Successful interventions to support the delivery of services by local governments and administrations have been undertaken in a number of countries, including Afghanistan, Nepal, Somalia and Sudan. The majority of these interventions fall into the community-based approaches category. These are often used in areas where there is no effective local government or where supporting local government is considered undesirable. Where direct support is provided to local governments to enable or improve service delivery in areas of protracted conflict, it is often used as a way to enhance state legitimacy.
Examples of interventions where there is some evidence of success include:
- National Solidarity Programme (NSP) Afghanistan: Evaluations indicate that the Community Development Council (CDC) component of the NSP provided a means of reaching communities in the absence of effective local government and succeeded in building confidence in the state.
- Village Development Programme (VDP) Nepal: Evaluations found that the VDP was successful in improving access to services for the rural poor, even when local government was absent as a result of conflict.
- UNDP’s Joint Programme for Local Governance (JPLG) Somalia: The programme’s 2012 annual report indicates that its community consultation processes project enabled communities to develop long-term social and economic development priorities, and strengthened village governance structures.
- Community-based organisation (CBO) networks in Sudan: A qualitative research study found that CBO networks were successfully established in Darfur to enable the remote management of projects by international agencies.
- UNDP’s Afghanistan Subnational Governance Programme (ASGP): The programme’s 2013 annual progress report indicates that the ASGP made significant progress in supporting local government to improve service delivery.
- UNICEF’s Making Public Private Partnerships (PPP) work for rural water supply in Somalia programme: An independent evaluation of the programme found that it led to some improvement in the quality of service delivery in Somaliland and Puntland.
