For Immediate Release
Governance Must Include Social Accountability
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World Vision calls on the World Bank and IMF to give greater priority to support good governance at the local level. Barriers include indifference, inefficiency, corruption, fear and lack of knowledge. Local communities often have little knowledge of the services available to them, nor how to access the services. They rarely have experience of consultative processes and mechanisms to deal with inappropriate practice by implementing agencies.
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Public ‘social accountability’ approach aims primarily to give a genuine voice to the people directly affected by development programmes. Where successful, this approach not only helps local communities to place greater upward pressure on implementing agencies for better governance and transparency, but also strengthens the fabric of civil society and democratic processes.
Recommendations
- The World Bank and IMF need to address resistance from those developing country governments that seek to discourage citizen empowerment.
- The World Bank and the IMF need to support citizens’ struggle to make more political space for dialogue in their respective countries.
- The World Bank needs to scale up positive results in mainstreaming social accountability approach throughout its operations.
- The World Bank needs to revisit interpretation on its articles of agreement with regard to positioning human rights in its operations.
- Investment is needed in measures to promote governance and anti-corruption strategies that reinforce citizen engagement especially in the education, livelihood and health sectors.
- Support to civil society engagement through innovative funding and capacity-building in the use of evidence and practice on social accountability.
For more information contact:
Dr Fletcher Tembo,
Senior Economic Justice Policy Adviser
World Vision UK, World Vision House
Opal Drive, Fox Milne
Milton Keynes, MK15 0ZR
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 1908841244489 (Office-Direct line); 07748118575 (Mobile)
Fax: +44(0) 1908841015
Email: fletcher.tembo@worldvision.org.uk
http://www.worldvision.org.uk
More on Social Accountability:
Community Based Performance Management was first used by Care in Malawi and has subsequently been developed by other organisations including the World Bank and World Vision. Community Based Performance Monitoring allows communities to identify shortcomings and call for improvements in the delivery of basic services such as health and education. User groups are enabled to monitor the quality of service delivery on an ongoing basis and to provide real time feedback to service providers.
A ‘scorecard’ approach is used in CBPM. This means that community groups rate the degree to which local services and facilities meet their needs. This is followed by an ‘interface meeting’ in which users present their views on service delivery to provider organisations and agree on necessary reforms and follow-up actions. CBPM has now been trialed by the World Bank in Gambia and World Vision Australia in Uganda, Brazil and Peru. Their primary use is to ensure adequate delivery of basic services and accountability of development expenditures. It has been used to focus on public expenditure issues and also to improve local participation in natural resource management projects, for example, by ascertaining local perceptions of the adequacy of compensation and adjustment programs.