Blogs

• 5 CIVICUS members to attend the European Commission’s partnership forum

  Some months ago, a call was sent to CIVICUS members inviting them to apply to attend the European Commission’s partnership forum to be held on 25^th and 26^th June 2018. In order to ensure fruitful discussions during the forum, we needed members who understand cross-sectoral collaboration, the dynamics of professional networks and knowledge-sharing, and members who were able to envision future collective actions as CIVICUS members after the forum.

  We received over 160 expressions of interest from 75+ countries and we were very much impressed by the depth of the insights! We are delighted to introduce the five members who will attend the forum as the CIVICUS delegation.

  The CIVICUS delegation will be a rich blend of actors from the civil society: members from different regions of the world (including Francophone and Spanish speaking representation), working at different levels from local to regional, and ensuring gender and youth representation. The five members also deal with very different aspects which are key when it comes to multi-stakeholder partnerships, North-South collaborations, tackling key global challenges (e.g around migration and employment) and using diverse channels and means of communication (e.g. arts, media, high-level discussions etc).

  

• 7 Q&As about participatory grantmaking

  In February, CIVICUS hosted an animated webinar called ‘Participatory grantmaking in action’ in partnership withUHAI EASHRI, Africa’s first indigenous activist fund supporting sexual and gender minorities and sex worker human rights, and Candid, an organisation that has extensively researched and promoted participatory grantmaking. Both are strong proponents of participatory funding approaches.You can watch there recording on YouTube. 

  Sarina Dayal, from Candid, shared the characteristics and principles of participatory approaches. Amy Taylor, from CIVICUS, shared their journey setting up a young participatory fund called CIVICUS Solidarity Fund. Lastly, Cleo Kambugu, from UHAI, explored the challenges and opportunities they have faced during their 10-year journey as participatory funders. 

  Here, we want to share and answer seven most frequently asked questions sent to our panelists before and during the webinar: 

  1. What stakeholders are or should be directly engaged in decision making in participatory grantmaking? 

  Sarina Dayal: Across the board, participatory grantmakers agree that the very communities impacted by a problem should be at the decision-making table. But figuring out which community members should be involved really depends on your context and can be difficult, even for those who have been doing this for a long time. One of the most important factors in successful processes is being proactive and intentional about involving people from all parts of the community you are seeking to impact, not just those more likely to participate because of their titles, social capital, or financial status.

  In addition, figuring out roles with donors and staff also depends on the context. Some funds are completely community-led in that everyone making the funding decisions is a member of the community the fund supports. Community members are also involved in designing the process, conducting outreach, and other steps of the grantmaking process. Other funds involve staff and donors in parts of the grantmaking process such as reviewing proposals, facilitating discussion, and even in granting final sign-off of the funding decision the community came to. Whatever balance of participation is used between community, staff, and donors, it should acknowledge power, privilege, capacity, and what the value-add is to the process and to advancing equity.  

  2. In peer-reviewed applications, do peer reviewers provide platforms to the community stakeholders or their representatives to have any interactions and possibly give feedback? 

  Amy Taylor: At CIVICUS, we have a Membership Advisory Group (MAG) that makes funding decisions related to the CIVICUS Solidarity Fund.  When the MAG does not have sufficient insight into the context of an applicant under review, they solicit feedback from other members in the CIVICUS alliance who have relevant knowledge and experience. 

  3. Is there a downside to participation (e.g. risk of overburdening constituents)? What is the balance of meaningfully involving them but being considerate too of their limited time?

  Sarina: The risk of overburdening constituents is real—but possible to avoid! While we don’t want to overburden constituents, participatory grantmakers agree that the greater risk is not involving communities at all. So, this is an excellent reminder to ask ourselves, what are we offering to communities by involving them in this process? One good practice is to open conversations with the community from the very start, so they can co-create a process that is mindful of their capacity and how they want to be involved. You may need to revisit these conversations and alter the process over time to find the right balance. Also, think about what you can do to compensate constituents for their time and thought, whether that be financial compensation, food, transportation, or otherwise. 

