Between June and December 2022, as part of the Roadmap evaluation, a portfolio evaluation of the EU support to civil society in Nepal between 2016 and 2021 took place. The evaluation analysed a total of 25 EU-funded interventions. Conceived as a “mixed methods evaluation”, the evaluation used a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods to collect and assess the information, including an online survey answered by 35 partners, visits to 13 interventions in Madesh, Karnali and Sudurpashchim provinces and 70 semi-structured interviews with a wide spectrum of stakeholders. Appreciative evaluation tools such as Appreciative Enquiry, Outcome Mapping, and Most Significant Change were also integrated in the developmental framework. What follows is a policy brief summarising the key findings of the evaluation and the recommendations intended to feed the implementation of the new EU Roadmap for the engagement with civil society in Nepal.

The evaluation concludes that EU interventions have provided relevant and positive contributions supporting civil society in Nepal.  However, a major gap prevails between EU policy commitments and the actual implementation practices, in terms of the actors, approaches and modalities, which are used. This is despite the longstanding relationship between the EU and the civil society in Nepal and the volume of EU support (close to 20 M Euro between 2016 and 2021).

All in all the evaluation finds that actual engagement practices are only “fit-for-purpose” to translate the ambitions of the 2012 EU Communication “Roots of Democracy” and effectively contribute to implanting the priorities  of the EU Road-map for engagement with civil society in Nepal 2021-2024, in line with the principles enshrined in the Nepal Constitution 2015. Read the full report here