54 Bangladesh, Burma and the Rohingya crisis BRAC 135. A unique feature of DFID’s work in Bangladesh is its strategic partnership with BRAC, the giant home-grown, now global, NGO. Since 2011, DFID has been in a Strategic Partnership Arrangement (SPA) with BRAC. This is a flexible funding agreement in which BRAC receives a sizeable, multi-annual allocation of ODA to deliver a defined set of agreed development objectives covering a wide range, if not all, of DFID’s strategic objectives for its work in Bangladesh. The original SPA concluded in 2016 and SPA II has been agreed to be concluded in 2021. BRAC itself states that the SPA arrangement “gives BRAC the flexibility and funding security to innovate and implement extremely effective programmes that have achieved transformative results in Bangladesh. SPA II is funded by £224.5 million between 2016 and 2021. Looked at on an annual basis, that amounts to virtually £45 million, getting on for a third DFID’s annual budget for development aid for Bangladesh (setting aside the recent allocations for the Rohingya). 136. The original SPA portfolio performed well against expectations. Evidence submitted by BRAC in relation to mid-term results from SPA II demonstrates: • Services provided to at least 110 million people in 2017. • 86,000 households participating in BTRAC’s ultra-poverty initiative. • 1.8 million students enrolled in BRAC educational programmes. • 1.3 adolescents and pregnant women in receipt of counselling on balanced nutrition and dietary practice. • Like DFID, BRAC is incorporating climate change resilience and gender equality. 137. BRAC has developed from the ‘Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee’ to be No. 1 NGO in the world, and almost, an experiment in government - or at least key public service provider - as a non-partisan, meritocratic, social enterprise. We visited a number of BRAC projects, and met a great number of BRAC personnel and were impressed. One such, was a small community early years school. We consulted the parents and there was very vocal support for the institution which they wanted to ‘grow’ up with the children and not have to use the ‘government school’. 138. BRAC seems to have avoided the sort of partisan contamination, or political polarisation, that our witnesses alerted us to. Equally, BRAC seems to be handling, or working around, the shrinkage of the public, democratic and/or civil society ‘space’ (of course it is possible that BRAC eschewed this space in the first place). Whatever BRAC is doing, or not doing, in the background to reach and surpass its objectives while seeming to steer clear of political interference and the other challenges we have identified above, DFID should take note and put in place a process to capture, and consider, the lessons that can be learned. Conclusions 139. Overall, we conclude that DFID’s work in Bangladesh is to be highly commended. The country is on a welcome overall trajectory and the UK as a longstanding ally, critical friend and partner has made a clear contribution to this direction of travel. DFID