A "must read" on preventing partner violence

The UK Department for International Development (DFID)  has published a study by Lori Heise: "What works to prevent partner violence?" - click on the title to download it. It is a hefty document - don't be discouraged if you can't find time, just read the short and clear executive summary!

The study draws on evidence from all kinds of places, but it is meant to inform chiefly work in low and middle-income countries. It concludes that the following types of interventions work best to prevent partner violence:

Managing for Results?

A group of Swedish researchers and development professionals has published a hefty review of evaluations on Results Based Management in Development Cooperation. The full Vähämäki/ Schmidt/ Molander study is available HERE. The authors conclude that the basic idea behind the "results agenda" - i.e. that you need to know how your development interventions perform so as to make the right decisions - is uncontested. They have found that RBM may indeed improve planning and monitoring of development interventions.

Monitoring legal aid

A team at Tilburg University has developed a methodology to measure "access to justice". It includes plenty of useful information for people with more modest ambitions - for example, legal aid providers who want to monitor the quality of their work, or development professionals who need to assess the performance of a partner organisation. Find the full manual as a PDF file by clicking HERE. Additional material - including an interactive "wiki" on measuring access to justice - are available on the "access to justice" WEB-SITE.

DAC Evaluation Standards now in Arabic!

There is a new, trilingual version of the OECD-DAC Quality Standards for Development Evaluation: Arabic/French/English. Click HERE to find them!