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Bangladesh
>> Regional Overview >> Bangladesh Overview ACTIVITY DATA SHEET
PROGRAM: Bangladesh
TITLE AND NUMBER: Strengthened Institutions of Democracy, 388-009
STATUS: New
PLANNED FY 2001 OBLIGATION AND FUNDING SOURCE: $3,000,000 DA; $1,500,000 CSD
PROPOSED FY 2002 OBLIGATION AND FUNDING SOURCE: $ 3,000,000 DA; $500,000 CSD
INITIAL OBLIGATION: FY 2001 ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE: FY 2006Summary: Democratic institutions in Bangladesh do exist: parliament, a free and vigorous print media, the judiciary, political parties, competitive elections, and free speech. However, Bangladesh's formal democratic structures have very little transparency or accountability and are not open to public input. National politics is mostly about competition for power and resources among elites. Only rarely is the focus on national development issues affecting the citizens. Therefore, this objective is designed with a strong civil society orientation emphasizing the creation of effective advocacy and constituency input into national policy. It is sharply focused on three key, important institutions: local government, parliament, and human rights. This objective builds on the experience gathered and lessons learned from an earlier objective.
Key Results: This activity will stimulate the demand for strong and democratic local government, which will help lay the foundations for the longer-term goal of decentralization of resources and authority to local elected bodies. The program will engage civil society and political and bureaucratic champions in advocacy and consensus-building in activities aimed at legal, policy, and institutional reforms. Simultaneously, field-level activities will demonstrate improved governance in selected union councils.
There is very little interface between public interest groups and the parliament, so the responsiveness of parliament focuses on increasing interaction through parliamentary committees, workshops, informal meetings, training, and the media. The emphasis is balanced between the supply side (parliamentary committees and party members) and the demand side (public knowledge of parliament, public capacity for policy advocacy in parliament, and improved media reporting). These activities will be orchestrated to increase parliament's responsiveness to citizen input.
Civil society advocacy of human rights takes a dual approach, by developing leadership and advocacy skills broadly within human rights organizations and by supporting comprehensive programs to address specific human rights problems. Knowledge, skills, contacts, and leadership capacity of local and national leaders in the human rights movement will be enhanced. Simultaneously, civil society coalitions and human rights organizations will be supported to carry out programs on priority issues-especially those most seriously affecting women and children. Improved leadership and improved policy reform advocacy should move Bangladesh closer to the goal of protecting vulnerable groups, particularly women and children, from basic human rights violations.
Performance and Prospects: In FY 2001, USAID plans to obligate $3,000,000 in DA funding and $1,500,000 in CSD. Of the DA funding, $1.8 million will fund a local government policy program and $800,000 will fund human rights activities. The $1.5 million in CSD will fund primary education.
Under this objective, efforts aimed at increasing the responsiveness of the local elected bodies and government institutions were confined to fewer than 300 out of a total of 4,500 unions. Under this new objective, the prime contract for national constituency building has been fully scoped and will soon be completed. The scope includes activities to stimulate public policy debate on local government, feed the national debate with more grounded information on practical issues, and expose policy makers and potential supporters to stronger forms of local government found in other countries of the region. Simultaneously, a more focused experimentation with best practices at Union Councils is being planned using both DA and local currency resources.
With the certainty of national parliamentary elections by October 2001, preparations have been intense including pre-election surveys, technical assessments, planning and procedures for domestic monitoring, and arrangements for international election observers. Other core activities are also in full swing. The long-term activities for increasing interaction between parliament and the public started up in September 2000 and already numerous small-scale meetings and workshops have taken place. One emerging focus is on the parliamentary committees for education, environment, health, and employment and encouraging public input and policy dialogue process. Anticorruption activities already completed include fact-finding studies on three watchdog agencies, the creation of two of six planned committees of concerned citizens, and initial activities of an advice and information center including a news scan database. Media coverage of parliament will be included in a new contract.
The antitrafficking in women and children program has developed a comprehensive strategy and is playing an active role in donor and NGO coordination using several funding sources. The prime contract for advocacy of human rights is now fully scoped and will soon be competed. Initially, this contract will focus on two areas with some of the worst human rights violations: violence against women and children and child labor. If sufficient funds are available, additional priority human rights topics such as torture in police custody and workers' rights may be added. The first step for each focus topic will be a situation analysis, followed by a mini-strategy, and then implementation through subcontractors and grantees. The program for Bangladesh's 1.5 million garment workers is doing well and will continue under objective 388-009. An experimental basic education policy activity focused on "Equity in the Classroom" will also be initiated in FY 2001.
