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Abstract
Background
Humanitarian practitioners have recently expanded their focus from the provision of assistance only to working to ensure refugees and internally displaced peoples (IDPs) can develop sustained 'self-reliance'. However, few tools measure self-reliance, and even fewer capture non-financial dimensions of self-reliance or measure the construct within refugee and IDP populations. To help address these gaps in measurement and provide organizations with a tool to track households' self-reliance over time, the Self-Reliance Index (SRI) was developed. The index component of the tool comprises 12 domains of self-reliance, including housing, food, education, healthcare, health status, safety, employment, financial resources, assistance, debt, and savings, and social capital. This paper presents the methodology used to evaluate the tool's internal consistency and scoring validity, shares the corresponding findings, and offers a practical approach for developing a culturally relevant and robust tool for humanitarian settings.

Results
Data were collected from 57 and 59 refugee households in Nairobi, Kenya, and Palenque, Mexico, respectively; repeat follow-up interviews were held with 34 and 33 households in Kenya and Mexico after a period of 3 months. Cronbach's alpha was found to be 0.66 in Kenya and 0.64 in Mexico, both of which met the a priori minimum threshold for internal consistency of 0.6. A data-driven process was used to inform the design of the scoring rubric for the SRI, prioritizing the tool's validity such that the final score would signal useful information about a household's overall level of self-reliance while also keeping the process as straightforward for users as possible. Final descriptive statistics and score distributions, considered alongside organizational knowledge of sample households and sensitivity analyses, suggest good score validity.

Conclusions
The SRI aims to serve as an important step in measuring the complex subject of self-reliance in a comprehensive way and over time. Results suggest that, with some contextualizing for each setting, the universal tool offers a measurement approach that is feasible, reliable, and valid. By encouraging relevant stakeholders to more holistically conceptualize and measure self-reliance, the SRI also aims to promote a more cross-sector, all-inclusive approach to programming.

International child protection work has undergone a paradigm shift, moving from addressing issues such as trafficked children, street children and child labour separately to a more integrated systems approach. As a young nation still marked by conflict, South Sudan offers insight into how the interplay between a fragile national child protection system in a conflict‐affected country and the efforts of international humanitarian actors can promote or undermine systems strengthening. From June to August 2012, 52 semi‐structured key informant interviews with international‐, national‐ and community‐level actors were completed. Eight community‐level focus group discussions were also conducted separately with men, women, boys and girls. Interview guides were designed to explore participant perceptions of child protection system functioning. Data were analysed using a grounded theory approach. Four dimensions emerged as crucial pillars for child protection systems strengthening: coordination, capacity, funding and community inclusion. These factors were found to have taken root in unequal measure. Respondents at all systemic levels indicated that child protection systems strengthening efforts operated largely in isolation from the quotidian realities of children, families and communities. The humanitarian apparatus — marked by short‐term funding and accountability to the international community — will require significant reform to situate humanitarian efforts in a systems strengthening framework. If the objective is to strengthen national child protection systems, emergency response activities must better align with household‐ and community‐level efforts to protect children.