Democratisation in Central Asia - programme review

Publication date: Thursday 03 February 2005

The following publication reports on the first independent review of Hivos’s Central Asia Programme from its beginning in 1994 through 2002. During these nine years Hivos allocated about €7.1 million in grants to 42 organisations in Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic, and to several West European organizations active in Central Asia.

Summary
The evaluators found the programme design generally relevant to context and to most aspects of Hivos and Co-Financing Programme purposes. As formulated in 1993, the programme was tightly focused on four sectors with a clear core theme of democratization. Hivos did not, however, pursue its intentions in respect to media, thereby missing opportunities to strengthen democratization processes.

Hivos helped pioneer support in two important domains: women’s rights (particularly the issue of violence against women) and organisational development and training of NGOs. It was among the first donors to identify and assist environmental policy activist groups, and NGOs active on the terrain of political and civil rights. In building civil society – a major Hivos goal – the performance of most local grantees in these sectors is good, particularly in building networks and alliances; the performance of a number of grantees in influencing public policy has been good and shows further promise in spite of highly problematic – and for some worsening – political climates. Improvements in internal organisational capacities show more uneven patterns; issues of leadership, learning systems, and financial sustainability loom large in many cases.

Hivos’s decision to add a programming sector focused on small enterprise is open to question on grounds of coherence with the core theme of democratization, on conceptual grounds, and on grounds of added value on a working terrain crowded by other donors. Relevance to poverty is not self-evident. Data to verify this relevance are in almost all cases weak or absent. Grantee performance is quite uneven, and Hivos has met major setbacks mainly in this sector.

Looking to the future, Hivos should build on its strengths and minimize its weak points. That will mean renewing its strategic commitment to democratization, with an accent on citizen participation in pursuit of political and civil rights. It should further develop grant-making and advocacy emphasizing transparency and public accountability of public and private actors. It should further contribute to the emancipatory camp of civil society through stimulation of organisational learning, research, and debate. On the terrain of economic initiatives, however, Hivos needs to stop and reflect. It should revisit and re-centre its anti-poverty strategies. In respect to overall programme management, Hivos should re-adjust grant-making norms in order to boost grantee self-reliance and sustain flows of benefits from grantee accomplishments. It should enable its Programme Officer to re-deploy time from primary process tasks toward gaining contextual knowledge and toward a welcome new Hivos initiative: a formal strategy of advocacy on human rights in respect to Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic.