Opening the Black Box: An Outline of a Framework to Understand, Promote, and Evaluate Humanitarian Coordination

This paper starts out with a cursory overview of coordination experiences by major players in the humanitarian world (Section 2). The aim is only to indicate the wealth of experience there, not to offer a critical analysis of it all. The review indicates that coordination in and by host governments and coordination in and by donor administrations are understudied. It also points at the important role donors could play in fostering better collaboration and coordination among operational agencies. Section3 provides the substance of the paper. It outlines a framework for understanding, promoting and evaluating coordination. That framework is a tool. Like any tool, it is a means to an end, and it can be refined, improved or discarded. It has at least three potential uses:
a. The framework may help us understand better what we refer to when we talk about 'coordination'.
b. It may serve as a tactical guide for those wanting to strengthen the coordination efforts. In that sense it is a tool to facilitate focused discussion, not for guaranteed outcomes.
c. And it could be a reference for those wanting to evaluate coordination practices. The framework needs testing in practice. The paper finally concludes with a discussion of strategic coordination (Section 4).