Mid-term Review of Strategic Partnership to support local CSOs working on Human Rights, Democracy and Good Governance, Royal Norwegian Embassy and NCA

Background:
As part of its strategy to implement the “Civil Society for Accountable Governance” program, NCA entered into a Strategic Partnership (SP) with the Royal Norwegian Embassy (RNE) with the objectives of supporting local civic organizations as of October 2006. Under this SP NCA-Ethiopia (NCA-E) assumes the responsibilities of, among others, managing RNE’s fund to seven prominent local CSOs working in the areas of human rights, democracy, good governance and peace building.

A mid-term review was conducted to assess the “Human Rights, Democracy and Good Governance” program jointly run by the Royal Norwegian Embassy (RNE) and NCA-E in accordance with their Strategic Partnership (SP) agreement in 2006.  The review had two dimensions: The Programme review assesses the accomplishment of selected partners of NCA towards attaining the general goal of the programme while the Organizational review assesses the contribution or added value of NCA since the commencement of the SP.

Purpose/ Objective:
The purpose of this particular review is to review the performance of NCA’s partners in achieving their stated objectives (in relation to their program on human rights, good governance and democracy) with specific reference to the relevance and effectiveness of the programs, and the extent of the progress they have made towards achieving their objectives. In addition to the partners, the review also covers NCA-E’s role as a Strategic Partner to RNE and its responsibilities towards the implementing partners.

Methodology:
The review team employed a qualitative method for collection of the data for the review. The team made interviews with representatives of the partner organizations, and randomly selected beneficiaries such as representatives of Idirs. Visits to field offices were conducted to meet staff at local level and learn how they translate their objectives to practices. Observation was undertaken of the actual working environments, their human resources and institutional capacity.   

Key Findings:
• The perception of partners towards NCA’s effectiveness and efficiency is found to be very positive and encouraging.
• All the seven partners except the EERI actively involved in CSO forums and networks which is very crucial for
experience sharing and achieving common objectives; the promotion and protection of human rights, good governance and democracy in Ethiopia. Some of the networks are established to create enabling political and legal environment for the sector.
• It is observed that some projects are very ambitious in setting their objectives compared to their human and financial resources. The issues they deal are multifaceted, in some instances not related to each other, and lack consistency.
• The evaluation team has observed that women participation in programs has been sound. Not only gender but age
has been also considered important in many of the programs. 
• Although the degree varies among the different organizations, still there are valid concerns on the new funding
arrangement commonly known as CSSP. The concern arises from different perspectives; avoids the consortium arrangement of donors which is believed to be more favorable in utilization and administration of fund, absence of core funding and limitation only to project support, possible impact on donor-partners working relationship, capacity of the grant administrator to establish a close working relation and to assess activities on the ground than mere paper works, etc.
• The draft CSO legislation, as it stands now, withers away all the partners as all of them are classified as advocacy
organization working on human rights, good governance and democracy. These types of interventions cannot be carried out with foreign financial support. 

Recommendations:
 Partners should be encouraged to ensure effective and active participation of their stakeholders in project designing,
implementation and monitoring to ensure financial and institutional sustainability.
 Partners together with NCA need to design a workable strategy on how to cope up with the CSO legislation before
their eventual closing down
 Partners need to have continued trainings aiming at project designing so as to improve the quality of their project
document and implementation capacity.
 NCA should work hard towards the establishment of a joint forum consisting of all partners as envisaged in the SP. The annual partners meeting is one but should not be the only venue for partners to meet each other, share experience, identify and address common advocacy issues.
 As part of its role in building the capacity of partners, NCA should encourage partners to undergo external evaluation exercise on their program intervention periodically and regularly

Comments from Norwegian Church Aid (if any):
• Closer follow up of projects to ensure active participation of all stakeholders
• Encourage partners which have not done external evaluation since 2006 would make such exercise
• Encourage partners to be engaged in existing CSO forums such as CRDA Good Governance forum