Possible Adjustments to Plans: This objective is in its early start-up phase and is designed to make flexible use of multiple sources of funding including ESF and local currency. It includes some activities that will continue only if such funds are available. Donor coordination is an active component of this objective. USAID will seek opportunities to encourage other donors to increase their contributions to strengthening of institutions of democracy.
Other Donor Programs: To date the greatest strength of USAID's democracy programs in Bangladesh has been in the grass-roots development of local democratic institutions and processes. In the new program, this strength will be expanded to build a broad civil society constituency to support policies leading to stronger institutions of democracy.
Other donors that address democracy, governance, and human rights include Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the European Union (EU), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Children's Fund, the International Labor Organization, the Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank.
Coordination with these donors occurs both through a broad donor consultative group on governance and smaller donor groups addressing specific topics, such as anticorruption, antitrafficking, and elections. The EU is funding a program through The Asia Foundation that emphasizes legal awareness and alternative dispute resolution. The UNDP projects in the areas of local government training, elections, and parliamentary development complement USAID's civil society program by working more directly with the central government.
Principal Contractors, Grantees, or Agencies: In the area of local government, Cooperative Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) will soon manage an activity to support union councils through local NGOs. The National Democratic Institute provides assistance for public-parliament interaction and elections. The Asia Foundation assists in the area of domestic election monitoring. Other key agents that support this objective are Transparency International Bangladesh (for anticorruption) and International Foundation for Election Systems (for a public opinion survey). USAID and the World Bank jointly fund a World Bank Corruption Survey. In the area of human rights, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity assists garment workers, the Red Barnet, and the local Bangladesh National Women's Lawyers Association supports activities to counter antitrafficking of women and children.
Selected Performance Measures: One of the first activities under this new objective will be to develop indicators, benchmarks, and targets for the program. This objective will serve as an umbrella for three distinct programming areas (local government, parliament, and human rights). This will address preference for the management flexibility of a single objective and the dependence on separate unpredictable funding sources. There are strong conceptual linkages among each of the intermediate results and the objective. Since the objective does not lend itself to easy measurement and monitoring at the strategic objective level, performance will be monitored and measured at the intermediate result level.
FY 2002 Performance Table
Bangladesh: 388-009
Performance Measures:
Indicator FY97 (Actual) FY98 (Actual) FY99 (Actual) FY00 (Actual) FY00 (Plan) FY01 (Plan) FY02 (Plan) Indicator 1: New PMP not yet approved NA NA NA NA NA NA NA Indicator Information:
Indicator Level (S) or (IR) Unit of Measure Source Indicator Description Indicator 1: IR NA NA NA U.S. Financing
(In thousands of dollars)
Obligations Expenditures Unliquidated Through September 30, 1999 0 DA 0 DA 0 DA 0 CSD 0 CSD 0 CSD 0 ESF 0 ESF 0 ESF 0 SEED 0 SEED 0 SEED 0 FSA 0 FSA 0 FSA 0 DFA 0 DFA 0 DFA Fiscal Year 2000 389 DA 111 DA 0 CSD 0 CSD 0 ESF 0 ESF 0 SEED 0 SEED 0 FSA 0 FSA 0 DFA 0 DFA Through September 30, 2000 389 DA 111 DA 278 DA 0 CSD 0 CSD 0 CSD 0 ESF 0 ESF 0 ESF 0 SEED 0 SEED 0 SEED 0 FSA 0 FSA 0 FSA 0 DFA 0 DFA 0 DFA Prior Year Unobligated Funds 1,698 DA 0 CSD 0 ESF 0 SEED 0 FSA 0 DFA Planned Fiscal Year 2001 NOA 3,000 DA 1,500 CSD 0 ESF 0 SEED 0 FSA 0 DFA Total Planned Fiscal Year 2001 4,698 DA 1,500 CSD 0 ESF 0 SEED 0 FSA 0 DFA Future Obligations Est. Total Cost Proposed Fiscal Year 2002 NOA 3,000 DA 8,713 DA 16,800 DA 500 CSD 1,000 CSD 3,000 CSD 0 ESF 0 ESF 0 ESF 0 SEED 0 SEED 0 SEED 0 FSA 0 FSA 0 FSA 0 DFA 0 DFA 0 DFA *9/30/99 unliquidated obligation comes from continuing activities folded under this new SO from a completed SO 388-002 and should not be treated as part of this SO's est. total cost.
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Last Updated on: May 29, 2002 |
