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BOLIVIA
BOLIVIA

The government organised the participatory process in the framework of the National Dialogue and with the support of UNDP and bilateral donors (including Germany). However, owing to bad experiences, the National Dialogue was boycotted by major civil society organisations. At local level, roundtables dealt with the social agenda and participation in monitoring. At regional level, the government held workshops on the social and political agenda. Economic and political topics were discussed in three events staged at national level with the motto "The Government is Listening". However, macroeconomic topics were only given marginal treatment. In order to institutionalise the participatory approach, Parliament passed the Law on the National Dialogue in July 2001. In monitoring, the government plans to have the Catholic Church participate as a monitoring body in the meetings of the supervisory boards at national and department level. The Vigilance Committee is to adopt the same role at local level.

In spite of its structural enshrinement, NGOs complained that the Ministries were partly only viewing the National Dialogue's significance as that of hearing civil society rather than as a forum to exchange information. Bolivian NGOs depended strongly on information from international partners.

Jubilee 2000 started a letter campaign to put pressure on the government to really involve civil society in the process. In addition, the network organised an independent participatory process in the framework of the National Forum the results of which were presented at the National Dialogue Workshop. The so-called "Seven NGO Netwerk", an umbrella organisation of approximately 200 NGOs, outlined its opposite standpoint to the PRSP in a letter to the government and recommended the IMF and the World Bank not to accept the PRSP.

The PRSP was drawn up by a committee headed by the Minister of Finance. Civil Society did not participate in this. In spite of the paper's being severely criticised by civil society, the IMF and the World Bank approved it in May 2001.
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Bolivian NGOs did not feel that they were being sufficiently involved in the PRS process and criticised a lack of integration into the strategy's implementation and monitoring of the implementation phase. They also complained that local decision-makers were too influential in the regional round tables, that women and Indigenas were underrepresented, that methodology was poor and that the agenda was too rigid. Observers noted that the National Dialogue and the formulation of the PRSP had proceeded completely separated from one another and criticised that the topics defined as of a cross-sector nature, gender, Indigenas and environment, were either not being addressed at all or, if so, only marginally.

In spite of this criticism, Bolivian NGOs conceded that the participatory process was having an impact inside society that promoted democracy at local level. For example, Indigenas and smallholders were elected chairpersons of local councils, monitoring committees, etc. In addition, civil society's independent participatory process could be regarded as representative, offering a sound basis for the further process.


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Up to date: February 2003
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