Closing the Loop and Combining Community Integrity Building with Integrity Education

Transcription

1 1 Closing the Loop and Combining Community Integrity Building with Integrity Education NORAD Learning Paper Series Written by Joy Saunders December 2015

2 2 Objectives and Methodology This learning paper was commissioned by Integrity Action with the aim of capturing some of the knowledge, learning and - where possible - evidence around the effectiveness of the work of Integrity Action s partner in Afghanistan. Specifically, the paper aims to assess: 1) to what extent Integrity Actions partner has applied Integrity Action s Community Integrity Building (CIB) approach to their projects; 2) whether the partner have been able to own the CIB approach, enrich it and/or adapt it to the local context; 3) if strategies of learning are in place to inform the partner and help them plan for the future; 4) the impact of the projects implemented; and 5) to what extent the partner has been able to incorporate CIB with Integrity Education (IE) initiatives in their projects. As a result of the analysis, a number of recommendations have been provided. and service delivery issues at a community level. During 2015, as a direct result of a workshop funded by SIDA and hosted by Integrity Action on learning based management, Integrity Watch and Integrity Action started to discuss in more detail the various ways to scale up work in Afghanistan to achieve greater impact. It was agreed that the most effective route to do this would be to continue to invest in community based monitoring activities, but to speed up the pace and scope of reform, a focused investment in integrity education was needed. IWA have been involved in integrity education as part of their monitoring work for many years with a focus on teaching integrity being part of their community mobilisation work. In addition, IWA have conducted trainings in integrity for religious leaders, journalists and as part of other media campaigns so will build on this experience, and draw on the strengths Integrity Action have in this area, to take this focused investment in integrity education forward. The author wrote this paper based on a five-day visit to Afghanistan in April 2015 and various meetings with stakeholders in Afghanistan between April and November Due to the remote nature of most of the meetings, Integrity Watch Afghanistan s management were asked to validate the paper before publication and additions have been incorporated. We are extremely grateful to them for their time in supporting this paper. The analysis below focuses on the achievements in ; however, the context from past years have also been taken into account. Executive summary Integrity Action s presence in Afghanistan remains stable with continued funding support from NORAD for at least another year. From Integrity Watch s inception in 2005, Integrity Action has been able to plant and cultivate the seeds for extensive impact by supporting Integrity Watch Afghanistan to address infrastructure IWA staff and monitors visit a project site

3 3 During 2015, Integrity Watch and Integrity Action have been able to build on their strong partnership to expand the depth of collaboration by developing an integrity education programme (called an Integrity Building Unit) for Integrity Watch, to expand the teaching around integrity and anti-corruption and its practical application. This has meant regular and exciting discussions and cross-pollination of ideas and expertise between the senior management of both organisations. What has become clear throughout these discussions is that Integrity Action s value in Afghanistan is not so much related to the amount of funds that can be channelled to Afghanistan but in leadership, mentoring and capacity building that can be provided to Afghans to embed the ideas in sustainable activities that will far outlive the people involved. What has been achieved during the year is the first fruits of a strategic and systematic intervention which could bring transformational change to Afghanistan. Students at a school being monitored by IWA in Mazar e Sharif History and background In the past decade, Afghanistan has sought to put in place mechanisms of good governance and integrity. This has stemmed from requirements placed by donors as a condition for receiving aid as well as a longing by the government knowing that for development to occur, corruption has to be dealt with. However, at a macro level, there has been limited impact with rampant corruption still undermining the legitimacy of the government, which directly weakens security and stability in Afghanistan. Transparency International state that Corruption damaged the integrity and sustainability of Afghan national institutions, sapped the confidence of Afghan society in the international community and hampered capacity-building efforts. Those efforts also failed to adequately deter the activities of corrupt actors. (Corruption: lessons from the international mission in Afghanistan, 2015) This is clearly reflected in the Corruption Perception Index where Afghanistan ranks 172 out of 175 (Transparency International, 2015). Moreover, International funding opportunities are shrinking, which could endanger the sustainability of anti-corruption efforts in the country. This is why Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) stands out not only as a national success but an international one. IWA unveiled its first community based monitoring (CBM) projects in 2005 when corruption had heckled state functions and had turned security and stability into an unachievable dream in Afghanistan. Public participation was low, information was hard to come by, expectations were not met and citizens had become frustrated. In such circumstances, the first IWA community based monitoring programme in infrastructure was launched in partnership with Integrity Action, trying to improve this paralyzing dynamic through engaging communities in oversight of government projects and creating a safe space for dialogue between community members and government authorities. During the past few years, the CBM

