On Wednesday, 6 April 2011, the Rule of Law Unit in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General launched the report New Voices: National Perspectives on Rule of Law Assistance.
The process that led to the launch of this report began in 2008, when the Secretary-General, in his report on Strengthening and coordinating United Nations rule of law activities, recommended an approach to better take into consideration the voices of national actors.
This process included two workshops with national rule of law experts as well as UN entities and development partners, where they shared views on how rule of law assistance can be informed by national perspectives to deliver better results. Sixteen national rule of law experts from 13 countries addressed issues such as national ownership, political will, donor coordination, and impact of assistance.
The report launched on Wednesday provides a summary of the conclusions and recommendations that emerged from these consultations and individual articles by participating national practitioners delineating the challenges and realities of assistance provided at the national level.
The four key common conclusions outlined in the report are: 1) Where national leadership takes greater ownership over rule of law programming, greater commitment to implementing reform efforts is experienced; 2) rule of law assistance that draws on and empowers national stakeholders leads to a stronger enabling environment, wider political support, and more sustainable programmes; 3) coordination and coherence in rule of law assistance leads to more efficient use of resources, wider understanding of priorities, and rational implementation of reform measures; and 4) greater efforts must be undertaken to measure the effectiveness of rule of law assistance in order to increase learning about successful methods and to justify new approaches to improve results.
The conclusions and recommendations of the report should provide an important resource to inform future policy and planning decisions. It is hoped that they encourage a re-alignment of donor priorities to account for national perspectives on national ownership, stakeholder engagement, donor coordination, and effective, results-based programming.
The document can be downloaded here:
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