Civil society participation

World Vision believes that Civil Society Organisations (CSO's) and Faith-Based Organisations (FBO's) are often important agents in enabling poor communities to hold their governments to account. This is usually because of their direct work with the poor, mostly in the context of delivering services but also in championing their rights via local advocacy initiatives.

Although the UK government has alluded to working with CSO's in the pursuit of greater accountability in the past, they have, however, provided little information on how this should be implemented in practice.

World Vision believes that DfID must establish clear policies and implementation plans for support for building citizen engagement and increased accountability. They must make provision for southern CSO's to actively take part in policy dialogue, implementation and accountability initiatives, with regard to direct budget support or other assistance approaches.

We also believe DfID should make greater use of the ‘Drivers of Change’ analysis that has been used in some countries for other purposes, and that DFID must also aim to influence other donors on similarly improving CSO engagement.

CSO's have increasingly demonstrated creative ways of working with parliaments to strengthen government accountability to the poor communities and marginalised groups that parliamentarians represent. DfID must promote measures that increase transparency in donors’ dealings with national governments, and increase the flow of information to citizens.