Coordination Tools: Needs Assessment

Due to the rising frequency and intensity of disasters and emergencies, humanitarian response in sudden-onset crises needs to be informed by consistent, reliable, credible and timely needs assessments and analysis of humanitarian information.

“Many needs assessments are planned and carried out in Pakistan. Nearly every organization does its own assessment, often without coordinating even within their respective cluster. Questionnaires can be poorly designed, with inappropriate, insensitive and/or misleading questions that do not result in the needed analysis. Hence a lot of work has to be done to get assessments right.”  (Manuel Bessler, former Head of OCHA Pakistan)

OCHA and the International Federation of the Red Cross/Red Crescent (IFRC) co-chair the Needs Assessment Taskforce (NATF), which is mandated by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC). The NATF aims to strengthen the multi-sector coordination of needs assessments in collaboration with IASC members by:

• Harmonizing needs assessment approaches and methods within the humanitarian community.
• Managing a pool of deployable needs assessment coordinators and analysts.
• Developing tools (e.g. the Humanitarian Dashboard) and guidance based on standardized information that support humanitarian organizations’ initial planning and response.