Mid-Term Review of the Norwegian Cooperation with South Africa in the Field of Human Rights

The Project

The Norwegian cooperation with South Africa through the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) has roots back to 1998. The current program, 2005-2009, has a budget frame of NOK 65 million. In the agreement the programme has three components: 1) Development and management of a project portfolio with South African institutions; 2) Provision of advisory services to the Embassy on human rights issues; 3) Contribute to competence building and debate in Norway on South Africa. The NCHR developed a Strategy for the South Africa cooperation for 2005-09 to guide the management of the Programme. The goal of the Programme as stated in the 2005-2009 Strategy is to promote respect, protection and fulfilment of human rights in a manner that consolidates democratic development in South Africa through engagement with government. This Strategy was revised in 2007, which stated the following goal for the programme: increased implementation of socio-economic rights, including increased access to justice in a constitutional democracy.

Interesting Findings

• The Strategic relevance of the Programme has been assessed by the review team as moderately relevant. The Programme supports the bilateral dialogue between South Africa and Norway and is aligned with the “Guidelines for Norwegian-South African development co-operation 2005-2009” and with the South African government's priorities include in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa of 1996. Moreover, the programme supports the Norwegian Development policy. The planned activities, outputs and results of the projects also support the stated objectives of the Programme. The strategic revision for the remaining period of 2007-2009 did not have much impact at programmatic and funding levels. NCHR continued funding almost all of the same organizations it funded before the 2007 strategic revision and most of the Programme’s funds continued to support the same organizations it funded previously. The Programmes’ focus on socio-economic rights is highly relevant to the context of South Africa, but its approach to pursue its objectives, continued focus on legal rights, has restricted the tangible impacts to beneficiaries (poor and vulnerable communities). The Programme’s strategic decision to focus on legal rights as a methodology has not captured the need to instigate and support civil society organizations work to implement rights attained in the legal arena and to maximize the possible impacts of the research supported by the Programme.
• The Programme had good and continued relations with its partners, from who information about developments on the ground were sought. Programme partners are highly professional organizations that keep abreast of developments in the field of human rights in South Africa. However, because the programme mostly and continuously worked with academic and legal institutions, information feeding funding decision making were highly influenced by such milieu. As a result, most of the Programme funds support the “cream of the crop” in the field of human rights in South Africa. Smaller organizations are being supported, but at a much smaller scale.
• The projects in the portfolio of the Programme have been producing most of its planned outputs. The Programme is therefore effective in delivering on its objectives. Various factors contributed to the effectiveness of the Programme. Support from NCHR has positively contributed to the effectiveness of some projects. The flexibility and predictability of funding provided by the NCHR have positively impacted effectiveness of the Programme as well. Receiving long-term financing (vis-à-vis yearly) has enabled partner organizations to concentrate on project activities and outputs.
• Insufficient strategic partnership supported by the Programme (e.g. partnership with organisations engaged in different but complementary work such as litigation and social mobilisation, government institutions) has diminished the effectiveness of the portfolio. While the overall delivery rate of outputs by partners is high, the outreach of produced results to beneficiaries has been more modest. This has been particularly the case for partners whose activities under the Programme focused on litigations and research.
• Overall the Programme has been running efficiently. Some inhibiting factors of efficiency are however identified: insufficient strategic partnership, remoteness from beneficiary communities, pursuit of objectives with narrow, and limited tangible impacts on the poor. Staff turn-over, especially in research, also generates project inefficiencies in some partner organizations. External factors that influence the efficiency of Programme operations are Government inefficiencies and capacity limitations to implement policies. Inefficiency in the count system delay litigation, incrementing project costs. Of importance, weak social movements in South Africa affect the effectiveness and efficiency of the Programme.
• NCHR has developed no results frameworks which could provide management with information on the Programme’s results at Output, Outcome and Impact levels. Most partner organisations do not have or use a results framework either. The review team therefore could not provide an evidence-based assessment of Programme’s outcomes. What the review team provides is an analysis of possible outcomes and impacts of the Programme, based on a subjective analysis: The South African Programme produced important outcomes. Together, Programme partners have influenced policy formulation and helped to entrench at consciousness level certain socio-economic rights in areas of Government and society. Partners have also contributed to human rights networking formation at continental level. The work of numerous partners with litigation has yielded important outcomes. Concrete examples of partners contributing to improving the implementation of socio-economic rights are provided in the report. Many Programme partners, however, do not monitor the outcomes of their work. Most of the projects either do not have or only have poorly defined Goal-level results and virtually no indicators that are monitorable at this level. In turn, the NCHR has not developed a results framework for the Programme, making it difficult to monitor results.
• The main strategic focus of the Programme has been to promote socio-economic rights through the legal arena. Some positive outcomes have been generated by partners supported by the Programme, such as Olivia road research, advocacy and litigation which has had major impact in Johannesburg on access of poor people to housing, and other cases exemplified in the report. Given that the outcomes of litigation takes time, at this point in time, the stronger contribution of the Programme portfolio has been to help to entrench at consciousness level certain socio-economic rights in areas of government (housing, HIV/AIDS-health, water, land reform, women’s and children’s rights). The Programme has therefore contributed to advance democracy more at consciousness than practical level.
• The incorporation of gender and HIV/AIDS as cross-cutting issues in the Programme has produced mixed results. While some partners have made significant progress in incorporating Gender and HIV/AIDS as a cross-cutting issue, others have not fully developed either an understanding or the necessary instruments to integrating gender and HIV/AIDS into the organizations’ modus operandi. It would have been useful to Programme partners if NCHR had provided a clear understanding of its expectations regarding the incorporation of gender and HIV/AIDS as cross-cutting issues. Ideally, NCHR and the partners should jointly have identified and developed guidelines in this regard early on in the Programme.
• NCHR has been a competent fund administrator and effective in providing direction and coherence to the human rights portfolio of the Programme. However, the role of NCHR in the institutional set-up of Norwegian development cooperation requires that NCHR act beyond the role of a Programme manager. The team assesses that up to this point NCHR has not fully fulfilled its potential as a human rights institution managing a development cooperation programme for the Embassy. NCHR seems to have underplayed or misunderstood its role in supporting the work of a political body – the Embassy, and the full dimensions of development cooperation. The Embassy has until recently also underplayed its role in the Programme.