useful and actionable?

Join and for a facilitated discussion on what works, what does not, and why.

✅ The session will explore adapting evaluation designs and methodologies, managing safety and ethical risks, navigating relationships between international and local actors, and strengthening the uptake and use of evaluation findings.

🎙️ Speakers
◾ Introduction by Sarah Gharbi | ALNAP
◾ Diane Abi Khalil | Independent Office of Evaluation of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
◾ Anupam Anand| GEF - IEO
◾ Adeyinka Jacob Timothy | World Food Programme
◾ Mohammed Ziaulhaq Lamea | CEO, Malan Ideal Impact
◾ Concluding remarks by Domagoj Vrbos | CGIAR Independent Advisory and Evaluation Service (IAES)

💬 What challenges have you faced when commissioning or conducting evaluations in fragile and conflict-affected settings? What has helped make evaluations more useful in practice?

Join the discussion and bring your own experience and questions.

🔗 learn more and register ➡️ https://buff.ly/JgZI2Jf

As humanitarian needs intensify amid increasingly complex crises and shrinking resources, the demand for credible, timely, and useful evidence has

30/09/2026

Climate shocks are hitting hardest in the places least able to respond, just as the humanitarian system is shrinking and crises are multiplying.

One of the clearest findings of the State of the Humanitarian System 2026 is how profoundly climate risk and humanitarian crisis now overlap. 2022-2025 included the three warmest years on record, as floods, droughts and extreme heat increasingly hit populations already facing conflict, displacement and hunger. At the same time, the international system – there to help them – sharply contracted.
Yet as humanitarian funding retreated, climate finance did not step in where people face the most extreme weather.

The result: millions who would previously have received assistance were left out.
We now have evidence that acting ahead of floods, droughts and other foreseeable hazards saves lives, prevents food crises and reduces costs. Yet anticipatory action still accounts for only around 1% of humanitarian spending.

And those closest to the climate shocks – communities, and local and national responders – remain furthest from the money.

If you work on climate, humanitarian response, or localisation, where are you seeing the biggest gaps between risk and resources – and what’s one change that would make anticipatory action more realistic in your context?

Read the report: https://buff.ly/AOq7DFk

29/09/2026

We are delighted to announce the publication of the Country Brief: in-country research carried out in Sudan by our research partner Global for The State of the Humanitarian System 2026.

📄 Read the brief here: https://buff.ly/ntJCKsA
🎧Listen to real-time insights from our researcher diaries: https://buff.ly/4jOLF52

Through first-hand evidence, the research provides a reality check on the state of humanitarian response on the ground in Sudan.

🔎 What does it find? Sudan’s crisis response does not run on just one system. It runs on two.
➡️ the locally led system of mutual aid groups, Emergency Response Rooms, local and national NGOs, diaspora networks, and vendors
➡️ the international humanitarian system of UN agencies and INGOs

While there is increasing recognition that local actors are the backbone of the response infrastructure – not a temporary fix – the international system has some way to go to ensure that protection, programming, policy and funding catch up with the reality of this dual system.

We would like to thank all the communities, individuals and local organisations who contributed to the research, and special thanks to our research partner Global for contributing this highly valuable and important evidence for humanitarian learning.

This brief serves as a tool for reflection and dialogue on how the complex humanitarian system is performing in practice in Sudan.

28/09/2026

TL:DR❓️

📚️ The State of the Humanitarian System 2026 covers a vast range of issues from the shape and size of the system to principles, protection and progress on reforms. Our online e-reader, now available on our website, makes it easy to explore the topics or policy areas that are most relevant to you.

💻️ 📱 Read the report online: https://buff.ly/MMlBnOh

As one humanitarian put it: “The SOHS report is mandatory reading.”

Dive in and explore the state of the humanitarian system covering the period 2022-2025 today!

The State of the Humanitarian System 2026 looks at the period from January 2022 to December 2025, as well as drawing comparisons with our previous editions to take a longitudinal view.

25/09/2026

For our regular Friday Facts feature, let’s take a look at ten of the key charts from our recently launched State of the Humanitarian System report.

As the international humanitarian system struggles with having to do more with less in the face of rising needs, what do you think needs to change for the system to see a more positive picture of humanitarian performance in the 2030 edition of the SOHS?



Tom Fletcher; Antonio Guterres

24/09/2026

Our recently published State of the Humanitarian System 2026 tells a sobering story about politics, progress and paralysis in humanitarian action over recent years.

