Developing Case Studies from a Rights Perspective (1)

Some Practical Steps

The steps proposed below are not prescriptive however, it is important to ensure that the case study contains the elements suggested below. The elements have been drawn from some of the very good case studies

Brief background of the situation (person) before the intervention. You can also give a general background within the wider context (district/national). If you have statistics, you could quote. What are some of the development challenges? Analyse this within a ‘rights’ context (framework) for example; what rights are violated as a result of the situation? What are the gaps in the realisations of rights? What is the capacity of duty bearers in addressing these rights? Which gender/age group is the most affected?

What was the intervention and what rights was it intended to address? When was the intervention and what prompted it? What specific interventions were undertaken or what were the specific rights were they intended to address (re: children, communities etc). What was the scale of the intervention, what was the involvement (and contributions) by various actors/stakeholders? Was the intervention linked to an existing community, partner or government initiative?

What have been some of the noticeable changes (both negative and positive)? What are the perceived changes from the perspective of the right holders especially children? What are the unintended changes which have resulted from the intervention? Are the changes contributing to any national or international initiatives like the National Development Agenda/MDG? How are they contributing to the realisation of the Program/Project Objectives? The intention is not to draw linear cause-effect analysis; the purpose is to highlight how the intervention is contributing to address issues of right violations which were identified during the situation analysis

What conclusions can be drawn from the case studies? From whose perspective are these drawn? What are the key lessons? What’s the way forward and how are these findings going to be used? Are the findings localised or they show a particular trend across a broader geographic area? Are the findings supported by any general trend in the country/district? Do the findings support any trend in the country? Some of these findings may not be necessarily be reported in the case study but would be useful for program/project improvement

Please share your thoughts on this

Community M&E Systems

Is M&E a completely new skill that has to be taught communities or communities have traditionally had their own traditional means of monitoring and evaluating their endeavors? Do modern methodologies build on community knowledge and systems? Something to ponder over