Conclusion
Weakly functioning state institutions constitute a worrying feature of fragile states. The basic services that are provided to a state's citizens are therefore often of poor quality.
Non-state actors can play a positive role by either taking over part of the service delivery from the state, or supporting the state in improving its functioning. International donors are often reluctant to work directly with fragile state actors and instead provide support via civil society. This chapter explored the contribution of Dutch donors in strengthening the capacity of the Congolese civil society. With less funding available, Dutch development interventions in the DRC tend to acquire a different character: Donors increasingly prefer to seek collaboration with partner organisations that already possess a certain level of capacity and invest less in capacity development of Congolese CSOs. It means that CSOs that benefitted from capacity development interventions in the past and that have grown into more mature partners are now at an advantage in comparison to younger CSOs. This risks eroding the richness of civil society in a setting in which civil society is an indispensable actor in providing certain services that the state or private sector do not provide, such as agricultural support services, water, or health care. Other NGOs do not act as much as substitutes for the state, but as watchdogs, for instance, by addressing human rights abuses. In indirect ways, this can also be seen as a way to work towards better functioning state institutions, especially when the abuses are committed by state actors. This chapter has shown, however, that Dutch donors invest more in strengthening organisations through concrete skills that make them better equipped to report towards the donor and to improve upward accountability, but much less in strengthening downward accountability or in demanding accountability from state and non-state actors. Whereas CSOs gather a lot of relevant information on the local level, this information is barely translated into lobbying and advocacy purposes on a higher level.Interventions in the east of the DRC take place within a humanitarian aid setting. This has clearly led to an aid culture in which it is difficult for development NGOs to set up sustainable interventions, not only because beneficiaries are used to short-term, direct relief, but also because donors have a rather short-term outlook in supporting projects. Such a shortterm approach sits uneasily with the longer-term objective of capacity development, and is reflected in a lack of clear capacity development strategies and a lack of funding earmarked for capacity development. This was especially the case towards the end of the evaluation period when the committed funding provided by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs was nearing its completion. Most Dutch donors depended to a large degree on this funding.
In conclusion, it can be argued that interventions and funding provided by Dutch donors to Congolese civil society organisations is mostly oriented towards the ‘capability to deliver on development objectives’, and to a lesser extent to the ‘capability to relate’. Organisational strengthening has been a focus in earlier years but is no longer prominent as donors increasingly prefer to work with stronger partners that are able to deliver. The strengthening of civil society per se hardly seems to be an objective, whereas this might be essential to enable civil society to contribute to the objective of strengthening the capacity of the state and enabling the Congolese state to take over the driver’s seat again when it comes to the provision of basic services to its citizens.
Notes
I would like to thank all CSOs and donors involved for their willingness to participate in this research and Bart Weijs and Patrick Milabyo Kyamusugulwa for great teamwork in collecting data and reporting.
The overall objective was to achieve a sustainable reduction in poverty.
The Millennium Development Goals, capacity development of Southern partner organisations, and strengthening of civil society were the three main priority result areas (Bulte et al. 2015).Dutch NGOs represented in the sample were Cordaid, Free Press Unlimited, ICCO, IUCN-NL, Mensen met een Missie, Oxfam-Novib, PAX, Salvation Army NL, Tear, and ZOA.
Since March 2OII, the Dutch government has ended its development cooperation relation with the DRC. In the Kivu provinces there are still some activities funded, most notably in the field of peace and stabilisation (executed by UN and Congolese NGOs) and humanitarian aid (through the UN Pooled Fund) (see https://www.rijksoverheid. nl/onderwerpen/betrekkingen-met-nederland/inhoud/congo-democratische- republiek, viewed on 23.O3.2OI5)
See https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/capacity-building. This chapter uses the term capacity development rather than capacity building, unless the cited works use the term capacity building. Capacity building is more technocratic and assumes that capacity does not exist prior to the intervention but needs to be built with the help of external experts. Capacity development underlines that capacities already exist prior to an intervention and are developed jointly.
See http://betterevaluation.org for current evaluation practices.
See https://kivusecurity.org/ for regularly updated mappings of the armed groups in the east of the DRC.
Although the Ministry of Foreign Affairs encouraged donor organisations to use Theories of Change to monitor progress, most donors did not have such ToCs available for their partners.
NGOs with a holistic approach towards development usually have strategic plans that cover a wide range of activities in different domains, targeting a wide range of beneficiaries. One such NGO, for instance, mentioned in its strategic plan for 2011- 2OI5 to target women, widows, victims of sexual and gender-based violence, youth, internally displaced persons, returnees, repatriates, autochtonous people (the marginalised pygmy people), small peasants, and landless peasants (NGO X, Plan strategique 2011-2015).
With funding for only one or two projects at the time, it was hard to meet all these ambitions. A broad focus enables such CSOs to apply for a wide range of funding, but in practice it also appears that there is a risk of lacking coherence in activities. Without a clear profile, such CSOs are also less interesting for donors. Towards the end of the evaluation period, it seemed donors were increasingly inclined to work with specialised CSOs with a clear profile.When asked about their “motivation” to work, staff members would usually understand this question to be related about the ‘enveloppe’ or remuneration they receive.
Several respondents explained that the Congolese labour law makes it difficult for an organisation to dismiss personnel. At the moment there is no project funding available, staff formally continue to be contracted, but in practice often do not receive a salary and are sent on ‘technical leave'.
12 The minimum number of members in a non-profit organisation is 7 (Law n. 004/2001 portant dispositions generates applicables aux associations sans but Iucratif et aux etablissements d'utilite publique, article 6). A member has to be a legal entity. For a ‘regular’ CSO this means individuals; for a network organisation, the members are other CSOs.
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