CEPA Annual Symposium on Poverty Research
Supported by Frederich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and World Bank


CEPA organises a National Symposium on Poverty Research annually, focusing on topical issues that reflects new insights generated by research in CEPA and in the research community. This is CEPA’s most significant public event that brings together a diverse audience of scholars, practitioners, policy makers and students from different disciplines to discuss empirical findings of poverty related research.

The scale-up study included elements of poverty targeting based on poverty data and electricity coverage plans and The 9th CEPA Symposium on Poverty Research was held in partnership with FES as well as the World Bank Post Conflict Fund and was on the theme Forced to Move: Involuntary Displacement and Resettlement: Policy and Practice.

The Symposium comprised three sessions on themes that are common to all types of resettlement regardless of whether the displacement occurred due to conflict, development or natural disasters. One session looked at restoring livelihoods, another at understanding how vulnerabilities were addressed in the process of dealing with displacement, and the third on the implementation of resettlement, emphasising the importance of ensuring equity and participation. In the final session, a video documentary entitled “evicted”, developed by PANOS South Asia, brought in the stories and views of affected people from all three types of displacement/resettlement. This was a precursor to the wrap-up which revisited the objectives and presented key analysis points and insights into those issues which need to be considered to ensure better policy formulation in resettlement processes in the future.

Evaluation of the Prolinnova Network
Client: ETC Foundation (Netherlands)
Duration: August to December 2008

The Prolinnova Network is a global network of people and organisations interested in promoting local innovation in agriculture. CEPA’s Executive Director was one of a two member team carrying out a mid-term evaluation of the network for ETC Netherlands, that hosts the Prolinnova global secretariat, under a framework agreement with DGIS Netherlands (the government international development department). This assignment raised some issues about evaluating networks, especially where the client’s frame of reference is highly structured and less able to accommodate the fluidity of network activity.

Monitoring the development of Sri Lanka’s National Involuntary Resettlement Policy (NIRP)
Client: Overseas Development Institute
Duration: January 2007 to December 2008
This assignment, led by members of the Poverty Assessment and Knowledge Management (PAM) team, monitored CEPA’s influence on the NIRP through the activities being carried out under the monitoring of the Southern Transport Development Project. It helped the Poverty Impact Monitoring (PIM) team to organise its policy influence activity and pull in additional knowledge, as was done via the roundtable on policy influence held in September and facilitated the development of good practice notes.

Peace and Conflict Timeline – PACT
Supported by World Bank Post Conflict Fund
Duration: ongoing

In May 2008, the Peace and Conflict Timeline (PACT) project was launched with a new look. The project was developed as a participatory initiative to help those with an interest in the Sri Lankan conflict gain a deeper understanding of the conflict’s roots, manifestation and trajectory and to promote discussion around events, themes and experiences of peace and conflict related events.

PACT is linked to various websites as a resource on the Sri Lankan conflict, including UNHCR, groundviews, Sahajeevana Centre, Communication Initiative, Global Voices Online, ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace), the New Communications Review, and various sections of wikipedia. PACT is highly optimized for a range of search engine terms on the Sri Lanka conflict.

Monthly traffic to the site has doubled and the site receives just under 4,000 visitors per month. Judging by the statistics, the number of websites to which PACT is linked and the use of PACT’s content as evidence and sources, the project’s is clearly a resource that many researchers turn to on information about Sri Lanka.

PACT’s has also made inroads in stimulating discussion amongst its users, especially through it ‘features’ focusing on critical events and themes. In 2008, these included features on Black July 1983, the 18th anniversary of the Muslim expulsion of 1990 and a discussion on activism in Sri Lanka. Further, narratives from the team’s applied research projects (including Moving out of Poverty in Conflict Affected Areas -2006, Making Peace, Keeping Peace -2008) fed into PACT in connection with significant events on the timeline.

PACT now also boasts audio and visual content including a ‘Turning Points’ section illustrated with photographs from conflict history. PACT’s YouTube and Vimeo channels have been set up for current and future audio visual material expected under the World Bank’s Post Conflict Fund grant in 2009.

PACT has received plaudits including an award for its innovative use of new media from Society for New Communications Review (SNCR), a US-based think tank.

Praise for PACT:
“PACT is a must for any researcher on our conflict and is one of those sites that really should be put as a shortcut on the desktops of PCs in libraries and cyber-cafes, so that people actually get to know of it and use it. PACT is a historical narrative that comes alive through new media”
Sanjana Hattotuwa, ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace), 17 May 2008.

Poverty Portal
Supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES)
Duration: ongoing

CEPA’s Poverty Assessment and Knowledge Management (PAM) programme team is working on a Poverty Portal which will be a central hub of information on poverty in Sri Lanka, aiming to improve the dissemination of existing research and information on poverty in the country. The Poverty Portal emerged in response to the demand from users in a survey conducted in 2005. The target audience will be practitioners in state institutions especially at the decentralised level, non-governmental organisations and the private sector as well as academics and university students. A year into the project, the technical and programmatic constraints to developing it into a more dynamic, inclusive and sustainable resource have become apparent. The Poverty Portal is in its second phase of development with the objectives of (i) developing the CEPA Poverty Portal as an interactive portal for sharing as well as obtaining robust evidence on poverty related issues in Sri Lanka and of (ii) complementing the development of the CEPA Poverty Portal with outreach activities that will engage a range of organisations that are able to use the information in their decision making. The first phase was carried out under a technical assistance grant from the ADB that ended in 2007. It was continued with CEPA funds in 2008. The second phase will be supported for nine months in 2009 by FES.

South Asia Evidence Based Policy in Development Networks
Supported by the Global Development Network (GDN)
Duration: ongoing

The South Asia Evidence-Based Policy in Development Network (SA-ebpdn) is an exciting initiative which will give a much needed regional focus to the existing global network, coordinated by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), at www.ebpdn.org. The SA-ebpdn aims to bring together think tanks, research institutes and similar organisations working in international development across South Asia, to promote more evidence-based, pro-poor development policy making in the region. The regional network is coordinated by CEPA with funding from the Global Development Network (GDN).


CEPA has been involved with the global ebpdn programme since its inception, and hosted the 2007 partners meeting in Colombo. CEPA sees this as an opportunity to build on its experience with ODI and other regional partners, while fostering new partnerships to build a strong regional network which can share experiences of communicating research and influencing change across South Asia. Although the region is extremely diverse in terms of the political and social environment, we hope we will be able to establish common threads and lessons which can help other organisations wishing to communicate more effectively.

The objectives of the South Asia ebpdn are to: capture regionally-specific lessons on how evidence can be used to influence policy; strengthen research communication capacity; establish a sustainable mechanism to share knowledge between organisations committed to evidence-based policy in development; support regional efforts to bridge research and policy; and share information and learning with other similar networks, such as the Latin American ebpdn forum.

The SA-ebpdn offers an opportunity to establish a local community of practice, stimulating debate and dialogue on the issues that matter in South Asia, and using regionally-specific knowledge to improve the use of evidence in policymaking. Members of the network are able to exchange knowledge and questions, debate important issues online, participate in studies to find out more about experiences in the region and be part of capacity building initiatives to build on shared knowledge. We hope that members of this community will be inspired and empowered to collaborate on projects to generate and use research-based evidence to improve development policy at national, regional and global level.

The countries involved in this regional network are: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.