Since the 1990s, many multi-lateral and bi-lateral donors have expanded their peace-making and peace-keeping assistance to conflict-affected countries to include peace-building activities. The objective of these interventions is to prevent the conflict from reoccurring and return countries to a stable situation in which the economy can operate.
Evidence based development is treading in the footsteps of evidence-based medicine: innovating, testing, and systematically pulling together the results of different studies to see what works, where and why. Other disciplines as diverse as sports science and management have been going down the same route. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: profiting from evidence-based management by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton contains valuable insights for practitioners of evidence-based development.
Governments want results. Tax payers want results. Beneficiaries want results. The results agenda gained momentum in development circles during the 1990s, becoming firmly established with the widespread adoption of the Millennium Development Goals. This focus on results is welcome.
In the case of the flagship social safety net program Bolsa Familia, now reaching around 40 million poor Brazilians with a budget of over USD 6 billion, evaluation has been an integral part of the program since its conception. The establishment of a monitoring and evaluation system was one of the main pillars of the program.
We need convincing evidence that examines the effectiveness of development spending. Such evidence can best come from independent bodies like the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval) in Mexico, the Swedish Agency for Development Evaluation (SADEV) in Sweden, 3ie itself, and, most recently, the UK’s Independent Commission on Aid Impact (ICAI).
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