A woman asking for improved drainage at Shama Junction, Ghana, during a Mid-Term review of the 2014-2017 District Medium-Term Development Plan. Credit: Susana Ewuakye, Friends of the Nation
ARC engages with civil society thinkers, activists, practitioners, policy reformers, and researchers working on accountability across issues and countries.
We co-create action research on accountability through extensive dialogue with our partners and allies in the global South. This research aims one one hand to be relevant for their strategies, and on the other to contribute to international thinking about how progressive change happens.
We also develop and build on new ideas to advance analysis and understanding of strategic approaches to accountable governance.
Health Rights and Accountability
Health rights oblige governments to ensure access to care for all people, without discrimination. ARC’s work on health rights and accountability focuses on learning from and with frontline health rights defenders. This includes community-based monitors of services and policies, and those organizing for health worker rights.
Corporate Accountability and Worker Rights
ARC’s corporate accountability and worker rights program engages trade union organizers and other worker rights advocates in the global South. It aims to learn about and share strategies to advance worker power and access to remedy for rights violations in supply chains in the apparel, cocoa, and seafood industries.
Accountability for Education
ARC’s work on accountability for education recognizes that progressive civic actors play a key role in setting policy agendas that are inclusive and equitable, and in holding governments accountable for resourcing and implementing their education policy commitments.
Monitoring Civic Engagement in Development Aid
ARC supports efforts by CSOs in the global South to hold development aid institutions accountable for their commitments to civic engagement. In particular, we have focused on the World Bank, monitoring reforms and trends on civic engagement, supporting civil society partners to monitor Bank projects, and complementing the oversight efforts of watchdog CSOs.
Open Government & Locally-Led Development: Focus on USAID
User-centered access to information about what donors are funding is necessary to understand whether development aid is becoming more ‘locally-led’. Connecting the dots across fragmented official data sources, this project assessed USAID’s information disclosure practices, traced its sectoral priorities, and identified patterns of funding to ‘local’ organizations.
Social Accountability and Peacebuilding in Colombia
Since 2017, ARC has collaborated with civil and social organizations on their independent public policy monitoring and advocacy in support of the implementation of the Peace Agreement and policies related to ethnic communities in the Colombian Pacific.
Indigenous Health Rights Accountability in Guatemala
Public health services delivered to rural indigenous communities in Guatemala are often characterized by structural racism, discrimination, and unfair allocation of resources. ARC partners with the Centro de Estudios para la Equidad y Gobernanza de los Sistemas de Salud (CEGSS) to promote inclusion, transparency, and accountability in the Guatemalan health system.
Scaling Accountability and Citizen Action in the Philippines
Scaling accountability and citizen empowerment promote democratic deepening. In the Philippines, ARC partners with Government Watch (G-Watch), an independent citizen action and research organization. G-Watch works to develop and implement strategic, multi-level approaches to accountability.
Researching Accountability in Bangladesh
ARC partners with activists, researchers, and artists working to hold government and the private sector accountable in Bangladesh. We help to research policies and programs, activate official accountability mechanisms, and build citizen power.
Participatory Oversight Institutions
“Participatory oversight institutions” are the diverse official oversight institutions created by governments that involve citizen engagement to improve public sector performance. These channels for participatory oversight include social audits, citizen input into official audits, and grievance redress and feedback mechanisms.
Sandwich Strategy: State-Society Synergy
“Sandwich strategy” describes an effort to make governments more publicly accountable through mutually-reinforcing collaboration between reformers and broad-based citizen action. ARC has studied whether and how this kind of state-society synergy drives pro-accountability institutional change in several countries of the global South.
Accountability Keywords
The words people use to describe accountability vary across countries and languages. This work brings together reflections on the meanings and use of “accountability keywords”, sharing insights from practitioners and researchers from around the world.