GPSA countries

Increase the effectiveness, performance and impact of anticorruption institutions through collaborative social accountability: Strengthen coalition-building against corruption, and support anticorruption institutions – for example the High Anti-Corruption Court and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau – to better perform their functions by: a) monitoring the functioning of the High Anti-Corruption Court (for example, monitoring of court proceedings, both in the first instance and appeal); b) producing information through participatory monitoring based on collaborative social accountability mechanisms (e.g. monitoring regional/local procurement, licensing and other public management processes related to how government spends and delivers public goods and services in specific sectors or public programs;); c) systematizing such information so that it can be taken up by anticorruption investigations and by institutions with preventive functions, processes and systems; d) facilitate coordination, collaboration and collective action across central and local-level state-civil society groups, so that they use the information generated to co-produce and co-implement solutions, including measures that would lower the risk of violations/abuses identified by civil society/investigative journalists/law enforcement, and agree on follow-up mechanisms to monitor responsiveness to the proposed solutions; and e) supporting the national anticorruption bodies in better engaging local authorities and civil society in anticorruption, aiming to institutionalize participatory anticorruption mechanisms as a result of the project’s contribution.

Grants are intended to provide strategic and sustained support to CSO projects with the following objectives:

Addressing critical governance and development challenges through social accountability processes that involve citizen feedback and participatory methodologies geared to helping governments and public-sector institutions address these challenges. Special emphasis is on problems that affect extreme poor and marginalized populations.

Strengthening civil society’s capacities for social accountability by investing in CSOs’ institutional strengthening and through mentoring of small, nascent CSOs by well-established, larger CSOs with a track record on social accountability. The GPSA will prioritize proposals that a) are implemented by CSOs’ networks, alliances or partnerships, b) include on-granting from lead implementing CSO and CSO partners.

The call prioritizes collaborative social accountability approaches, with the objective of generating systematic citizen feedback and its use by public sector institutions at the local, state and federal levels. Collaborative social accountability consists of inclusive citizen participation processes, whereby civil society organizations (CSOs) facilitate collaborative problem-solving spaces between citizens, particularly marginalized and vulnerable groups, and public sector institutions responsible for decision-making. The information produced should be used to introduce corrective measures and improvements in policy-making and implementation, including responses co-produced and co-implemented between citizens and the public sector.

Proposals will have to demonstrate that they will use inclusive participation approaches to engage citizens, particularly marginalized and vulnerable groups, in generating systematic feedback and engaging them in collaborative problem-solving. They will also have to link participatory mechanisms to ongoing initiatives led by public sector institutions at the local, state and federal levels aimed at reforming governance in public security. Proposed interventions may combine a target geographic area but must be clearly linked to (a) public sector initiatives at higher levels (state or federal), and (b) the possibility of scaling up such mechanisms to cover larger geographic areas. The high-level objective will be to contribute to increasing transparency, accountability and inclusive citizen participation in the relevant sectors, as well as improving state and civil society capacities, knowledge and learning on the use of collaborative social accountability mechanisms in the sectors outlined in the national thematic descriptions.

Before applying, please make sure to read the Application Guidelines and visit the Call for Proposals page.