Episode 5: Lessons from IAHE's evaluation of the Syria–Türkiye earthquake response: A conversation with Tasneem Mowjee

In this episode of The Learning Curve, Juliet Parker speaks with independent evaluator Tasneem Mowjee, lead author of the recent Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation of the Syria–Türkiye earthquake response. Together, they explore what the evaluation revealed — from recurring system-wide challenges to promising examples of community engagement and duty of care. 

Tasneem reflects on why long-established learning still struggles to shape real-time decisions, what it means to respond in a middle-income context, and how the sector can better empower frontline and local actors during this moment of humanitarian transition.

All IAHE reports are are commissioned, funded, and published by the IAHE Steering Group.

Guest: Tasneem Mowjee, Director, Policy to Practice Team (P2PT)

Host: Juliet Parker, Director, ALNAP 

Resources: “INFORMING THE HUMANITARIAN RESET WITH EVIDENCE - A contribution from the Türkiye/Syria Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation” - IAHE

Inter-agency humanitarian evaluation of the response to the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria - English

Inter-agency humanitarian evaluation of the response to the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria - Arabic 

Inter-agency humanitarian evaluation of the response to the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria - Turkish

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Transcript

Juliet: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Learning Curve. My name's Juliette Parker, and I'm the director of ALNAP, the Learning Network for the Humanitarian Sector. During this podcast series, we'll be taking the opportunity to talk to a range of people across the sector about what the humanitarian sector would look like if we lived in a world based on learning.

Juliet: I'm delighted to be joined today by Tasnim Maji, an independent evaluator who's recently published the IAHE reports on the response to the earthquake in Syria. And Toia, welcome Tasnim, and thank you very much for joining me. Thank you very much for having me. So first, maybe you can explain to those of us who might not know what an IAHE is.

Tasneem: So an IAHE is basically, uh, something that is, it's an evaluation that's actually mandatory when there is a scale [00:01:00] up of the humanitarian system. And so it is an evaluation that looks across, um, the members of the interagency standing committee. Mainly UN agencies and, um, and their partners in looking at the response.

Tasneem: And so I think the IAHEs are important because, um, they actually help us to review a response more holistically rather than looking at the work of just one agency. 

Juliet: So you just completed the, uh, Takia, Syria, um, IAHE. What was it that stood out for you in this one? And were the lot of the findings familiar or were they new?

Tasneem: So they were obviously familiar findings. The agencies had difficulties in identifying and addressing the specific needs of, uh, groups like the elderly and persons with disabilities. There were also significant gaps in the reporting, uh, of collectively, uh, reporting against [00:02:00] the. Flash appeal that was launched for the, uh, earthquakes.

Tasneem: And so those are things that are not uncommon, uh, to find in evaluations. But there were some interesting new things I think that came out of this evaluation. So one positive area of learning was around community engagement in the crosswater humanitarian response. I think it was relevant that the AAP advisor, um, in that response, uh, was ass Syrian and could communicate directly with communities in Arabic and shift there in the mechanisms.

Tasneem: Was that. It was really about seeing, uh, affected people, not as just passive recipients of aid, but people who were capable of helping themselves and others of organizing, and also of actually making some effective decisions about the most appropriate, uh, forms of assistance for them. One issue that [00:03:00] we surprised us actually, that came out at the beginning, duty of Care came up as a really important issue to look at, not only for the staff of agencies themselves, but also there were issues about what is the responsibility for staff of partners.

Tasneem: The good practice we, we identified there was, uh, from the, the cross-border humanitarian fund, um, the managed country-based pool fund for the cross-border response, where they actually set aside some funding for the staff of their partners to receive duty of care support. Now, it didn't cost them a lot of money at all.

Tasneem: But it meant a lot to the staff who were actually on the ground. It made a big difference. 

Juliet: What happens to the findings now? I mean, they're big undertakings, these iahe, aren't they? And, um, significant pieces of work and investment. Um, where do they go now? What happens next? 

Tasneem: That's a good question. Um, so, um, at country level, I think there is clarity because, [00:04:00] um, the, uh, humanitarian coordinator or whoever is, is, you know, was uh, is in charge of leading responses together with the equivalent of the humanitarian country team is actually responsible for developing a management response plan.

Tasneem: That is, um, a, a solid undertaking between the humanitarian coordinator and the emergency relief coordinator is part of that compact that they, that they have. The challenge, I think, arises when some of the issues that we raise are not just country or contact specific. So for example, duty of care. Duty of care is not set at the country level.

Tasneem: The policies around duty of care are set at headquarters level. So that is something that needs to be taken up by the inter-agency standing committee, the IASC. And that is where the challenges, I think, arise more because getting collective action at that global level is much harder. 

Juliet: Over the years, you've done quite a lot of evaluations, [00:05:00] and I was also interested was because, um, Turkey obviously being a developed country, did that make a difference to how the response played out?

Tasneem: Did. That's a really good point. I think because, um, the, I think what, um, one lesson that really, uh, came out for the, I think for international humanitarian actors is the strong role of the Turkish government. It was, it was a really mass. Uh, disaster and such was the scale that this was the first time that the Turkish government actually requested international search and rescue support.

