This post is also available in: Arabic
As citizens of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continue to fight for the gains they have accomplished through their uprisings, it remains clear that people in the region have found their voices and are demanding that they participate in the decisions that affect their lives. In response, and in order to remain relevant, international and local players have quickly adapted their discourses and ways of doing business to better and more meaningfully engage citizens in the region in their operations.
The World Bank Group has in many ways been at the forefront of these efforts, particularly in MENA. In the post-Arab Spring period, the Bank supported the Tunisian government in implementing governance reforms like the access to information and freedom of association laws; it provided technical assistance to the Moroccan government in developing and implementing a public consultation law; and negotiated similar reforms in Egypt that the country’s first post-revolution government later rejected. The Bank has also launched several initiatives in line with its new commitment to social accountability such as the Affiliated Network on Social Accountability (ANSA)-Arab World and the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) to support civil society and non-state actors in holding their governments accountable.
Citizen Engagement
Also in line with this new discourse, the Bank has started piloting components of a new initiative called Citizen Engagement (CE) in multiple regions of the world (including MENA), with plans to eventually mainstream CE across all Bank operations. CE, as defined by the Bank, aims to improve the accountability of governments and service providers by engaging citizens in the preparation, implementation and monitoring of development projects, programs and policies at the project/program level. More specifically, and according to information obtained from the Bank team who is developing the CE strategy, at the project/program level this would include participatory decision-making, consultations, third party monitoring, grievance redress mechanisms, and other tools. The initiative also recognizes that in order for these various mechanisms at the project level to be effective, certain conditions need to exist at the institutional level in a country, such as laws promoting good governance and access to information. While the ideas behind CE are not new for the Bank, this initiative aims to engage citizens in a more systematic manner and places them at the heart of the development process to close the feedback loop. Another important aspect of this initiative is that it will leverage tools such as mobile phones and other types of Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) for citizens to provide feedback on projects.
If people are at the heart of development and must be the drivers of development processes, the Bank’s initiative to mainstream citizen engagement across its operations then seems like a positive step forward, especially given the current global shifts in the development landscape and the particular context of the MENA region. The concept of CE in fact transcends Bank-funded projects and would ideally be implemented across all development projects. Keeping that in mind, following are a few initial comments on how the Bank ought to integrate CE in its operations, particularly in MENA.
World Bank accountability
First and foremost, given the movement towards more government ownership and accountability with respect to development efforts, for citizen engagement to be effective and achieve its intended goals, it should, in addition to enabling citizens to hold their governments accountable, ensure that the Bank is ultimately accountable to the beneficiaries of its operations. This is also in line with the Bank’s new corporate strategy, which in addition to trying to make the Bank a leaner, more efficient, and evidence and solution-based Bank, aims to tackle the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. These goals come with a big responsibility towards the targets of this work: citizens.
Moreover, in the MENA region particularly and despite the calls for democracy, many of the governments that the Bank seeks to support continue to systematically suppress any efforts by their citizens to hold them accountable. As the Bank pilots CE in the region, this is a crucial factor to take into consideration and many of the region’s citizens look to international institutions like the Bank as tools to hold their governments accountable.
Application of CE
Citizen engagement should apply to all Bank instruments including development policy lending (DPL), technical assistance (TA) and program-for-results (P4R) where there usually is a lack of detailed information around the programs they support, and that are harder to monitor than physical investment lending projects. As the first glimpse into the CE strategy reveals, in order for CE to be fully effective at the program/project level, the legal and de facto governance environment must exist for citizens to be able to participate, and this environment includes national policies that ensure access to information and freedom of association among other rights. The Bank should evaluate this governance environment as a precursor to implementing CE in a country and should work with the government to ensure that this environment is in place in order to support CE at the project/program level. In the cases in which the Bank supports governments in enabling these national policies through DPLs, TA and possibly P4R, and in addition to governments engaging their citizens in these national systems, it is necessary that the Bank engage citizens- as the end users of those policies- in the design and implementation of the instruments that support these national systems. This can be achieved through regular consultations throughout the design process and the provision of transparent and timely information, allowing citizens to give meaningful and informed feedback on how they see the Bank’s role in supporting these national systems.
