Bangladesh - Belgium

Citizens’ Voice and Accountability Evaluation – Bangladesh Country Case Study
The BCCS study team focused on eleven interventions (three implemented by Government, two
implemented by local NGOs, one implemented by a grassroots social movement, two implemented
by International NGOs, one civil society Watch Dog, one Trade Union and one implemented by the
donor agency) and covering a range of interventions supporting demand-side, supply-side and
demand-supply-side interaction. The selection was made on the basis of criteria developed in an
Inception Workshop with donors, NGOs, Trade union representatives, the media, government and
Chamber of Commerce and then finalised through bilateral discussions with DAC joint Evaluation
Donors.
The team undertook the case study reviews by i. Reviewing project documentation, ii. Meeting with
key project personnel, iii. Field visits to Pabna, Khulna, Gazipur and Faridpur to meet with local
stakeholders of various interventions as well as observations of project activities. The team used
participatory and interactive methods to facilitate discussion and self evaluation.
All eleven interventions are relevant to the context of Bangladesh and all are supported on the
premise that they contribute to poverty alleviation, even if causal links can be a little tenuous.
There has been more focus on voice than accountability mainly because most of the interventions
were designed before the current Caretaker Government when there was less willingness on the
part of government to support investment on accountability interventions. A number of donors told
us that they had designed programmes to support guardianship organisations in the pipeline but
had not been able to operationalise them. A flurry of activity has resulted to take advantage of the
window of opportunity afforded by the two years of Caretaker Government before restoration of
political parliament and the more agile donors have already contributed funds to support the
Election Commission 2 , Separation of the Judiciary and the Anti-Corruption Commission.
Donors have tended to be quite conservative in their choice of actors. Most voice interventions are
channelled through NGOs. We purposely included a social movement and a Trade Union case in
our study to explore diversity of intervention but they are not typical and most donors would
consider them risky partners. One intervention started out as a purely media intervention but has
been moulded to fit donor requirements of a more conventional NGO engaged in a range of
information and awareness raising activities. We also purposely selected two government
interventions which emphasised voice but again these are rare examples. Accountability
interventions are mainly targeted at capacity building of Union Parishads (councils and the lowest
tier of elected local government). This is partly because the most visible impact on the poor can be
achieved in this way since it is the poor who have suffered most from weak and corrupt local
government. But it is also because there was less unwillingness of government to engage at this
level than central and district level.
The main emphasis in all the interventions is on awareness raising (of rights including the right to
information, corruption and social issues). Several interventions use popular culture to promote
awareness which is particularly appropriate where many are illiterate but also where cultural
events are so well supported. Many of the inventions also involve some form of organisation into
committees and networks to raise voice collectively and benefit from mutual support. Many of the
interventions have also successfully used the media (print and broadcast) to bring issues into the
public domain and particularly to ‘name and shame’.
Most of the interventions are premised on the assumption that they will contribute to good
governance and democracy and will therefore lead to better service delivery and less leakage of
resources intended for the poor. Whilst awareness raising activities have had considerable
2 The team had wanted to include a review of the support to the Election Commission as an example of
opportunistic funding but it was so busy that donors dissuaded us.
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