Title: Real time evaluation of the emergency drought situation response in Kenya, 2017
Description: The UNICEF response was relevant in most areas, particularly as related to health facility level nutrition interventions and integrated outreach (including the Catch-Up Campaign) but could have been even more relevant to addressing water stress if UNICEF had applied a more strategic and context specific approach, with greater emphasis placed on assessing and addressing the specific effects of the drought on water access in each area.TIMELINESS: The UNICEF response started as early as August 2016 with advocacy and planning to address the deteriorating nutrition situation. RTE data collection demonstrated that the UNICEF nutrition response evolved to match the changing needs. This was prior to the Government of Kenya disaster declaration and the response used both available funding and additional, scaled up resourcing from donors. However, the scale-up of other sectors in UNICEF only started after the GoK declaration of emergency (February 2017). The timing of scaling-up the outreach response was, in part, limited by the reality of resource mobilization, stewardship by all stakeholders and lack of outreach strategy prior to the scale up of the response. Connectedness and Sustainability: The RTE was able to identify many positive examples of national and county government structures taking the lead in managing the drought response. UNICEF has provided support to system strengthening for governance capacity in the nutrition and health sector and to a lesser extent in WASH, including technical assistance embedded in ministries (national and county levels) and NDMA, as well as building information management and supply management capacities. The RTE found that this assistance directly contributed to the government's capacity to lead and manage the drought response, irrespective of whether this assistance specifically focused on drought response or on more regular governance capacity.Recommendations:The recommendations below are listed accordingly to strategic priority and as ranked by the RTE workshop participants. The Sub-Recommendations, listed after each Strategic Recommendation, flow from the Strategic Recommendations and are also listed in order of priority (again as specified and ranked by the RTE workshop participants). Thus, the recommendations are a prioritized listing of the combined efforts of the RTE team and RTE workshop participants.Strategic Recommendation #1: UNICEF should expand and deepen its system strengthening assistance to government. A specific objective of this support should be to ensure that governance systems are risk informed and that there is drought response capacity at all levels (from the national level to community level).Strategic Recommendation # 2: UNICEF should further develop strategies for a phased and surged approach (surge up and down) to drought response based on the principle of supporting and strengthening rather than substituting government response.Strategic Recommendation # 3: UNICEF should use a more demand based response, link with other resilience actors to build on existing programming and community plans, strengthen the information base, strengthen needs assessment and increase accountability to and accountability of communities for the monitoring, planning and response to a drought emergency.
Subjects: Droughts, Kenya, Evaluation
Places: Kenya