  4. How can you handle conflicts of interest within the committees when deciding how the resources are allocated?

  Cleo Kambugu: You can’t avoid dealing with different interests if you want to involve activists in participatory grantmaking processes. Activists should have a vested interest in making sure that the granted projects go well - this actually strengthens the process. What we do is provide a strong orientation to the review board. This orientation, beyond focusing on the technical skills, focuses on the value of participatory grantmaking and includes how to identify and manage conflicts of interest. We sign a memorandum of understanding with activists that sit in our review board, which elaborates on conflicts of interests and the circumstances in which these can happen, as well as the penalties for breaching it, like being excluded from the board or cutting funding for the organisation they represent. To help them manage a conflict of interest, we set up space in a way that if someone is feeling conflict, they can walk out, or another reviewer can call them out. What we have noticed is that most of the time people walk out of the room by themselves when feeling conflicted. (Hear an extended answer to this question in the webinar recording).

  5. How do you guard against perpetuating inequitable or exclusionary dynamics in participatory grantmaking processes?

  Amy: In our case, the group making funding decisions - the MAG - is composed of members nominated by members and selected by the CIVICUS Board’s membership committee. One of the key objectives of the selection process is to ensure a diverse MAG that has a variety of personal experiences and professional backgrounds, which helps to mitigate unintended bias in the group’s decision-making processes. To be more inclusive, the MAG tries to look beyond the quality of the writing in applications and prioritise the potential of the idea or degree of the need, often providing flexible funding that can be used for operational costs like office rent or salaries. In the future, the MAG hopes to expand the mediums of applications receivable to include videos and proposals.

  6. Can the organisations of peer reviewers apply for grants during a grantmaking cycle when they are reviewing and how do their applications get treated?

  Amy: The organisations of the MAG who serve as peer reviewers for the CIVICUS Solidarity Fund are not allowed to apply during the funding cycles that take place over their terms of reference. These individuals also recuse themselves from decision-making when affiliated organisations or alumni apply in order to avoid conflict of interest.

  7. What strategies can help engage more donors in participatory grantmaking processes? 

  Cleo: As part of our work, we do philanthropic advocacy with multiple stakeholders about participatory grantmaking, among other topics. We feel that if we speak about this often enough in rooms where activists themselves are not able to be, perhaps we can get donors interested. In the past 10 years, there have been many successes and changes in East Africa. Now activists in the region can participate in funding decisions that affect them. We have had law and policy reforms, LGBTQI organisations can now become registered and transgender people can change their genders. In social justice, this is really fast! To continue, we must document these experiences, challenges, opportunities, and successes. It is also necessary to link up with like-minded individuals and organisations and to think about less confrontational and more community-building, practical ways to be more participatory. Building a community of participatory grantmakers has helped us to keep speaking about this in different spaces. We have seen donors becoming more convinced that participatory funding can happen, while funding has become more flexible and less project-oriented.

  Learn more about participatory grantmaking:

  • Watch the webinar recording now! 
  • Check out Candid’s guide, videos, and blogs on participatory grantmaking.
  • Visit Candid’s website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. 
  • Visit UHAI’s website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
• A Belgrade en Serbie, PJUD-BENIN ONG parle de la redevabilité au service de la démocratie béninoise.

  Par DJOWAMON  A. Cyrille, PJUD - Promotion Jeunesse Unie pour le Développement, Benin ; organisation membre votante de CIVICUS

  La semaine internationale de la civile (the international civil society week ICSW) s’est déroulée du 06 au 12 avril 2019 à Belgrade en Serbie sous le thème : «Le Pouvoir de la Solidarité». Elle a donné l’occasion aux organisations, aux défenseurs des droits humains et aux activistes d’explorer les moyens par lesquels ils peuvent fédérer les efforts pour libérer le potentiel d’une l’action collective. Le programme de cette semaine constitué de plusieurs sessions a donné l’occasion à PJUD-BENIN ONG d’exposer ses actions sur la thématique de la redevabilité au Bénin. Autour du thème : « Government accountability towards Democracy and Rule of Law » le directeur exécutif de PJUD-BENIN ONG a partagé avec l’assistance constituée d’acteurs de la société civile mais également de partenaires techniques et financiers les efforts des OSC béninoises pour créer l’interaction entre les détenteurs de droits ou demandeurs de redevabilité et les débiteurs d’obligations qui offrent la recevabilité.

