Strategy for
Strengthening Public Sector & Civil Society Rationale A strong civil society is fundamental for ensuring that the poor and marginalised have their own channels for expressing their interests. Individually, poor people are vulnerable and often powerless victims of systems and structures of oppression and deprivation of their rights. SF aims to safeguard people from such exploitation by creating an environment in which they are able to address their individual and collective needs, provide mutual support, resist external threats and claim their rights for durable changes in the lives of their families and communities. For this to happen, civil society needs to be strengthened and organised, in order to create a safety net that enables people to become active participants in decision-making that affect their lives. SF does not wish to create dependency on the external environment, but works to prepare the community to take control of their lives in deciding what is best for them, having realised their inherent strength, i.e. their potential for collective action. SF also works to strengthen the ability of the public sector to cater for a more active civil society, through promoting improved accountability and transparency, and encouraging more participatory planning processes. SF’s Development Policy spells out the following priorities for SF’s work with public sector and civil society for the Strategic Plan period from 2014-2018: Local Governments increasingly apply transparency and accountability tools (e.g. Public Audit and hearings)
STRENGTHEN PUBLIC SECTOR AND CIVIL SOCIETY
Capacity Building of Local Governments, Local NGOs and Communities
Local Governments planning processes
adopts
participatory
Increasingly independent and locally anchored rights-based NGOs/ Community Based Organisations Strengthened awareness of rights and capacity to claim them among rights holders Community Based Organisations and NGOs are capable in peace development and conflict transformation Duty bearers held accountable
Definition Strømme Foundation defines Civil Society as the social sphere separate from both the state and the market, with not-for-profit organisations, associations, groups and movements that express the interests and values of their members or others. Civil society includes Community Based Organisations (CBOs), Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), labour unions, indigenous groups,
charitable organisations, faith-based organisations, professional associations and foundations, based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious or philanthropic considerations. In a functional civil society, these groups sometimes come together to advance their common interest through collective action.
Approach In line with SF’s rights-based approach, efforts are made to work with both rights-holders and dutybearers. The following sections describe SF’s work with both groups.
Working with Right Holders in SF’s Intervention Areas: Rights-holders in SF’s intervention areas often have limited awareness about mechanisms of power structures in civil society, as well as their own rights, duties, and overall power structures. Civil society and citizenry are often disorganised. In order to remedy this, SF works to ensure that rightsholders are capable of taking appropriate action raising their voices, by mobilising them, teaching them to organise themselves and to claim their rights from the responsible duty bearers. In line with SF’s cross-cutting issues, gender equality is an important goal for SF. In many rigidly patriarchal societies, women are treated subordinate to men in virtually every aspect of life. Therefore, SF strives to have an in-built mechanism to ensure gender equality throughout the planning, monitoring, implementation, evaluation and re-planning phases, i.e. in the entire programme cycle. In SF’s work with rights-holders, we will focus specifically on the following areas: Voice, Participation and Accountability: This component assesses the extent to which people are able to raise their voices, share their opinions and proactively participate in project activities,. For SF it is important to understand why people participate in civil society, what they feel about their participation and what motivates them. Transformation of Power: Relationships and Linkages: This component examines the ways in which individuals, groups and organisations form linkages to work together and in partnership. In order for effective programming to take place, SF believes it is important to understand the relationships between individuals, groups and institutions and examine whether power relations are changing in ways that lead to greater access to services, assets, justice and equity. This component has a strong focus on issues of discrimination, inclusion and intra-household relationships, as well as on the structural relationships formed between institutions and groups. Institutional Response: This component explores how organisations of all types respond to the issues raised by people in their constituency. SF seeks to address the systems that organisations use, how they ensure accountable and equitable resource allocation, whether and how they address issues of inclusion systematically, as well as the identification and addressing of vulnerabilities.how Sustainability Mechanisms: Creating community mechanisms that ensure sustainable change is a central part of SF’s work with civil society. The changes we want to see include increased capacity of rights- holders, better links between local communities and duty bearers, changes in attitudes of duty bearers and changes in power relations. Organising rights-holders at the community level is central for impact and sustainability. SF strives to facilitate grassroot organisations that build democratic values at grassroot level and simultaneously become efficient arenas for dialogue between rights holders and duty bearers. In SF’s programmes, Community Based Organisations
(CBOs), People’s Organisations (POs), Community-Managed Microfinance (CMMF) groups and clusters are good examples of such bottom up change mechanisms.
Working with Duty Bearers: Authorities and Other Power Holders Public authorities are responsible for ensuring the realisation of basic political, social and economic rights of their citizens, including gender justice and gender rights at all levels. SF acknowledges the need to work directly with public authorities to improve their ability to fulfil their obligations and be more transparent, responsive and accountable, especially to SF’starget groups – women and other poor and marginalised people. Public authorities are accountable to their citizens when duty bearers have the obligation to show, explain and justify their behaviour and face the threat of sanction for any failures in fulfilling their duties. In describing a relationship between duty bearers and those affected by their decision and actions, accountability implies the obligation to: 1. Share timely and relevant information in a manner that is accessible to all stakeholders, and to provide clear justification for the decisions that have been made (answerability). 2. Be responsive to the views of stakeholders in decision making. This implies meaningful participation (stakeholder engagement) at all stages of the decision making cycle - in planning, implementing and determining policies and programmes. It requires that the participation inputs of stakeholders translate into policies and practices (responsiveness). 3. Bear the consequences for the violation of duties, non-fulfilment of rights, and of poor or criminal performance. Consequences can include punishment, sanctions and/or redress (enforceability). While SF recognises that public authorities play a central role in the development process given the unique obligations the state owes to its citizens, we also acknowledge that non-state actors can supplement and in some cases replace state provision of services. This implies that other duty bearers, including the private sector and civil society, can act on behalf of the state and therefore bear the same responsibilities in terms of transparency, responsiveness and accountability. Other power holders, such as religious authorities and the media, can be equally influential in hindering or promoting good governance. SF will therefore consider the role of these actors when seeking to strengthen civil society. It is commonly assumed that governments and other public bodies, due to corruption and selfinterest, do not meet the needs of the poor, excluded and vulnerable. However, there are also instances where the state, especially at local level, is willing but unable to meet its obligations due to a lack of human or financial resources, poor infrastructure, or a variety of other factors. In SF’s work with duty bearers, the following key programming sub-domains will be addressed:
Transparency and access to information: SF aims to strengthen public authorities’ capacity and incentive to be transparent and provide citizens with accessible and appropriate information about public policy and spending.
Responsiveness and accountability: SF aims to strengthen the incentives of public authorities to engage with and respond to marginalised people’s needs and rights, including through decentralisation and support to local government.
Provision of services: SF aims to strengthen the technical capacities of public authorities to implement pro-poor policies and programmes and deliver quality services.
Provision of justice and rule of law: SF aims to ensure the existence and enforcement of legal provisions (including customary law) around citizens’ rights and access to justice and security.
Accountable customary institutions: SF aims to promoting inclusive and pro-poor policies among traditional/customary authorities, ensuring that they interrelate with the formal system.
Engaging other duty holders: Finally, SF will works with the private sector, media, religious authorities, and other power holders to build a more inclusive society.
Building the Capacity of Local Partner Organisations Strømme Foundation always implements development programmes through local partner organisations. This is due to a conviction that working with local grassroot organisations strengthens sustainability, as the organisations will still be present in an SF-supported area after SF’s withdrawal from it, and as the local NGO can be a long term actor for development in that specific area. Building capacity of the implementing partner organisations is therefore a crucial part of SF’s efforts to strengthen civil society. Partner organisations can be on very different levels with regard to both technical, financial and institutional capacity, and SF will through policies, workshops / trainings and tailor-made capacity building plans, seek to strengthen civil society through strengthening the accountability and technical capacity of our partner organisations. SF also promotes opportunities for partner organisations to meet and mutually share experiences and knowledge, in order to facilitate the capacity building between our partners, and from partners to SF’s Regional Office. SF’s work with capacity building of partners is guided and monitored / measured through SF’s Partner Assessment tool.
Peace Development and Conflict Transformation Finally, in SF’s work with civil society, we seek to make a positive contribution to peace development and conflict transformation where relevant to our intervention areas. Conflicts are common in many countries with SF operations and there are different ways of approaching conflict resolution. Approaches that concentrate simply on bringing the violent conflict to an end tends not to work in the long-term, and conflicts which are suppressed often escalate again. The academic literature on conflict often points out three alternative perspectives; Conflict Management, Conflict Resolution and Conflict Transformation. SF has, in accordance with our RightsBased Approach , selected the conflict transformation approach, as this is the only approach that addresses the root causes of a conflict in the long term. This approach aims to recognise the needs and issues of all parties, and focuses on the processes by which conflict develops into violence. It addresses the root causes of not only conflict, but also of related exclusion, inequality, denied rights and injustice, and it offers space for dialogue to identify alternative ways of addressing these issues. The approach aims to prevent and transform a conflict from violence and destruction into a constructive force which produces social change, progressively removing or at least minimising the root causes from which the conflict and violence have arisen. As a result, the peace that develops can be well-founded and sustainable. As SF works together with local partner NGOs and build sustainable mechanisms at the grassroot level through e.g. CBOs and CMMF groups/clusters, these will be central in our work in peace development and conflict transformation. In countries with conflict SF will enhance the knowledge and skill of community people on peace and conflict, and on how local conflicts can be transformed
peacefully and constructively through dialogue. SF will also enhance the capacity of partner NGOs and the knowledge of SF staff on peace development conflict transformation, and the application of the Do-No-Harm principle, in order to strengthen our conflict sensitivity in the implementation of our programmes. In order to achieve this, SF will conduct trainings/workshops with partner NGOs to mainstream conflict sensitive approaches into their programmes. Moreover, we will integrate regular trainings on peace development and conflict transformation for CBOs / Self-Help Groups and, as far as possible, integrate conflict sensitivity into SF’s monitoring framework. Finally, SF acknowledges that peace depends on many factors that cannot be influenced by SF nor the development community alone. SF’s main focus will therefore be on supporting local communities and partner organisations to be sensitive to conflict in their immediate environment, and to develop mechanisms through dialogue to transform local conflicts peacefully and constructively, through local solutions where possible.
Strømme Foundation, August 2013