Background. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has long recognized the importance of working closely with the people it tries to protect and assist, as well as the fact that armed conflicts affect people differently depending on their gender, age, disability, or other identity factors. The institution has made historical and more recent commitments to continuously improving how it engages with people affected by conflict and violence and how it responds to their diverse needs.
Evaluation Questions. This evaluation is part of these ongoing efforts. In 2018, the ICRC’s Operations Department commissioned the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) to independently assess the quality of the ICRC’s policies on diversity and accountability to affected people (AAP) (evaluation question 1), to document the organization’s current operational practice on these issues (question 2), to analyze the factors affecting performance (question 3), and to recommend what (if anything) the ICRC should do to improve its practice (question 4).
Thematic Focus. The ICRC does not use one commonly agreed-upon definition of diversity, inclusion, or AAP. The evaluation therefore focused on four practical implications of diversity and AAP in operations: informing affected people; understanding their diverse vulnerabilities and capacities (due to their gender, age, disability, socio-economic status, or other identity factors); enabling the participation of (diverse) people; and adapting the ICRC’s response to people’s priorities and their diverse vulnerabilities and capacities.
