Projects

Short Description:

Overall goal

Overall objective: A Uganda where citizens are empowered to engage in democratic governance and where the state upholds citizens’ rights.

The Democratic Governance Facility (DGF) has been established to address deficits in democratic governance identified in Uganda. The programme seeks to work towards the vision of “A Uganda where citizens are empowered to engage in democratic governance and where the state upholds citizens’ rights” and will be implemented through three broad and interconnected domains of governance called “spheres” that include: (1) democratic processes that build citizen-state relationships, (2) citizen empowerment, engagement and accountability and (3) protection of human rights, access to justice and gender equality.

The spheres are operationalized by interventions in thirteen Areas of Intervention (AoI). DGF II will apply into a Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach to its work, which emphasizes a commitment to learning and to adapt programme interventions as issues emerge or as needs change. Strong emphasis will also be put on collaboration and collective action. Based on ADA’s Uganda Country Strategy, the present contribution is earmarked for the areas of intervention under Sphere 3, which include:

- Upholding Human Rights

- Improving Access to Justice for Poor and Vulnerable Groups

- Upholding Pro-Gender Equality Legislation

- Addressing Abuse of Power, Violence, Torture and Impunity

Expected results

- Improved responsiveness of government towards citizens

- Improved citizen engagement on government accountability

- Human rights of citizens upheld

- Improved access to justice

- Enhanced gender equality

Target group / Beneficiaries

Target group/partner/region: countrywide

Direct beneficiaries: around 800.000 people per year for the whole programme; for Sphere 3 around 166.200 people in three years (ADA: around 5.7% = 9.500 in three years). They include civil society organisations and other non-state actors (networks, academia, faith-based organisations etc) and their constituents in about 80 districts, as well as state institutions whose mandates are relevant to the DGF’s objective. These beneficiaries are reached in trainings, advocacy activities and various forms of legal aid and other direct support measures.

Indirect beneficiaries: around 8 million people per year (around 24 Mio in three years) are reached with the whole programme throughout the country through civic and voter education, with human rights awareness messages, awareness raising for the youth etc. This is done primarily through radio shows and spots as well as participation of partner representatives in TV talk shows etc.

In Sphere 3 around 6.65 million people will be reached in three years. The Austrian contribution accounts for around 380.000 of those.

Activities

Activities (samples):

- Civic and voter education

- Human rights education and awareness raising

- Participatory planning, budgeting at the local level, monitoring of accountability

- Capacity building and technical assistance for state actors engaged in human rights, legal reform, election activities and the like

- Legal aid to vulnerable groups

- Joint activities by implementing partners active in same areas of intervention across the country to strengthen impact, cross-fertilisation through lessons learnt, complementary work and collaboration between state and non-state actors

Context

DGF II is underpinned by a Human Rights Based Approach and defines gender equality and youth as cross-cutting issues to be integrated in all interventions as well as targeted specifically by some areas of intervention.

Seven Development Partners (Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Norway and the EU) have agreed to support the programme, which works as a basket fund and is managed by a special DGF Facility Management Unit (FMU). The programme will harmonise support to civil society organisations and non-state actors and selected public institutions.

The Austrian Development Cooperation has supported the DGF since 2011. After the first five years, an extension of 18 months (DGF I+) was agreed on by the eight original funding partners. This extension period was used to consolidate results, evaluate the first phase and design the new programme, DGF II.