IOB Evaluation Useful Patchwork

Support for civil society has been a key element in Dutch development cooperation for a long time, because it was considered that change and development are the joint responsibility of governments together with civil society actors and the private sector, supported by international donors. In the past, the funding of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the South by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was mainly supported by subsidising Dutch co-financing agencies. In turn, these agencies – also using their own funds – provided support to Southern CSOs for a wide variety of development programmes. Since the devolution of budget responsibilities from the Ministry in The Hague to the embassies in the mid-1990s, the latter have increased their direct funding to CSOs in response to the embassies ’ desire to support activities complementing other elements of their country programmes and because direct funding enabled them to be in contact with partners at the local level. The fact that local CSOs had become stronger over the years contributed to the confidence of embassies in the implementing capacities of these organisations. Although direct funding of CSOs involves a substantial percentage of decentralise