What are the challenges of evaluating programs for migration and displacement?

Programs for migration and displacement operate in environments that can change rapidly due to political shifts, economic fluctuations, or sudden environmental crises. This variability makes it hard to establish stable benchmarks for success, as the goals and needs of migrants and displaced persons can shift just as quickly. Evaluations must therefore be adaptive and sensitive to these contextual nuances, requiring evaluators to continuously update their understanding of the situation on the ground. For further insights, the UNHCR's guidelines on evaluating programs in such settings provide valuable frameworks for navigating these challenges.

The lack of standardized metrics and indicators for measuring outcomes related to migration and displacement makes it challenging to determine the success or failure of programs.

Evaluating programs for migration and displacement poses challenges due to the diverse and dynamic contexts in which they operate. Factors such as politics, economics, culture, and environment vary across regions, affecting the needs and resources available. Evaluators must understand and adapt to these specific contexts, avoiding generic criteria. Additionally, the evolving nature of migration and displacement requires evaluators to be flexible in their methods and consider changing needs. By taking a context-specific and adaptable approach, evaluators can provide valuable insights to improve program effectiveness.

Migrants are also not homogeneous. It is difficult especially where the evaluation is focussed on children who are on the move.

It is sometimes difficult to undertake a thorough evaluation in a context of active war. Access to areas of interventions becomes a challenge augmented by strict security protocols to access such areas.

Ethical considerations are paramount, especially regarding the vulnerability of participants. Ensuring informed consent, guaranteeing confidentiality, and minimizing harm are crucial. Methodologically, there's a risk of bias in data collection and analysis due to the participants' reliance on the programs for support, which might influence their responses. Evaluators must design their studies to mitigate these risks, using methods like anonymized surveys and ensuring that participation is voluntary and informed. The Sphere Handbook offers guidelines on conducting ethical evaluations in humanitarian contexts, emphasizing the importance of respecting the dignity and rights of participants.

Ethical and methodological concerns arise during data collection and analysis. Protecting the rights and well being of migrants and displaced people is paramount requiring informed consent, confidentiality and minimizing harm. Evaluators must also employ appropriate methods that accurately capture the perspectives and realities of those affected while remaining unbiased and inclusive.

In my experience in Banda Aceh, Port au Prince, Bicol, Houston, coastal Bangladesh, and Afghanistan reflects the major challenges: inaccurate data, communities and families want to stay together, inadequate resettlement facilities, language and cultural barriers and misunderstandings, refugee distrust of government, security issues, sexual harassment, health and nutritional concerns. It’s important to organize displaced persons with legitimate and honest leaders.

Evaluating migration and displacement programs faces challenges like data scarcity, ensuring privacy and safety of vulnerable populations, and accounting for the complex, multifaceted nature of migration causes and impacts. Political sensitivities and fluctuating migration patterns add layers of complexity, making it difficult to isolate program effects. Additionally, long-term tracking is needed to fully understand outcomes, but this is often hindered by resource constraints and changing geopolitical landscapes.

1. Uphold the rights, dignity, and safety of migrants and displaced individuals during evaluation. 2. Obtain informed consent, ensure confidentiality, and minimize risks and harms. 3. Address power imbalances and avoid bias or discrimination in data collection and analysis. 4. Choose appropriate and reliable methods that reflect the realities and perspectives of participants. 5. Utilize mixed methods, participatory approaches, triangulation, and feedback mechanisms for comprehensive evaluation.

The critical component is bridging the gap between research/policy findings and stakeholder commitment to social justice. Committing crucial $ and financial buy-in from private investors to social justice for the well-being of migrants/minorities despite evidence is a huge challenge during consultations

Stakeholder engagement in evaluating programs for migration and displacement is tricky due to the diverse interests and perspectives involved. Governments, NGOs, donors, and the migrants or displaced persons themselves often have different priorities and expectations from the program. Balancing these varying viewpoints to ensure a comprehensive evaluation requires skillful negotiation and clear communication. Moreover, engaging stakeholders effectively can be resource-intensive, requiring time and effort to build trust and consensus. The challenge lies in ensuring that the evaluation is inclusive and reflects the views of all stakeholders, particularly the beneficiaries, whose voices are often underrepresented.

Partnerships are key to not just driving change effectively but also in building and bringing a circle of trust with you through the process of change and drive migration with ease and impact. Identifying stakeholders of influence and keeping them in alignment will be key to building trust and allow the partnership to thrive not just when the program delivers well but through both challenges and course corrections.

This is kind of my default answer as it comes to program implementation and employment. Quality and effective stakeholder engagement is the cornerstone of any program employment. Especially in this case when it would seem that we are not only talking about employment but displacement. This makes this entire concept even more challenging because we are taking something established away. Engaging with those individuals that will be responsible for implementation and ultimately the success must be identified and thoroughly embedded in the process or it is doomed to fail. This is unfortunately something I have some experience in.

