Evaluation of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute’s project “Strengthening Human Rights in Myanmar” during the time period 2013-2014
In May 2014, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) commissioned an evaluation of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute’s (RWI) human rights capacity development project in Myanmar covering the period 1 January 2013 – 30 June 2014.
The project “Strengthening Human Rights in Myanmar 2012-2016” (hereinafter referred to as “the Project”) started 1 November 2012 with the overall objective to strengthen the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC), and its key partners, to more effectively implement their mandates to promote and protect human rights in Myanmar, so as to address the problem of ineffective implementation of human rights protection measures in Myanmar.
MNHRC was established in September 2011 and at a time when Myanmar had initiated a series of political and economic reforms leading to a substantial opening of the long-isolated country. The Commission was accordingly a very young institution when RWI first initiated cooperation. Faced with high expectations, the Commission lacked capacity and basic facilities in several, if not all, important areas, as well as an appropriate and strong legal foundation for its work. The Project was thus initiated, and has continued to operate, in a highly complex context implying the Commission having to navigate in a difficult political landscape in transition.
The evaluation of the Project intended to serve the purpose of contributing to the dialogue between Sida and RWI on the continued operation of the Project. The objectives of the evaluation were to generate information on how effective the Project had been in achieving results thus far, identifying, where possible, factors influencing positive results achievement, and proposing any potential adjustments to ensure effective delivery for the remaining two years of the Project.
The evaluation was limited to assessing results achievement at predominantly output level and as directly related to the activities set out in the 2013 Project work plan and the activities that had taken place before July 2014 (as per the 2014 Project work plan), in accordance with specific evaluation questions formulated. Furthermore, since the evaluation, due to its timing, only would assess the first 1.5 years of the Project, which had been designed as a four-year project, the evaluation should take into consideration, for assessing results, that the first year of the Project had heavily focused on building trust and laying the foundation for future cooperation with MNHRC and other potential partners.
In accordance with requirements of an existing framework agreement for Sida evaluations and advisory services on results frameworks, Sida called off the services of the Swedish consultancy firm Indevelop AB to carry out the evaluation, as per the Terms of Reference (ToR) developed for the evaluation. The evaluation was carried out between August – November 2014. The report from the evaluation was finalised in late November 2014.
Raoul Wallenberg Institute Management Response