Field Visits

Conducting Field Visits to Improve Humanitarian Response

InterAction remains committed to ensure that its work is informed by the field experiences of its members, and that we bring their realities to global forums. This commitment is illustrated through the seven missions InterAction humanitarian team conducted in the field in 2017.

InterAction’s humanitarian team conducted seven missions in the field in 2017.

InterAction staff conducted a field visit to Myanmar in March to assess the roll out and uptake of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Protection Policy, in collaboration with the in-country NGO consortium and individual NGOs working on protection issues. Recommendations focused on NGO roles in relation to overall protection leadership, coordination, and strategies, and addressed information flow and analysis and diversifying ways of working for protection outcomes for civilians. This visit was followed-up with a visit a few months later in May, to more closely examine protection information management in relation to human trafficking in Rakhine. The visit concluded with a set of developed recommendations emphasizing the role of a diversity of actors across disciplines in analysis and implementation of protection strategies. Both reports were disseminated widely and InterAction briefed NGOs, UN agencies, and donor governments on its findings, both in-country and at the headquarters level.

In an April partnership with the international NGO Forum in Kinshasa, InterAction visited the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), focusing on the dual humanitarian response to a new emergency crisis in the Kasai, as well as the protracted conflict situation in the Kivus. InterAction met extensively with the humanitarian community on the ground and provided recommendations that were welcomed at the field and international levels.

In the summer of 2017, InterAction and member organization Catholic Relief Services conducted a field visit to Northern Uganda, where up to 1.8 million people were resettled after two decades of displacement due to conflicts. The overall objective of the visit was to take a longitudinal look at the correlation between humanitarian shelter and settlement assistance and its impacts on the long-term recovery of the affected population. Recommendations were widely disseminated among UN agencies, NGO and donors, and influenced Global Shelter Cluster’s 5-year strategy.

InterAction also represented its membership in two inter-agency missions In one, InterAction joined UN agencies and other NGOs to provide peer support to humanitarian country teams grappling with the crisis in Northeast Nigeria. The other mission, with UNHCR and NGOs, took place in Jordan, where participants discussed the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework and its implementation.