Framework for People-Oriented Planning in Refugee Situations (POP)

POP is an adaptation of the Harvard Analytical Framework by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) for use in refugee situations, designed to overcome some of the Harvard Framework's initial weaknesses. The purpose of POP is to ensure that there is an efficient and equitable distribution of resources and services. There is an accompanying POP planning tool. It is based on three ideas:

Change: When people flee from disaster or conflict, their lives change
rapidly and dramatically, and continue to change.
Participation: Refugee participation is a major factor in determining whether or not a project will succeed.
Importance of analysis: Whatever type of project is being planned (water, food distribution, health promotion, and so on), socio-economic and demographic analysis are critical components of project planning.

The POP Framework has three components:

Determinants Analysis (Refugee Population Profile and Context Analysis): Asks the questions—Who are the refugees? What is the refugee’s context?
Activities Analysis: Asks the questions—who does what? When and where do they do it?
Use and Control of Resources Analysis: Determines how resources are distributed, and who has a say over their use.

Change: When people flee from disaster or conflict, their lives change
rapidly and dramatically, and continue to change.
Participation: Refugee participation is a major factor in determining whether or not a project will succeed.
Importance of analysis: Whatever type of project is being planned (water, food distribution, health promotion, and so on), socio-economic and demographic analysis are critical components of project planning.

The POP Framework has three components:

Determinants Analysis (Refugee Population Profile and Context Analysis): Asks the questions—Who are the refugees? What is the refugee’s context?
Activities Analysis: Asks the questions—who does what? When and where do they do it?
Use and Control of Resources Analysis: Determines how resources are distributed, and who has a say over their use.

Strengths

• Applies it to a more specified audience and allows it to adapt to the nuances of their situation.

• Provides a more critical understanding of resources and pays attention to how things may change over time.

• Practical tool that supports data collection that gives a clear and simple picture of who does what, when, and with what. It makes women's work visible and helps practitioners avoid making serious technical mistakes, such as handing out resources at inappropriate times or underestimating women's existing workload.

Weaknesses

• Takes an efficiency focus, not an equity focus, on allocating new resources, in order to make a response more efficient without addressing inequalities in gender relations. (Similar limitations to the Harvard Analytical Framework)

• Focuses on material resources rather than social relationships, emphasizing activities and resources of different categories of people, rather than on relationships between different groups, leading to over-simplified understanding of the issue.

• Focuses on separation rather than interconnectedness.

• Matrices can encourage people to take a fairly superficial, tick-the-box approach to data collection that fails to capture the power dynamics present in the lives of men and women, which play a key role in shaping their evolving experiences.

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