Equitable evaluation in remote and sensitive spaces

Abstract

Democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) programs work in environments where there are actors that actively undermine program goals, environments with conflict or war, situations where program management is physically distant from program implementation, contexts where target communities live with little or no internet or mobile phone connectivity, and where stakeholders are subject to intimidation and violence. As a result, DRG program monitoring and evaluation activities must apply principles from the Equitable Evaluation Framework™, to meaningfully engage program staff and participants to mitigate risks and innovate approaches for collecting and analyzing data, and communicating results that carefully consider digital, physical, and psychosocial safety and measure sustainable, culturally relevant changes at the individual and community level.

Matching program complexity with institutional funding realities in democracy, human rights, and governance program evaluation

“…In these circumstances, plans and activities must shift, and project objectives and benchmarks will likely change and may become more modest (ACVFA, 2020). While this may pose a challenge to a donor looking at metrics across portfolios or tracking the progress of a larger strategic plan, the duty of care is to the grantee (who may be in harm's way due to their activities and the nature of the political environment in which they are operating) and therefore evaluation practices must be adapted to the situation at hand (see Serpe et al., 2022; and Guidrey et al., 2022 for insights on adaptive management and evaluation in fragile environments).…”

Evaluation amidst crisis: Voices of Ukrainian DRG evaluators

“…to practical (how does one perform the simplest data collection task when physical security changes regularly?) (see Guidrey et al, 2022). MEL adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic ironically prepared the MEL community for the remoteness and physical challenge of war, but the war has posed an additional series of challenges.…”