USAID General Publications

Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance Emergency Application Guidelines: Indicator Handbook

The USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) Emergency Application Guidelines (EAG) Indicator Handbook is one of the three core documents comprising the EAG, along with the Common Requirements and Sector Requirements.  

The Indicator Handbook provides the performance indicator reference sheets (PIRS) for BHA emergency indicators.The Handbook provides guidance on applicability criteria for each BHA emergency indicator, and guidance on what you must include in custom indicator PIRSs. Each PIRS describes:  

• Key terms in each indicator, 
• How you must calculate the indicator, 
• How you must report disaggregates, 
• How you must collect the data, and  
• Any additional, external resources that may be useful for understanding how to use the indicator in practice.  

BHA’s Emergency Application Guidelines, including this Indicator Handbook, apply only to non-competitive applications from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). For Resilience Food Security Activities (RFSA) or legacy Development Food Security Activities (DFSA), refer to the USAID/BHA RFSA webpage: Indicator Handbook Part I: Indicators for Baseline and Endline Surveys (August 2021) and Indicator Handbook Part II: Monitoring Indicators (August 2021) for PIRSs and guidance on indicators you will use to monitor or evaluate.  

Modality Decision Tool: Nutrition Addendum

The Modality Decision Tool (MDT) Nutrition Addendum aids implementing partners (IPs) to apply a nutrition lens to the selection of appropriate food assistance modalities (cash, vouchers, or in-kind) for the nutritionally vulnerable. IPs are encouraged to use this addendum alongside the MDT when planning for the development of interventions for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNA) sub-sector as described in Annex A of the Bureau for Humanitarian (BHA) Assistance Emergency Application Guidelines. The SNA sub-sector, found under the Nutrition Sector, aims to provide additional support to specific vulnerable groups to access adequate and diverse diets.

This addendum presents considerations in alignment with the four MDT concepts of appropriateness, feasibility, objective, and cost, providing nutrition-relevant questions that may relate to various steps in the program design process. It aims to assist IPs to optimize modality choice and enhance intervention design so as to better achieve nutrition and related food security outcomes. These considerations were informed by IP best practice and published evidence related to cash, voucher, and direct food distribution programs for vulnerable populations.

USAID Digital Strategy (2020 - 2024)

Countries around the world are in the midst of a historic digital transition. The rapid development and adoption of digital technology are transforming industries, governments, economies, and societies. Digital ecosystems—the stakeholders, systems, and enabling environments that together empower people and communities to use digital technology to gain access to services, engage with each other, or pursue economic opportunities— hold immense potential to help people live more freer, healthier, more prosperous lives. These ecosystems can help drive economic empowerment and financial inclusion, advance national security, support accountability and transparency in governance, introduce new and innovative health solutions, and make development and humanitarian assistance more efficient and effective.

Digital transformation comes with the risk of increasing inequality, repression, and instability. Malign actors capture digital infrastructure to advance divisive messaging, crime, and illicit finance. Despite the global prevalence of mobile phones and the Internet, the reality in many communities does not yet reflect the potential of a digital ecosystem that drives sustainable and equitable growth. Vulnerable or marginalized groups often find themselves excluded from the digital ecosystem because of inadequate infrastructure or a lack of affordable or relevant products, services, and content; or because political, social, environmental, or economic factors inhibit equitable uptake.

Now more than ever, as the global development community works to deliver life-saving assistance and relay crucial information in the face of the pandemic of COVID-19, the role of digital technology is undeniable. Teachers deliver lessons remotely to homebound classes; health care workers diagnose patients via telemedicine to minimize their risk of exposure; and people worldwide seek out online information about the pandemic’s impact on their lives and livelihoods. Across all of these activities, digital technology is what allows us to remain connected even while physical distancing requires us to be apart. It is more important than ever for USAID to help communities be resilient in the face of threats like this global pandemic, by ensuring all countries have robust digital ecosystems that are open, inclusive, secure, and of benefit to all.

In light of this, The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Digital Strategy (2020-2024) will position the Agency to advance our mission—to end the need for foreign assistance—through digitally supported programming that fosters the Journey to Self-Reliance in our partner countries and maximizes the benefits, while managing the risks that digital technology introduces into the lives of the communities we serve.

USAID Protocols for Evaluation of Current USAID Programming - 2025-02-20

To assess alignment of the US Government’s (USG) foreign assistance with the President’s America First foreign policy, which requires that each dollar of foreign assistance makes America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.

Semiannual Report to Congress - March 2024 - 2024-03-20

USAID

Simply put, our goal at USAID OIG is to improve U.S. foreign assistance programmed by the agencies we oversee by providing assurances to Congress and the American people that critically important aid dollars are going where intended and having the desired impact.

Our oversight work during this reporting period tracked USAID’s major programs and initiatives. For example, we continued to prioritize USAID’s Ukraine response, expanding our on-the-ground presence in Kyiv, and issuing an evaluation of USAID’s direct budget support to the government of Ukraine administered through the World Bank. We also audited USAID’s response to the Rohingya crisis in Burma and Bangladesh and evaluated USAID’s role in evacuating aid workers during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, all while expanding our evaluation and inspection capacity.