Beyond the institutional and project levels, CE should also apply to World Bank policies and strategies both at the country level and across the institution. At the country level, the Bank should meaningfully engage citizens in the design and implementation of the World Bank’s Country Partnership Strategies (CPS) which under the Bank’s new corporate framework will be called Country Partnership Frameworks (CPF). These strategies or frameworks determine the engagement of the Bank in a country over a period of 3 to 5 years and are meant to support governments in implementing their national development plans. For true citizen engagement to materialize, citizens must be able to participate and be effectively engaged in setting those strategies which ultimately determine what projects the Bank funds in a specific country, the same projects that citizens will be engaged in and monitor through CE. Before involving citizens in projects, they should have a say in what projects are funded in their communities and that can happen through engaging them in country strategy development. This is also in line with mainstreaming CE in country engagements which is an explicit commitment by the Bank under its new corporate strategy.
At the institutional level, citizens must also be able to participate and engage in any strategy or policy that would govern the new Country Partnership Frameworks. Such a strategy or policy would set the rules for CE in developing country-level frameworks, and naturally should include the voices of citizens who would provide input on how they would like to be engaged in country-level CPFs. In other words, the feedback loop should start and end with citizens.
Monitoring and redress
At the project level, one of the instruments proposed by the Bank for CE is third-party monitoring. It is crucial to ensure that the monitoring of project implementation is independent, accurate and representative of the actual results and impacts on the ground. In addition, the process for selection of the monitor(s) should be transparent, and the methodology followed by the monitor (s) as well as the indicators and milestones decided upon must be made publicly available. Most importantly, the monitor (s) should be known to the community that is meant to benefit from the project. Ideally, that can be achieved through hiring local consultancy companies instead of external foreign ones who have better knowledge of the language, the culture and the specific country and regional/area setting, all which enhance the quality of the reporting. Having said that, companies do have a financial interest and ideally citizens who live in the project area or are beneficiaries of a project should be the ones who do the monitoring and reporting.
Another important instrument that is related to project implementation and monitoring is grievance redress mechanisms at the project level. While it is still not clear if the Bank is making this an integral part of CE, the Bank has already piloted grievance mechanisms in many of its projects, such as the Giza North power plant project in Egypt, and we feel it is important that the Bank implement this across its projects by making it an instrument for CE. This would enable citizens to seek redress for harms they have been caused as a result of projects. Beyond that, it is also important that citizens have access to independent mechanisms beyond the project level such as the Inspection Panel that they can use as an alternative mechanism or a next-level mechanism, and through which they can also hold the Bank accountable, in the case that their issues were not addressed. This is especially important when there have been violations of Bank policies that cannot be necessarily addressed at the project-level.
Access to information
An overarching principle that relates to all of the above and which will surely enhance any efforts to engage citizens is access to reliable, timely information in a local language. With respect to third party monitoring, it is crucial that reports from third party monitors are made public such that if there are any discrepancies or inaccuracies, citizens can also make sure that information is corrected. With respect to grievances, it is important to ensure that complainants are able to submit their grievances in their local language and that any communication henceforth is done in the local language. With respect to consultations, the more information and the better the quality of the information provided prior to consultations, the more effective they will be. Moreover, the Bank ought to follow its own new consultation guidelines at a minimum.
With respect to ensuring that information is available in a local language, the MENA region is in a unique position as a result of the Bank’s MENA department approving an Enhanced Action Plan (EAP) for the region in 2009 following an Inspection Panel complaint by Yemeni groups seeking project documents in Arabic, in which it committed to translating important project documents into Arabic. However, since the EAP is not a policy, and given that the Bank does not currently have an institution-wide policy on translation, it is not mandated to making those documents available in Arabic or any other language. Therefore a Bank-wide policy on translation is necessary to ensure information on Bank operations is accessible to citizens.
Last but not least, the Bank has already started piloting CE in select projects in the MENA region with plans to create a strategy to mainstream CE in projects across the region and across the Bank’s global portfolio beginning in July 2014. While the goal of this strategy is to engage citizens in Bank-supported operations, the strategy for CE itself is thus far not transparent to the very citizens it claims to target. Moreover, we have learned that the Bank is planning to hold consultations around CE in the US, the UK, and online. While this is an important step, in the spirit of engaging citizens who are the ultimate beneficiaries of Bank projects, we would like to see the Bank expand its consultations to countries that are affected by its operations. This will serve in building trust among citizens that the Bank is serious about meaningfully engaging them in its operations.