Project

Campaign for Stressing Community Concerns and Seeking Political Resolutions in the South and South Centre of Iraq

Grantee: Iraq Civic Action Network

The project’s overall objective was to establish a robust civil society, to hold government to account and to effectively involve citizens in decision-making. The project design was built, around the central role of a group of 18 facilitators, drawn from nine member organizations of the grantee’s own Iraq Civic Action Network, each of them based in one of the target provinces in Iraq. Each of these organizations was also the implementing organization at the project level.
All of the stakeholder groups confirmed that the project provided practical knowledge on how to play an effective role in the political process and on how to become involved in decision-making. The grantee’s experience in organizing activities to strengthen local leadership and build up the knowledge and skills of representatives of local organizations, including political parties, proved to be an important asset in supporting a project strategy which fitted well with overall objectives, as well as the priorities of beneficiaries.

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Lessons from Project

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The project had an uneven performance in securing the participation of women. Given the many barriers to women’s involvement in public activities in Iraq, this is not surprising. The grantee made considerable efforts to ensure the prominence of women as facilitators, panellists and experts but these were not always effective.

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A particularly innovative feature of the project was planning, implementing and using the findings from a large-scale public opinion survey, based on a random sample of 3,000 individuals, drawn from the population in the nine target provinces in Iraq. The report on the survey provided essential input to discussions on local priorities, in particular how to use non-violent methods in dispute resolution. The use of this survey was a positive factor in the success of three of the major, sequential activities of the project: the local focus groups, civic forums and provincial conferences.

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The civic forums, provincial conferences and advocacy meetings between groups of community representatives and decision-makers, were notable in bringing citizens and elected officials together to consider community priorities and what might be done to address them. It is a testament to the effectiveness of the project that many of the issues raised have subsequently been addressed, or put on the agenda for practical action to follow.

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The activities built the beneficiaries’ capacity to collect information, analyse situations and work with other parties in coming to a consensus view in establishing priorities and in understanding how to bring such issues and associated solutions, to the attention of decision-makers.

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The continuing role of both the facilitators and the nine implementing organizations ensured that the project’s central ideas were well-adapted to the requirements of the local context in each of the nine provinces of Iraq.

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