• Names and affiliations of the authors of reports and other consultants should be clearly identified at the beginning of the report
• Sometimes IMS seems to be engaged in countries, which may be characterised as very high profile and thus often also targeted by other organisations and initiatives (Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, Chechnya). It is a factor that always should be assessed in relation to where to intervene. But it is also important to bear in mind that the form of support that IMS provides is often not of a high profile character.
• IMS has shown that its ability to act quickly with a mixture of fresh ideas, risk-taking, and funds is invaluable.
• In the documents on the different interventions it is in many cases not possible to find out where the idea for intervention originated.
• IMS must conduct a proper evaluation of the quality of the workshops and training that it lets partner organisations undertake.
• It is necessary with very thorough preparations for and identification of suitable partners particularly in situations of violent conflict.
• The fact that IMS follows up its missions with rapid concrete commitments and activities increases its credibility with its partners.
• IMS’ involvement in the Horn of Africa exemplifies how IMS has broadened its interpretation of its mandate to include post-conflict scenarios. Sri Lanka and most recently Nepal are other examples of these types of intervention.
• It is not always clear from IMS’ documents what the organisation’s overall objective is in each country, beyond responding to a large spectrum of problems faced by the media, and on what basis it believes it can have an impact on a particular identified problem, especially concerning the role of media in conflict.
• It can be safely said that IMS’ activities in several of the “case stud y”-countries have been unique and catalytic.
• IMS’ success comes from its ability to rapidly link local organisations to international groups.
• In general, it is very difficult to gauge the impact of many of the activities IMS has supported to date. For the most part, outputs are clear but criteria for success have not been developed by neither IMS nor by its partners.
Furthermore, IMS largely relies on reports from its consultants and partner organisations to assess activities it has not directly been involved with.
• The longer-term effect of many of IMS activities will depend entirely on whether they continue beyond IMS’ engagement. Fortunately, IMS has been largely successful at garnering ongoing support for the activities it initiates, at the least in the immediate term.
• There is a need for continued assessment of how long IMS should stay involved in a given country and how many resources it should invest in a given country over time. Some countries register excess expenditure, due to a string of IMS activities in these countries, while others feature interventions that may be too brief to have much of an effect. While the answer should ideally be based on a case-by-case analysis, stronger consideration for the necessary conditions to enable IMS to exit should be given at the start of an activity. Exit points are as important as entry points.
• IMS could, in some instances, consider increasing its grants to local organisations. This is especially true here, where IMS’ investments in missions almost equals its investments in concrete activities. The scale should tip more in the direction of concrete activities.
• In interventions in conflict zones, it is important to target media most effective in the local context. In general, provincial and local media are easily overlooked. Furthermore, in some countries, there is some uncertainty about which groups to target within a media enterprise (publishers, editors or journalists), creating possible problems for the effectiveness of the intervention.
• The IMS secretariat should where possible seek to attend workshops and training (especially of organisations they regularly rely on) in order to observe the work of their external consultants and partner organisations, and gain first-hand experience and learning.
• While workshops and seminars are important, they also have limited importance if they are not followed up by concrete long-term projects.
• In depth training in media monitoring issues must consist of more than what can be achieved at short workshops, and it is particularly important that this training takes into consideration local and national circumstances and institutions, e.g. the legal situation and the need for legal awareness.
• Provincial and local media are easily overlooked.
• In some countries, there is some uncertainty about which groups to target (publishers, editors or journalists), creating possible problems for the effectiveness of the intervention.
6 Overall conclusions and recommendations
The most important conclusion that we want to draw from our work evaluating IMS is that we are very impressed with what the organisation and particularly the small and dedicated staff has managed to achieve over less than two years. The number of interventions is impressive. The quality of the work is in general very good. The ability to cooperate with partners is fine. The enthusiasm for the project is great both among the staff and the board. Obviously with a project such as IMS not everything that has been undertaken is beyond problems and criticism, and we have tried to point that out, but the critical points should be read in the context of our very positive attitude to the project.