4 4 programmes have reached astonishing accomplishments in establishing and promoting a culture of monitoring, plus they have opened up an effective channel of communication with the Afghan government. Integrity Action s presence in Afghanistan is solely through Integrity Watch. The fact that the organisation is well known across Afghanistan and has concrete results has helped them reach, involve and empower the community. As a consequence, fixes1 have been successfully achieved both at a local level and policy level, with IWA achieving a Fix Rate of at least 70% between within their CBM-I project which is the monitoring of infrastructure. IWA are a trusted advisor of government, NGOs, INGOs and the private sector. This is why the next phase of efforts is so key, with renewed emphasis on transparency and accountability from President Ghani, IWA and Integrity Action aim to make their integrity and accountability building efforts undying, through integrity education. Since 2010 IWA have trained 1,559 monitors and now plan to widen its network of volunteer monitors, broaden the areas in which citizens are engaged in monitoring activities and provide effective tools for public oversight activities with low cost. Needless to say, local monitors have been the key players in promoting the culture of oversight, putting government activities under the spotlight and pushing and pressuring state for adopting reforms. Their volunteer based contribution to this whole cause has been fundamental in sustainability of their campaign against corruption. Community based monitoring In the year 2005, Integrity Watch Afghanistan, with the close assistance and financial support of Integrity Action, launched a pilot project mobilising volunteers to do monitoring of infrastructure 1. When an identified problem in a project is resolved we call this a fix IWA staff and monitors visit a school in Mazar e Sharif projects in Afghanistan. Through this pilot, reports were collected from construction sites and deficiencies were effectively communicated and fixed through local shuras in conjunction with contractors and donors of the projects. The pilot project turned out to be a success with a high percentages of problems resolved (FixRate) and later was developed to a full programme, Community Based Monitoring Infrastructure (CBM-I). CBM-I has subsequently been expanded to 7 provinces in Afghanistan covering various construction projects such as roads, hospitals, schools and training centres. During this period 1,559 citizens have been trained as community monitors; 364 public officials have received integrity training; and 919 infrastructure projects have been monitored. The success of this pilot in Afghanistan formed the basis of Integrity Action s approach to community based monitoring. In fact, during 2012/13, Integrity Action s management took stock of various monitoring approaches, drawing heavily from partners within the Network for Integrity in Reconstruction, to formalise its Community Integrity Building approach. The success and refinement of CIB can

5 5 in large part be attributed to the learning that Integrity Action and Integrity Watch Afghanistan have developed over the years. Since 2005, the Fix-Rate of infrastructure projects (number of problem resolved/number of problems identified through communities) stands at 80% which demonstrates that most of the problems have been resolved at the local level. More recently, the programme effectiveness also has been proven by a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) carried out by the University of California San Diego and other studies. The CBM-I programme has been expanded over the years into community based monitoring of schools, trials and extractives (CBM-S, CBM-T and CBM E) as well as continuing to grow CBM-I. So far, CBM programmes have been implemented in 7 provinces covering 919 infrastructure projects, 4,300 court trials, 8 extractive sites, and 90 schools. Since the inception of the CBM-I programme in 2005, Integrity Watch (IWA) and Integrity Action have consistently partnered to increase the impact of their monitoring programmes by influencing policy at a national and international level and Integrity Watch Afghanistan has sought to establish anticorruption activities as the Afghanistan s government first priority in the governance of the country. The CBM-I program has been able to successfully influence the policies in infrastructure sector in local level by providing support for establishment of provincial monitoring boards (PMB). PMBs consist of government officials as well as provincial council members and civil society and they take necessary actions based on the information provided by IWA local monitors in infrastructure projects. In past, they have been able to form standards for companies implementing construction projects and pressure them to follow the same standards. Integrity Watch is Integrity Action s only NGO partner in Afghanistan. As discussed above Integrity Watch applies Community Based Monitoring a derivative of Community Integrity Building consistently through all four of its programmes (CBM-I, CBM-E, CBM-T and CBM-S). IWA has added to the CIB approach and adapted it to the local context and sector. Moreover, they have designed various learning tools to train staff and community monitors. Integrity Watch s CBM Toolkit is an excellent example of following the five phases of the CIB cycle in the Afghan context. Integrity Action could use the Toolkit within the network for integrity in reconstruction as a means of sharing best practice and to learn from one of the more established partners working on CIB. IWA staff examining project documents DevelopmentCheck Integrity Action s DevelopmentCheck has received mixed reviews within IWA. IWA have their own monitoring and evaluation (M&E) database (introduced early in 2015) and therefore have been hesitant to enter data onto DevelopmentCheck as well although in out of 30 projects were published but in future information will be captured in their own M&E database. To combat this

