Africa/Global: Ticking the box - the world bank and civil society

A 1999 Bank report entitled Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't and Why, found that government agencies that actively sought to encourage involvement of beneficiaries achieved a 62 percent success rate in their projects, while those that did not achieved just 10 percent. A more recent discussion paper by the Bank's Civil Society Team said relations with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) were "fragmented" and "lacking clarity". Engagement is described as "ad-hoc" and "disconnected from policy processes". High demands on staff time, ambiguous guidance and poor monitoring systems "fuel the tendency among task managers to 'tick the box' that they have involved CSOs. This is according to a briefing from the Bretton Woods Project on the World Bank's relations with civil society.