Performance evaluation of Instituto Libertad y Democracia (ILD) activities : final report

To accomplish its goal, ILD focuses on: (1) providing technical assistance; (2) sharing research; and (3) gaining support from partners to build awareness and advocate on behalf of the poor. Legal empowerment of the poor, as espoused by the United Nations -- (UN) hosted Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) -- focuses on four areas: (1) formalization of real property rights; (2) access to justice; (3) labor rights; and (4) business rights (meaning the right to participate as an entrepreneur in the marketplace). ILD"s mission is to catalyze interest in the need to bring all economic agents into the formal sector of the economy and to provide governments with the expertise and information to implement institutional reforms in property and business rights, thereby enabling all citizens to be included in the market economy and consequently allowing the poor to pull themselves out of poverty and prosper. The evaluation team was initially requested to consider measures of outcomes and whether detailed data were available for the following: (1) building awareness for legal empowerment and social inclusion -- for example, existing attitudinal surveys of the poor in countries where ILD has been active -- to gauge awareness of legal channels available to them, preferably drawn from time series or panel datasets; or statistics on the use of legal channels, disaggregated by poverty status and gender, and mapped over an appropriate period of time; (2) institutionalizing land reform to empower the poor and women in client countries -- for example, statistics on possession of land-tenure rights or land titles, disaggregated by poverty status and gender, and mapped over an appropriate period of time, showing results of any reform programs associated with the current grant; (3) strengthening ILD"s operational platform and ensuring a sustainable expansion -- for example, data on the evolution of ILD"s diversity of financial support, by donor and amount of support; (4) analyzing the correlation between the provision of ILD services to supported countries and corresponding local public debate on reform and reform implementation; and (5) finding evidence of demand by reforming countries for ILD involvement in reform implementation and the nature of ILD involvement sought (including how such involvement was funded). The evaluation team determined during the evaluation activity that the methodology for measures of outcomes should be modified from the original scope. The details of these modifications and specific evaluation findings, conclusions and recommendations are provided with detailed analysis for each evaluated measurement. (Excerpt, modified)