Social Accountability in Fragile Violent and Conflict: A Learning Agenda

Abstract

The Global Partnership for Social Accountability is experimenting with new ways to support collaborative social accountability in Fragile, Conflict and Violent contexts. The effort presents a unique opportunity to learn about how to integrate social accountability processes into broader prevention strategies supported by the World Bank and developing partners.

This note identifies three priority knowledge gaps that could contribute towards future programming of social accountability for conflict prevention. These are: a) under what conditions and how can social accountability processes support third party monitoring, as defined in World Bank operations?, b) under what conditions and how can social accountability processes and their contributions to governance and service delivery outcomes address drivers of fragility, conflict and violence, and in so doing, contribute to conflict prevention?, c) how can we better integrate human rights based approaches into social accountability programming in FCV settings?

The note builds on knowledge about the evolution of the social accountability field as well as the case for holistic, people-centered preventive strategies made on the recent World Bank/United Nations Report “Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict.” Both bodies of work point to the importance of integrating collaborative social accountability into broader reform and programming efforts, working iteratively, and understanding their results in context, over long-time horizons. Integrating sectoral and governance interventions, as collaborative social accountability efforts do, opens new pathways to obtain, scale up and sustain results. For example, engaging people in the mitigation of fiduciary, social, and implementation risks associated with policies and operations all while addressing grievances with a conflict sensitive approach.

Keywords: Social Accountability, Citizen Engagement, Prevention, Fragility, Conflict, Violence, Human Rights