objective

This project aims to strengthen advocacy efforts towards a gender-sensitive civil personal status law in Lebanon. It will build capacity in civil society; create a coalition of a range of actors; engage the media; educate and inform the public; and increase pressure on political parties to take action on the draft law currently being reviewed by a committee in parliament. It will build a strong foundation for a well-informed, consistent national campaign to change the current law, which threatens democracy and human rights, in particular the rights of women, children, and marginalized groups, as well as increasing political pressure on lawmakers. Project activities will also incorporate actions in response to the Covid-19 crisis, as it impacts women, including gender-based violence.

The project aims to contribute to strategies regarding the sustainable management of natural water resources in the Ararat Valley through enhancement of women’s groups that supply oversight and equity in community water and sanitation resources. Three groups will be interlinked in their actions to facilitate discussion on tariff compensation; monitor the participation of oversight activities on irrigation; and implement four pilot projects at the community level. Pilot projects will identify community-based participatory approaches to decision-making involving women to improve access and management of water resources.

Elections in Nigeria, and especially in its oil-producing Niger Delta states, have in the past been disputed and given rise to violence. One of these states, Bayelsa, is due to choose a new governor in 2020 in what is expected to be a hotly contested election. The project seeks to minimize the risk of dispute and help to ensure the election is free, fair, and credible. It will support the Independent Nigerian Electoral Commission to train staff engaged to oversee polling in at-risk areas in the procedures necessary to do so effectively. It will support the creation of a database to register party political agents in three areas, reducing the risk of unidentifiable persons engaging in illegal political activity. Activities will also include voter education across the target areas, aiming to reach 1,350 citizens in workshops and 170,000 via a public campaign, seeking to inform citizens on how to prevent votes from being stolen or manipulated.

The project aims to promote the recognition of domestic work as decent work and domestic workers (WDs) contribution to society. 3500 domestic workers reached will be positioned to take individual and collective actions to improve working conditions. Two Associations of existing 61 mutual support groups of the domestic workers will be established to build solidarity and support for each other, develop advocacy strategies and represent themselves with support from PLA in influencing change. This project will also further the participation of female and youth DWs in claiming their rights, accessing services including legal aid and inclusion in decision making in policy, local and national government processes.

The project works to improve access to education in Brazil, by tackling mismanagement in construction of schools; empowering civil society groups to pressure local and federal government official for more accountability; building a network of local monitoring organizations; gathering robust information on problems in several phases of construction and delivery, presented in semi-annual reports to Federal Government and media; holding a final conference on lessons learned and how to redesign policies for effective monitoring and control with the help of local civil society organizations.