Tasneem: Um, but then once that search and rescue support, um, or that phase of search and rescue was, was over, um, they took a very strong role in leading the humanitarian response. And that is something that, uh. I think, uh, international humanitarian actors have to learn to understand and adapt, [00:06:00] adapt to, you know, they really need to understand what is their, a role and a capacity of a government in, you know, a middle income country or a developed country.

Tasneem: We can't just take a cookie cutter approach and just take our existing, uh, systems or structures and then just impose them on these countries. So thinking about like what you saw of the response. 

Juliet: One of the things we always say in Alap is that the humanitarian sector is rich in learning. You know, there's a wealth of experience and knowledge that predates every response.

Juliet: If the humanitarian sector had based its decisions and actions in responding to the crisis in Syria and Toia on the learning that already existed, how do you think things might have played out differently? 

Tasneem: So the human agencies in Turkey would actually have had an emergency preparedness plan in place, uh, which sounds, uh, sort of obvious, um, but wasn't because, uh, the government had had obviously, you know, just taken [00:07:00] responsibility for.

Tasneem: For responses and, and been very clear that they didn't need, uh, assistance or support. But actually the, the emergency preparedness plan, you know, isn't just about, you know, supporting the government or, or the assistance to affected communities. It's also about how do you ensure continuity of your own operations?

Tasneem: What do you, what, what are you going to do, um, in terms of duty of care for your own staff? Um, I think the other thing is actually that needs assessments would have been well coordinated and avoided duplication, and also burdening communities with multiple assessments. In Turkey, it wasn't actually that bad, but Syria was a real surprise because there'd been an ongoing, uh, conflict for 12 years.

Tasneem: So how come we still had, um, so much duplication in needs assessments and so on. And I think, I mean, lessons, you know, have been learned from that [00:08:00] particularly about making sure that there is more responsibility given and coordination done at a more local level. One other thing again that we, we. I think might have looked different.

Tasneem: How had we learned lessons is around how do we communicate with communities and, you know, we still fall into the trap of having one-way communication with communities, having a much more open communication, two-way communication to listen to their concerns. I think would've avoided some tensions that then arose between the Syrian refugee and Turkish, uh, communities in Turkey.

Tasneem: There were misperceptions about, you know, what age was being provided to whom, and the basis on the basis of what criteria. 

Juliet: I mean, if these things are known undocumented and evidenced over time, what is it that's stopping us in, in, from what you saw in the Tia, uh, situation, what was it that was stopping us from putting that established learning into [00:09:00] place?

Tasneem: So I think in Turkey, um, a lot of the staff who were involved in that response were not necessarily experienced in dealing with a major disaster, which is understandable. There isn't a lot of time to get the learning that's often stored at headquarters level down to the field level. Um, and then not only getting that learning down to the field level, but then people have to understand how to adapt that to the context.

Tasneem: In Syria, I think there were two challenges. One was that the whole of Syria coordination architecture had been dysfunctional probably since it had been set off. So there wasn't very, there wasn't a lot of sharing of learning and good practice across the, the two responses really. One was a cross-border response, uh, into northwest Syria.

Tasneem: And then the other one was the, was the response within, um, the government controlled areas of Syria at the time. So, and there was, there was a lot of competition for resources across these two, uh, responses as [00:10:00] well. And so there really weren't those incentives for putting into practice a lot of the learning that existed.

Juliet: Your evaluation came out at a kind of time of very significant change within the sector where the whole sector is reeling around the requirement, the need to change and to kind of reevaluate how the system works. What do you think are the most important findings coming outta your evaluation that the humanitarians need to keep in mind during this transitional moment?

Tasneem: The evaluation team actually came up with a, a very short paper on, uh, sort of some of the good practice and lessons learned from this IAHE and how they could inform the implementation of the humanitarian reset. I think the main message of that paper was that we already have a significant body of good.

Tasneem: And lessons. So we don't need to keep reinventing the wheel. You know, we know what's needed to [00:11:00] deliver effective cash programming. We know the importance of trust and equity in partnerships with local NGOs. We know, um, what is the difference between a good and a bad complaints and feedback mechanism.

Tasneem: These are not things we have to try to figure out. So I think maybe really the important thing is actually. Can we ensure that frontline aid workers, you know, people who are on the ground, who are delivering actually feel empowered to take their learning and their, and this existing knowledge and evidence and apply that to their context.

Juliet: So if the humanitarian sector is serious about learning, what do you think needs to happen now? 

Tasneem: There's a lot of talk around accountability to affected populations. There's a talk about localization and, and it's as if you know this huge amount of good practice, um, and lessons as if, you know, as if these [00:12:00] aren't already there.

Tasneem: What would be most useful is if we just stopped talking about these things and actually just acted on, on just doing things differently. You know, if we could just, yeah, just let you know. Really trust people on the ground. Just listen to people who are on the ground, trust them, respect them. And they are, they are smart people.

Tasneem: They know they have answers that are suited 

Juliet: to their context. Thank you so much for your time to talk to me today on the learning curve and for reminding us the importance of, uh, listening when you're learning, and particularly to the people that have been affected by crisis in enabling a more demand driven system that is able to respond to the learning that exists.

Juliet: Thank you so much for your time. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so very much for having me. It's been a real pleasure to to chat with you. 

Tasneem: Thank [00:13:00] you.