REVIEW OF THE NPA RWANDA PROGRAMME AND ASSESSMENT OF PROSPECTS OF NPA ACTIVITIES IN RWANDA

Background

Norwegian People's Aid started its operation in Rwanda in 1994 in the immediate aftermath of the genocide, to address the situation of emergency. The new NPA global international strategy for the period 2004 - 2007, where the major objectives were linked to strengthening the capacity of partner organisations to mobilise for democratisation, participation and social and economic change, initiated a transformation process in the Rwanda programme. From the second half of 2005 and onwards, partner cooperation has been NPA's main approach for promoting development. The programme moved towards Rights based approach and the work was concentrated around three thematic areas under the NPA global strategy: Violence against women, Young people and their right to participate and Land and resource rights.
The transformation of the NPA Rwanda programme was done during the period of reform and changes in the Rwandan society and the development of NPA programme in Rwanda must be seen in light of the prospects, challenges and opportunities faced by the Rwandan society. The Period from 2004 has been considered a trial period for NPA's new approach.

Purpose/objective

The overall objective of the review has been to identify future prospects for NPA's work in Rwanda. An assessment has been done of the development of the programme, focusing on the present situation and future opportunities. The review comes up with recommendations for the programme for the next 4 year period, looking into opportunities, capacities and conditions within NPA Rwanda, NPA's partners and within the general Rwandan context.

Methodology

The methodology for data collection embraced a combination of the following:
? Review of documents.
? Interviews and discussions with program and administrative staff at NPA, personnel in partners' offices and field based staff, as well as representatives of beneficiaries, authorities and other international organisations.
? Direct observations and close interactions with the working environment both in office as well as in the field
? Participation in workshops

Key findings

The Findings indicate that the readjusting and transition of the Rwanda programme from operational humanitarian activities towards partnership co-operation and RBA in line with NPA's 2004 - 2008 strategy seems in general terms to have been quite successful, and the achievements made constitute a good platform for further development of the programme. Local partners have been identified based on contact with the local community and their ability to influence change. The programme faces challenges related to the low capacity in the organisations and also related to the organisational culture in Rwanda. NPA has played a positive role in encouraging and facilitating co-operation between its partners and has also successfully supported wider alliance building among organisations. There are also examples that the alliance building has strengthened advocacy and contributed to civil society influencing political decisions.

Violence against women, Young people and their right to participate and Land and resource rights are all relevant issues in the Rwandan context. There is a political momentum in Rwanda to work on women's empowerment and gender equality. NPA and some of its partners have a good record to build future efforts on, with its work to end violence against women and to promote women's participation by the programme "Women Can Do It". Very few interventions in Rwanda specially target youth and NPA seems to be the only international organisation working to promote young peoples participation. Right to land and resources is a sensitive and critical issue in Rwanda, but involvement also carries potential risk, thus effectiveness of the land rights programme seems less relevant than the involvement on women's and youth's rights.

The programme faces some particular challenges in handling partners' and NPA's relation to authorities. The authorities are quite welcoming towards NGOs and there are many arenas for co-operation between civil society and authorities, but there is at the same time a tendency towards firm control with non governmental actors. It is, however, also important that the decentralisation process has provided appropriate institutional structures for development actors, particularly NGOs, to engage local governments and reach target communities and groups.

Recommendations

Major recommendations to the country programme's future work is to increase focus where results can be achieved and to work to increase capacity, impact and influence of actors in civil society. To maximise impact it might be feasible with a more flexible attitude towards the thematic areas and look into the relations between them and how to build synergies to get better results. A key consideration could also be to scale down to fewer thematic areas where important lessons from the current phase can be replicated to other geographical areas within Rwanda.

NPA should continue and if possible scale up its portfolio, but must be mindful of the challenges involved. The focus should be on greater and more targeted support to the partners' organisation development, building stronger partnerships, and support partners to strengthen and have lasting links with grassroots - building constituencies and internal democratisation of partner organisations.

The present intervention areas are still relevant from the national and international perspective. But there is more to be done, in terms of policy analysis and programming, to translate international NPA strategy into Rwandan context.

There is a need to strengthen the organisational focus of the co-operation and focus more on strengthening the organisational capacity of partners. The programme now needs to consolidate and enter into longer term and more politically strategic partnership with some selected partners.

There is potential for improvement and strengthening of the link and relations between Rwanda's local communities and the formalised civil society mainly based in Kigali.

Unity and reconciliation should continue to be integrated as an integral component of all programme activities by NPA and partners, because it cross-cuts the socioeconomic, governance and rights activities.

The thematic areas and cross-cutting themes will continue to be viable, but NPA could benefit from planning for different scenarios (better, status quo or worse - political/economic unrest);
The cross-cutting issues need to be identified with activities, outputs and indicators to measure achievement.

Comments from the organisation

Findings and recommendations will provide input to the formulation of the new strategy and to guide the programming for the next period. The regional office will address the management issues and a new organisational structure will be in place and effective early 2007.