Testimony

House Committee on Government Reform,

Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs,

and International Relations

United States General Accounting Office

GAO

For Release on Delivery

Expected at 11:00 a.m., EST

Thursday, May 17, 2001 FORMER SOVIET

UNION

U.S. Rule of Law

Assistance Has Had

Limited Impact and

Sustainability

Statement of Jess T. Ford, Director, International Affairs

and Trade

GAO-01-740T
Page 1 GAO-01-740T

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

I am pleased to be here today to discuss the U.S. rule of law program in the

new independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union.1

 My testimony

will highlight some of the major points that we made in the report we are

releasing today.2

Since 1991, the new independent states of the former Soviet Union have

been struggling to overcome a long tradition of totalitarian rule marked by

an arbitrary system of justice and state suppression of human rights. To

support these states’ transition to a more open and democratic style of

government, the U.S. government has committed about $216 million in

assistance from fiscal years 1992 through 2000 to help them develop the

sustainable institutions, traditions, and legal foundations for establishing a

strong rule of law. The U.S. Agency for International Development

(USAID) has administered about 49 percent of this funding while Justice

(25 percent), State (22 percent), and Treasury (4 percent) administer the

rest.3

What do we mean by the term “rule of law”? According to the U.S. Agency

for International Development, the rule of law is premised on a

government being able to provide a predictable and transparent legal

system. Fair and effective judicial and law enforcement institutions to

protect citizens against the arbitrary use of state authority and lawless acts

are also a basic part of such a system.

My discussion of whether the U.S. government’s rule of law program in the

new independent states has been effective will focus on (1) our

assessment of the extent to which the program has had an impact on the

development of the rule of law and whether program results were

 1

These nations are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,

Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

2

See U.S. Rule of Law Assistance Has Had Limited Impact (GAO-01-354, Apr. 17, 2001).

3

Almost all funding for rule of law assistance in the new independent states of the former

Soviet Union, authorized under the Freedom Support Act of 1992, is appropriated to USAID

and the Department of State. A portion of this money is allocated to the Departments of

Justice and the Treasury through interagency fund transfers.
Page 2 GAO-01-740T

sustainable4 and (2) our identification of factors affecting the program’s

impact and sustainability.

Our review focused primarily on Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia,

countries where the U.S Agency for International Development has

defined the development of the rule of law as a strategic objective.5

 We

conducted fieldwork in Russia and Ukraine, which have received about

half of the total U.S. rule of law assistance to this region, and interviewed

numerous U.S. government and host-country officials, as well as

representatives of many nongovernmental organizations and other project

beneficiaries.

The U.S. government’s rule of law assistance efforts in the new

independent states of the former Soviet Union have had limited impact so

far, and results may not be sustainable in many cases. U.S. agencies have

had some success in introducing a variety of innovative legal concepts and

practices in these countries. For example, the United States helped

establish legal education clinics in Russian and Ukrainian law schools to

provide practical training for future lawyers as well as greater access by

the poor to legal remedies for their problems. However, the U.S. assistance

has not often had a major, long-term impact on the evolution of the rule of

law in these countries. In some cases, countries have not clearly adopted

on a wide scale the new concepts and practices that the United States has

advocated. In other cases, continuation or expansion of the innovations

depends on further funding from the U.S. government or other donors. In

fact, the rule of law appears to have actually deteriorated in recent years in

several of these countries, including Russia and Ukraine, according to data

used to measure the results of U.S. development assistance in the region

and a host of U.S. government and foreign officials we interviewed during

our study.

It is clear that establishing the rule of law is a complex and long-term

undertaking in the new independent states, where laws and institutions

were designed to further the power of the state. In our review, we found

that the impact and sustainability of U.S. rule of law programs have been

 4

Sustainability is the extent to which the benefits of a program extend beyond the

program’s life span.

5

According to the agency, a strategic objective is the most ambitious result that a U.S.

Agency for International Development operating unit, such as a country mission, can

materially affect, and for which it is willing to be held accountable.

Summary
Page 3 GAO-01-740T

affected by a number of factors, including a limited political consensus for

reform, foreign government budget constraints to institutionalize some of

the more expensive innovations, and weaknesses in how the U.S. agencies

designed and implemented these programs. The first two factors have

created a very difficult environment in which to foster rule of law

development. As a result, many key legal and institutional improvements

have yet to be made, including the passage of some post-Soviet-era

criminal and civil codes and procedures. Achieving real progress in this

area is likely to take many more years and will be highly dependent on

host country willingness to undertake meaningful political reforms.

