Background
By early 2012, there was a general sense of hopelessness and fatigue amongst protection actors in the DRC. Over the past decades of war, the international community had tried a variety of approaches to protect civilians and nothing seemed to work. The on-going response from the international community had for many years been largely focused on military responses and deployments of peacekeepers to deter attacks – which sometimes had worked but more often had failed. MONUSCO’s efforts to protect civilians were heavily criticised by the humanitarian community, yet there were few suggestions for alternatives to the deployment of peacekeepers to enhance civilian protection in eastern DRC. Against this backdrop, NRC initiated a project in early 2012 to look at non-military approaches to protection.
The objectives of the project were to strengthen:
- NRC’s own approach to protection on the ground
- The practice of other humanitarian actors in the DRC; and
- The approach of the wider international community to include non-military protection approaches to complement the efforts of the UN peacekeepers
Purpose of Evaluation and Intended Use
The main purpose of the mid-term evaluation was to provide an independent assessment of the protection and advocacy work done to date. The evaluation results will inform and influence the future work of NRC’s protection and advocacy work in the DRC, and possibly in other NRC programmes.
Findings and recommendations
Overall, this evaluation found that the NRC advocacy created visibility for the issue of non-military protection in DRC provoking further reflection, which in some cases, led to changes in policies and practices, most notably within NRC and other humanitarian actors in North Kivu. More intangible aspects such as the impact on influencing approaches and provoking reflection about protection were more difficult to measure – but it is thought that the advocacy did have an impact in this regard. Recommendations included: clearer messaging,better links with global advocacy, protection mainstreaming, strengthen M&E.