At the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) Global Partners Forum in May 2014, World Bank President Jim Kim called the program, which aims to bring together civil society and governments to solve critical governance challenges in developing countries, “an amazing political success.” PTF agrees. Since the GPSA’s inception in 2012, 39 countries have “opted in” to the program, which requires government endorsement of direct funding to CSOs that hold them accountable. This is a truly outstanding achievement.
However, President Jim Kim also stated the World Bank will “wait for impact evidence from the 22 grant-funded project before considering a scaling up.” Here, PTF disagrees, as our experience shows that the discernible impact of grassroots anti-corruption projects often take several years to be known. Yet there is sufficient evidence that context appropriate social accountability interventions improve development effectiveness over the long term. The comment made by President Jim Kim raises growing concerns that the GPSA will lose its momentum without significantly increasing its operations now.
Click here to download the letter PTF sent to President Jim Kim, urging him to significantly scale-up GPSA funding, operations and knowledge work on an urgent and immediate basis.
