Civic, Voter, and Human Rights Project Evaluations in Europe and Eurasia for U.S. Department of State

Overview

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) Office of Global Programs (DRL/GP) awarded ME&A a task order to conduct evaluations of Civic, Voter, and Human Rights (CVR) projects in 26 countries in Europe and Eurasia. The U.S. Department of State implements these projects through grant mechanisms with national and community-level partners.

Activities

ME&A’s evaluation team will work with DRL program teams to analyze the design and concepts of 26 CVR awards and, based on this, delineate variables and develop typologies on how CVR projects are designed, the different ways they are implemented, and how they reinforce or conflict with each other. These projects vary in size, scope, and duration and cover a wide array of interventions, including training, internships, research, and development of new tools and models, for:

• Increasing accountability of parliamentarians to citizens and civil society
• Strengthening the capacity of in-country minorities to advocate for and improve their social, economic, and political condition on a local and national level
• Increasing capacity of human rights monitoring, particularly in regions outside capitals, to strengthen capacity of election observation and campaigning for popular participation in elections as well as initiate public debate on political issues by strengthening independent media reporting
• Strengthening country civic and government responses to the needs of internally displaced persons
• Strengthening broad-based civil society engagement in support of the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons and developing and supporting allies among parents and families of LGBTI people nationwide

ME&A’s evaluation team will complete the evaluation in an inception phase and a fieldwork phase following a quasi-experimental design. The inception phase will be comprised of extensive document reviews and interviews with DRL staff and key stakeholders to determine how DRL CVR projects are conceptually distinct from each other and how they were conceived and designed. Which countries ME&A teams will visit for fieldwork will be finalized in early 2022.

Funding

The U.S. Department of State awarded ME&A the task order under the Performance Management and Evaluation Services ) Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) Contract. providing monitoring and evaluation services to regional, functional, and management bureaus at headquarters and overseas. ME&A is the prime contractor on two U.S. Department of State IDIQs covering two Functional Areas: Civilian Security, Rights and Stability, and Management Platform.