democratization

The project’s overall development goal was to “increase the civic and democratic participation of young people in the Arab region”. The specific objective was to “empower young leaders in the Arab region to play a bigger role in civic and democratic life”. The project sought to empower young leaders in five countries in the Arab region - Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. The project approach was based on the observation that while youth played a key role in the Arab uprisings; they continued to find themselves with limited empowerment or support to take control of their lives and futures. While the intervention rationale is broadly accurate, the project document did not include substantive contextual background for each targeted country and the project design lacked context analysis for each country. There also did not seem to be any involvement from project stakeholders and beneficiaries in the formulation and design of the project. Given the lack of contextual understanding, the project’s intervention rationale and the process for implementation also lacked essential elements to make the project relevant to the needs of the beneficiaries at the local and national levels.  

The aim of the project was to promote the development of a more inclusive and equal society through promoting the free flow of information to the general public so that individuals, civil servants and civil society groups acting at the local level can hold their government to account, advocate for their rights and entitlements more effectively and influence policy-making processes. Specifically the project set out to foster local activism on freedom of information and to use access to information and transparency tools to strengthen participation within municipal governments across Brazil. The project strategy was built around four specific components: a strengthened and effective network of local activists working on access to information; increased public understanding of the importance of freedom of information and how to use the concept to encourage transparency and accountability; increased public demand for governments’ responsiveness to information requests at the local level; legislative and policy reform initiatives to promote transparency at the local level. The project was highly relevant since the Access to Public Information Act had recently come into effect. This Act required each municipality to draft regulations ensuring its proper enforcement. Yet surveys had indicated a lack of interest and knowledge in many municipalities about enforcing this law.