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tions (MIR, which housed the Norwegian-advised DACU, Serbia’s unit in charge of coordination of international assistance) which in turn approached IMG and asked it to design and propose the project to Norway’s MFA for funding. Military reform is another area where Norway is engaged. Among other things, Serbia is slimming down its military forces and its support apparatus. Through the NATO Trust Fund, Norway has helped organise and coordinate a fund to assist the defence ministry help discharged military persons find work and reintegrate into civilian life, and done it under a NATO umbrella in part to improve that alliance’s image. Both the content and the “image” aspects of the project are relevant to the SSR agenda. Since 2006 Norway has funded an increasingly prominent watchdog and think-tank, the Centre for Civilian-Military Relations (CCMR). Norway is financing running costs and individual research projects. The centre does research and advocates for public oversight over the entire spectre of security services – from army and police to private firms, and thus provides one of the few examples of civil society engagement and constructive contribution to SSR. The institution aims to become an incubator for a new generation of experts and contribute to the discourse on security-sector reforms on a basis of research-documented facts. Since 1998 MFA has financed a portfolio of NPA-implemented projects, termed “Civil Society and Media Development Programme”. This portfolio has supported civil-society organisations devoted to Roma rights, IDPs and refugees, youth and human rights – but the perhaps most prominent efforts in the portfolio have been the so-called “Media Development Programme” (NOK 53 million) and the programme “Women Can Do It (WCDI)” (NOK 7 million). WCDI has been arranging seminars and local actions to promote gender equality during the period 2001-09. The Media Development Programme has been financing Serbian media throughout the 1998-2011 period in four phases: first an emergency-support phase (1998-2001, NOK 20 million), next a consolidation phase (2002-2005, NOK 16 million), third a democratisation phase (20062008, NOK 10 million) and is presently in an exit phase (2009-2011, NOK 7 million).
Both projects are clearly relevant given the explicit Norwegian priorities in these two areas, but they also correspond well with priorities set forth by important Serb stakeholders. •• The judiciary remains a weak institution in Serbia, if not in formal powers then in authority. Many of Serbia’s 138 municipal and 34 district courts36 are hampered by poor facilities, systems and processes, rendering them inefficient as deliverers of justice-services to the population. They also have a poor reputation for corruption, and the judiciary by all accounts scores worryingly low in public opinion polls when it comes to trust. •• Norwegian funding for the IMG-implemented “Improving the Delivery of Justice in the Courts in Serbia” is a grants mechanism for local courts, to improve facilities and access to justice. It was launched in 2007 on the basis of a DfID analysis, with a EUR 1.1 m budget over one year. It was extended in 2008 for another 36 The number and names of courts in Serbia are changed with effect from January 2010.
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Evaluation of Norwegian Development Cooperation with the Western Balkans