  Avec une démarche pédagogique, il a démontré que le recul des trois obstacles fondamentaux à la construction d’une bonne gouvernance et d’un État de droit que sont : la corruption, le clientélisme et la captation des marchés n’adviendra qu’avec l’appropriation du concept de redevabilité tant par les détenteurs de droits que par les débiteurs d’obligations. Pour lui, la corruption, le clientélisme et la captation des marchés sont des maux à combattre avec vigueur. En effet, la corruption, outre qu’elle enrichit directement des bureaucrates individuels, fausse les marchés et entrave la fourniture du service.

  Le clientélisme, outre qu’il canalise de manière inéquitable des ressources publiques vers des groupes de clients spécifiques, altère les dynamiques de la compétition politique et mène à une fourniture inefficace du service public. Enfin La captation, outre qu’elle fournit des rentes à des acteurs économiques spécifiques, altère elle aussi grandement les marchés et aggrave la position des consommateurs, travailleurs et l’environnement entrepreneurial. Il a, pour conclure invité à une action à l’endroit de la jeunesse qui doit faire un parcours initiatique dans l’apprentissage de la responsabilité, de la culture de la vérité et du refus de la corruption sous toutes ses formes.        

• A Day Without a Woman in South Africa

  Wathint’ abafazi,wathint’ imbokodo – When you strike a woman, you strike a rock – was the battle cry of women who marched to the Union Buildings in South Africa in 1956, and it has echoed through the ages and continues to ring true today. For hundreds of years, as birth givers, nurturers, leaders of industry and pillars of their communities from Cape Town to Cairo, African women have fought for their place in society; fought the label of “the weaker sex”, seeking to be seen as equal in strength, determination and value in their various forms of womanhood, and as people whose voices should not and cannot be muted. Today, we challenge ourselves here at CIVICUS to continue to amplify the voices of women all over the world.

• A Day Without a Woman in the USA

  The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day seems to match the current sentiment around much of the globe. A day without a woman… What would that mean for us?

  In equal measure, Hillary Clinton’s loss and the success of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election have reminded many of us what it means to be a woman in the workforce here in the United States, at every level. In the nonprofit sector, the pay differential between male and female leaders executives continues to increase, with women earning anywhere between 21 and 47 percent less than their male counterparts. All along the corporate ladder, women are underrepresented: 45% of posts are occupied by women at the entry level and this figure drops to 37% at management, 32% at senior management, 27% at vice presidential, and 23% at senior vice president levels with only 17% of C-suite positions going to women.

  So what would it look like then, if all women stopped working?

• A Day Without a Woman in Tunisia

  Before the Tunisian Revolution, International Women’s Day centered around a major state-sponsored festival in which artists and government officials celebrated the progressive Code of Personal Status (CPS) promulgated in 1957 under President Habib Bourguiba. However, Tunisian women have been facing the most “sophisticated inequalities” since our independence.

  According to UNESCO’s report on women in the labour force in 2009, only 38 percent of adult women are employed compared to 51 percent of men and nearly half are subject to various kinds of gender-based violence, including physical, sexual and/or verbal abuse. In this restrictive civic space, I wondered if our policymakers were even aware of these numbers or do they think only of using the progressive gender legislation to portray themselves as pro-western, secular modernists despite the implementation falling short?

• A Day Without CIVICUS Women

  About 66% of CIVICUS’ staff are women. And while it’s impossible to say what percentage of the whole CIVICUS Alliance’s membership is composed of women, we can safely guess that in a sector dominated by women, there are many member organisations that have more women than men on staff.

  Thus, a day without women would be an impossible day for CIVICUS; work at the Secretariat, and quite possibly throughout much of the Alliance’s more than 1,200 member organisations, might just grind to a complete halt if all women workers went on strike.

