This report reflects on lessons that can be learned from needs assessments in the context of the Rohingya crisis. It is based on reviews of assessments in Cox’s Bazar since 2017 and conversations with key assessment stakeholders in the Rohingya response, grounded in global experience and assessment practice. It suggests a series of key recommendations and considerations covering all stages of the assessment process, with the goal to improve future assessments and data quality. It covers assessments targeting Rohingya refugees as well as the Bangladeshi host community.

The report begins by emphasizing the need for coordination and analysis and discusses implications and limitations of different data collection methods. In the next section, it highlights linguistic challenges, showing how they can impact data quality and assessment results. This is followed by a discussion of age, gender, and diversity considerations in the context of needs assessments and operational constraints. The next section discusses enumerator selection and training, followed by suggestions on communicating assessment results back to affected communities. After a series of key literature recommendations, the report closes by showcasing, in a Spotlight, the differences between two major datasets.

On 5 January, volcanic activity on Kadovar Island, one of the six Schouten Islands of Papua New Guinea, prompted all 591 residents to evacuate. The islanders have been relocated to the Dandan Care centre, located in Turubu LLG (East Sepik Province). The 3.5 hectare site is located on a narrow strip of land physically bound by steep hills on the inland side and the sea. The ground is low-lying and sandy. It is prone to flooding during heavy rains as two running creeks (flowing from inland) flow through either side of the site as they flow out to sea. Access to the main planned resettlement site (of approximately 40 hectares) remains an outstanding issue.

The Multi-­‐Sector Needs Assessment (MSNA) provides an overview of needs in Eastern Ukraine, based on reports from households (HHs) and key informants (KIs). It is an initiative of the Ukraine NGO Forum to seek greater understanding of needs across the affected area. The support of ACAPS1 was requested the for this. The assessment covered the five eastern oblasts in an attempt to provide a more comprehensive overview of the humanitarian situation than was available. This would help identify the overall priorities and needs by using a consistent approach across all 5 oblasts so that findings could be compared. It did not focus on assessing only the areas known to be worst impacted by the crisis, rather it considered the entire area (including badly affected areas)2. The assessment uses three distinct areas and the target population in them as the basis for the analysis, and presents information based on key differences between them:

• IDPs living in Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Zaparizhia, oblasts not affected by active fighting but host to a large number of IDPs.

• IDPs living in areas that remain under the control of the GoU in Donetsk and Luhansk.

• People living in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts that are under the control of non-­‐government actors (both IDPs and people in their place or origin).
   

The number of new Ebola infections in Sierra Leone is declining, despite the outbreak continuing to claim lives. New cases have dropped to around 9-12 per week, according to recent WHO figures. There were over 500 cases per week at the height of the crisis around late November 2014.

The impact on the lives of the thousands of people directly affected by the disease has been devastating. It has caused substantial suffering to many others, leaving the population very vulnerable. 

No recent assessment has evaluated and compared the status of populations in areas with high, medium and low exposure to Ebola. In this report, we refer to low, medium or high exposure areas based on the proportion of Ebola cases up to January 2015, compared to the 2014 population projections for those areas. Low Ebola exposure areas are districts in which the proportion of EVD cases compared to the population is between 0.01% and 0.10%. Medium Ebola exposure districts are defined as districts in which the proportion ranges from 0.11% to 0.20%. High exposure districts are districts in which the proportion of EVD cases is between 0.21% and 0.52%.

 The Ebola Needs Analysis Project (ENAP) assessment was designed as a probability sample survey, conducted with 188 KIs from 59 chiefdoms and wards. The aim was to analyse the impact of the Ebola crisis from a multi-sectoral perspective. 

The traffic lights chart depicts an initial multi-sector overview of needs from Round 11 of the NPM Site Assessment – these results are preliminary and require further analysis. Of the 37 indicators have been used in the construction of the Basic Needs Gap, have already been analysed and included in the previously-documented Prioritisation Index and its component sector sub-indices. This product displays results at both camp and mahji block-level, as pockets of high need and other variations cannot be understood through camp-level analysis alone. The size of each point reflects the number of people in need. Sites and blocks are scaled separately. The percentage of persons with needs in that sector are listed next to each site.

