Rule of law

While working on promoting rights of the transgender community, it is important to focus equally on demand creation through activities enhancing the rights awareness of the community focused on by the project, along with strengthening institutional capacity of public sector institutions for inclusive service delivery.

Effective institutionalization of a technology driven initiative in government departments requires an assessment of their capacity and readiness. Technical and capacity support may be provided to ensure smooth transfer and successful adoption of technology. In the present project, an App developed to report human rights incidents and violations was handed off without prior assessment to a public office unprepared for ensuring its maintenance and use.

In order to be effective, public awareness raising campaigns need to be more targeted and focused. The content should be developed in local language, keeping in view the general literacy level. It should also be evaluated to assess efficacy and impact. In this case the grantee developed them in English and published them without translation which limited their efficacy and outreach.

The project experience clearly indicates that project interventions when anchored in or leveraging existing government initiatives have greater stakeholder endorsement and higher chance to sustain. In this case, the grantee successfully tapped in and leveraged existing government initiatives that support, for example, the issuance of identity documentation as well as literacy and nonformal education.

Connected, aware and empowered CSOs and Human Rights Defenders can become a strong catalyst for change at the grassroots level in order to promote local action aimed at promoting transgender persons’ rights. In this case, the engagement provided them a chance to liaise and establish a link with government officials and departments which continued beyond the project.

Meaningful and transformative change to safeguard rights of transgender community is possible through legislative action. Creating adequate legal frameworks and making justice work for transgender community requires rigorous policy advocacy and extensive engagement with policy and law makers. In this case, while the grantee took a number of initiatives including legal and policy review as well as development of a draft law on Transgender Rights, it met with limited success to generate ownership to steer the legal reform process due to limited engagement with parliamentarians and policy makers.

Engagement with, and mapping of, prospective national institutional stakeholders in advance of a project taking place is critical to ensuring that the activities proposed align with their interests and priorities and are feasible in the timeframes proposed.

Supplementing training through follow-up coaching and mentoring and by creating platforms for ongoing dialogue and engagement can build and sustain networks that are driven by shared understandings on key human rights and LGBTQI+ issues across the political spectrum.

Efficient communication between project and finance management staff, and between grantees and implementing partners, is key to ensuring the delivery of projects in challenging conditions, such as during a global pandemic or when significant staff changes take place, especially when adaptive programming is required.

In-person training conducted through a series of shorter sessions over a period of several months, rather than one training condensed into a short period of time, can improve learning and support the building of connections and networks between participants, which is important to recognize and leverage.