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Enhanced capacity of government and social partners to reduce child labour and improve occupational safety and health in Syria - cluster evaluation with RBSA components

eval_number:

3079

eval_title:

Enhanced capacity of government and social partners to reduce child labour and improve occupational safety and health in Syria - cluster evaluation with RBSA components

location:

region:

Arab States

country:

Syrian Arab Republic

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eval_url:

https://analyticstest.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/eval/3079

lessons_learned:

description:

Project design in fragile states needs to take into account the practical realities of project implementation in such contexts

context:

• Protracted conflict, security concerns, things take much longer to accomplish • ILO financial system does not operate in Syria • Need government permissions to do lots of things, moving around country not simple, very limited fuel availability • Government stakeholders reluctant to engage via phone and email, prefer in person communications • Daily power cuts, limited internet access for some stakeholders

success:

• The projects did the best they could with the resources and time available. • All three projects benefited from the technical expertise and language skills of the National Project Coordinator, a Syrian national with bilingual Arabic/English, with excellent skills building and managing relationships on the ground in Syria with the tripartite constituents, UN partners, and local implementing partners. All tripartite stakeholders and numerous key informants expressed their appreciation to the National Project Coordinator for her efforts. • Notwithstanding the challenging implementation context, the three projects carried out 24 capacity building workshops, which built the capacity of tripartite stakeholders, labour inspectors, local NGOs, UN partners, child labourers and their families in the areas of child labour and occupational safety and health.

challenges:

With respect to the time proposed for interventions, the RBSA child labour project was originally designed for 30 months (2.5 years), but only approved for 18 months. The UNICEF child labour project was approved for a 12-month time frame. The RBSA OSH project was approved for 15 months. Key informants unanimously agreed that these timeframes were inadequate and unrealistic to address the problems of child labour and occupational safety and health in a sustainable manner in the Syrian context. When it came to implementation, outputs for all three projects were not always produced on time. The RBSA child labour project had three no-cost extensions, the UNICEF child labour project had implementation delays for outputs 2 and 3, and the RBSA OSH project had very rushed implementation for the final few months of the project. Key informants explained that delays were caused by multiple factors, which were largely out of the control of project stakeholders. First, there were some delays due to the pandemic response, which meant some activities were delayed during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. Second, government approvals were required to carry out various tasks associated with project implementation, particularly for civil society partners. The National Project Coordinator had very good relationships with government stakeholders, which was helpful, but it was not always easy to get timely permissions for implementation of activities.

administrative_issues:

• Do you have sufficient and appropriate ILO staff on the ground to get practical things done in a challenging implementation context? • Do you have adequate implementation time i.e. appropriate for fragile state context? • Do you have a risk identification register with a risk mitigation strategy with provision for regular reviews? • Stakeholders need support to participate in project – financial, logistics, technical.

comments:

Project designers, donors

url:

https://analyticstest.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/lessons/246459

themes:

theme:

Planning and programme design

category:

Organizational issues

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