November 4, 2025: On October 21, 2025, PTF hosted a Special Session on “How CSOs Overcome Obstacles to Constructive Engagement with Governments”. It featured:
- Wayne Nissly, Moderator (PTF’s President and CEO)
- Vinay Bhargava (PTF’s Chief Technical Advisor)
- Gilbert Sendugwa (Executive Director, Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC), Uganda)
- Nadishani Perera (Country Representative, PTF, Sri Lanka)
- Carolina Ungureanu (Executive Director, IDIS Viitorul, Moldova)
The session focused on the need to ensure that people are at the center of development programs and how CSOs can engage with governments in this regard despite an increasingly difficult operating environment and shrinking civic space. Speakers from Moldova, Uganda, and Sri Lanka shared their experiences in engaging with government to advocate for reforms. Finding the right people within the government who will champion and push for reforms was a common thread identified by the speakers.
In Moldova, IDIS Viitorul used a range of strategies for continued engagement with government stakeholders in the “Increasing the Integrity of Public Procurement in Moldova” project. These included institutionalized mechanisms such as through participation in working groups and advisory councils, but also through bilateral meetings and informal communications channels. This happened at several levels of government including local governments as well as the Parliament.
In Uganda, AFIC situated its work in the context of government priorities and found shared ground to take common action, such as on anti-corruption. Often it meant providing constructive engagement and offering to help address a problem once it is identified, specifically by speaking to the people in government most empowered to take action. And it also meant that messaging should focus on the need for reforms rather than on shaming specific individuals, which may otherwise increase resistance to the reforms. That meant being forward looking and focusing on solutions when engaging with the government, rather than primarily focusing on the uncovered corruption.
In Sri Lanka, in the aftermath of the 2022 Aragalaya movement which overthrew the government, national CSOs sought to ensure critical anti-corruption and governance reforms would be made. When an anti-corruption bill was being drafted without public consultation, they convinced the Ministry of Finance to provide them with a copy which they published on their website for public comment and convened a group of anti-corruption experts to provide feedback to the Ministry. This led to continued engagement in several roundtables, following which they were asked to provide revisions to the text, which were later incorporated.
All in all, the session showed that by finding the right partners with the government, and by working with them to achieve shared goals, civil society can be effective in advocating for and securing the passage of crucial reforms which promote accountability and transparency.
PTF will continue working with its partners to advocate for such increasingly important reforms amid an increasingly difficult operating environment for civil society.
The presentation slides can be found here. Additionally, the Special Session can be watched in the video below:
