UNDP’s democratic governance practice focuses on fostering inclusive participation, strengthening responsive governing institutions, and promoting democratic principles.
The project was formulated under the economic governance sub-area of the 2008-2013 10th EDF for the PALOP & TL, which allocates EUR 33.1 million to supporting governance initiative projects in PALOP & TL countries. This project is formulated on the basis a EU-UNDP partnership allocating 6.4 million Euros in support of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI), Parliaments, Parliamentarians &Civil Society Organizations in the PALOP and Timor-Leste in the domain of external control of public expenditure and accounts. This project aims at promoting economic governance in the PALOP and TL strengthening technical and functional skills of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs), National Parliaments and Civil Society in the six beneficiary countries. The project is fully funded by the European Union through the 10th EDF A envelope in support, among others, of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI), Parliaments, Parliamentarians and Civil Society Organizations in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau[1], Mozambique, São Tomé and Principe (PALOP Countries) and Timor-Leste.
The project is consistent with PALOP partner countries’ national strategies for poverty reduction and national development plans, with UNDP Country Programmes and Development Frameworks, and the 2008-2013 10th EDF for the PALOP & TL. These policies and strategies are adapted to the specificities and priorities of each country, but converge to promote good governance as an important support for development and economic growth. This is achieved, in particular, through the strengthening of capacities in (i) legislative and oversight functions of the State, (ii) the management system of public finances, including internal and external control, (iii) support services to Parliament and (iv) State’s accountability.
The multi-country intervention logic of this project aims to intensify the PALOP and Timor-Leste dialogue, drawing on the holistic approach to democratic governance. A special emphasis placed on joint, transversal, south-south and peer-to-peer capacity-building within the selected areas of economic governance, namely external control, audit and oversight capacities of the public finances.
The project will use training actions as a tool to enhance skills and credentials of stakeholders for controlling public finances while establishing eLearning platforms in Portuguese ensuring means of durable access to existing database and information in Portuguese. The project will also contribute to establishing a first time multi-country CSO PALOP-TL platform showcasing lessons and progress made by civil society organisations’ within the PALOP/CPLP Open Budget Initiative. Other activities aiming to promote sustainability will complement and support the OSAI CPLP multi-country plan and promote cooperation with the Training Institute for Financial and Economic Management in Portuguese Language (IGEF), involving this institution in training and capacity building activities at transnational level (joint learning involving actors from all beneficiary countries).
Improved access to information (in terms of availability of information, quality of the information available) is a pre-condition for effective public oversight and therefore to achieve the project’s key outputs. In the long run, the project impact will depend on the success of its exit strategy and sustainability of its actions and activities. It is critical that the project beneficiaries develop synergies and dynamics that will still be there after the end of the project. This will be best done through capacity development of human resources within national institutions. Such capacity development needs to target professional skills and enhancement/development of in-house training capacities in the field of external control of public accounts and finances, in particular CAs in the PALOP and Timor-Leste.
The overall objective is to promote economic governance in the PALOP and Timor-Leste (TL) strengthening technical and functional skills of SAIs, Parliaments, Parliamentarians and Civil Society (including media).
The specific objective is to improve the effectiveness of external political, judicial and civilian control of public finances in the PALOP and TL for a more efficient use of public resources. SAIs play an important role to prevent mismanagement and corruption. Therefore, whenever possible, the project will also help strengthen the links between SAIs and other oversight agencies, in particular anti-corruption and procurement agencies.
This project will directly address good governance and democracy strengthening the accountability system with external and independent control of public finances standing as the specific objective. As part of the action, responding to the right of citizens to information, and cross cuttingly supporting the promotion of gender equity in public spending will yield transformational results to be sustained beyond the project life cycle (among others, training and sensitization activities on gender equality addressed to Parliaments and CSOs). UNDP will associate UN Women units at country office level in designing the AWPs and training activities. ICT platforms and solutions will play a central role in this strategy and will be transversal to the action (among others, use of videoconference and IT tools). Environmental issues will be taken into consideration in specific activities when appropriate and consistent with partner countries’ national strategies and priorities, such as the strengthening of oversight capacities in the natural resource extraction domain in Mozambique.
The project foresees two results directly contributing to the specific objective:
SAIs’ control and audit capacities over public finances in the PALOP and TL are strengthened in a context of joint learning.Parliaments and Civil Society oversight capacities over public finances are developed for an informed analysis of public finances in the PALOP and TL in a context of joint learning.The strategy defined by the project takes into account the different contexts of the six beneficiary countries and the multi-country PALOP and TL cooperation intervention logic. The strategy will seek to improve political, judicial and civilian control and oversight of government action and public accounts through actions benefiting SAIs, Parliaments and CSOs.
The action plan includes multi-country activities fostering the south-south PALOP-TL cooperation (face-to-face and eLearning training, workshops, study trips and peer learning initiatives) and national activities aimed at addressing specificities of each beneficiary country (training, organizational changes, drafting of manuals, capacity development, etc.).
The implementation of the foreseen activities during the three-year project’s duration period will be articulated on the basis of annual work plans. Project start-up will have an initial phase of a maximum of four months from the signature of the Contribution Agreement with UNDP. In this inception phase annual work plans will be developed in a participatory manner and approved for each country, identifying accurately the pivotal countries and triggers of a change dynamics supporting the project’s sustainability strategy.
[1] In line with the provisions set in the Project Document and Contribution Agreement signed between the European Union and UNDP in Cape Verde.
For detailed information, please refer to the Terms of Reference available in the following websites:
UN Cape Verde website, www.un.cv , under the section Anuncios;The UNGM website at www.ungm.org; andUNDP Procurement website at http://procurement-notices.undp.org.View the original article here
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