Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2015

In 2015, the Ministry published its “evaluation policy”, which henceforth replaces its strategy and specifies the introduction by Luxembourg development cooperation of a systematic approach for the evaluation of its activities and the contribution of this evaluation to improving the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainable impact of its development assistance.

Applying the criterion of usefulness as defined in this policy, the “quality evaluation and control” department consulted the operational departments and responded to their needs by launching and steering six evaluations. 

The Ministry grouped the NGO evaluations by geographical areas. Thus the activities of six Luxembourgish NGOs in India and Bangladesh were evaluated by emphasising an analysis of the various Luxembourgish NGOs’ relationships with their partners in the beneficiary countries. At the end of the year, the six NGOs exchanged best practice at a workshop. In addition, the activities of three Luxembourgish NGOs in the field of disaster risk reduction in Laos were also evaluated.

Two direct payments made to NGOs in the South, ENDA Tiers Monde (Senegal) and ENDA Santé (regional project), were also evaluated. This type of evaluation, which assesses accountability as well as education, is planned systematically in the financing agreements that link the Ministry to its partners.

Apart from steering evaluations, with a view to continued learning and improvement, the Ministry organised for the first time the annual meeting of the German-speaking evaluation network, in which Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland took part. The aim of this meeting is to strengthen the individual evaluation departments through an open exchange of best practice and lessons learned from the evaluation processes.

The Ministry also contributed to funding a publication by the DAC Network on Development Evaluation (EVALNET) on the evaluation systems in OECD member states’ bilateral cooperation. 

In 2015, Luxembourg’s development cooperation carried out the following evaluations:

1. The evaluation of disaster risk reduction activities in Laos, financed by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and implemented by three NGOs, CARE in Luxembourg, Fondation Caritas Luxembourg and the Luxembourg Red Cross, from 2011 to 2014;

2. The evaluation of six Luxembourgish NGOs (Aide à l’Enfance de l’Inde, Amicale Internationale d’Aide à l’Enfance, Amis du Tibet, Fondation Caritas Luxembourg, Friendship Luxembourg, Pharmaciens sans frontières) working in India and Bangladesh;

3. The final evaluation of the BI-MFA project: “Border and vulnerability to HIV/AIDS in West Africa” (FEVE);

4. The evaluation of the cooperation agreement between the Luxembourg state and the NGO ENDA Tiers Monde (2013-2017).

Luxembourg’s development cooperation also participated in:

5. The joint evaluation (NL, NOR, LUX) of the NGO AMAN (The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity in Palestine); 

and finally

6. The evaluation of the activities implemented under the Agreement between the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the non-governmental organisation Appui au Développement Autonome a.s.b.l. (ADA) was launched during the third quarter of 2015. The final report on this evaluation will be available in the first half of 2016.

Lesson learned

The lesson learned from the evaluation of the disaster risk reduction activities in Laos financed by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and implemented from 2011 to 2014 by three NGOs, CARE in Luxembourg, Fondation Caritas Luxembourg and the Luxembourg Red Cross.

The innovative aspect this year was to write a single report for the three NGOs evaluated and to add an advisory phase for the conclusions and recommendations of the evaluation. At the Ministry, this additional phase strengthened its cooperation with the NGOs outside the regular, structured meetings on the implementation of the co-financed projects. In this way, dialogue can be dissociated from the role-playing constraints imposed by the framework of financial negotiation and allow the discussion of real problems that the NGOs encounter in the field. Simultaneous discussion with several NGOs that operate differently not only provides opportunities to compare their methods on intervention but also to distinguish structural, deep and shared aspects from those that are short-term and specific to one NGO. This provides sufficient information to assess the consistency of all the interventions implemented via various instruments (bilateral cooperation, multilateral cooperation, NGOs) or topic areas (risk reduction and disasters, development) as well as the relevance of the rules drawn up for each of these instruments and topic areas.