Moreover, U.S. agencies have not always designed and implemented these

aid projects with an emphasis on achieving sustainable outcomes and

monitoring program impact and sustainability. The Departments of State,

Justice, and the Treasury have not developed specific strategies for

achieving long-term objectives, or desired “outcomes,” of their assistance

projects, such as reforming national law enforcement practices. Instead,

efforts have focused on achieving short-term “outputs,” such as training a

finite number of people. Further, none of the agencies, including USAID,

have effective monitoring and evaluation systems in place to fully assess

the longer-term results and sustainability of their efforts. Recently, U.S.

agencies have begun to pay increased attention to improving project

planning and evaluation and are in the process of making program

reforms. However, the U.S. government has committed, but not yet spent,

approximately $30 million for law enforcement training projects, many of

which still have these management weaknesses. Unless these funds are

reprogrammed for other purposes or the projects are redesigned, these

projects may have limited impact and sustainability.

In our report on this program we recommended that the Secretary of

State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the USAID

Administrator require that each rule of law project that their agencies

implement be designed with (1) specific strategies for achieving impact

and sustainable results and (2) a provision for monitoring and evaluating

outcomes. In commenting on a draft of our report, State, Justice, and

USAID generally agreed with our recommendations and indicated that

they have begun to undertake some management improvements.6

However, these agencies were concerned that we measured program

success by too high a standard given the complex and long-term task of

 6

The Department of Treasury did not comment on the report draft.
Page 4 GAO-01-740T

establishing the rule of law and that we did not adequately acknowledge

some of the program’s positive accomplishments. We modified our report,

as appropriate, to address these and other agency comments, but our

conclusions remain essentially unchanged.

Despite some positive developments, U.S. rule of law assistance in the new

independent states of the former Soviet Union has achieved limited

results, and the sustainability of those results is uncertain. Experience has

shown that establishing the rule of law in the new independent states is a

complex undertaking and is likely to take many years to accomplish.

Although the United States has succeeded in exposing these countries to

innovative legal concepts and practices that could lead to a stronger rule

of law in the future, we could not find evidence that many of these

concepts and practices have been widely adopted. At this point, many of

the U.S.-assisted reforms in the new independent states are dependent on

continued donor funding to be sustained.

Despite nearly a decade of work to reform the systems of justice in the

new independent states of the former Soviet Union, progress in

establishing the rule of law in the region has been slow overall, and

serious obstacles remain. As shown in table 1, according to Freedom

House, a U.S. research organization that tracks political developments

around the world, the new independent states score poorly in the

development of the rule of law, and, as a whole, are growing worse over

time. These data, among others, have been used by USAID and the State

Department to measure the results of U.S. development assistance in this

region.

U.S. Assistance Has

Had; Limited Results

Project Sustainability

in Question

Rule of Law Remains

Elusive in the New

Independent States
Page 5 GAO-01-740T

Table 1: Rule of Law Ratings for the New Independent States, 1997-2000

Country 1997 1998 1999-2000 Trend

Armenia 4.75 5.00 5.00 Worse

Azerbaijan 5.50 5.50 5.50 No change

Belarus 6.00 6.25 6.50 Worse

Georgia 5.00 4.75 4.00 Better

Kazakhstan 5.00 5.25 5.50 Worse

Kyrgyzstan 4.50 4.50 5.00 Worse

Moldova 4.25 4.00 4.00 Better

Russia 4.00 4.25 4.25 Worse

Tajikistan 6.25 6.00 5.75 Better

Turkmenistan 6.75 6.75 6.75 No change

Ukraine 3.75 4.00 4.50 Worse

Uzbekistan 6.50 6.50 6.50 No change

Average for new independent states 5.19 5.23 5.27 Worse

Average for other post-Communist states 3.04 3.39 3.28 Worse

Note: Ratings are based on a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 as the best rating.

Source: Freedom House, Nations in Transit (Washington, D.C.: Freedom House, 1997, 1998,

1999-2000).

In the two new independent states where the United States has devoted

the largest amount of rule of law funding—Russia and Ukraine—the

situation appears to have deteriorated in recent years. The scores have

improved in only one of the four countries (Georgia) in which USAID has

made development of the rule of law one of its strategic objectives and the

United States has devoted a large portion of its rule of law assistance

funding.

I want to emphasize that we did not use these aggregate measures alone to

reach our conclusions about the impact and sustainability of U.S.

assistance. Rather, we reviewed many of the projects in each of the key

elements of U.S. assistance. We examined the results of these projects,

assessing the impact they have had as well as the likelihood that that

impact would continue beyond U.S. involvement in the projects.

The U.S. government funds a broad range of activities as part of its rule of

law assistance. This includes efforts aimed at helping countries develop

five elements of a modern legal system (see Fig. 1):

1. a post-communist foundation for the administration of justice,

Five Elements of the U.S.

Rule of Law Assistance

Program
Page 6 GAO-01-740T

2. an efficient, effective, and independent judiciary,

3. practical legal education for legal professionals,

4. effective law enforcement that is respectful of human rights, and

5. broad public access to and participation in the legal system.

In general, USAID implements assistance projects primarily aimed at

development of the judiciary, legislative reform, legal education, and civil

society. The Departments of State, Justice, and the Treasury provide

assistance for criminal law reform and law enforcement projects.

Figure 1: Key Elements of U.S. Rule of Law Assistance Program

Source: GAO

A key focus of the U.S. rule of law assistance program has been the

development of a legal foundation for reform of the justice system in the

new independent states. U.S. projects in legislative assistance have been

fruitful in Russia, Georgia, and Armenia, according to several evaluations

of this assistance, which point to progress in passing key new laws. For

example, according to a 1996 independent evaluation of the legal reform

assistance program, major advances in Russian legal reform occurred in

Legal Foundation; Some

Key Reforms Have Been

Passed, but Others Remain

Unfinished

LEGAL FOUNDATION

Laws, Codes, and Procedures

RULE OF LAW

ASSISTANCE PROGRAM

Prosecutors,

Police,

Other

Enforcement

Agencies

Nongovernmental

Organizations,

General

Population

Courts,

Judges,

Bailiffs,

Administrators,

Judicial

Institutions

JUDICIARY

Law Schools,

Students,

Lawyers,

Legal

Associations

LEGAL

EDUCATION

LAW

ENFORCEMENT

CIVIL

SOCIETY A
Page 7 GAO-01-740T

areas that USAID programs had targeted for support, including a new civil

code and a series of commercial laws and laws reforming the judiciary.7

Despite considerable progress in a few countries, major gaps persist in the

legal foundation for reform. In particular, Ukraine, a major beneficiary of

U.S. rule of law assistance, has not yet passed a new law on the judiciary

or new criminal, civil, administrative, or procedure codes since a new

constitution was passed in 1996. Furthermore, a major assistance project

aimed at making the Ukrainian parliament more active, informed, and

transparent has not been successful, according to U.S. and foreign officials

we interviewed. In Russia, the government has still not adopted a revised

criminal procedure code, a key component of the overall judicial reform

effort, despite assistance from the Department of Justice in developing

legislative proposals. According to a senior Justice official, Russia is still

using the autocratic 1963 version of the procedure code that violates

fundamental human rights.

The second element in the U.S. government’s rule of law program has been

to foster an independent judiciary with strong judicial institutions and

well-trained judges and court officers who administer decisions fairly and

efficiently. The United States has contributed to greater independence and

integrity of the judiciary by supporting key new judicial institutions and

innovations in the administration of justice and by helping to train or

retrain many judges and court officials. For example, in Russia, USAID

provided training, educational materials, and other technical assistance to

strengthen the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court. This new

independent institution was created in 1998 to assume the administrative

and financial responsibility for court management previously held by the

Ministry of Justice. USAID and the Department of Justice have also

supported the introduction of jury trials in 9 of Russia’s 89 regions for the

first time since 1917. Although the jury trial system has not expanded

beyond a pilot phase, administration of criminal justice has been

transformed in these regions—acquittals, unheard of during the Soviet era,

are increasing under this system (up to 16.5 percent of all jury trials by the

most recent count).

However, U.S. efforts we reviewed to help retool the judiciary have had

limited impact so far. USAID assistance efforts aimed at improving

 7

USAID Programs Supporting Commercial Law and Other Legal Reform in the Russian

Federation (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Sept. 1996).

Judiciary: Greater

Independence Achieved in

Some Respects,

but Continued Reform and

Retraining Needed
Page 8 GAO-01-740T

training for judges have had relatively little long-term impact.

Governments in Russia and Ukraine, for example, have not yet developed

judicial training programs with adequate capacity to reach the huge

numbers of judges and court officials who operate the judiciaries in these

nations. In Russia, the capacity for training judges remains extremely low.

The judiciary can train each of its 15,000 judges only about once every 10

years. In Ukraine, the two judicial training centers we visited that had

been established with USAID assistance were functioning at far below

capacity; in fact one center had been dismantled entirely. Courts still lack

full independence, efficiency, and effectiveness. Throughout the region,

much of the former structure that enabled the Soviet government to

control judges’ decisions still exists, and citizens remain suspicious of the

judiciary.

The third element of the U.S. assistance program has been to modernize

the system of legal education in the new independent states to make it

more practical and relevant. The United States has sponsored a variety of

special efforts to introduce new legal educational methods and topics for

both law students and existing lawyers. Notably, USAID has introduced

legal clinics into several law schools throughout Russia and Ukraine.

These clinics allow law students to get practical training in helping clients

exercise their legal rights. They also provide a service to the community by

facilitating access to the legal system by the poor and disadvantaged. With

the training, encouragement, and financing provided by USAID, there are

about 30 legal clinics in law schools in Russia and about 20 in Ukraine.

USAID has also provided a great deal of high-quality continuing education

for legal professionals, particularly in the emerging field of commercial

law. Traditionally, little training of this type was available to lawyers in the

former Soviet Union.

However, the impact and sustainability of these initiatives are in doubt, as

indigenous institutions have not yet demonstrated the ability or inclination

to support the efforts after U.S. and other donor funding ends. For

example, in Russia, we could not identify any organizations that were

engaged in reprinting legal texts and manuals developed with U.S.

assistance. In Ukraine, U.S. assistance has not been successful in

stimulating law school reforms, and legal education remains rigidly

theoretical and outmoded by western standards. Students are not

routinely taught many skills important to the practice of law, such as

advocacy, interviewing, case investigation, negotiation techniques and

legal writing. The United States has largely been unsuccessful at fostering

the development of legal associations, such as bar associations, national

judges associations, and law school associations, to carry on this

Legal Education: More

Practical Methods

Introduced but Not Widely

Practiced
Page 9 GAO-01-740T

educational work in both Russia and Ukraine. U.S. officials had viewed the

development of such associations as key to institutionalizing modern legal

principles and practices and professional standards on a national scale as

well as serving as conduits for continuing legal education for their

members.

The fourth component of the U.S. government’s rule of law program

involves introducing modern criminal justice techniques to local law

enforcement organizations. As part of this effort, the United States has

provided many training courses to law enforcement officials throughout

the new independent states of the former Soviet Union, shared

professional experiences through international exchanges and study tours,

implemented several model law enforcement projects, and funded

scholarly research into organized crime. These programs have fostered

international cooperation among law enforcement officials, according to

the Department of Justice. U.S. law enforcement officials we spoke to

have reported that, as a result of these training courses, there is a greater

appreciation among Russians and Ukrainians of criminal legal issues for

international crimes of great concern in the United States, such as

organized crime, money laundering, and narcotics and human trafficking.

They have also reported a greater willingness of law enforcement officials

to work with their U.S. and other foreign counterparts on solving

international crimes.

However, we found little evidence that the new information disseminated

through these activities has been routinely applied in law enforcement in

the new independent states. In Russia and Ukraine we could not identify

any full-scale effort in local law enforcement training institutions to

replicate or adapt the training for routine application. Nor could we find

clear evidence that the U.S. techniques have been widely embraced by

training participants. Furthermore, though the United States has

sponsored significant amounts of research on organized crime in Russia

and Ukraine, we could not determine whether the results of this research

had been applied by law enforcement agencies.

Law Enforcement:

Training, Models, and

Research

Provided, but Routine

Application Is Not Evident
Page 10 GAO-01-740T

The fifth element of the rule of law assistance program is the expansion of

access by the general population to the justice system. In both Russia and

Ukraine, the United States has fostered the development of a number of

nongovernmental organizations that have been active in promoting the

interests of groups, increasing citizens’ awareness of their legal rights, and

helping poor and traditionally disadvantaged people gain access to the

courts to resolve their problems. For example, in Russia, USAID has

sponsored a project that has helped trade unions and their members gain

greater access to the legal system, leading to court decisions that have

bolstered the legal rights of millions of workers. In Ukraine, environmental

advocacy organizations sponsored by USAID have actively and

successfully sued for citizens’ rights and greater environmental protection.

Despite their high level of activity in recent years, these nongovernmental

organizations still face questionable long-term viability. Most

nongovernmental organizations we visited received very little funding

from domestic sources and were largely dependent upon foreign donor

contributions to operate. The sustainability of even some of the most

accomplished organizations we visited remains to be seen.

At least three factors have constrained the impact and sustainability of

U.S. rule of law assistance: (1) a limited political consensus on the need to

reform laws and institutions, (2) a shortage of domestic resources to

finance many of the reforms on a large scale, and (3) a number of

shortcomings in U.S. program management. The first two factors, in

particular, have created a very challenging climate for U.S. programs to

have major, long-term impact in these states, but have also underscored

the importance of effective management of U.S. programs.

In key areas in need of legal reform, U.S. advocates have met some steep

political resistance to change. In Ukraine and Russia, lawmakers have not

been able to reach consensus on critical new legal codes upon which

reform of the judiciary could be based. In particular, Ukrainian

government officials are deadlocked on legislation reforming the judiciary,

despite a provision in the country’s constitution to do so by June 2001.

Numerous versions of this legislation have been drafted by parties in the

parliament, the executive branch, and the judiciary with various political

and other agendas. Lack of progress on this legislation has stymied

reforms throughout the justice system. In Russia’s Duma (parliament),

where the civil and the criminal codes were passed in the mid-1990s, the

criminal procedure code remains in draft form. According to a senior

Civil Society: Awareness

and Involvement Have

Increased, but Many

Nongovernmental

Organizations’

Activities Depend on

Continued International

Donor Support

Limits on Impact and

Sustainability Stem

From Political,

Economic, and

Program Management

Issues

Political Consensus on

Reform Slow in Forming
Page 11 GAO-01-740T

Department of Justice official, the Russian prosecutor’s office is reluctant

to support major reforms, since many would require that institution to

relinquish a significant amount of the power it has had in operating the

criminal justice system. While U.S. officials help Russian groups to lobby

for legislative reforms, adoption of such reforms remains in the sovereign

domain of the host country.

In the legal education system as well, resistance to institutional reform has

thwarted U.S. assistance efforts. USAID officials in Russia told us that

Russian law professors and other university officials are often the most

conservative in the legal community and the slowest to reform. A USAIDsponsored assessment of legal education in Ukraine found that there was

little likelihood for reform in the short term due to entrenched interests

among the school administration and faculty who were resisting change.8

Policymakers have not reached political consensus on how or whether to

address the legal impediments to the development of sustainable

nongovernmental organizations. Legislation could be adopted that would

make it easier for these organizations to raise domestic funds and thus

gain independence from foreign donors.

Historically slow economic growth in the new independent states has

meant limited government budgets and low wages for legal professionals

and thus limited resources available to fund new initiatives. While Russia

has enjoyed a recent improvement in its public finances stemming largely

from increases in the prices of energy exports, public funds in the new

independent states have been constrained. Continuation or expansion of

legal programs initially financed by the United States and other donors has

not been provided for in government budgets. For example, in Russia, the

system of jury trials could not be broadened beyond 9 initial regions,

according to a senior judiciary official, because it was considered too

expensive to administer in the other 89 regions. In Ukraine, according to a

senior police official we spoke to, police forces often lack funds for

vehicles, computers, and communications equipment needed to implement

some of the law enforcement techniques that were presented in the U.S.-

sponsored training.

 8

Ukraine Rule of Law Assessment and Strategy Recommendations (Washington D.C.:

Management Systems International, 1999).

Weak Economic

Conditions Make Funding

Reforms Difficult
Page 12 GAO-01-740T

U.S. agencies implementing the rule of law assistance program have not

always managed their projects with an explicit focus on achieving

sustainable results, that is, (1) developing and implementing strategies to

achieve sustainable results and (2) monitoring projects results over time to

ensure that sustainable impact was being achieved. These are important

steps in designing and implementing development assistance projects,

according to guidance developed by USAID.9

We found that, in general, USAID projects were designed with strategies

for achieving sustainability, including assistance activities intended to

develop indigenous institutions that would adopt the concepts and

practices USAID was promoting. However, at the Departments of State,

Justice, and the Treasury, rule of law projects we reviewed often did not

establish specific strategies for achieving sustainable development results.

In particular, the law enforcement-related training efforts we reviewed

were generally focused on achieving short-term objectives, such as

conducting training courses or providing equipment and educational

materials; they did not include an explicit approach for longer-term

objectives, such as promoting sustainable institutional changes and reform

of national law enforcement practices. According to senior U.S. Embassy

officials in Russia and Ukraine, these projects rarely included follow-up

activities to help ensure that the concepts taught were being

institutionalized or having long-term impact after the U.S. trainers left the

country.

We did not find clear evidence that U.S. agencies systematically monitored

and evaluated the impact and sustainability of the projects they

implemented under the rule of law assistance program. Developing and

monitoring performance indicators is important for making programmatic

decisions and learning from past experience, according to USAID. We

found that the Departments of State, Justice, and Treasury have not

routinely assessed the results of their rule of law projects. In particular,

according to U.S. agency and embassy officials we spoke to, there was

usually little monitoring or evaluation of the law enforcement training

courses after they were conducted to determine their impact. Although

USAID has a more extensive process for assessing its programs, we found

 9

For more information, see “Results-Oriented Assistance: a USAID Sourcebook,” available

on the World Wide Web at www.usaid.gov. Although this guidance has not been formally

adopted by other government agencies, it reflects the expertise of the U.S. government’s

most experienced development agency and is instructive to all agencies involved in

development assistance.

Program Management

Weaknesses Affect Impact

and Sustainability of Aid
Page 13 GAO-01-740T

that the results of its rule of law projects in the new independent states of

the former Soviet Union were not always apparent. The results of most

USAID projects we reviewed were reported in terms of project outputs,

such as the number of USAID-sponsored conferences or training courses

held, the number and types of publications produced with project funding,

or the amount of computer and other equipment provided to courts.

Measures of impact and sustainability were rarely used.

State has recently recognized the shortcomings of its training-oriented

approach to law enforcement reforms. As a result, it has mandated a new

approach for implementing agencies to focus more on sustainable

projects. Instead of administering discrete training courses, for example,

agencies and embassies will be expected to develop longer-term projects.

Justice has also developed new guidelines for the planning and evaluation

of some of its projects to better ensure that these projects are aimed at

achieving concrete and sustainable results.10 These reform initiatives are

still in very early stages of implementation.

It remains to be seen whether future projects will be more explicitly

designed and carried out to achieve verifiably sustainable results. One

factor that may delay the implementation of these new approaches is a

significant backlog in training courses that State has already approved

under this program. As of February 2001, about $30 million in funding for

fiscal years 1995 through 2000 has been obligated for law enforcement

training that has not yet been conducted.11 U.S. law enforcement agencies,

principally the Departments of Justice and the Treasury, plan to continue

to use these funds for a number of years to pay for their training activities,

even though many of these activities have the same management

weaknesses as the earlier ones we reviewed. Unless these funds are

reprogrammed for other purposes or the projects are redesigned to reflect

the program reforms that State and Justice are putting in place, projects

may have limited impact and sustainability.

 10These guidelines govern projects implemented by Justice’s Criminal Division and do not

extend to other agencies within the Department that implement law enforcement training,

such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the

Immigration and Naturalization Service.

11The precise amount of funding is unclear as State program officials believe that the

implementing agencies may have actually conducted some unknown amount of this

training but not yet submitted necessary documentation to State for reimbursement.
Page 14 GAO-01-740T

To help improve the impact and sustainability of the U.S. rule of law

program in the new independent states, we have recommended that the

Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Treasury,

and the USAID Administrator, who together control almost all of the

program’s funding, require that new rule of law projects be designed with

(1) specific strategies for achieving impact and sustainable results and (2)

a provision for monitoring and evaluating outcomes. Furthermore, to

improve the likelihood that project funds currently budgeted but not yet

spent achieve sustainable results, the Secretary of State, the Attorney

General, and the Secretary of the Treasury should jointly review the

current pipeline of projects to ensure that all projects meet the above

criteria, including reprogramming of unspent assistance funds, as

necessary.

In commenting on a draft of our report, State, Justice, and USAID

generally agreed with us that the program management improvements we

recommended are needed and, in some cases, have already begun to take

actions consistent with these recommendations. However, USAID and

State also expressed concern that our assessment set too high a standard

for program success and did not adequately recognize the complex and

long-term nature of this development process. Also, the agencies indicated

that we did not adequately recognize some significant program activities,

achievements, and evaluation efforts. State and USAID also expressed

concern that we did not rank the three factors that have limited the impact

and sustainability of the program in order of importance; they believe that

program management weaknesses are the least important factor and the

lack of political consensus is the most important. In the final version of

our report we made revisions, where appropriate, to address the agencies’

comments. However, our overall conclusions remain essentially

unchanged.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared testimony. I would be very

happy to respond to any questions you or other members may have.

For future contacts regarding this testimony, please contact me on

(202) 512-4128. Individuals making key contributions to this testimony

included Stephen M. Lord, Jim Michels, Janey Cohen, and Mary Moutsos.

Contact and

Acknowledgment

(320050)