Concept note – Orientation to Civil Society Assessments.docVIP

Towards a better understanding of civil society: Building support for civil society-led assessments Beniam Gebrezghi UNDP has an established record engaging civil society at the country level on a range of issues. It has long recognized that the success of development and participatory governance depends on both a robust state and an active civil society with healthy levels of civic engagement. The growing role of civil society as development partners and advocates for inclusive policies and democratic governance has lately been accompanied by demands, both from civil society and the international development community, for a more thorough understanding of the nature, workings and extent of civil society in countries. This has in turn resulted in the growth of civil society-led assessments i.e. assessments of civil society that are initiated, implemented and sustained by civil society – representing a major shift in thinking from so called “external assessment to self assessments” and from a “management and technocratic tool to being a citizen’s and mobilizing tool”. The expansion of civil society-led assessments is an important trend for UNDP, given the essential role of civil society and civic engagement in spreading and sustaining democratic governance, which is a core focus area of the work of the organization. ? Lately UNDP has actively joined the international discourse and dialogue on governance assessments. It has emphasized that such assessments must be more actionable and useful to national policy makers while at the same time promoting and strengthening national and local level engagement and ownership. UNDP’s global programme on country-led governance assessments is one of many efforts to address this agenda. Taken together, both these initiatives can work closely in countries where they overlap to provide stakeholders with internal rather than external pressure for reform. This paper introduces an innovative partnership led by CIVICUS, the Un