Working Group on CSO Enabling Environment Preparing for the Third Monitoring Round

The Working Group has been very active since November with activities broadly relating to the expected Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) Third Monitoring Round. This Monitoring Round is expected to be launched May 2018 and will conduct country level monitoring until October 2018. This Third GPEDC Monitoring in monitoring will be based on a revised Monitoring Framework that will be approved by the GPEDC Steering Committee at its April meeting. This revised Framework, including Indicator Two on CSO Enabling Environment, will be subject to a consultation with all stakeholders in the GPEDC before the SC meeting.

For information about the GPEDC’s Monitoring Framework, click here.

The Working Group, with the support of the Global Secretariat and the Regional Secretariats, launched a call to seek nominations for CPDE country Focal Points for Indicator Two. Fifty-eight (58) country focal points for Indicator Two have been confirmed for all regions, with more to come from the Pacific Region. These Focal Points will engage Government Country Coordinators, who will be leading the Third Monitoring Round, on an inclusive data collection and verification process with civil society on Indicator Two at the country level as well as dialogue around the implications of this data for civic space in their countries.

Four CPDE members of the Working Group, who are also members of the multi-stakeholder Task Team on CSO Development Effectiveness and Enabling Environment, participated in a November 2017 meeting of a multi-stakeholder Reference Group on revisions for Indicator Two, organized by the GPEDC’s Joint Support Team (JST).

For this Reference Group meeting, the JST used a draft revised Indicator Two Framework, which was proposed by our Working Group, and which was developed with the Working Group on Development Effectiveness at an Working Group Experts Meeting held in Paris early in July 2017.

Following the November Reference Group meeting, the JST has undertaken significant development of this Indicator Two Framework based on input from the stakeholders, including CPDE participants. This revised Framework will now be put back to the Reference Group for their comment and to a wider GPEDC consultation.

The major change in the Framework is the development of a four-level scale, relating to a range of bad to good practice, for each of the questions in each module. The advantage of this scaled approach is that the monitoring will capture more nuances in country situations. We also hope that discussions (with civil society and with government) about where to place a given country on a scale may provoke some policy discussion among stakeholders.

A major activity for the Working Group up to April 2018 is the organization of training of the Focal Points on the revised Indicator Two. The first training will bring select focal points from Africa, Asia and Europe to Nairobi at the end of January. This will be a hands-on training with the revised Framework received. The Co-Chairs for the Working Group on CSO Development Effectiveness will also join the training as facilitators as CSO development effectiveness is an important module in Indicator Two. A second Focal Point training will be organized in March, which will bring Focal Points from the Pacific, the Americas and MENA regions, as well as any others that our budget allow us to accommodate. These are bilingual training in French/English and Spanish/English.

With this advanced preparations and training for country Focal Points, we expect that CPDE will be well placed to make a significant impact with respect to its priority to highlight and advocate for a reversal to the shrinking civil society space at the country level through the next Monitoring Round.

For more information, contact: Brian Tomlinson | brian.t.tomlinson@gmail.com