The challenge of evaluating support for democracy and human rights

In 1997, Sida’s Department for Evaluationand Internal Audit (UTV) initiated an assessmentof the evaluability of the agency’s supportfor democracy and human rights (D/HR). The initiative came as a response to thefact that D/HR evaluation, in particular ofdevelopment impact, is widely considered difficult.Despite a large number of evaluationscarried out over the last decade, Sida still haslittle reliable information on the impact of itsD/HR support. Why is that? What makes D/HR support difficult to evaluate? What are therequirements of successful impact evaluation?How could the D/HR support be planned andimplemented in order to better facilitate suchevaluation?