The humanitarian community uses many approaches to
evidence. Representative initiatives are presented in Table
1. The many different data gatherers, managers, users
and donors have prompted recent efforts to inventory
and critique these varied approaches. In October 2007,
the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) began a two-year multisectoral study into the
Assessment and Classification of Emergencies (ACE). The
terms of reference for the study identified 17 global initiatives
relevant to emergency assessment and analysis.1
In the
terms of reference of the study, OCHA expressed concern
that common definitions of basic terms of the trade were not
well-established in the humanitarian community, noting that
ambiguity surrounded terms such as ‘humanitarian crisis/
emergency’, ‘vulnerable group’ and ‘affected population’,
not to mention ‘evidence’ and ‘evidence-based’: ‘the
lack of standardized and universally accepted definitions
and indictors’, it was argued, ‘leads to inconsistency in
humanitarian action with similar levels of vulnerability in
different settings triggering different levels of response’.