Connecting evidence: How can various UN agencies and partners, with diverse mandates, align evidence agendas in the humanitarian, development, and peace nexus?
Answer
Aligning evidence agendas across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) nexus is one of the UN's most complex challenges. It requires merging three distinct "languages" of evidence: the (a) needs-based data of humanitarians, the (b) systems-based metrics of development actors, and the (c)political/risk-based analysis of peacebuilders.
There should be an agreement before sharing evidence on what to measure, share and agree on what that data is for. The most important is to have a primary strategic tool for collective outcome
What it is: A jointly agreed-indicator targets (e.g., "Reduce food insecurity in Region X by 30% over 5 years") that transcends any single agency's mandate.
How it aligns evidence: Instead of each agency measuring its own output (e.g., WFP measuring food delivered vs. UNDP measuring seeds distributed), they align their evidence to track the shared result.
Just to give an example-the Sudan (Protracted Crisis) Humanitarian data showed where people were hungry, but not why (root causes). a joint evidence approach would be for UNDP and humanitarians used shared "locality profiles" that mapped service gaps (development) alongside displacement figures (humanitarian) to target investments.
Jointly agreed indicators and targets will help to also produce an evaluation joint report that however take context into consideration
RE: Global Impact Evaluation Forum 2025: Forging evidence partnerships for effective action
Cambodia
Binod Chapagain
Technical Advisor
UNDP
Posté le 02/12/2025
Connecting evidence: How can various UN agencies and partners, with diverse mandates, align evidence agendas in the humanitarian, development, and peace nexus?
Answer
Aligning evidence agendas across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) nexus is one of the UN's most complex challenges. It requires merging three distinct "languages" of evidence: the (a) needs-based data of humanitarians, the (b) systems-based metrics of development actors, and the (c)political/risk-based analysis of peacebuilders.
There should be an agreement before sharing evidence on what to measure, share and agree on what that data is for. The most important is to have a primary strategic tool for collective outcome
What it is: A jointly agreed-indicator targets (e.g., "Reduce food insecurity in Region X by 30% over 5 years") that transcends any single agency's mandate.
How it aligns evidence: Instead of each agency measuring its own output (e.g., WFP measuring food delivered vs. UNDP measuring seeds distributed), they align their evidence to track the shared result.
Just to give an example-the Sudan (Protracted Crisis) Humanitarian data showed where people were hungry, but not why (root causes). a joint evidence approach would be for UNDP and humanitarians used shared "locality profiles" that mapped service gaps (development) alongside displacement figures (humanitarian) to target investments.
Jointly agreed indicators and targets will help to also produce an evaluation joint report that however take context into consideration