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Local voices with local solutions

Accountability Lab’s Civic Action Teams (CivActs) is a pioneering community voice and feedback process to close the loop on citizen challenges related to everything from migration and natural resource management, to the Covid-19 response and misinformation. At the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law annual conference in October, AL shared some of the creative ways that local governments are working with CSOs to disseminate important policy information in a resonant and inclusive way. Speakers included Suresh Chand, Program Manager at AL Nepal, Tinotenda Chishiri, CivActs Projects Officer at AL Zimbabwe, and Amna Rajput, Projects Coordinator at AL Pakistan. Chand [...]

2021-11-17T14:05:07+00:0017th October 2021|

The G20 must recognize the power of procurement for social and economic good

Public contracts are how governments do business. They are governments’ number one corruption risk, and where public funds leak into the illicit financial system. At over US $13 trillion annually, the public procurement market wields enormous economic power. From improving equity to fighting climate change to improving the quality of education and delivering world class infrastructure, G20 governments can do better by buying better. Written by Kristen Robinson and Charlene Migwe-Kagume   Procurement deserves a strategic seat at the top table across all of the Italian G20 presidency’s anti corruption priorities and open contracting solutions can drive progress on all [...]

2021-10-12T11:24:07+00:0012th October 2021|

Betting on local media to strengthen local democracy

Written by Raju Sharma The debate around democracy on a local level is marginalized in the media today. Everybody seems concerned with what the Prime Minister says but seldom puts focus on what the mayor of their local government thinks. It is against the backdrop of this absence of focus on local democracy that we see a rise of electoral dictatorship in the country. Constitutionally, we should be more concerned with what our local leaders are doing because their decisions affect our lives as much as the decisions taken by our national leaders - if not more. Our local leaders [...]

2021-06-29T17:17:25+00:0029th June 2021|

Recap of SSIR’s 2021 Frontiers of Social Innovation Conference

By SSIR Editors The 2021 Frontiers of Social Innovation Conference: “People, Power, Resources: Enacting an Equitable Future” featured senior leaders of nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, academia, business, and government addressing how the social innovation community can respond to a world struggling with a global pandemic, continued racial injustices, and assaults on democracy. SSIR's editors recapped the virtual conference and assembled a list of articles related to the sessions. Session 1: Systems Work Is Not a Thought Experiment, It’s a Continual Practice Francois Bonnici of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Cynthia Rayner of the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, René Parker of RLabs, [...]

2021-06-04T09:20:23+00:004th June 2021|

COVID-19 and it’s impact on people living with disabilities in Pakistan

By Nida Qasim Khan The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the extent of exclusion that the most marginalized communities in Pakistan experience. Among the most adversely affected groups are Pakistan’s 28 million persons with disabilities (PWDs), who make up 10% to 15% of Pakistan’s population. according to the Special Talent Exchange Program (STEP). Even under normal circumstances, persons with disabilities are neglected and suffer from reduced access to education, poverty, unemployment, abuse and low rates of participation in the community. According to research done by the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), PWD’s can suffer [...]

2022-11-10T06:46:22+00:0011th April 2021|

Building an anti-corruption organization in a complex context: Key insights from Zimbabwe 

By McDonald Lewanika, Country Director of Accountability Lab Zimbabwe COVID-19 crept into an unsuspecting world like a thief in the night at the end of 2019. It altered the world of work through deprivation and dramatic changes to ways of working. In Zimbabwe, dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic was mired in authoritarian politics, which saw the alleged weaponization of lockdown regulations to curtail civic space and place democratic dissent itself in lockdown.  Despite this, in April 2020, Accountability Lab pressed ahead with year-old plans to establish a translocal network lab in Zimbabwe and implement a new project, New Narratives for [...]

2021-04-01T06:51:11+00:001st April 2021|

Business integrity during COVID-19: How to build integrity and trust within businesses during pandemic?

By Bakhtawar Khalid In the light of recent hoarding and price manipulation scandals, the business industry has developed a reputation for its lack of ethics. In an industry where getting ahead and making money appears to take precedence over ethical decision-making, it can be difficult to understand the importance of ethical behavior in business. Lack of business ethics and commitment to compliance leads to a wealth of problems for a business; for instance, they can face: Fines and long-drawn legal battles; Criminal charges against those involved; Negative effects on employee motivation may create an air of distrust among employees and tension [...]

2021-03-31T12:03:49+00:0031st March 2021|

An assessment of current policy advocacy tools used by chambers of commerce in Pakistan

By Nida Qasim Khan Context: Accountability Lab Pakistan has worked with chambers of commerce in its recent Business Accountability Bootcamps, and in the process has gathered some insights into how they operate. Some of the key findings made were that they lack the advocacy tools that are required of a chamber of commerce, such as proper websites, updated social media channels, or a platform where they share press releases, minutes of their internal meetings, and other such details of their work. We understand at Accountability Lab Pakistan that chambers of commerce are the bridge between business communities and the government and [...]

2022-11-10T06:46:24+00:0031st March 2021|

Data literacy: A tool for change in Nepal

By Bikin Ghimire, Soni Khanal and Nitee Shrestha As strong advocates and supporters of the country’s open data movement, we at the Accountability Lab were thrilled to learn about the “100-hour Nepal Data Literacy Program” organized by the World Bank in 2019 and jumped at the opportunity to learn about data literacy. As World Bank Country Director for Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, Faris Hadad-Zervos noted, the program was designed to sustainably transfer data literacy skills to stakeholders in Nepal and build an enabling environment for evidence-based policymaking and strengthening federalism in the country. The training program helped participants build a [...]

2021-03-09T09:48:06+00:009th March 2021|

Our Strategy Update: What We’re Going to Do in 2021

In late 2019, we developed a new global strategy for the 2020-2023 period. The strategy outlined why we care about accountability, what we have learned from almost 9 years of work on these issues, where we are going and how we’ll get there. The strategy was matched with a 2020-2023 operational plan and a budget for this work (here.)  Adapting to COVID-19 And then everything changed...as COVID-19 fundamentally transformed global politics, economics and societies; and dramatically altered accountability dynamics everywhere. The pandemic has highlighted the deep-set challenges of corruption within healthcare systems; and the policy responses have demonstrated how critical [...]

2021-01-14T18:46:32+00:0014th January 2021|
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