Explore the story of humanitarian action between 2022-2025

Download the report: https://buff.ly/efd3I3G

Read the SOHS in brief (available in EN/AR/FR/ES: https://buff.ly/aCPU9hq

While gains were made in areas such as anticipatory action, needs assessments, cash programming and digital delivery, and there is more proof than ever of what works well, too often politics and funding cuts intervened to put progress on hold, and in some areas even forced progress into reverse.

Is now the time for the international humanitarian system to undergo a major rethink of its role in humanitarian response? Does the reform agenda need totally revitalising? What are the changes that would deliver the results you want to see in your context? And how can they be brought about?

Share the findings of SOHS 2026 with your thoughts on the way forward for the international humanitarian system.

23/09/2026

What are humanitarians saying about the State of the Humanitarian System 2026 report?

The humanitarian sector is navigating a period of significant uncertainty and change. Following the presentation and discussions during our online launch event earlier this week, Loreine dela Cruz, Executive Director of the Centre for Disaster Preparedness Foundation in the Philippines closed the event with a powerful call to action for the international humanitarian system to amplify, not replace, the leadership and agency of communities and local organisations. She called for greater accountability, more transparency and strengthening the things that form the ‘bedrock of legitimacy’: quality, safety and effectiveness.

“Aid is not charity. It is an investment in agency, resilience, and justice... Relief without the justice lens leaves unbroken cycles of poverty, and it erodes dignity. True humanitarian justice demands shifting power, so communities lead, holding institutions accountable and addressing structural causes. Only then does aid become a pathway to lasting change.”

Watch her full closing remarks here: https://buff.ly/76daDvH

Loreine frames the report launch as a call to action rooted in rigo...

22/09/2026

Last week’s launch of the State of the Humanitarian System 2026 delivered stark and sobering evidence about the impact of recent years’ funding cuts on an already overstretched humanitarian system. While the constraints, gaps, frustrations and paralysis of reforms are inevitably under the spotlight, it is important to recognise that there was some progress too.

🎯When access and resources aligned, extreme hunger was averted in some contexts, and some epidemics were addressed quickly.
(first aid icon?) Protection is moving out of niche and into humanitarian’s core lifesaving remit.
💥Acting before shocks helped people cope better and saved money.
💵Cash and digital delivery moved assistance faster, cheaper and gave people more choice. 👫Local and mutual aid structures have shown they can reach places internationals cannot, and there’s been progress in how the wider system can play a supportive and enabling role to local actors.
🌐The funding ecosystem is starting to diversify with Gulf donors, Islamic giving, philanthropy and private finance becoming valuable additions.
📈After initial cuts to information and data services, valiant attempts were made to protect the system’s knowledge and create a more inclusive data ecosystem.
🙂 And despite everything, good communication with people affected by crisis led to a greater sense of being treated with dignity and higher rates of satisfaction with the quality of assistance.

The challenge now for the humanitarian system is to ensure that we preserve and reinforce the gains, rather than see them roll back in a smaller system.

Read/download the report here: https://buff.ly/QGlbIep

21/09/2026

❓️ What impact has one of the most consequential contractions in the international humanitarian system’s 80-year history had on growing humanitarian need and increasingly challenging crisis response?

As gathers this week, we urge humanitarian and policy leaders and influencers to read the findings from our report.

Between 2022-2025, lives were saved and food crises averted in areas where funding and access aligned, and many gains were made through improved needs assessment, accountability and inclusion. Yet funding cuts and politics intervened bringing hard won gains to a standstill and preventing millions of people from receiving the assistance they urgently needed.

📚️ Explore progress, politics and paralysis in the SOHS 2026 report here: https://buff.ly/QGlbIep
📑 Read the report in brief: https://buff.ly/AjWME7n

Is now the time for the international humanitarian system to undergo a major rethink of its role in humanitarian response? Does the reform agenda need totally revitalising? What are the changes that would deliver the results you want to see in humanitarian action? And how can they be brought about?

Share the findings of SOHS 2026 with leaders and policymakers, along with your thoughts on the best way forward for the international humanitarian system.

United Nations United Nations OCHA

21/09/2026

Are we talking openly about how artificial intelligence is changing humanitarian practice—or are we treating it as a taboo subject?

In our latest commentary, Humanitarian M&E: Challenging the AI taboo, Zaki Ullah explores how AI tools are being used across the sector, the unspoken challenges face, and why open dialogue is essential to ensuring AI is used responsibly and ethically in crisis response.

📖 Read the full commentary here: https://buff.ly/0GmgSUV

💬 How is AI impacting your work in the humanitarian sector? Share your thoughts below!

Many still tend to get embarrassed when acknowledging the use of AI tools like ChatGPT in their work, almost as if agreeing that using it would reduce the credibility of the research. Yet the reality suggests that M&E and research practitioners are increasingly using AI in their work to save time an...