  As Joanna Maycock, head of the European Women’s Lobby in Brussels, clearly demonstrates in Breaking the Glass Pyramid, there is a “failure of our own sphere, civil society, to address gender inequality in our leadership.” We must struggle to consciously address the conditioning and messages we were raised with and that are constantly reinforced every day. So of course, even in progressive civil society spaces, we are frequently replicating the very same kinds of hierarchies internally that we see all the time externally in the broader world.

• A Day Without Women Minorities

  After Trump took office and the world was reeling in shock, it was women* who organized a worldwide women’s march to come together in solidarity. We know that through hate propaganda, women are often the most targeted, even through an intersectional lens of race, identity, migration status, and other factors that deepen discrimination and exclusion.

  It is women who are pushing back against far right propaganda and division, and that is why a day without women will hopefully demonstrate the power of women within the struggle to advance fundamental rights for everyone.

  We must ensure women of colour lead these movements as women’s campaigns rooted in the Global North often fail to understand or acknowledge the particular challenges that women of colour face. I was able to take part in the Dutch women’s march this year, and although it felt empowering to be part of something bigger, as a woman of colour I still felt alone. How we campaign together must be inclusive of all the issues that we face.

• A la 65ème session ordinaire de la commission africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples, PJUD-BENIN ONG dénonce la politique ultra-sécuritaire des pays et propose !

  By Cyrille Djowamon, PJUD - Promotion Jeunesse Unie pour le Développement, Benin

  

  La 65^ème session de la commission africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples s’est ouverte ce lundi 21 octobre 2019 à KAIRABA BEACH HOTEL à Banjul (Gambie). Elle a réunie autour de la vice-présidente gambienne 287 acteurs de la société civile venant de 36 pays africains. Les activités préparatoires entrant dans le cadre de cette session ont débuté le 14 octobre par un atelier sur le plaidoyer et le mécanisme africain des droits humains suivi du forum de participation des ONG et de la 39^ème foire du livre des droits de l’homme les 17, 18 et 19 octobre.

  PJUD-BENIN ONG, membre de la délégation de l’alliance CIVICUS, a participé activement à tous ces travaux. Dans sa stratégie de défense des droits de la jeunesse, des femmes et filles rurales, elle a invité toutes les parties prenantes à l’application de la résolution 2250 des nations unies. Dans sa déclaration intitulée : Advocacy for a youth at the heart of change (Plaidoyer pour une jeunesse au Coeur du changement), elle invite les Etats à repositionner la jeunesse comme une force positive de changement dans l’édification d’une société sûre, stable et pacifique.

  En effet, Dans un contexte de mondialisation croissante caractérisé par l’omniprésence des préoccupations liées au terrorisme, à la criminalité transnationale organisée et à l’extrémisme violent, les perspectives concernant les jeunes sont faussées par des stéréotypes contagieux qui les associent à la violence. Ces stéréotypes négatifs ont pour principale conséquence de marginaliser et de stigmatiser la jeunesse en la présentant comme un problème à résoudre et une menace à contenir. Cette situation fausse de manière préjudiciable les interventions et les priorités programmatiques en faveur de la jeunesse, de la paix et de la sécurité au profit d’approches ultra-sécuritaires qui négligent la prévention. Continuer ainsi c’est foncé droit dans le mur, a-t-elle conclure en invitant toutes les parties prenantes à la promotion d’approche de sécurité communautaire.

• A Platform for Africanism, Identity and Action

  By Rawand Boussama, Afrika Youth Movement

  The day I arrived to Ghana, I had the opportunity to network with people from Greece, Sudan and Nigeria. One of the participants, after knowing that I came from Tunisia, asked me whether I identify as African or not since North Africa is always related to the Middle East than to the rest of Africa. I responded, “I am an African". The last day, I talked to him again and told him: “After my stay in Accra, I have truly found my African identity, and now, in all self-confidence, I can tell you that I belong to this continent that I carry in my heart and soul”.

  During the four days of the Afrika Youth Movement (AYM) retreat in Ghana, I had the chance to meet people from 14 different countries. I felt in each workshop or panel that I had travelled to a different African country. I was astonished by the quality of the interventions of AYM members. We dug deeper into the issues of African youth and the solutions in order to implement our mission and achieve our vision as a movement aiming for transforming this continent.

