Applying Best Practices to Afghanistan
Report on an International Symposium on Monitoring and Management in Insecure Environments
The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) gathered experts and practitioners from across and outside the U.S. government earlier this spring to assess the lessons and challenges for overseeing aid distributed in active conflict areas such as Afghanistan. The highlights of those discussions are now available in a conference report released today by the two organizations.
Humanitarian, development, and oversight organizations in Afghanistan are finding it progressively more difficult to access development and reconstruction project sites in many areas of the country due to deteriorating security conditions. As a result of the volatile security environment in Afghanistan and other conflict areas, humanitarian and development organizations are increasingly turning to remote management and monitoring approaches in order to continue providing assistance while safeguarding the security of their personnel.
Remote management poses particular challenges to conducting effective project monitoring and oversight, ensuring program effectiveness and accountability, and mitigating against fraud and corruption.
In a recent study, humanitarian and development organizations raised the following issues and concerns with respect to the use of remote management: potential deterioration in program quality; deterioration in the potential to ensure effective and rigorous monitoring; reduced regularity of visits and access to project implementation areas; inaccuracy of project data and reporting; limited capacity of their own and partner personnel; deterioration in technical oversight of projects, particularly those with a complex focus such as infrastructure or engineering; poor communication between country and field offices; increased danger and risks to local or national personnel, communities, and beneficiaries; increased pressure and expectations (social and political) on local staff; and increased risk of the occurrence of fraud and corruption.
These are not new issues or challenges. In countries throughout the world, development experts have designed and implemented projects that provide for strong monitoring and evaluation despite the challenges. Good practices and innovative approaches to remote project management and monitoring need to be identified and shared in order to help ensure program quality and accountability in the complex, dynamic, and fluid operating environment of reconstruction in Afghanistan.
For this reason,SIGAR and USIP partnered to present an international symposium on “Monitoring and Management in Insecure Environments: Applying Best Practices to Afghanistan.” The objective was to engage the U.S. agencies, international donor community, and think tanks involved in development and reconstruction work in Afghanistan in a focused discussion to identify and discuss past and current best practices, techniques and technologies, as well as limitations and challenges, of sustaining effective management and monitoring in insecure environments.
The symposium was held on February 12, 2014, at USIP headquarters in Washington, DC. To encourage candid discussion and the free exchange of ideas, SIGAR and USIP adopted a policy of non-attribution for the symposium. However, this report describes on a non-attribution basis the symposium discussions and the major themes that emerged from those discussions.
