International Trends and Development Evaluation: The Need for Ideas

Abstract

A number of trends in the development arena—a renewed commitment to lifting billions of people out of poverty, the need to draw and put to use the lessons of experience, and the emergence of “evidence-based” policy making—create daunting professional challenges for evaluation. Development evaluation has long been nearly invisible within the evaluation community. But by emphasising results-based approaches to global public policy, recent UN conferences on development finance (in Monterrey, Mexico) and on environmentally and socially sustainable development (in Johannesburg, South Africa) have attracted worldwide attention and moved development evaluation to center stage. These conferences have brought to the fore the need to enhance the management of poverty reduction programs in developing countries, as well as the reciprocal obligations of developed countries to increase aid volumes, improve aid quality, and level the playing field of international trade. In this new enabling environment, development evaluation has been called upon to track the progress being made towards the UN sponsored Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to contribute to the improved design and implementation of development policies and programs at local, country, and global levels. These are challenging tasks and it is no longer acceptable that evaluators working for progress in the zones of turmoil and transition where 80% of the world’s population lives should labor in isolation. They require a mechanism for professional connectivity and mutual support. To meet this need, 60 evaluators from developing countries and development organizations met in Beijing in September 2002 to found the International Development Evaluation Association, or IDEAS. This new wing of the international evaluation architecture has been designed to support development evaluators in tackling the professional challenges of the new century.