This traffic lights diagram is based on the result of multisectoral priortrisation tool developed by the Analysis Hub. The tool uses NPM site assessments Round 13 data from four sectors to priortise needs geographically, at majhee block level. The 45 indicators used are selected from the sectors to build up a composite index, and combined to make up Basic Needs Gap Index at majhee block level. Each indicators are evaluated for their inclusion in the priortrisation tool and selected according to the amount of variation it revealed. The Betti-Verma method is used to calculate the weight of each indicator and multiple deprivation tool is used to calculate the index in STATA. Additional explanation can be found in the Rohingya Influx Overview. Camps and sites are too large and diverse to be effective planning devices. The analysis for the Basic Need Gap Index was done at majhee block level because the majority of differences and variations in needs are between majhee blocks; and camp level analysis can hide the pockets of high need area.

A multitude of needs assessments have been conducted to capture impacts of the Ebola outbreak on affected communities, since March 2014. This paper reviews all of the assessments on Liberia and Sierra Leone made available to the Ebola Needs Analysis Project (ENAP), between December 2014 and 20 March 2015. Several assessments have been conducted at a regional level. This report focuses only on those conducted on a national level or lower, to allow for disaggregation of results. The review aims to inform the humanitarian response and future assessments, by identifying what information exists and where information gaps remain. 

Heavy rainfall from 23–25 July caused flooding in El Nuhud town, West Kordofan state. An inter-agency rapid assessment concluded on 2 August estimated that more than 23,000 people had been affected in El Nuhud alone. Shelters and WASH infrastructure have been significantly damaged. The ongoing humanitarian response has been insufficient to meet the needs in El Nuhud. At 13 August, at least 4,000 people are reported to remain in need of humanitarian assistance, particularly emergency shelter and WASH assistance. Other areas are affected but beyond the scope of this note.

This report aims to provide an overview of the impact of the hurricanes Irma and Maria in the Caribbean. For the purposes of this report, the focus is limited to the following seven countries: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Sint Maarten, and Turks and Caicos Islands. All, except Sint Maarten, are Members of CARICOM. The depth of the report also reflects the limited availability of data, which in turn means that figures and information need to be updated in the future. The current data were based on the Post-Disaster Needs Assessments (PDNAs) conducted in Antigua and Barbuda and in Dominica and by other available sources. These are all listed in the Reference section.

Over 18,800 people have been displaced in March 2019 in Diffa region as a result of Boko Haram activities and attacks against civilians, adding to the 249,000 people previously displaced by the conflict, including 104,300 IDPs, 25,700 returnees and 118,900 refugees from Nigeria. In most cases, IDPs have fled without taking their belongings and are in urgent need of shelter, food and NFI support. Assessments conducted in the IDP sites have also shown a need for improved WASH infrastructure. Protection remain a high concerns as attacks against civilians have continued throughout the month of March and the risk of gender based violence is high.

The Syria Needs Analysis Project (SNAP) started in December 2012, as a collaborative project between ACAPS and MapAction, aimed at bring together available information on humanitarian needs in the Syria crisis. At the time, information-sharing and publications on the humanitarian situation were extremely limited; in this context, SNAP’s initial goal was to help create a shared situational awareness among humanitarian actors, which in turn would contribute to a better-targeted and more needs-based response and improvements in the situation of crisis-affected populations. Over 2.5 years, SNAP has pursued these goals with a combination of independent information products, technical support and capacity building for humanitarian assessments. At the end of 2014, the project name was changed to Strategic Needs Analysis Project, to reflect the growing need for regional and whole-of-crisis analysis following the declaration of an L3 crisis in Iraq. The project closed at the end of June 2015.

