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Contributions from
the Column
Facts and trends
AIDS: auditors criticise Bush administration
WTO disapproves of EU sugar subsidies
Demobilisation in Afghanistan a success
Additional funds for German civil peace service
Kemal Dervis next head of UNDP
New World Bank data on governance
Monetary fund for Asia under preparation
New leaders for WTO and UNCTAD
Canada concentrates development aid
The failure of Plan Colombia
06/2005
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[ Germany’s Civil Peace Service ]
Lessons from evaluation
The German Development Ministry is providing ¤14.5 million for the Civil Peace Service (CPS) this year. The money is earmarked for 44 peace experts to be posted in crisis and post conflict countries such as Sudan, Rwanda, Palestine, Cambodia, Indonesia and Guatemala. Since the CPS was founded in 1999, the Ministry has payed for 193 experts, who were deployed by the various organisations that constitute the CPS consortium. In 1999, ¤ 2.5 million was made available for this purpose; almost 10 million in 2001 and ¤ 14.3 million last year.
In 2002, the build-up phase of the Civil Peace Service was evaluated. The appraisers acknowledged that the participating institutions had created an important instrument in the intersecting field of development programmes and foreign peace policy. However, the evaluation also brought to light some shortcomings. According to the Ministry and the CPS consortium, some of these have since been rectified, while others are still being worked on.
The process of approving funds, for example, which the assessors has criticised as being bureaucratic, has been modified. Since last year, the Civil Peace Service’s secretariat, which is run by the German Development Service (DED) in Bonn, must no longer apply to the Ministry for each individual project. Instead, the Ministry annually grants funds for a package of projects. Within the allotted sum, the secretariat may shift funds for individual purposes as the need arises.
The CPS agencies also reacted to the assessors’ criticism of missions having been poorly defined. The consortium has adopted standards for the further training of peace experts. According to Oliver Märtin of the CPS consortium the Development Ministry is even making an exception to the law on development professionals by permitting peace experts to be further trained during their mission. Moreover, in March, the consortium agreed on standards for CPS projects. The evaluation of the Service’s initial phase had stated that it was unclear in what sense some CPS projects differed from “normal” development projects. As a result of the evaluation, each project application must now contain a conflict analysis.
Measuring impacts, however, remains “a difficult topic”, according to Märtin. So far, checks have been limited to project outcomes. The implementing agencies simply lack the instruments for deeper investigations into the impact of CPS projects on underlying conflict structures. The Ministry currently prepares another evaluation in order to find out how the effects of peace work and conflict prevention could be better monitored. (ell)
Further information:
http://www.ziviler-friedensdienst.org/
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