Bangladesh - Belgium

Citizens’ Voice and Accountability Evaluation – Bangladesh Country Case Study
Executive Summary
The Bangladesh Country Case Study (BCCS) under the joint Evaluation of Citizen’s Voice and
Accountability (CVA) reviews the intervention approaches donors in Bangladesh are taking to
promote CVA. Donors in the inception workshop in October, 2007 defined Citizens Voice as ‘Open
expression of opinion and aspiration resulting in more equitable policies and institutions and
Accountability as Fulfilment of responsibilities including answerability by duty holders to ensure
check and balance in power’.
BCCS is one of five such studies of CVA commissioned by the Evaluation Core Group (ECG) of
seven donor partners (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK).
All case studies were required to use the uniform Evaluation Framework and the Methodological
Guidelines developed by the Overseas Development Institute.
The objectives of the entire joint evaluation are:
• To improve understanding of CVA among development partners by documenting their
approaches in a variety of contexts;
• To assess impacts of a range of CVA interventions;
• To learn lessons about which approaches have worked best, where and why.
The TOR for the BCCS identify a further three specific objectives:
• To assess a number of interventions against their intended objectives and, on the basis of
that, draw conclusions about what works, and what does not, in relation to intervention
programme theories;
• To assess the relevance of the interventions for strengthening voice and accountability in
the specific country context;
• To provide an overall analysis/assessment of donors’ roles, successes and failures in
supporting CVA in different country contexts.
Bangladesh was ranked 17 out of 76 countries in the failed state index (2005). The most salient
problems related to weak institutions, law and order deterioration, politically sponsored terrorism,
patronage and confrontational politics. From 2004 the Opposition continued a 18 month boycott of
Parliament and regularly called country wide strikes (Hartals). Despite an enlightened Constitution
developed in 1972 many provisions have not been enacted over the interim thirty years (e.g.
separation of the judiciary, provision of guardianship organisations such as ombudsman). With
pervasive corruption 1 and political insecurity the investment climate and international trade were
severely undermined. It was against this backdrop that many of the CVA interventions were
initiated. Bangladesh is currently governed by a transition Caretaker Government which intends to
stand down for national elections to take place by December 2008. CVA interventions had been
somewhat limited to support for advocacy networks and participatory processes embedded in
development programmes in different sectors. There had been very little scope for accountability
interventions partly because of an unwillingness to risk public scrutiny and partly because of the
non existent or non functioning guardianship institutions. Whilst some challenges exist related to
the ‘state of emergency’ and constraints on public gatherings, most people see the Caretaker
Government period as a window of opportunity in which to operationalise guardianship institutions
and provide an enabling environment for CVA.
1 Bangladesh topped Transparency International’s corruption index for four years running.
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