  The experience was very inspirational and motivating and had an impact on me both personally and professionally. Knowing that it was my first trip out of Tunisia, the experience was so exciting, unique and full of learning and sharing. I have learnt how to be responsible for myself, to articulate my views especially because I was representing my country and the whole of North Africa. It was my duty to give an image about our culture, our situation and our history.

  The five days of the AYM retreat and forum were full of new knowledge for me. It was the first time I heard people discussing Pan-Africanism and understanding its history and how we are redefining it. The first day, we focused on team building, ground rules and networking while the second day, we dug deeper into the roadmap, strategy and structure of AYM Hubs across the continent. Through group work and art of hosting methods, we developed a code of conduct, governance structure and working methods of the hubs and national action plans.

• A quest to find our generation’s mission

  Based in Johannesburg since 2002, CIVICUS: World Alliance is commemorating Youth Day in South Africa by initiating a conversation to find this generation of young people’s mission and empower youth to organise, mobilise and take action throughout the world to better our communities. Forty-one years after the Soweto youth uprising that took place on 16 June, a group of creative and engaged members from the CIVICUS Youth Working Group took to the street of Johannesburg in a quest to find their generation’s mission. They recorded the diverse voices of young people living in Johannesburg in order to achieve this goal.
  
  Youth Day is a celebration to remember the ability of young people, through their voices, actions and power, to stand up and speak out for our collective rights and to create meaningful change for our present and future. Throughout the world, the youth population is increasing. This is particularly the case in developing countries where civic space – the fundamental space necessary to exercise the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly – is being unduly restricted. This is according to the CIVICUS Monitor, which highlights added challenges facing young people living in the global South. Often, they face systematic violations of their human rights through institutionalized inequality, lack of protection against discrimination, unjust and unfavourable work conditions, and few have access to an adequate standard of living with proper health services and education.

• A strategy that sets out to mend broken systems

  

  Secretary-General Update: March 2022

  We are pleased to report on the adoption of a revised strategic plan for the period 2022 to 2027. The plan was developed through an extensive process to review and refresh CIVICUS’ strategic priorities. The CIVICUS Board unanimously confirmed the adoption of the revised strategy in March 2022. Reader-friendly and multi-lingual versions of the strategy will accordingly be developed and published on our website by the end of April. Our current strategic plan has been effective from July 2017 to June 2022 and will be replaced with a refreshed strategy in July 2022. 

  Addressing new realities 

  The revised strategy is the outcome of deliberations held across stakeholders of the CIVICUS alliance. We began this journey with several trends and foresight analyses exercises undertaken with members, partners and staff across October 2020 to March 2021. These assessments contributed to the development of future scenarios and strategic steers, which were reviewed by the CIVICUS Board and led to a decision on updating our existing strategy. The Board outcome indicated an opportunity to restate our ambitions with greater clarity and determine how best to address new realities and challenges for civic space and civil society. In describing the strategy that we have now developed, I want to quote our youngest Board member Vandita Morarka who said, “What I am most proud about is that this is not a polite strategy... it does not shy away from mending broken systems.” 

  Interrogating our Theory of Change 

  Between July and November 2021, drafting teams comprised of Board and staff members collaborated to review and restate key assumptions related to CIVICUS’ Theory of Change. We interrogated the successes and hurdles we have faced in the delivery of our current strategy and contrasted these with an analysis of developments in civic space across the last ten years (2011-21). In doing so, we were able to identify tensions and opportunities in relation to how we define the change we seek and actively contribute to it. This assessment informed the development of a draft strategy, which underwent two levels of review by the Board and staff between November 2021 to January 2022. 

  In February, the draft strategy was shared with key stakeholders of the CIVICUS alliance through a range of interactions, which included two sessions of Board & member engagement on our proposed priorities and a joint meeting with key donors. The interactions generated a large amount of feedback and queries on various aspects of the strategy. I am happy to share that teams involved with drafting the strategy were able to close the feedback loop by dedicating time to respond to queries raised by various groups. Key themes that emerged in our exchanges with CIVICUS members are captured in this Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document, which is available in three languages.  

