THEMATIC AREA
The humanitarian project cycle
A good humanitarian intervention is not improvised. This section brings together the pages that explain how international cooperation projects are managed at each phase of their cycle, from context analysis through to monitoring, evaluation and learning.
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What is an international cooperation project and how does it work?
For many people with technical specialisations, such as those related to health, project management in international cooperation tends to be one of their main gaps. Initial training does not usually cover concepts such as logical framework, theory of change, SMART indicators or sources of verification, as it is not always linked to international development cooperation or humanitarian action. However, familiarity with this terminology and with what a project consists of, including its vertical and horizontal logic, is always an essential requirement in the sector.
- A project is a set of planned actions designed to achieve an objective within a defined timeframe and with specific resources. A programme brings together several projects under a common strategy.
- The project cycle is divided into four phases: context analysis, design and formulation, implementation, and monitoring, evaluation and learning. Other manuals or organisations refer to five phases, but the underlying logic is always the same.
- The vertical logic of a project connects resources, activities, outputs, outcomes and impact. The horizontal logic establishes the indicators and sources of verification used to measure progress at each level.
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What are the phases of the international cooperation project cycle?
The operational reality of a project lies in its phases: how a context is analysed before intervening, how that analysis is translated into a fundable proposal, how it is implemented in the field, and how its results are measured. The underlying logic is the same regardless of how the phases are grouped.
Each phase has its own tools, its own challenges and its own pitfalls. They are also deeply interconnected: a poorly conceived needs assessment undermines the design, and a poorly designed or planned project complicates implementation or makes monitoring impossible.
- What does context analysis involve? Studying the needs of the population, the causes of the crisis, the existing response capacity, and operational and access constraints.
- Rapid needs assessments prioritise speed over depth, but whenever possible, quantitative and qualitative methods should be combined with community participation.
- It is essential to map the actors present, identify gaps in the response, and understand what affected communities are already doing.
- Coordination with other humanitarian actors is essential from the outset to avoid duplication and make use of information that is already available.
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- The logical framework is a matrix that summarises activities, indicators, sources of verification and assumptions according to a classification by expected results.
- Building a theory of change first facilitates teamwork and co-creation with communities and partners before transferring the content to more rigid formats.
- A complete proposal goes far beyond the logical framework and includes a justification of the intervention, a description of partners, a detailed budget, a monitoring plan, and the mainstreaming of cross-cutting elements such as gender or protection.
- Short donor deadlines can sometimes make quality formulation difficult if no overarching programme framework has already been identified.
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- Implementation begins with administrative tasks, staff recruitment and a kick-off meeting in which the team reviews the work plan and assigns responsibilities.
- Activities can be highly varied: distributions, service equipment, direct provision of healthcare, training, awareness-raising campaigns, studies, infrastructure works or technical support to institutions.
- A project mobilises very different profiles that must work together: coordination, sectoral technical staff, field personnel, community agents, logistics, finance and monitoring, among others.
- In projects involving multiple partner organisations, clear internal coordination mechanisms must be established from the outset.
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- Monitoring continuously tracks the progress of activities and the achievement of results.
- Indicators must be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. In practice, many standard indicators from Sphere, clusters or donors are used.
- Evaluation, generally carried out by external evaluators, analyses in depth relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability.
- The real challenge is not collecting data but using it to be accountable to the people assisted, to make better decisions during implementation, and to learn for future interventions.
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What else should I know to manage international cooperation projects?
Any humanitarian or development cooperation intervention must integrate cross-cutting issues such as gender, protection, mental health and psychosocial support, conflict sensitivity and others from the very beginning of the context analysis and throughout the entire project cycle. It is also important to be familiar with humanitarian standards such as the Sphere Handbook and the Core Humanitarian Standard, which serve as references for many aspects of project design and implementation. Finally, it is worth understanding that although the project cycle logic is shared by humanitarian action and development cooperation, the contexts, timeframes, funding and the type of intervention to be considered can differ considerably.