International donors and humanitarian actors committed themselves at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian assistance. The OECD secretariat commissioned Ground Truth Solutions to track first-hand how people affected by humanitarian crises – as well as the humanitarian field staff who implement humanitarian programmes – perceive the reforms spelled out in the Grand Bargain document.

Ground Truth Solutions developed three survey instruments to measure both the implementation and the effects of these reforms.

• The goal of the first set of surveys is to gather feedback from affected people on the provision of humanitarian aid and track how perceptions evolve over time.
• The second survey instrument collects feedback from field staff on how Grand Bargain themes are being carried out and provides a baseline to track their progress and impact.
• The third survey instrument looks at relations among international agencies and local partners in the context of empowering the latter to play a larger role in humanitarian relief operations.

Data is currently being collected in Iraq and reports will be available for download shortly.

Ground Truth Solutions is one of the seven NGOs that have jointly launched a mixed migration platform to deliver research, analysis and policy recommendations for a better understanding of mixed migration patterns in the Middle East and Europe and to enhance the protection of, and information available to, people on the move. The Mixed Migration Platform (MMP), funded by the UK’s Department for International Development and the Switzerland’s Federal Department for Foreign Affairs (FDFA), is an initiative that aims to provide quality information and protection-sensitive analysis to improve decision-making, both for people on the move through the Middle East and Europe, as well as for host governments and humanitarian organisations who are involved in the response. 

Ground Truth Solutions’ contribution to the platform is a real time collection and analysis of feedback about the perceptions of people in different stages of displacement (borderlands, transit countries and countries of final destination). The focus of the surveys is on people’s experience as refugees, asylum seekers and migrants and their perceptions of the assistance they receive from humanitarian agencies.

In Iraq, the data collection targets refugees as well as internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. A first quantitative round of surveys has been completed, followed by focus group discussions, delving deeper into issues surfaced in the surveys. A second round is currently underway. Reports issued so far can be downloaded below.