Equity-centered evaluation of international cooperation efforts: the urgent need to shift unfair power dynamics

There is one main conclusion from the South-led research process: the way that international cooperation initiatives are evaluated perpetuates structural and historical inequities at the global, regional, national, and local level. These injustices are –proactively or subtly– reinforced by institutional day-to-day decisions regarding how evaluations are designed, funded, commissioned, implemented, and disseminated worldwide.  

In this research, we applied a power-aware analytical lens, approaching the exchange process using 21 reflective questions during interviews to more than 88 individuals from 81 organizations. The interviewees have varied decision-making power and evaluation experience in the evaluation ecosystem: some fund and commission evaluations, others are subject to evaluations or carry out evaluations following standardized templates. By listening to these diverse voices in the Global South and North, one key objective was to deconstruct the multiple understandings of “equity in evaluation” while capturing how some actors in the evaluation ecosystem overcome concrete barriers to achieving equity.   

Overall, in this summary report, we describe the evaluation ecosystem, specifically highlighting who are those systematically excluded in the evaluation process, and how this exclusion happens at different levels. This way, we distinguish specific levels of responsibility that need to be taken into consideration to radically transform the evaluation industry. Each one of us can choose to seize concrete opportunities to encourage critical learning that leads to the creation of emancipatory knowledge and the promotion of mutual accountability. This is extremely important in an increasingly multipolar world, as the international cooperation scenario is finally becoming more aware of the need to overcome neo-colonial approaches to international cooperation.  

Furthermore, this report briefly introduces some efforts to transform the inequitable status quo. They are presented as “journeys of change,” and they are gaining momentum. However, these efforts are still limited and face multiple and complex barriers including dispersion, lack of funding, the North capturing the narrative and spaces and platforms that could lead to change, and the slow pace to modify institutional arrangements that perpetuate the concentration of power in a few, among many other barriers.