  Refining our strategic objectives 

  Key shifts outlined as part of this revised plan which will guide CIVICUS’ strategic course for the period from July 2022 to June 2027 include: 

  • The framing of one overarching goal, i.e., To strengthen civil society and civic action for expanded civic and democratic space. The goal reflects our emphasis on actions that are not just defending but also improving civic and democratic freedoms - through a combination of influencing, organising and solidarity interventions. The strategy outlines five core objectives that support the achievement of our overarching goal, which are: (i) generating timely knowledge (ii) coordinating targeted advocacy (iii) contributing to stronger emergency & sustained support eco-systems (iv) strengthening public discourse and civil society narratives (v) building counter-power with most affected groups. 

  • An explicit focus on working with and for groups affected by the combined impact of civic space restrictions and structural forms of discrimination is also integrated across the revised strategy.  The revised strategy includes a deliberate focus on collaborating with movements led by communities facing structural discrimination. This implies a greater emphasis on solidarity and alliance building across levels of our work, and the stronger representation of issues of civic and democratic freedoms from a social justice lens.  

  • A clearer articulation of our contribution to long-term, systemic change is captured in four outcome statements that connect and consolidate the impact of our work across all levels. Our core objectives will be the basis for a comprehensive framework to measure results and communicate lessons from our progress more effectively.   

  A roadmap for implementation 

  The next step in this process is the coordination of a phased plan for the implementation of the strategy. This includes the design and activation of a Results framework and the coordination of programmatic and operational alignments required to deliver our refreshed strategy.  A robust process for continued stakeholder engagement with our strategic progress is also envisaged as part of this plan and includes the coordination of Membership Month, a new initiative that will take place annually to enable exchanges on civil society strategy and impact across the alliance.  

  We look forward to your continued engagement and support in this important period! The election of a new CIVICUS Board this year will be an important opportunity to play a direct role in overseeing the transition our refreshed strategy and activating a year-long campaign to mark the completion of 30 Years of CIVICUS’ existence in 2023. If you have not done so already, do look at our Board election timeline and contribute to its outcome. 

  In solidarity, 

  Lysa John 

   Lysa John is Secretary General of CIVICUS. She is based in South Africa and can be reached via her twitter handle: @lysajohn. 

• A young rural woman activist at CSW62

  By Nadia Sanchez, She Is Foundation. Colombia, Member of CIVICUS Youth Working Group

  My experience at CSW62 as a panelist in the event "Shrinking space for the feminist movement"

  The 62nd Commission on the Status of Women - CSW62 was an experience that facilitated knowledge generation and transfer amongst women from more than 120 countries who met and shared their experiences, but also decided on the steps to take forward together. In the session on "Shrinking space for the feminist movement" organized by CIVICUS in collaboration with other civil society organizations, I first thought it would only be about discussing the theme of rural Women and economic empowerment, but the biggest outcome was connecting as activists and leaders to raise our voices, finding out that everything we shared had a strong connection, sharing around the work of women, rural women, peace and our own feeling as activists.

  Main outcomes of attending CSW62

  Sharing our experiences with the UN allowed us to empower ourselves and generate valuable connections. But above all, it enables us to act together.

  CSW62 was also an opportunity to revive hope that we are doing the job well and that the time is now to continue dignifying our rights.

  I particularly connected and developed synergies with the delegation of my country, Colombia, who invited me to be in their sessions and to actively participate in a topic as important as peace.

  SHE IS, the organisation I founded, works with victims of the armed conflict, communities in situations of vulnerability and extreme poverty. It has not been an easy process, we have moved from indifference to our work to building a sustainable network that transforms lives.

  Now imagine what it has been like to share our work in this iconic venue, to raise our voice and being given the opportunity to exchange knowledge for a common good, which perhaps could be called a 'solidarity economy of knowledge'.

• Advocacy at African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Arusha, Tanzania

  

  On the margins of the 77^th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) held in Arusha, Tanzania, CIVICUS, through the Consortium for Human Rights and Media in Sub-Saharan Africa (CHARM) project hosted a side event on Environmental Rights and Human Rights Defenders in Africa on 21 October 2023. The event, hosted in collaboration with partners under the Environmental Rights Legal Framework Coalition in Africa, was attended by 111 activists, civil society representatives and grassroots organisers.

