The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade provides a range of humanitarian support services to other countries, drawing on specialist partners in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Partners include the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre (NCCTRC), Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) and Fire and Rescue New South Wales (FRNSW). This report assesses the capacity-building assistance provided by these organisations to partner country governments in the Indo-Pacific region through training, advisory services, and mentorship.

The evaluation found overall, grant partners had established a sound foundation for emergency response capacity strengthening programs, which could continue to develop in a new phase. Grant partners should feel encouraged to continue to develop their programs for eligible partner countries.

Key findings
- Effectiveness: capacity building assistance to partner country governments is being delivered effectively by grant partners and is valued and appreciated by its recipients.
- Efficiency: investment activities have mostly been delivered on time and within budget.
- Monitoring and evaluation: the monitoring and evaluation system for all three grant partners is under-developed and not suited for gathering results at outcome or impact levels.
- Relevance: whilst there is evidence of the links between capacity building programs to regional and global mechanisms and initiatives, there is little qualitative impact data available on work in this area.
- Consideration of thematic priorities such as gender equality and disability inclusion is relatively rudimentary and there is scope for these areas to be addressed more comprehensively.