On 24 July, high amounts of rainfall (between 100-200mm at various locations) caused heavy flooding in some parts of Senegal. The districts Kaffrine and Kolda (central and south Senegal) have reportedly been the heaviest affected, with Kaolack and Matam also receiving above average rainfall. Throughout Kaffrine district some 1,500 houses have been destroyed and 7,500 people affected. Because no independent assessment has been carried out yet the actual amount of damage and sectoral needs are not yet known.
The number of people potentially at risk throughout the 2016 flood season is estimated at 210,000.

Tropical Cyclone Idai hit eastern Zimbabwe with heavy rains and strong winds on 15-16 March. Manicaland and Masvingo provinces are mostly impacted, facing massive destructing caused by floods and landslides. An estimated number of 12,500 to 15,000 people have been affected overall, with at least 9,600 people (1,600 households) in the hardest hit districts, Chimanimani and Chipinge (Manicaland province). As of 18 March at least 82 people have died, 200 people are injured, thousands are displaced, and many properties, crops and livestock have been damaged and destroyed. More than 200 people are still missing. Assessments are on going and numbers are likely to increase. Priority needs are shelter, WASH, food, livelihood, and health assistance.

ACAPS mapped the analysis landscape in Yemen during January and February 2019 during the start-up phase of the Yemen Analysis Hub. We developed a meta-database of over 130 primary datasets, needs assessments and analysis products publicly available (mostly in English) and interviewed over 25 organisations working on data collection and analysis in Yemen in the field or remotely. We compared the analysis landscape to an ‘ideal’ analysis ecosystem and identified lessons and recommendations.
ACAPS published these findings for use by other analysis organisations, researchers or think tanks interested in analysis or analysis capacity building. 

ACAPS Humanitarian Access Overview provides a snapshot of the contexts where humanitarian action faces the biggest constraints. Our analysts have scored each context on nine variables in order to rank and compare humanitarian access worldwide. Crisis affected populations in about 60 countries are not getting the humanitarian assistance they need due to access constraints. Eight new countries were included in the ranking since the last ACAPS HumanitarianAccess report released in May 2019. Among the indicators, ‘Physical constraints’ and ‘Restrictions and obstruction to services and assistance’ are the most common challenges. This report presents the score boards for all the countries assessed. Narratives are provided only for countries with high, very high, or extreme constraints.

This note summarizes a longer document on the potential impact of pre-monsoon and monsoon rains in the Rohingya camps of Cox’s Bazar. It has drawn on the past impact of rains in the Rohingya settlements and in Cox’s Bazar and Bangladesh more generally. The Rohingya camps at this scale have never existed in this season before so there is no direct past experience of how they have withstood a monsoon in Bangladesh. The number of people in the settlements and the nature of the temporary living conditions and facilities all indicate that the impact of a normal rainy season will make the provision of on-going response to the influx challenging. A severe monsoon will have a serious impact on needs.

Disclaimer: This note is based on a subjective assessment of the potential impact of the monsoon on camps and is considered a worst-case scenario.

Access a longer version of this report

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh has been a place of refuge for Rohingyas fleeing violence in Myanmar on numerous occasions since 1978. August 2017 saw the beginning of the largest and most rapid influx of Rohingya refugees, over 730,000 Rohingya, including 400,000 children, fled across the border in response to a genocide.

They joined an estimated 300,000 Rohingya who had already fled violence in previous years, creating the world’s largest refugee camps. As of October 2019, there are 914,998 refugees living in 34 sites in Ukhiya and Teknaf sub-districts of Cox’s Bazar. Of those, 55 to 60% are children, 4% of households are headed by a child, and there is an estimated 11% of people with disabilities. 

This document collates and analyses publicly available secondary information focusing on children and youth since the influx of Rohingya Refugees at the latter end of 2017 favouring the most recent reports. Over 35 documents and assessments have been reviewed and data from the MSNA and the NPM where relevant have also been included. Technical advisors from Save the Children reviewed the document and contributed to the identification of information gaps.

The aim of the document is to give an overview of children’s needs both inside and outside the camps and identify child related information gaps. The desk review will then be used as a basis to guide the design and methodology of the primary data collection of a children’s consultation led by Save the Children.