Governance Assessment: Experience of a development

partner

Donald RukareInwent Conference:

'Country-led Governance Assessments: Sharing Experiences and Increasing Political Accountability'

Namibia 5th November 2009

Outline

What we are assessing?How we do it?The main challengesBest PracticesWhat needs to be done?Main lessons learnt

What we are assessing?

Who: Development partners ie Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, US, UK, Germany, Ireland, UNDP, EU, World Bank

What: Governance issues i.e. state of democratization, corruption, human rights, conflict

Why: Development partners have a stake as they provide assistance to government

How we do it?

At three levels (1) bi laterally (2) jointly and (3) externally

Have developed a governance matrix has four components (1) human rights (2) democratization (3) anti corruption (4) conflict resolution

Have identified indicators linked to the Government Poverty Eradication Action plan ( PRSP) and APRM National Action Plan

How We do it?

We rely on a number of surveys, indexes and reports both national and international i.e. Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, Governance Matters –World Bank, Mo Ibrahim Index, APRM country reports

Several of the individuals in this sector not conversant with statistics and use of statistics

Blind faith in the various surveys and quoted at will

Subjective assessments done sometimes not backed by evidence

Human Rights Indicators

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION; FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION; FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND OTHER MEDIAFREEDOM FROM ARBITRARY ARREST, ILLEGAL

DETENTION AND TORTURE

Main Challenges

Few indicatorsSources of information rely in reports,

newspapers and subjective viewsPolitics, sometimes hard to reach consensus Tendency to always focus on negativeThere is no universally acceptable definitions of

governance, human rights and democracy ie Human Rights – universal vs cultural relativism

Matrix confidential

Best Practices

Developing a Governance MatrixCollective assessmentAligning to National PlanMeeting with GovernmentIdentifies who should do what i.e. group,

Heads of Mission

What needs to be done?

Develop good indicators that tell the right story

Rely on credible sources of informationMake matrix publicLink more to external and bi lateral

assessments

Main Lessons learnt

Need to adopt a scientific methodologyNeed to build capacity on use of statistics The statistics and governance, human

rights and democracy worlds need to interface more

Political considerations have affect tone of assessment