Bangladesh - Belgium

Citizens’ Voice and Accountability Evaluation – Bangladesh Country Case Study
Sustainability
Attitudinal change is a virtuous spiral of continuous change (in contrast with one-stop change).
Indeed, the entire raison d’etre of the campaign is to create sustainable change.
In pursuit of this sustainability, funding is reportedly not a burning issue for Alliance. For the past two
years there has not been much funding from donors (Oxfam providing most of the funding: Euro1.6
million for change makers support and 16 day campaigns). The Alliance office is planning to mobilise
additional funds, phase-wise, with a 2 nd phase beginning shortly. But money is not a prime motivator
or priority for this campaign. One key informant commented: “we’re happy to get support but not by
losing our identity”.
Lessons Learned
The issue of “projectising” this kind of social movement is particularly challenging given the sensitive
nature of the focus and sensitivities around “western cultural agendas”.
Oxfam to their credit have recognised the sensitivity of the campaign by not imposing a restrictive
project framework and by not insisting that the campaign use their logo. A key informant noted:
“using logos can be good but sometimes you need something other than a logo”.
III: Models of Change Developed
The motivation for making this a development issue was fuelled by the effect assumption that gender
equality in the household impacts on development (see Figure 1 below).
The model takes as its starting point the objective to break the socio-cultural norm that violence
against women is locally perceived as necessary to control women and maintain discipline in society.
The movement is therefore built on the premise that there is a need to transform this social institution
(to change the rules that govern behaviour) through building a social consensus and renegotiating
social contracts rather than to rely on the sanctions of policy change alone.
The model is based on effect assumptions that are difficult to test. Firstly it is very difficult to reliably
measure the incidence of a taboo like domestic violence. In reporting on its achievements, the
movement therefore leans heavily on accumulation of anecdotal evidence, which does not amount to
a robust data set. Of course the movement cannot and should not be criticised for not being able
effectively to measure its impact, but it should be careful to qualify its reporting on the effects of the
campaign.
This means that the assumption that public declarations of change in attitude and behaviour are
sufficient proxies for assessing the impact of the movement. Secondly, it is extremely difficult, and
probably unwise, to attempt to attribute change in development outcomes to a reduction in domestic
violence. The campaign is partly trying to do this because of donor demands for instrumentality but
also because of a reported identification of empowerment in the family as a key to broader
development achievements and outcomes.
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