Humanitarian Assistance

Humanitarian assistance seeks to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain the dignity of those affected by rapid onset natural disasters and conflicts. Protracted and complex crises are increasingly the norm and require an array of approaches and solutions that meet the needs of the most vulnerable, ensure access to essential services, build resilience, and promote stability and peace. This has resulted in an expanding role for development and peacebuilding actors in long-term humanitarian responses and a blurring of the differentiation between humanitarian, stabilisation and development activities, actors, and funding streams, in these fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

Globally, humanitarian assistance suffer from short project cycles, high levels of competition for limited funding, security risks and difficulty in obtaining regular direct access to affected areas. These challenges often result in a dearth of timely, usable information to design effective and accountable responses. The role and influence of local organisations and the views of affected populations are often ignored. This reduces the benefit to affected communities and may do harm. In protracted crises, where humanitarian, development and peacebuilding actors overlap, there are persistent challenges with a lack of information sharing and coordination potentially contributing to harmful outcomes.

Integrity supports effective humanitarian assistance by providing clear, timely and easily understood information in challenging and hard to reach environments. We work independently or through trusted local organisations to ensure context-aware and conflict-sensitive information and approaches to our core service offerings. Through these approaches, we support the Grand Bargain commitments to accountability, working with local and national partners, and enhancing engagement between humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding actors.

We enable evidence-based decision-making

We provide third party monitoring, evaluation and learning services to humanitarian actors in hostile, difficult to reach locations and assist better decision-making.  Integrity supports response actors by providing essential information and feedback for decision-making.  We focus on building a nuanced understanding of realities on the ground by triangulating multiple information sources. We then provide this information – and tailored analysis – to relevant decision-makers in a timely and easy to understand format.

We use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to provide essential data for key response actors at a country response and an operational level. Beyond this, we help organisations respond to findings, providing learning services tailored to the distinctive organisational and operational contexts of humanitarian situations. Supported by bespoke knowledge management services, we provide evidence of what works and what does not, supporting cluster leads, Humanitarian Country Teams and agency heads to use lessons and drive behavioural change within their organisations so that quality evidence leads to better decisions and better outcomes.

We improve accountability

Integrity seeks to give voice and promote the views of those affected by crises.  Whether through third party monitoring, monitoring support, political economy analysis, or capacity building of grassroots and national organisations, we promote and listen to the voices of those most affected by conflict, especially marginalised groups and individuals. Our project portfolio includes innovative workshop methods and enquiry tools. We customise our approaches to include rapid learning cycles that can better inform programme delivery.  By involving partners in the process of inquiry, we are able to recognise their knowledge and capabilities, therefore leading to more sustainable outcomes. By working in this way, we seek to support the international community to be held to account for the quality and effectiveness of its actions.

We support local and national actors

Integrity provides training and support in a variety of skills, including strategic planning, survey tool development, capability and capacity assessments, MEL and project management to national and grassroots organisations. In some of the world’s most challenging operating contexts, including Syria, Somalia and South Sudan, we have demonstrated a commitment to strengthening the capacity of local providers and first responders to effectively deliver and to demonstrate they are doing so in a safe, effective, and well-managed way.

We enhance engagement and information sharing across the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding nexus

Integrity is uniquely placed to provide a contextual understanding of humanitarian crises, providing key information to clients such as donors, cluster leads, HCTs and response actors). With a long history of working in many fragile and conflict-affected contexts, Integrity plays an important role in helping development organisations leverage their skills and recognise the important role they can play in support of humanitarian responses.