Archive for 2026
Lessons from Mapping Civil Society in an Era of Aid Uncertainty
In January 2025, USAID was dissolved, and this created significant uncertainty across the international development sector, particularly for democracy, rights, and governance work. Many organisations in this space rely on donor funding to sustain advocacy, accountability, civic engagement, and human rights programmes, so changes in funding priorities have direct implications for their visibility, stability, and…
Read MoreWhat five years of celebrating good governance heroes taught us about the value of principled partnership
Integrity Icon, Accountability Lab’s campaign to celebrate exceptional public servants, has always rested on the notion that citizens respond more readily to real people than to abstract institutions, and that publicly celebrating integrity can shift how a society talks about public service. It is our longest running campaign, focused on “naming and faming” civil servants…
Read MoreStrategies for sustainable democracy, rights and governance work
We may not be in a pandemic like COVID-19, but civil society is traversing unprecedented territory and managing a tone of change. The shrinking civic space and receding funding base globally constitute a moment of crisis and introduce a complexity into the context that will affect us for a long while. Complexity is the new…
Read MoreFrequencies of Change: On Music, Narratives, and Why Artivism Matters
Before a society changes its laws, policies or institutions, it often changes the stories it tells about itself. The questions it considers legitimate begin to shift, as do the voices it listens to, the futures it can imagine, and the injustices it no longer accepts as inevitable. Music has accompanied many of these processes. It…
Read MoreFrom Paper to Territory – and from Territory to the Screen
Thinking about this challenge from the very beginning, it was easy: to make a documentary about El Yuguelito and the on-the-ground work through the CivActs methodology. Also, one that could expose the structural failures of participation mechanisms in Mexico City and serve as a portrait of urban inequality. And to do it as a civil…
Read More(Del Papel Al Territorio) Y del Territorio a la Pantalla
Abordar este desafío no fue, desde el comienzo, cosa fácil: realizar un documental sobre El Yuguelito y el trabajo en territorio a través de la metodología CivActs, que permitiera evidenciar las fallas estructurales de los mecanismos de participación en la CDMX y sirviera, también, como un retrato de la desigualdad urbana. Y hacerlo como organización…
Read MoreFrecuencias de Cambio: Sobre música, narrativas y por qué el artivismo importa
Antes de que una sociedad cambie sus leyes, sus instituciones o sus políticas, suele cambiar las historias que cuenta sobre sí misma. Cambian las preguntas que considera legítimas, las voces que escucha, los futuros que es capaz de imaginar y las injusticias que deja de aceptar como inevitables. La música ha acompañado muchos de esos procesos. Ha…
Read MoreProving the Theory – Five years of celebrating Good Governance Heroes in Somaliland
We catch people doing the right thing, then “name and fame” them for it, all on the assumption that telling the stories of do-gooders is contagious and encourages others to do the same. After 14 years, and 15 locations, we added Integrity Icon Somaliland as the 16th to spread the stories of public servants who…
Read More¿Quién vigila las reglas del juego? Nuestra experiencia haciendo observación ciudadana
Durante el 2025 acompañamos a la comunidad de Yuguelito, en Iztapalapa, en su primera ocasión involucrándose en el Presupuesto Participativo (PP) de la Ciudad de México. Sin embargo, las cosas no salieron como esperábamos. El proyecto propuesto por la comunidad fue rechazado bajo argumentos poco claros y contradictorios, entre los que destacaba la condición de…
Read MoreWho watches the rules of the game? Our experience as citizen observers
Throughout 2025, we accompanied the community of Yuguelito in Iztapalapa as they participated for the first time in Mexico City’s Participatory Budgeting (PB). Things did not go as expected, however. The project the community put forward was rejected on vague and contradictory grounds, most notably the settlement’s irregular status, which is not an official eligibility…
Read MoreUprooting the Old Guard: Can Nepal’s Youngest Cabinet Ever Break an Entrenched Kleptocracy?
In Nepal, corruption has morphed into sophisticated, institutionalized kleptocracy. It is a system through which the state’s structures, culture, and hierarchies are engineered to serve a parasitic elite. For decades, the arbitrary conduct of our leaders and a systemic lack of accountability has shattered public trust. But now, a new Gen-Z movement, catalyzed by years…
Read MoreAccountability Lab’s Co-CEO model teaches us surprising lessons about shared leadership
As organizations confront increasing complexity and global collaboration, leadership models are evolving. At Accountability Lab, our three Co-CEOs reflect on what it takes to build a shared leadership structure as we launch a free toolkit for others interested in co-leadership models.
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