• Agenda 2063: Youth taking charge of Africa's transformation

  By Esther Kariuki

  Every active citizen would by now have heard of "Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" or, simply, the SDGs. Every active African citizen would also have heard of Agenda 2063. The SDGs are a group of 17 global goals addressing social and economic development issues set by the United Nations. The goals apply to the world in its entirety and they do not distinguish between nations, whether ‘developed’ or ‘developing’. Agenda 2063, which is specific to African nations, is a strategic framework for development of the African continent with the vision of “an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in international arena”. Both are praiseworthy documents full of hope, but we are all aware that the biggest hindrance to the success of a development agenda lies in implementation. How are the SDGs and their respective targets going to be implemented by 2030? Is Agenda 2063 being executed across the entire African continent? The most important question for me, one that is rooted in citizen participation, leadership and accountability is, what is the role of African Youth in the implementation of both the SDGs and Agenda 2063?

  

  I recently spent close to a week deliberating on this last question in the company of brilliant young minds from various countries within and outside Africa. This platform was provided during the second Afrika Youth Movement(AYM) Empowerment Forum that convened in Accra, Ghana, from 18-22 April 2018 to which, as a member of the movement, I was invited. AYM is a pan-African, action-oriented, youth-led movement that strives for the participation, development and leadership of African youth to transform Africa and achieve their rights to peace, equality and social justice. AYM further adds to its uniqueness of being the largest youth led movement with its promotion of the values that bind the African continent; ubuntu, self-determination, integrity and accountability in each of its endeavours. Did the forum provide an answer to the question I raised above? There is rarely ever one solution to a puzzle and the problem of development in Africa is surely a puzzle. My sole conclusion, however, is that our role as African youth lies in or begins with grassroots implementation.This position is in line with AYM as a focal point of empowerment of young people already working or those keen on working in their communities.

• AGNA: Sharing Lessons Globally to Scale up Domestic Impact

  By Jimm Chick Fomunjong, Head, Knowledge Management Unit, WACSI

  Civil society organisations (CSOs) across the globe thrive on the implementation of best practices. Some of these are found within organisations (intrinsic), learned from other organisations (extrinsic), learned in the course of implementing projects (operational) or learned as a result of obligatory requirements organisations must fulfil in contractual agreements with their partners (contractual).

  Many CSOs learn sector-based best practices from others. This is often achieved through their membership in networks. Networks comprise of a group of CSOs and or individuals who work together to achieve a common goal. There is often an underlying motive or need to be addressed that binds members of the network together. They usually commit effort and resources to achieve their common goal and influence social change.

  As Keller Easterling puts it;

  “A network allows a broad range of people and organisations to identify their shared interests, to deepen their understanding of the systems they are seeking to change, and to find a shared framework from which to act. Members of a network are unlikely to agree on each and every philosophical point, but they can use their relationships and sense of shared purpose to coordinate actions capable of producing social change.”

  Networks could be at a community level, a regional level within a country, a national level, a regional level either across a geo-political subset of a continent, or at a continental level or at the global level. They could also focus on specific thematic areas within different areas of the development spectrum. Often, CSOs are keen to be members of networks to leverage on the rich expertise, opportunities and the value addition networks give to its members.

  One such network, at a global level, is the Affinity Group of National Associations (AGNA). Created in 2004 and championed by CIVICUS, AGNA comprises of national networks of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that seek to strengthen citizen action and civil society throughout the world. This is to ensure that there is a worldwide community of informed, inspired, committed citizens engaged in confronting the challenges facing humanity.

  Between 12 – 13 June 2019, over forty of AGNA’s eighty-seven members convened in Amman, Jordan for its 2019 annual general meeting. This was a space for reflections on AGNA’s operations and governance in the past year. It was also a space for reflection as a network, sharing of members’ experiences with a focus on initiatives driven by or in collaboration with AGNA. Most importantly, it was an opportunity for members to assess the governance of the network to consolidate its strengths and highlight areas for improvement where necessary.

