International humanitarian assistance reached a record high in 2014, with global contributions totalling US$24.5 billion,almost a 19 per cent increase since 2013.However, this isn’t good news for the sector as the demand for humanitarian assistance continues to outstrip supply. Humanitarian financing is now fraught with new challenges as the nature and number of emergencies that come under the realm of humanitarian action is constantly changing.

So, 2015 has arrived and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are to be replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But shouldn’t we stop and ask how we have done on the MDGs first? “How we have done” can be seen an outcome monitoring question: have the targets been reached? But since we have fallen far short on some targets, such as access to improved sanitation, we need to dig deeper and ask which policies have been successful in helping achieve the targets.

The just-released International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE) suite of publications reexamining the effectiveness of deworming in Kenya demonstrates the potential impact of replication research. The headline publication is a 3ie-funded replication study.

A group of villages in Haryana, India came together to build a much-needed bridge to reduce travel time to the nearest town. This sounds like the sort of community initiative that donors have been supporting for more than a decade with community driven development (CDD) programmes. Except it isn’t.