Challenge
Democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) are integral to USAID’s overall development agenda. Generating analytically sound and evidence-based DRG strategies, programs, and activities is critical to accomplishing this agenda. High-level expertise is required to support a challenging task of providing USAID Missions and Bureaus with timely, high-quality expertise in the analysis of country-specific DRG challenges and opportunities and to support Missions in applying this analysis.
Solution
Making Cents International, in a joint venture with our partner Development Professionals, Inc., and with major subcontractor Tetra Tech/ARD, supported USAID’s Center for Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG Center) to achieve its mandate of elevating and integrating democracy, human rights, and governance within the Agency’s overall development portfolio. As a critical part of carrying out its role, the DRG Center provides USAID Missions with a variety of analytical services to inform the development of DRG strategies and programs. The purpose of the DRG Assessments Task Order, awarded to our joint venture in September 2019, was to provide USAID Missions and Bureaus with analytical services and products to inform the strategic planning, design, and implementation of DRG programs and to ensure that DRG strategies, programs, and activities are based on in-depth, well-informed analyses; valid data; and best practices in the field of democracy, human rights, and governance.
During the task order, our team conducted DRG assessments in 16 countries around the world: Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Timor Leste, Guinea, Thailand, Mongolia, Guyana, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Using DRG Center’s existing analytical Strategic Assessment Framework, each assessment identified the core democracy, human rights, and governance problem(s) in these countries and provided an analysis of the allies and opponents to democratic reforms and the institutions in which those actors operate. Based on this analysis and consideration of the operational environment for USAID and the U.S. Government, the assessments produced a set of strategic and programmatic recommendations to inform the Mission’s democracy, human rights, and governance programs and activities in a given country. To ensure that the assessments performed rigorous analysis and produced timely, actionable recommendations, we deployed teams of high-quality international and local experts with appropriate country, regional, and program development expertise.