Evaluation of Five Humanitarian Programmes of the Norwegian Refugee Council and of the Standby Roster NORCAP

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is the largest Norwegian humanitarian  organization, measured by the number of employees. It employs more than  3000 persons and has programme activities in more than 20 countries spread  across Africa, Asia, America and Europe. NORCAP, a division of NRC, has  some 850 persons on a standby roster who can be deployed on short notice to support the UN and other international organizations. NRC has grown  significantly in later years. In 2011, the revenue (and operating costs) exceeded  1,200 million Norwegian Kroner, more than twice the amount in 2006. Such a  rapid expansion is in itself a valid reason for an evaluation.

In 2010, 52 % of the total funding to NRC was provided by the Norwegian  Government. Among other major donors is the Swedish International  Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and there has been a useful  cooperation with Sida regarding this evaluation.

According to the evaluation, NRC has in general delivered agreed outputs in the  humanitarian programmes examined, and has managed to do so under extremely difficult conditions. NRC has good access to difficult areas and its conflict  sensitivity is apparent. However, greater gains might have been obtained through  a more long-term approach. The quality of NORCAP secondees is considered  high and NORCAP provides high quality response to actual challenges. If the identified shortcomings are remedied, the emergency roster could according to  the evaluator increase its relevance and efficiency. 

The evaluation team of Termstrom Consulting AB in collaboration with Channel  Research SPRL faced a challenging task. The security situation in the case countries Pakistan, Somalia and South Sudan made data collection difficult. Field  visits and interviews occasionally had to be cut short because of overriding security concerns. This methodological challenge has to a large extent been compensated for by assessing NRC’s organizational capacity to meet its objectives.

We hope that the evaluation contributes in a useful way to the documentation of NRC/NORCAP activities and that it provides valuable insights to stakeholders.