Another stakeholder often left or neglected is the host community. In many instances, displaced populations are hosted or accommodated in communities. The later to many extends share the same vulnerabilities with the migrants especially in crisis settings. The way displaced populations and host communities interact, can trigger migrants to settle of to move further and thus worsening their vulnerabilities. Migrants and displaced populations programmes need to take on board support to host communities to avoid imbalances which in turn can trigger inter community tension. The case in eastern Chad with refugees from Sudan and ISPs in Chad Lac and Hadjer Lamis province illustrates the need of assessing the specific needs of host communities.

The challenge lies in ensuring that findings reach and are acted upon by the right stakeholders. Often, there's a gap between the generation of evaluation insights and their application in policy-making or program adjustments. This disconnect can be due to the technical nature of reports, lack of accessible summaries for non-experts, or simply the failure to engage stakeholders effectively in the dissemination process. To bridge this gap, evaluators need to tailor their communication strategies, providing actionable recommendations and focusing on clear, concise, and engaging formats. This might include policy briefs, interactive presentations, or even social media campaigns tailored to different audiences.

In my experience, the utilization of the results of evaluation can lead to underestimating the work required to prepare or refactor prior to migration. This will eventually lead to schedule, and potentially cost, overruns. It is key to ensure due regard is given to the results prior to building out sprint schedules.

Focus on using the findings effectively and ensure that your recommendations lead to a clear implementation workflow. This will contribute to improving the quality of the evaluated programmes or policies.

Another challenge is lack of GENDER AND SOCIAL INCLUSION (GESI) perspective, not only in evaluation but in all aspects of programming. If GESI is missing, migration and displacement interventions will reinforce the vulnerability and sustain the disadvantage of migrants/displaced people, such as gender based violence and exploitation. A GESI responsive evaluation will pay attention to: (1) issues, such as limited mobility and ability of concerned individuals to freely express ideas and observations; (2) misinterpretation or incorrect analysis of verbal and non-verbal messages; and (3) further marginalization of the affected people and of GESI as a cross-cutting consideration in all aspects of programming.

Building the skills and knowledge necessary for conducting meaningful evaluations requires time and investment, which can be scarce in crisis or post-crisis settings. This limitation affects not only the quality of evaluations but also the ability of local organizations to learn from and apply evaluation findings to improve programs. Strengthening local capacity involves training staff, fostering local evaluator networks, and ensuring that evaluation methodologies are adapted to the local context and languages.

Skill gap assessment is at the foundation of identifying capacity of value. Build a skill matrix of target state delivery needs and compare them against existing resources if they are already onboard. Leveraging this framework to challenge resources development as well as finding capacity that is meaningful becomes efficient. Its always a challenge to stay ontrack with every program but' bringing out the best of your talent base is in leveraging they time both creatively to meet both long term actions and short term tasks should be right at the center of your planning effort. Both of these elements will not only elevate the contribution of your resource-mix but also provide a path to elevate their skills to meet program objectives.

Sixth challenge: Evaluating migration programs involves fostering learning and innovation. Evaluations can generate knowledge, stimulate creativity, and address emerging challenges. Capturing, documenting, sharing, and applying these outcomes are essential for progress.

Evaluating programs for migration and displacement poses several challenges due to the complex and dynamic nature of these situations, Migration and displacement are often driven by a combination of political, economic, environmental, and social factors. Displaced populations can vary widely in terms of demographics, skills, and needs. Designing programs that cater to the diverse requirements of migrants and displaced individuals is challenging. Evaluating long-term outcomes is challenging, and measuring success may require tracking participants over time to understand changes in their lives, integration into new communities, and sustained well-being. Gathering accurate data on displaced populations can be challenging.

Forget checklists, migration programs need a human touch. Data guides, but empathy steers. It's about navigating chaos, respecting journeys, and seeing the bigger picture. Not boxes ticked, but lives transformed.

Remember at the heart of delivery are people and as a result motivation is key to empower both cynicism or excellence with fair measure directly based on you and your ability. Push to challenge the status quo at every level and develop the circle of trust around you to value personal and project goals with deliberate focus.

From my point of view one of the most important things when evaluating a program of migration and displacement is the real capability of States, institutions, etc, to handle it. Sometimes these bodies begin such a program moved by charity feelings, which are, by the way, so noble. However the program have to be built without letting the native population needs unmatched. I mean, the population already living in the country or region where migration or displacement take place shouldn’t be unattended in their needs because of the program. By not checking that issue States increase the risk of solving foreigner’s problems while raising other one with its own population.

Adaptability to changing circumstances: Program evaluations in migration and displacement must remain flexible and adaptable to accommodate the dynamic nature of these situations. Anticipating and responding to changing circumstances is crucial for ensuring the relevance and effectiveness of interventions.

Tracking impact on a "population in transit". It is critical to consider the transitory nature of the person's of concern impacted by the programs. Considering that most times the beneficiaries of the program are yet to be permanently settled in any given location heightens the yardstick for tracking impact.