Country Assistance Strategies
During FY01, the ECA region presented 13 full CAS-es to the World Bank’s Board. These were prepared with varying degrees of citizen involvement. This public participation partly reflects the mandatory inclusion of consultations in the CAS process, but also the growing awareness among the Country Teams that effective “country business plans” require direct input from key stakeholders.
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However, while consultations were conducted as part of the document drafting process, the strategies include few recommendations for the role of civil society in the actual implementation of Bank strategies. References to civil society appear more normative than substantive. While many of the CAS-es explicitly refer to civil society’s role in the Bank’s anti-corruption and governance work (such as strengthening of national and local public institutions), they rarely elaborate how such a role should be played.
The review of ECA CAS-es submitted to the Board in FY02 and FY03 confirms the trend of an intensive consultation process during the strategy formulation but only shows limited progress in the actual articulation of the role of civil society in the implementation of the reforms and operations proposed in our strategies. The forthcoming CAS for Ukraine, scheduled for Board approval in the fall of 2004, is the first ECA CAS that will contain a dedicated section on the role of civil society in the strategy’s implementation. In this context, the Country Team is also actively reviewing the proposed project portfolio from the perspective of possible “entry points” for civil society in the design, implementation and monitoring of CAS operations.
Sector Strategies
The above analytical insights have been incorporated directly into Bank sector strategies. The Social Development Strategy for ECA argues that to help client countries create transparent and accountable institutions, the World Bank should intensify its focus on community-driven development (CDD) and promote CSO capacity to more actively participate in formulating policy and projects. Similarly, the Social Protection Strategy for ECA stresses the importance of community and NGO involvement in service delivery, which can improve quality through competition and increases public participation and ownership of social assistance programs.
Over the last several years, the ECA region has increasingly involved civil society in preparing the regional sector strategies. The Bank conducted extensive consultations with CSOs and civil society representatives, inter alia, on the region’s environmental, rural, social and urban transport strategies. Most of the Bank’s efforts in consulting stakeholders (frequently represented by CSOs) focused on soliciting their comments on the substance of the strategy. However, while most ECA sector strategies make reference to the role of civil society in their implementation, CSOs themselves have not usually been consulted about their own role in achieving the strategy’s goals. In short, the ECA region has made great strides in eliciting substantive civil society input into the design of sector strategies, but still needs to operationalize civic engagement in the actual implementation of those strategies.
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