Evaluation of the integration of thematics into ICRC field operations

The Evaluation aimed to generate evidence and understanding of the enabling factors and barriers to integration and shared ownership of the six Operational Thematic work streams (i.e., Access to Education, Sexual Violence, Child Protection, Health Care in Danger, Internally Displaced Persons, and Migration) into field responses.

The evaluation highlights that despite the ICRC's longstanding commitment to a multidisciplinary approach, there are still numerous challenges to ensure integrated planning, operationalization, monitoring and evaluation in the organization. This evaluation served to develop a 'baseline' of the current status of integration for the recently created Operational Thematic Unit to identify lessons learned, good practices and opportunities that will help strengthen the integration process of the thematic workstreams that will feed into the ICRC planning process for 2023 and 2024.

The limitations identified during the evaluation process make it not possible to draw inferences on the level of integration in terms of breadth and depth of each of the thematics across contexts as there is no institutional definition of what it means for all the operational thematic workstreams to be considered "integrated" and what successful integration should look like. The methodology used, however, allowed observing trends, and present hypotheses about the impact that can be tested in the future.

Lastly, recommendations were presented to the program with the objective of indicating ways to improve the monitoring and analyzing of the extent to which these thematic files can be addressed by the institution as well as to optimize the implementation process to achieve more sustainable results in the long term.