The explosion in data availability, new analytical tools, and increasing humanitarian need and the imperative of anticipatory action compels us to rethink humanitarian information systems and humanitarian action for the future. Drawing on interviews with humanitarian practitioners, donors, analysts, and researchers and analyses of Early Warning (EW) and information systems and their linkages to Anticipatory Action (AA), we analyze six information challenges within the current system. We then propose an approach to improve the timeliness…
Entries by Daniel Maxwell
The ability to predict and analyze famine has improved sharply in the past fifteen years. However, the political influences on data collection and analysis in famine and extreme food security emergencies continue to limit evidence-based prevention and response. In many emergencies, good quality data are not readily available, which makes it easy to undermine analysis processes and distort findings. In some cases, these processes are even shut down for political reasons. Sometimes governments or armed…
The ability to predict and analyze famine has improved sharply in the past fifteen years. However, the political influences on data collection and analysis in famine and extreme food security emergencies continue to limit evidence-based prevention and response. In many emergencies, good quality data are not readily available, which makes it easy to undermine analysis processes and distort findings. In some cases, these processes are even shut down for political reasons. Sometimes governments or armed…
Famine early warning systems began with support from international donors in the aftermath of the Sahelian famine of the 1970s—though in some ways trace their origins back as far as the Indian Famine Codes of the nineteenth century. Attention to the growing number of people caught in crises characterized by extreme and often protracted levels of food insecurity, malnutrition, and mortality is increasing. The information systems that track these conditions and inform humanitarian decision-making have…
South Sudan, in the midst of conflict since 2011, is facing one of the world’s most challenging humanitarian operations. Further, the vastness of the country, the dispersed population, and the limits on transportation and telecommunications services make it difficult to gather and analyze data. South Sudan uses the Integrated Phase Classification system(IPC) to determine the severity of food security and nutrition crises. Throughout the crisis, the IPC system has shown innovation and ingenuity to address…
External actors have been engaged in what is now South Sudan from the colonial era through to the present day, providing humanitarian and development assistance and exerting political pressure during and since the second civil war that has helped to protect people, legitimize the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), broker the peace agreements leading to independence, and undergird the new state of South Sudan. After the civil war and especially at independence, many international actors…
This briefing describes the findings from research carried out in several areas of South Sudan in the context of armed conflict and raiding. The findings show that despite state-building efforts, service delivery remained inadequate in remote areas and that the interface between service delivery and people’s perceptions of the state is complex. The authors recommend that the highly political nature of state-building and post-conflict transformation processes should be more systematically taken into account by external…
This briefing paper (2016) summarises shifts in international engagement in South Sudan from humanitarian aid to development and institution-building, and then back again to crisis response. This paper analyses why current aid frameworks have been mostly unsuccessful in their efforts to promote sustainable institutions and peace in South Sudan. The central argument is that aid actors largely failed because they applied technical solutions to political problems. What is needed is a rethink in approaches, modalities,…
This briefing paper recommends a rethink in the way that aid actors approach questions of recovery and livelihood. Rather than a simplistic either/ or approach, what is needed is a much more localised and deeper analysis of conflict, inter-communal grievances and inter-communal relations.
The paper traces shifts in international engagement and the implications of these shifts for understanding the trends in service provision specifically, and recovery and development more generally, in South Sudan. This analysis is intended to offer some direction for the future of international engagement in fragile and conflict-affected states around the objectives of service delivery and state-building.