6 6 challenge and assist IWA staff, Integrity Action paid for an automatic link between IWA s M&E database and DevelopmentCheck so staff could enter data once and it be shown in both systems. We hope this will mean that all IWA projects are entered onto DevelopmentCheck in future. Education Integrity Education in Afghanistan has taken three forms in the last year: 1) community based monitoring of schools; 2) teaching on integrity in Islam; and 3) A new integrity education programme. These activities are listed in order of implementation during the year and are explored below. Integrity Action reinvigorated IWAs schools work by being the primary funder for CBM-S in 2014/15. This was as a result of a successful pilot in a couple of provinces just outside Kabul (Parwan, Kapisa and Herat To) where local people celebrated the successes they were able to achieve in fixing problems collaboratively with local officials in both girls and boys schools. From the authors visit this included ensuring water was piped to the school building, separate toilets were built for the pupils, and walkways were improved to avoid dirt being taken into school hallways. When the author visited in April, the local shuras were so pleased with the results that they said we tried this pilot to see if it would work. It has worked. So please go ahead, we need a full programme! (Head of Shura, translated from Dari). In April, the Ministry of Education expressed interest in supporting these efforts and were open to having integrity taught in schools over the coming years. They suggested starting small with awareness raising campaigns and then building up into teaching over the course of time. This has yet to be realised. To do so, IWA will provide its full assistance to the Ministry of Education. IWA staff visit a school building in Balkh Province During 2014, IWA organised and conducted a group of capacity building programmes and activities with the funding received from Harakat supported by DFID. This project was to train religious scholar. As part of this work, IWA developed and published a textbook on integrity in Islam. This textbook was distributed to holy men throughout Afghanistan as a way to engage a new audience on the importance of integrity building. Using language given in the Quran and framing integrity as a religious value the textbook sparked an interesting and helpful debate with the Mullah on issues of anti-corruption and integrity. The author was fortunate to sit with a handful of holy men during the trip and hear them debate the value of integrity as Afghans, as Muslims and as people seeking to live with integrity. They said that this was the first time they had been approached by aid practitioners to engage on a topic that has wide ranging development ramifications. Whilst anecdotal evidence, the Mullahs said they were now keen to teach integrity through their mosques. Despite all children having access to formal education in Afghanistan, due to security concerns, parents are often scared of sending their children because of insecurity in getting to school, particularly for the girls, as well as a fear that western ideals and

7 7 principles will influence their children s thinking. The hope is that as children are taught informally through the Mosques that some of this value based system will inspire them to behave with integrity. A key learning to reach scale in Afghanistan is the need to engage with all sectors of society including the holy men and women who have considerable influence within their communities and society more generally. Furthermore, a new project with funding from TAWANMANDI will continue until 2017 and includes training of CSOs on internal corruption control and risk assessment. Under this programme IWA are working with ACBAR, one of the oldest NGO umbrella organisations in Afghanistan, to train their members with the plan being to build this training into an NGO integrity certification system. At a retreat to explore the use of learning based management for Integrity Action, the management of Integrity Action and IWA were able to reflect on the activities within Afghanistan, especially some of the newer activities on education and discuss options for scale. This was primarily based on Integrity Action s model of combining integrity education with integrity building. What emerged was the idea of supporting IWA to reach a larger scale and impact through presenting a more focused, yet comprehensive education programme that would strengthen civil society s oversight of government s reform as well as local accountability through a network of Integrity champions involving youth, women and other community groups. The aim being that these integrity champions will be trained by IWA and Integrity Action and will go back into their communities to kick off community based monitoring activities. This will be done by IWA staff training Integrity champions in integrity principles as well as how to practically do community monitoring. They will return to their communities and implement community based monitoring either by doing the monitoring themselves or training others in their communities to be monitors. They will be supported remotely by IWA staff who will set up a specialised helpdesk function to answer any questions that integrity champions have. The results of the monitoring will be fed back and reviewed by IWA to celebrate success and highlight and follow up on areas where more support is needed. The theory of change is that this will increase the programmes impact and outcomes in fighting corruption and strengthening Afghan government accountability to its citizens. Completed toilet block at a school monitored by IWA, Balkh Province During the last 6 months of 2015, Integrity Action and IWA met weekly to design this programme, draft a business plan and pull together a proposal to the EU for funding. Integrity Action engaged some consultants to help with drafting the training material and logframe for the programme. As IWA is the primary anti-corruption charity in Afghanistan it meant the consultants hired, despite having great training experience, had limited experience of working on the issues and themes of the training and so a great amount of time was needed to get them up to speed and support them in preparing the logframe. The amount of time was under estimated to get the work done and so considerable management time was invested to

8 8 get them up to speed. The discussions and design fed heavily from Integrity Action s integrity education programme and integrity leadership courses that have been running for a decade. As a result of the close working arrangement, and investment of time from all parties, selection criteria, key materials to be included in the training and incentives for citizens to engage were discussed in detail using Integrity Action s approach as a model. It is too early to tell if this will work but what has been impressive is the close working relationships that has formed between IWA and Integrity Action leading to IWAs CEO to remark it s almost like we are one team. The excellent team working meant a quality proposal and business case was developed and a funding request of Euro 500,000 was approved by the EU and the programme will start early The EU funded project will identify integrity champions who will be trained, and mentored to implement monitoring projects of their own choice. This will be delivered through two training camps covering major topics such as the basics of corruption, understanding of integrity, community based monitoring and facilitation techniques. IWA will provide the integrity champions with consultation and advice to help them choose their own monitoring projects. The integrity champions will also be provided resources, an online database, and tools in order to effectively monitor projects in their own communities. In addition, a helpdesk will be established to provide them with on-going advisory support. The final phase (second year) will cascade the training to a second generation of integrity champions. In this phase the monitoring activities will continue and the training will be provided for overall 300 to 400 trainees. The aim is that at the end of second year, all the trained integrity champions will be involved in monitoring and advocacy activities. Cross-sectoral activities The benefit of the new integrity education programme is that it will enable cross-sector learning and activities with participants coming from different areas of the public, private, and NGO sectors as well as including women, youth and religious leaders. As far as we know this type of platform has not been done before in Afghanistan and so we hope it will inspire cross-cutting ideas, initiatives and collaborations. The progress will be followed closely over the next year. Workman building a road in Balkh Province Areas for future collaboration Public and private sector training Areas that have not yet been explored between Integrity Action and IWA are public sector or private sector training, although IWA have begun discussions around this with the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and Business Integrity Network Afghanistan (BINA). Hopefully with the newly developed integrity education programme that participants will be taken from all sectors of Afghan society. It is likely that focused effort will be needed in these two sectors to make a meaningful contribution to integrity

9 9 building. An area where Integrity Action could help IWA is through capacity building to support this agenda. Clearly with the launch of the new Integrity Education programme there is an opportunity to assist in the development of materials and delivering training. Maintenance of projects One of the areas that has been discussed is the idea of re-visiting projects already monitored to see how they are currently performing and reviewing maintenance of infrastructure projects. It is not unexpected that projects that were once fixed may revert into problems either from a change of personnel at a government level, poor quality of materials used originally, damage or normal wear and tear. IWA suggested at the beginning of 2015 they may revisit a sample of projects to see how they were performing against maintenance standards and report the updated Fix-Rate. Of course if problems were found, the idea would be to constructively engage until they were resolved. If IWA could do this alongside a costbenefit analysis of investing in maintenance this would form an excellent evidence base of the value of community based monitoring as well as has the potential of creating new jobs and livelihoods within Afghanistan in a post-aid era as the government realises the need to invest in maintenance contracts to maintain infrastructure and services. Other challenges Target groups Inherent with working in Afghanistan is the challenge of ensuring equal access to all particularly with regard to participation of women. Integrity Watch Afghanistan have males and females in positions at all levels of the organisation and board and target their programmes to ensure inclusivity but it is challenging within the cultural context. This is potentially an area where the new integrity education programme can be more targeted to ensure participation of women of influence throughout Afghanistan. Workmen building a road being monitored by IWA in Balkh Province Detailed research One of the challenges for IWA is that they are in demand, from the government, the international community and locally and so the there is a constant need for them to prioritise their time and invest in activities that bring impact. In order to invest their time effectively IWA recognise the need to allocate time to research to inform debates around topics such as access to information and extractives. IWA now have a more focused approach to research, having completed 6 research projects in the last year and at least 10 timely policy briefs based on short and relevant research. Recently they complete the National Integrity Context and System Assessment (NICSA) research with support from Transparency International (TI) which was the largest research project ever done in Afghanistan on anti-corruption and TI rated this as the best NICSA research done by any country so far. IWA should continue to build on this research strength to inform debate and advocate anti-corruption as well as to maintain the excellent credibility they have with the Afghan public, government, donors and partners.

10 10 Notable Achievements Integrity Action and Integrity Watch have successfully designed an integrity education programme and attracted EU funding for an integrity education programme in Afghanistan over the next 2 years. A total of 30 construction and 30 schools projects worth over two and a half million dollars have been monitored by IWA in this current granting cycle. IWA has consistently achieved Fix-Rates above 70% since the beginning of community based monitoring. During this year, over one hundred and sixty-three thousand people have directly benefited from monitoring activities, as a result of Integrity Action funded projects. The close working relationship developed between Integrity Action and IWA staff. Integrity Action provided a successful training for representatives from the Ministry of Education in Kabul in April Lessons Learnt The idea of introducing Integrity Education has been met with enthusiasm by both educational and non-educational stakeholders. Stakeholders unanimously agree that Integrity Education must be coupled with practical activities to have lasting impact. Partners look at Integrity Action for leadership, mentoring and the provision of capacity building activities on the ground. DevelopmentCheck has not been used to its full potential due to a number of practical constraints. Conclusion Integrity Action s partner IWA has demonstrated effective use of the Community Integrity Building approach and have designed an Integrity Education programme of activities. It is clear that Integrity Action provides a helpful leadership, mentoring and support role that far exceeds any monetary donations that it may provide (Integrity Action provides about 5% of IWAs annual funding). Funding is an important component especially where it can support innovation such as reinvigorating the CBM-S work and setting up an integrity education programme but it is not the most significant feature. What IWA has benefitted mostly from and what they unanimously ask for in the future - is support in terms of capacity building and mentoring to enhance their work on the ground. Recommendations Integrity Action to use the IWA CBM Toolkit within the network for integrity in reconstruction to share best practice and learning from one of the more established CIB partners. A key learning to reach scale in Afghanistan is the need to engage with all sectors of society including religious leaders who have considerable influence within their communities. Areas that have not been explored yet are public sector or private sector training. It is hoped that with the newly developed integrity education programme that participants will be taken from all sectors of Afghan society. It is likely that focused effort will be needed in these two sectors to make a meaningful contribution to integrity building. The integrity education programme provides an opportunity for greater participation of women throughout Afghanistan. Integrity Action should continue to provide support to IWA through mentoring and in the delivery of trainings and workshops.