What is Social Accountability Monitoring?
Social Accountability Monitoring (SAM) constitutes the range of measures and mechanisms—beyond the ballot box—that involve citizens in holding the state to account, i.e. justify and explain its actions, or lack thereof. It is a mechanism for citizen-based accountability intended to create bargaining space for citizens in governance processes and ensuring responsive service delivery from duty bearers. SAM provides citizens with opportunities and prospects to connect with the state contributing to good governance and enacting democratic values, serving to accomplish certain ends, such as better service delivery.
The practice builds on a long history of participatory projects, where citizens air their views, needs, and choices to public officials; but they also move beyond this by merging participation with answerability and sanctions to increase the possibility that officials will respond to citizens and be held accountable for their choices and actions. SAM complements and reinforces state institutions and processes that oversee other forms of accountability (electoral, legal, financial, and programmatic). Additionally, SAM identifies its core as collective action and stresses the importance of the nature and inclusiveness of participation.
How does it work?
A few fundamentals remain a constant in the various perspectives on SAM and these can be classified into the following themes: citizen inclusion and participation, duty bearer answerability and responsiveness, and understanding the contextual drivers for accountability. These themes exist within an ecosystem in which multiple actors across sectors work on various governance challenges towards a common goal or cause. Given that, SAM happens at multiple levels and layers. To put it simply, SAM happens at hyper-local (household and community), sub-national (local authority), and national levels (state/central government) respectively. At each level, multiple actors and institutions are key to the SAM process, and these institutions and actors make up the ecosystems where a healthy co-existence is necessary for social change to happen. In this respect, social accountability and its ecosystem are pre-conditioned to build accountability that relies on strong civic engagement where inadequate mechanisms for public debate and engagement with citizens exist. Moreover, SAM interventions are not removed from existing government accountability methods, institutions, and processes. Citizen-led SAM interventions seek to mutually reinforce existing processes due to institutional deficits inherent in developing democracies. The interventions are particularly concerned with developing adequate and effective mechanisms of state/central government accountability. This strongly speaks to the importance of linkages between state-led (horizontal) and citizen-led (vertical) accountability processes in SAM.
The Citizen Engagement for Accountability and Democracy in Zimbabwe project provides some examples of this practice in action. Among these are ongoing advocacy efforts by Habakkuk Trust to include women as assessors in traditional courts. Women face several challenges and complexities in accessing justice through formal courts. Barriers include limited financial resources for litigation, limited education to understand the complexity of court processes, and patriarchal cultures. The high cost of litigation and the intimidating atmosphere of the court form structural barriers to justice access for millions of Zimbabwean women. The Chief’s Court, with its relative ease of accessibility due to proximity to the 68% of Zimbabwe’s rural population, and mediation in local languages, means that Traditional courts hold extensive social value within rural society. Often, the Chief’s Court is the only avenue for rural women to access justice. Traditional leaders and public officials were responsive to the advocacy, participating in an Indaba organized by Habakkuk Trust. One of the targeted Chiefs agreed to include women assessors in his court and to act as a champion among other traditional leaders. In addition, the Ministry of Local Government made a commitment to review the policy on assessors in traditional courts.
The CEADZ project has also supported the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Mutare to inculcate Constitutional knowledge and awareness among residents of Ward 14 in Mutasa South Constituency. Following their exposure to constitutional rights education on the duties and responsibilities of local government duty bearers, the residents of Ward 14 engaged their local Member of Parliament and advocated for the opening of a local clinic. The clinic was eventually opened.
The CEADZ Social Accountability Monitoring Community of Practice
Given the importance of a well-functioning state and healthy interactions with citizens, development partners have treated governance as a sector in its own right. Projects ranging from public sector management reform to civil society strengthening, to democratization and SAM have become a key piece in African governance discourse. With increased support towards SAM interventions and the concomitant increasing complexity of the ecosystem, there is a need to provide a meeting point for diverse practitioners to collectively reflect and troubleshoot through the sharing of experiences. The desire to coordinate SAM efforts birthed the idea of a SAM community of practice (SAMCOP) which seeks to achieve the following:
(1) to provide a platform for sustained engagement and cross-learning among SAM practitioners in Zimbabw
(2) enhance access to information on public documents essential for civil society oversight and SAM on public resources management, and
(3) create a repository of knowledge on key developments and global trends around SAM.
To access the community of practice please visit: http://samcop.co.zw