Projects

This strategic four-year project works to increase the presence of local news in rural areas of Colombia, so as to encourage civic participation, sound governance and democratic discussion.

Working in collaboration with municipal governments and civil society, the project seeks to establish Citizen Assemblies in three cities in Brazil to facilitate public participation in policymaking to address poverty and inequality. Building on experience from Brazil and elsewhere, the aim is to demonstrate to public managers, political leaders and citizens alike the feasibility and value of open, inclusive deliberation to build sustainable and widely supported policy responses to complex issues. Results and lessons from the project’s three pilot efforts will be shared at national level.

Making democracies more inclusive requires bold and innovative reforms to bring the young, the poor, and minorities into the political system. Some countries have piloted initiatives for assemblies on specific issues where members are not nominated by political parties but chosen at random for a limited term to represent all sectors of society, to prevent the formation of self-serving and self-perpetuating political classes disconnected from their electorates. The project aims to enable more countries to develop initiatives of this kind.

The project aims to strengthen independent media in the Arab region so as to build greater accountability and better governance, by improving the working environment for journalists; advancing media freedom and accessible information and data; enhancing the capacity of freelance and full-time journalists to cover sensitive human rights stories; and improving journalists’ legal knowledge through strong working partnerships with civic actors. Project activities also incorporate responses to the Covid-19 crisis for journalists on the front line.

The project’s objective is to support in an inclusive way the monitoring of governmental efforts to implement UN treaty body recommendations, by bringing together civil society organizations and parliamentary actors to develop a monitoring mechanism; conducting a capacity development programme on international human rights law, monitoring, and advocacy in four regions; and mobilizing legislators to effectively exercise their roles and responsibilities in holding the government accountable for its commitments to implement UN treaty body recommendations.

The project aims to empower Musahar women and strengthen their representation in local decision-making procedures for promoting gender-responsive local governance in two rural municipalities and two town municipalities. It will work through three main approaches:empowerment of Musahar women to claim their rights, accountability of local government authorities, and strengthening multi-stakeholder partnerships for gender-responsive local governance.

The project seeks to enhance the gender responsiveness of policies and practices in the electoral process in Eswatini by assisting stakeholders to develop gender responsive guidelines and educating citizens on the importance of women’s political participation, while empowering the female electorate with leadership skills, campaign and mobilization strategies. The project seeks to impart a long-term effect by enabling community-based paralegals to conduct gender equality sensitization talks at community level.