Key to ensuring leaders deliver on the promises they make is equipping all people, including children, with the right knowledge and opportunity
Children and communities have access to some of the most important information and should be included in accountability processes
Aid agency says faith leaders have a special role to play to ensuring accountability
New global poverty targets set to replace the Millennium Development Goals will fail unless we invest in people’s ability to hold their governments to account. That’s the finding of a new report, Grassroots to Global, released today by aid agency World Vision.
The report comes shortly after more than 20 million people around the world were mobilised through World Vision's Global Week of Action, asking leaders to deliver on their promises and end preventable child deaths. Grassroots to Global explains sluggish progress on several of the Millennium Development Goals has been due to a lack of accountability for results.
“Unless new goals – currently being debated by decision makers at the UN in New York – deliver for the most vulnerable children, they risk being irrelevant, and, ultimately, illegitimate,” says World Vision’s director of public policy, Chris Derksen-Hiebert, in New York for this week’s UN meetings.
“The success of the new goals must be measured by their ability to reach the most vulnerable children in the hardest places to live. And this won’t happen unless citizens – including children – are empowered to hold leaders accountable to the promises they’ve made,” he says.
Grassroots to Global outlines seven key steps for governments, aid agencies, faith communities, businesses and donor countries to take to ensure the promises are delivered, and results are achieved.
“One that doesn't get as much attention as it should is the role faith leaders and other trusted accountability champions at a local level can play,” says Derksen-Hiebert. “They can help to bridge the gap between people and their government, and in doing so advance accountability for all, but especially children.”
The report says children and communities need to be able to access information about commitments and report back on whether they are being fulfilled. This information can help governments understand why development targets are on track or will be missed.
However, the report cautions people-generated data is only useful if it leads to action that improves lives. World Vision says its own local level accountability approach, called Citizen Voice and Action and used in more than 600 programmes in 45 countries, has demonstrated results can follow from constructive, evidence-based conversations between people and their leaders.
“Citizen Voice and Action enables communities to compare reality against the government’s commitments. As these gaps are highlighted, and communities work with leaders to fill them, the well-being of children improves,” says Derksen-Hiebert.
“For example, following an accountability programme to address teacher absenteeism in Uganda, control trials in 180 schools showed a 9 per cent increase in test scores after just one year. Studies of a similar approach to improve health services in 50 Ugandan communities documented a 33 per cent drop in child mortality.”
Grassroots to Global also underscores the responsibility of all governments to give ‘teeth’ to people led accountability through ‘right to information’ legislation and by appointing ombudsmen or auditors who are responsible for following up on people’s reports of missing or inadequate local services.
“Who better to measure the success of post-2015 goals than the people at their centre? When the girl from the poorest family in the most crowded slum or most remote village can be certain her local clinic will have the medicine and staff her government has promised, only then we will know we are achieving sustainable development.”
Grassroots to Global: Seven Steps to Accountability:
Start local: ensure the people most affected are enabled to engage
Work together: support collaboration to share and aggregate the right Information
Make space: create platforms for citizen generated information to be heard
Work with champions: strengthen crucial influencers
Open up: nurture a transparent environment
Sharpen the teeth: strengthen official remedies for accountability
Report together: incorporate people’s voices in all reporting
ENDS
Notes to editors:
The report is available to download here: http://www.wvi.org/united-nations-and-global-engagement/publication/grassroots-global-seven-steps-citizen-driven
World Vision is an international Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice.