Evaluating DRC police reform.

In 2009 - funded by $60m from DFID - the Congolese government started a reform in order to have a "more Accountable Security and Justice Sector that works for the benefit of the people of DRC including a Police Service that provides improved security and the Rule of Law for the population" (see here). After the program's end in 2014 one - of course - wants to know whether the reform was successful, and therefore the program includes an evaluation component.

This evaluation component recently took up contact with CSDS asking whether we could have a look at the evaluation. As a result, last week, after receiving the project and the evaluation documents, together with 3 other PhD Candidates trained in these issues and Macartan, we spent much time thinking through the evaluation. We produced a 12-page document with issues related to, among others: the evaluation's research design, it's sampling method, and the (French) survey questions.

It was a great experience! First, it is interesting to read about other projects. Second, as part of the PhD Program, we took specific courses how to do good evaluations; now we can put this knowledge into practice. Third, by discussing other projects' evaluations we learn a lot for future evaluations that we are likely to undertake for our own dissertations.