Social Accountability is Everyone's Business

Social Accountability is Everyone's Business

Suva, May 11, 2011 - Social accountability is everyone’s responsibility and citizens, civil society and the media working together with government can ensure that there is an effective delivery of services.

This was the message from the Manager of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Pacific Centre, Garry Wiseman as he made the opening remarks at the Training Workshop on Social Accountability that started in Suva today.

“This workshop will focus on accountability. If the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) targets are to be met, improving the delivery of services that are associated with the different MDGs through more responsive and accountable government is an imperative,” Mr Wiseman told the participants representing civil society and government at the workshop.

The workshop is organized by the UNDP Pacific Centre and is aimed at raising awareness and understanding amongst members of the civil society in Fiji and government on the various tools and practices on social accountability.

Mr Wiseman said that the 2009 UNDP Asia Pacific Human Development report highlighted that a lack of transparency and accountability had many damaging effects.

“Leakages from corruption undermine the provision of public services, the impact of which hits the poor the hardest as they are usually the most heavily dependent on public services. A lack of access to information is another major concern as it can limit people’s knowledge of what services they should be able to access. A lack of a human rights based approach can mean that certain sections of the community are treated differently.”

He added that in many Pacific Island countries, many of the formal accountability institutions and mechanisms such as the Ombudsman, the Auditor-General, the Public Accounts Committee, and the media, suffered from various capacity constraints. In addition, legal frameworks and systems were also not well developed.

“As these are the very institutions to deal with questions of why services are not being delivered to the community it is important for citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) to engage with them and help them hold government and others accountable for the services they are expected to deliver,” Mr. Wiseman said.

The workshop participants heard that the formal definition of social accountability was “an approach to building accountabilitywhich emerges from actions by citizens and civil society organization (CSOs) aimed at holding the state to account, as well as efforts by government and other actors (media, private sector, donors) to support these actions.” Social accountability complements and enhances the formal accountability institutions. What differentiates it from the formal accountability system is that social accountability can be exercised continuously through citizen’s actions through the media, judiciary and various channels thereby providing extra checks and balances on the state in the public interest.

The two day training workshop is the third of a series of in-country training workshops on social accountability after Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. Similar workshops are being planned for other Pacific Island countries later in the year.

ENDS

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