Program Cycle Operational Policy - 2024-03-20

USAID, Revised 2024

The Program Cycle is USAID’s operational model for planning, delivering, assessing, and adapting development programming in a given region or country to advance U.S. foreign policy. It encompasses guidance and procedures for:

1) Making strategic decisions at the regional or country level about programmatic areas of focus and associated resources;

2) Designing supportive projects and/or activities to implement these strategic plans; and

3) Learning from performance monitoring, evaluations, and other relevant sources of information to make course corrections as needed and inform future programming.

Driving Progress Beyond Programs - 2023-01-20

USAID, March, 2023

Since USAID’s founding more than 60 years ago, we have helped tackle many of the challenges of our time. With development partners around the world, we helped lift communities out of poverty, push back against oppression, and secure peace after conflict. We helped spark the Green Revolution and avert an age of global and continuous famine. We helped eradicate smallpox, reverse the spread of AIDS, end Ebola outbreaks, lead the campaign that has nearly eradicated polio, and dramatically decrease the incidence of malaria and tuberculosis. We supported dozens of transitions from autocracy to democracy, enabled tens of millions of girls to attend school, and provided lifesaving aid to communities torn apart by disasters, wars, and other crises.

Yet despite this remarkable progress, the development challenges of today are more formidable than those the world has faced at any time since World War II, with significant implications for America’s national security. The COVID-19 pandemic caused mass devastation, resulting in millions of deaths, economic turmoil, and rising global inequality. The climate crisis bears down on us all, with particularly vicious and destabilizing impacts on those least able to withstand its effects—and least responsible for the emissions that caused it. Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine has led to widespread misery and death and exacerbated a global food crisis to levels not seen in decades. In every region of the world, autocrats have become increasingly brazen, while democratic institutions and governance face a multitude of threats. All of these developments have combined to inflict significant economic harm on the world’s most marginalized communities.

These headwinds are occurring at a speed and scale never before witnessed, bypassing borders and affecting nations regardless of ideology or system of government. They are deeply interconnected, with climate change accelerating global hunger, the pandemic exacerbating long-standing economic challenges, and pervasive inequality contributing to democratic decline.

Integrating Conflict Sensitivity into Food Security Programs - 2023-01-20

The recent conflict in Ukraine is a stark reminder of the links between conflict and food security. Not only has it had a tragic human toll inside the country, but it is also fueling a global food crisis.1 Indeed, the increasing state of global fragility and conflict is a major contributor to acute food insecurity and a critical underlying concern for achieving the goals of food security programs.

Conflict sensitivity in food security programming is therefore of paramount importance. This is true not only in active conflict zones, but in any fragile environment that may have experienced conflict in the past or shows signs of latent or potential conflict. Ultimately, everywhere they work, it is imperative for food security actors to understand local conflict dynamics and how their programs interact with them. If they do not, implementers risk not only undermining progress toward their objectives, but may also inadvertently cause or exacerbate conflict.

To address this critical matter, this learning brief builds on an existing piece of guidance, Conflict Sensitivity in Food Security Programming2, from the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) former Office of Food for Peace. This brief assesses prevailing practices, successes, challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations around integrating conflict sensitivity into food security programs. Ultimately, conflict sensitivity is not only about managing and mitigating risk, but also about seeking opportunities to promote peace. In this respect, this learning brief can contribute to USAID’s calls for greater coherence in humanitarian, development, and peace programming by supporting aid actors to “champion conflict integration and opportunities for enabling or building peace where possible.”

Integrating a Market Systems Approach in Programming - 2022-11-20

The U.S. Government’s Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) 2022–2026 calls on the U.S. Government and its implementing partners to foster inclusive agricultural growth for small-scale producers, small- andmedium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and poor households, while increasing access to safe, healthy foodsand benefiting the environment. Programming can catalyze this inclusive growth by using a marketsystems development (MSD) approach that fosters more competitive, inclusive, and resilient marketsystems. The MSD approach, defined in the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID)AFramework for Inclusive Market System Development,is relevant to agricultural and nonagriculturalareas, including food systems and water and sanitation services, making it a powerful framework forprogramming across GFSS objectives. This guidance clarifies concepts and definitions, describes howusing an inclusive market systems approach in programming can advance the GFSS, provides relevantactivity examples, and identifies resources for design and implementation.

Strategic Framework for Early Recovery, Risk Reduction, and Resilience - 2022-10-20

USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) has developed this strategic framework to provide guidance to BHA and Agency staff and partners on approaches and programming1 in the areas of early recovery, risk reduction, and resilience (ER4). BHA considers the broad range of activities encompassed by ER4 programming to be integral components of humanitarian assistance and is committed to programming within the parameters of this framework.

Over the past decade, humanitarian assistance has evolved and adapted to a changing humanitarian landscape, characterized by climate change, complex and protracted crises, global migration, urbanization, and the rise of infectious disease outbreaks and global pandemics. Humanitarian assistance has thus extended beyond disaster response and traditional disaster risk reduction (DRR) activities to include a diverse set of activities characterized by innovative disaster risk management approaches.

BHA’s ER4 programming encapsulates a broad spectrum of work that can vary greatly in scope. For instance, risk reduction and early recovery activities can be relatively short in duration and very focused on certain sectors or may be longer in duration, requiring multi-sectoral approaches and multi-year investments. Meanwhile, BHA’s resilience activities, including Resilience Food Security Activities (RFSAs), are typically multi‑sectoral in approach and require multi-year investments.

This document provides a strategic framework for our ER4 work, including strategic objectives, guiding principles, definitions, and technical approaches, emphasizing the diversity of programming and approaches within the ER4 realm.