Urfolks rettigheter og kultur i Republikken Kongo

Background

In 2012 the executive Council of EEC proposed a project among Indigenous People when asked by The Mission Covenant Church of Norway to present their priorities for development projects.

A pre project took place in 2012/13 through a survey in three different departments, and the Plateaux Department was selected as the place for a three year long Pilot Project (2014 -2016, later on extended with one year) focusing on rights and culture, give value to this people group, but no investments or gifts, to break the pattern of giving money/things/ houses etc directly to the members of the group.

Purpose/objective

To verify if the objectives of the pilot project are reached, and propose adjustments for an extension of the project for a period of 5 years more. The evaluation should also contribute to a good finalization of the pilot project, at the time of the evaluation 14 months remain.

Methodology

All relevant documents were forwarded to the external evaluator long time before the evaluation took place. Meetings and discussions between the evaluator and MKN before. Participatory evaluation in Congo.

Meetings with stakeholders at all levels: EECs presidency, the development department of the church, the executive group for the project, local group, the political leaders at the department and district level visiting all the villages being a part of the project, interviews with more than 130 persons, all the time accompanied by the executive group of the project.

Key findings

It is a well-designed, coherent and innovative project at the same time, which already shows promising results in promoting the rights of indigenous peoples.

The project is also very diverse, and actually consists of several subprojects which makes it difficult to manage but at the same time makes it a very important holistic aspect

• Education: Parents have been more conscientious: They see the importance of education, and are a bit more eager to send their children to school than before. Still relatively few indigenous children at school.
• Health: Reliable women have got a basic introduction to medical first aid for use in the villages. At the same time their responsibility is to encourage the women to go to an governmental/official hospital/health centre, specifically at birth
• Income generating activities: In order to participate in normal social activities (education, health etc) the target group needs a reliable income. The small projects are well developed, agricultural products were ready. But a system around distribution and sale is a challenge and need to be looked at.
• Culture: This part of the project is delayed. A survey about culture were conducted in September 2016, and pointed at five key-findings about the culture part. This will be implemented in the last part of the pilot project, and in the permanent project. The language question has to be considered.

Recommendations

The recommendations proposed by the evaluation concern, among other things;

• the supervision of income-generating activities,
• strengthening the local level of the project,
• the valuation of the kitsoua language and the traditional pharmacopoeia,
• the need to consolidate the achievements of the project before enlargement,
• the roots ofrights, equality, respect and the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the parishes of the EEC

Comments from the organisation

The evaluation gives us a good starting point for the elaboration of a new application. It will be the basis for the baseline study and the project document. It contains no big
surprises, but income generating project as well as the cultural aspects (i.e. the use of the kitsoua language and the proposal of commercialisation of Traditional pharmacopoeia) is a challenge that shall be dealt with during the elaboration of new documents to see what could be achieved realistically the next years.

The report is written in French and translated to Norwegian.