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Grievance redress mechanisms (GRMs) in the public sector are institutionalized processes designed to enable people to complain about and seek redress for services they rightfully should have received. This paper reviews evidence on GRMs from around the world, focusing on mechanisms attached to public services and programs in the Global South, where they are relatively new and emerging fast. GRMs matter in particular in the Global South because they are increasingly widespread and found in...

This exploratory research set out to survey possible points of entry for POTENCIAR programme interventions and gather methodological insights for the ethnographic research component of the programme’s analytical strategy. It wil be used alongside other analytical studies undertaken by POTENCIAR (including the health sector analysis and the political economy analyses) to identify and design programme interventions. Following an inductive method, the team sought to assess the conditions and...

Efforts to strengthen the accountability of the governing to the governed go back millennia. However, in the past decade there has been a renewed debate about how to advance public accountability. One domain where this conversation has taken place is that of efforts funded by donors (government development agencies and private philanthropies), primarily in the Global South and implemented by a set of national and international actors, including NGOs, private sector project implementors, and...

This report offers POTENCIAR and the British High Commission (BHC) an analysis of how power arrangements influence the main social, political, and economic factors in service provision and decentralised governance in Mozambique. The results of the study will be used to refine POTENCIAR’s strategy and approach, as well as the design of PAIs in the health sector. While PAIs address issues across multiple sectors, sector analysis will also consider potential entry points for, as well as...

As of 15 April, over 20,0001 people from Palma are forcibly displaced, in the aftermath of Non-State Armed Group (NSAG) attacks on 24 March. They fled to the districts of Nangade, Mueda, Montepuez and Pemba by land, foot, air and sea. This is in addition to the nearly 700,000 already displaced in the provinces of Cabo Delgado, Nampula, Niassa, Sofala and Zambezia as a result of violence and insecurity in Cabo Delgado. UNHCR received reports that several families from Palma attempted to seek...

Abstract: The central aim of this text is to show the impact institutions have on the performance of the health sector in Mozambique. The text shows that of the social determinants of health, institutions play a central role in the performance of the Mozambican health sector—and, through it, economic and social development—particularly for the poorer and more vulnerable, such as children, women, the disabled, and the elderly. It is also argued that the deficiencies and inefficiencies of the...

This policy brief, apart from describing the dilemmas of the democratization process of health services it, aims to analyze its implications on the dynamics of social accountability in the health sector and, finally, to inform on possible ways for a more coherent democratization, considering the normative discourses

Inequality is a key political issue of our times. It has political consequences, fuelling conflict and raising legitimacy chal‑ lenges for regimes around the world, in democratic and non‑demo‑ cratic settings alike. At the centre of these challenges is the question of accountability: who can be held accountable, on what basis, how and by whom for tackling or failing to tackle which inequalities. In the field of global health, inequality has long been a key issue. A significant body of work —...

A recent study on information disclosure in the extractive sector has found 18 factors that result in citizen and institutional (state and non-state) inaction in demanding government accountability. Conducted by the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR) in collaboration with the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), as part of the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) research programme, the study shows that citizens and/or institutions are unlikely to...

Social accountability in the health sector has been promoted as a strategy to improve the quality and performance of health providers in low- and middle-income countries. Whether improvements occur, however, depends on the willingness and ability of health providers to respond to societal pressure for better care. This article uses a realist approach to review cases of collective citizen action and advocacy with the aim to identify key mechanisms of provider responsiveness. Purposeful...

The objective of the baseline survey is to analyze and document the situation around accountability, transparency and governance of the O&G sector in the country prior to the implementation of the Oxfam project. It focuses on a selected group of indicators chosen for the country program logical framework, identified and approved in the Baseline Inception Phase. A total of 33 people were interviewed in the context of this baseline. This was accompanied by a thorough national and international...

This case study was commissioned by N’weti Comunicação para a Saúde to explore the changes emerging from the implementation of an adapted version of the Community Scorecard (CSC) tool in 11 health facilities catchment areas in Nampula. This case study discusses how N’weti has adapted the Community Scorecard (CSC) tool to better improve the quality of the participation and prospects of accountability for citizens. The case study presents evidence that the adapted CSC tool has resulted in an...

The Citizen Engagement Program (CEP) in Mozambique is an empowerment and accountability program aiming to improve the quality of health and education services through supporting citizens to monitor them. The program supports citizens to engage with service providers to address identified problems; it also aims to generate evidence for policy and program improvement at the local and national levels. This case study is structured in three main sections. The first section provides a background...

The development industry is increasingly pushing practitioners to achieve results, and to do better in demonstrating what works, what does not, and explaining why. There is a growing interest in going beyond the measurement of results to being able to understand the basis for success or failure. Consequently, the development of explicit theories of change (ToCs) is starting to be viewed as central to this process, as a key part of what constitutes ‘rigour’ in impact evaluations. Citizen...

Accountability is a central feature of democracy. Governments must explain what they are doing, justify why they are doing certain things and not others. Moreover, accountability increases the likelihood of the improvement of public services if citizens have the political scope to hold politicians and administrators accountable, and potentially sanction them. Consequently, developing countries as well as the OECD-donor community have committed themselves to working towards the improvement of...

SDC has been implementing projects in support to decentralisation and local governance for about 15 years. Today, arounf 2/3 of SDC's country programmes include a support to local governance and/or decentralisation. For this reason, an independent evaluation of  SDC’s achievements on “Decentralisation  and local governance” took place in 2006‐2007. One of the recommendations of this evaluation  was to  carry out  a capitalisation of SDC’s experiences in this field. SDC’s  Governance ...

Since its emergence from a brutal, 17-year civil war, Mozambique’s process of political reform has faced a number of challenges. The first has been to empower ordinary Mozambicans by allowing them to participate in a democratic system and enabling them to voice their demands to the state and hold it accountable. The second has been to rebuild a state with the capacity to respond to citizen demands effectively. And given the long history of violent division, a third challenge has been to...

The IDS Participation and Health and Social Change Groups convened a workshop in October 1999 to share experience with the use of participatory approaches in enhancing accountability in the health sector, and to explore some of these challenges. The articles in this bulletin reflect some of the richness of experience on the ground in building effective participation, as well as some of the many issues that arise in moving towards more active citizen engagement with service provision. They...