§ The Earl of Sandwichasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they are giving priority to the monitoring of civil society participation in poverty reduction strategy papers; and how they will ensure that the international financial institutions take 7WA such views into consideration within the approval process. [HL5456]
§ Baroness AmosDfID attaches great importance to the participation of civil society in the poverty reduction strategy (PRS) process, and we are tracking the extent and nature of civil society engagement through a number of channels.
One important channel is the UK representatives on the executive boards of the IMF and the World Bank which see the joint staff assessments (JSA) produced by the staffs of these institutions on completed PRS papers to assess whether they provide a credible framework for new lending programmes. The JSA includes a description of the country's participatory process.
A second channel is through DfID's country programme offices, which are in regular contact with civil society organisations. We have supported the consultation and monitoring process in several countries—Uganda, Honduras, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and the Gambia. In several of our country programmes, we are also providing technical, human and financial support to poverty monitoring units, which encompass or have strong institutional links to civil society organisations.
A third channel is DfID's PRSP monitoring and synthesis project which was set up to collect information from a wide variety of sources—including DfID offices themselves—on the PRS process. Its recent report on participation in PRSPs in sub-Saharan Africa concluded that civil society participation had added much to the process, but work needed to be done to consolidate the gains made so far. DfID's country offices are also supporting a number of UK-based NGOs to work with developing country partner organisations to strengthen their capacity to engage in national debates and policy processes.