The Echo Chamber: Results, Management and the Humanitarian Effectiveness Agenda

Abstract

With increased focus on results in the humanitarian sector over the last 20 years, effectiveness has been understood as ‘doing what works’ as efficiently as possible. Significant energy and resources have been invested in technocratic measures to improve effectiveness of humanitarian action through strengthening accountability, developing technical proficiency, building an objective evidence base, and achieving greater value for money. But whose understanding of effectiveness has this been built on and how closely does it reflect the understandings of people for whom humanitarian action is enacted? This report offers a critical analysis of the emergence of the humanitarian effectiveness agenda, the bureaucratisation and professionalisation of humanitarian action, the politics behind these trends, and their impact on humanitarian action. It proposes that, in spite of bringing order and focus to efforts to improve humanitarian action, the development of the effectiveness agenda has reinforced an echo chamber within the humanitarian sector that is depoliticising humanitarian agencies, distancing them from the humanitarian imperative and the people they seek to support. The arguments presented in The Echo Chamber are informed by field research which is presented in a second publication – Essays on Humanitarian Effectiveness. Essays in the collection offer an analysis of the impact of context on understandings of and approaches to effectiveness.