  As a member of AGNA since 2012, the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) gained several lessons from the rich and expanding work of AGNA. The learning, transparency and accountability dimension of AGNA’s work was enriching for the Head of WACSI’s Knowledge Management Unit, Jimm Fomunjong who represented WACSI at this year’s AGM. It was enriching because it marries well with WACSI’s ongoing efforts to equip CSOs in West Africa to promote social accountability in the region. Although WACSI focuses on social accountability (holding duty bearers to account) and AGNA focuses on CSO accountability (ensuring that CSOs are accountable to all their stakeholders equally), Fomunjong admits that there is a strong nexus between CSOs’ accountability and social accountability because; “CSOs need to be veritably accountable to be able to demand accountability from duty bearers (social accountability)”.

  “At a time when civil society regulation is a topical issue for governments and CSOs in some West African countries, notably Nigeria and Ghana, CSOs need to put in place practical, feasible and results-oriented measures to demonstrate their legitimacy, prove that they are transparent and showcase an unbiased accountability as a means of paving way for the highly demanded civil society self-regulation by us (CSOs),” he said.

  At the AGM, Fomunjong shared WACSI’s experience in holding three successive national convenings that brought together CSOs, representatives from state institutions, national and international donor organisations and corporate institutions to reflect on feasible ways of facilitating CSOs’ capitalisation of domestic resource mobilisation opportunities in the country.

  Timo Lappalainen, Director of the Finnish Development NGO (FINGO) in Finland considered WACSI’s experience of bringing together diverse multi-stakeholders around the same table to reflect on a common issue to be outstanding. He committed to apply this practice in Finland and make sure that FINGO convenes diverse stakeholders to reflect on feasible ways of mobilising resources to support the work of CSOs in the global south.

   

• An interview with Mozynah Nofal

  Mozynah is currently participating in CIVICUSs UN learning Exchange program for citizens of an African country. She is 22 years old, from Egypt and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public Affairs and Policy Management with a specialisation in Development from Carleton University in Canada.

• An open letter to our fellow activists across the globe: Building from below and beyond borders

  

  French| Spanish

  Dear friend,

  Six decades after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, creating a global covenant affirming the fact that ‘all human beings are born equal in dignity and rights,’ the vision lies in tatters, made worthless by the ever-increasing chasm between haves and have-nots.

• Appetite, Buzzwords, and Capacity Gaps

  What the Resilient Roots accountability pilot project application process has taught us so far

  By Jack Cornforth

  The Resilient Roots initiative recently launched two open calls to find pilot projects around the world which will test the hypothesis that organisations that are more accountable and responsive to their roots - namely, their primary constituencies - are more resilient against external threats.

  A unique aspect of this initiative is that organisations have so much free reign to lay out what they want to do, over an extended length of time. As a result, this is an exciting opportunity for some really meaningful engagement, but also comes with much responsibility to get things right.

  Having personally spent several days reading through all 238 applications from the first call, this has been a truly eye-opening experience. My first impression was, “what have we created!?” The use of unexplained buzzwords, such as “empower”, “innovative”, and, of course, “accountability” itself, was really startling. Is our initiative, with its regular use of this terminology, only adding to this problem?   

  The organisations that applied are striving to address hugely important issues. However, a significant number did not provide a clear mission statement, so outlining the specific steps they would take to try and increase their primary constituent accountability was even more challenging. This could have been due to an absent theory of change, or challenges with written communication, especially if English isn’t their first language - something which it is of course our responsibility to address.

• As India goes to to the polls, will the people vote against the ‘politics of hate’

   

  By Alina Tiphagne, Human Rights Defenders Alert (HRDA)

  In just under a week, the world’s largest democracy, India, will vote to elect and constitute the 17th Lok Sabha. According to the Election Commission (EC) of India, nearly 900 million voters will be eligible to vote for representatives to the lower house or the Lok Sabha of the bicameral Indian Parliament. Voting will begin on 11th April and be held in seven phases till 19th May, 2019 across 543 constituencies. The EC has also declared 23rd May, 2019 the day of counting and results.