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January 2021

New Publications

Picturing Accountability: What We Learned from the Photography of the Rana Plaza Disaster

 

ARC researcher Naomi Hossain and acclaimed photographer Ismael Ferduos collaborated on a powerful new ARC Working Paper Picturing Accountability: What We Learned from the Photography of the Rana Plaza Disaster. Visual evidence can be a powerful part of strategies for pursuing accountability and social justice, and with the means of recording and viewing images now literally in our hands, we are becoming ever more sophisticated makers and users of visual evidence. This essay examines the role of photography in creating visual evidence in support of struggles for accountability. It draws on one photojournalist’s experience of photographing one of the worst indus­trial accidents in world history, the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh in 2013, as well as its aftermath in the lives of those affected.
Picturing Accountability (TAI blog)

The Transparency & Accountability Initiative (TAI) published the blog Picturing Accountability by ARC researcher Naomi Hossain and acclaimed photographer Ismael Ferduos. This punchy blog summarizes some key lessons from the December 2020 Working Paper on the power of photography in the Rana Plaza disaster, and calls for greater investments arts for accountability: “This is an area the transparency, participation, and accountability can usefully invest in: building collaborative agendas with artists, musicians, and photographers that harness the power of creative expression for accountability. Rana Plaza taught us that pictures can help frame accountability demands clearly and memorably, turning problems into intolerable wrongs demanding action. But while we are using pictures and music in our work, we have yet to figure out when and how it works to advance accountability action. Thinking through the Rana Plaza experience, Ismail and I concluded that accountability action and research could do more to figure out what difference visual, artistic, and cultural repertoires make.
G-Watch (Philippines) Launches TPA Now! A Paper Series on Transparency, Participation and Accountability

In 2020, G-Watch launched TPA Now: A Paper Series on Transparency, Participation and Accountability. Meant as part of the celebration of G-Watch's 20th anniversary, TPA Now aims to serve as a platform for practitioners, researchers and action strategists to present evidence and reflect on the practice and research on strategic TPA. So far, three TPA Now papers have been released. The first issue (Rebooting Accountability by Francis Isaac) provides the context and rationale for the paper series, reflecting on the implications of the worsening accountability situation in the Philippines and in many parts of the world despite of the many and long efforts to advance TPA. The second paper (Building Transparency, Participation, and Accountability in BARMM Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic by Yasmira Moner and Joy Aceron) explores the emerging practices of transparency, participation and accountability in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). Specifically, it checks how BARMM demonstrates its emerging TPA practices as it responds to the COVID-19 crisis. For the third issue (Exacting Accountability in Philippine COVID-19 Loans) authors Anna Bueno and Joy Aceron look into the loans and grants incurred by the Philippine government to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper includes a database of the relevant loans and grants and the emerging international standards in promoting transparency, participation and accountability in COVID-19 loans. In A Moro G-Watcher (Issue 4), Isnihayah Binumbaran reflects on the meaning of accountability from a Moro perspective, citing relevant ideas and concepts in Islam, and embedding its significance in the context of Muslim Mindanao. To demonstrate the urgency of accountability in the context of Muslim Mindanao, the paper shares the initiatives undertaken by the G-Watch core group in Lanao on its first year, including the highlights of its most recent monitoring activity, covering the government’s social amelioration program under its COVID-19 response.
Engagements and Events
The politics of learning reforms: How can governments be held to account? (University of Manchester)

ARC’s Naomi Hossain co-edited The Politics of Education in Developing Countries: From Schooling to Learning (2019 Oxford University Press). Building on that, she was a speaker in the December 10, 2020 University of Manchester ESID Webinar—The politics of learning reforms: How can governments be held to account? Developing countries have been more successful at widening access to education than raising learning outcomes partly because it is harder to build political support for learning reforms than for widening access. But is this inevitable? This webinar will bring together activists, policymakers/practitioners, and researchers to discuss experiences with the politics of learning reforms, and share lessons about how to hold governments to account for raising learning standards. The session chaired by Dr Susie Miles, Manchester Institute of Education had several speakers including ARC’s Naomi Hossain; Professor Brian Levy, John Hopkins University; Rakesh Rajani, Co-Impact; Mohammad Muntasim Tanvir, Global Partnership for Education (GPE) SecretariatDr Sara Ruto, Peoples Action for Learning (PAL) Network; and Ram Gaire, NCE-Nepal.

Navigating Action-Research Partnerships for Accountability: Lessons from Practice for Theory (University of Calgary)
 
ARC director Jonathan Fox and Walter Flores, former director of CEGSS in Guatemala spoke in the December 11, 2020 session of the Rethinking Latin American Studies from the South (RLASS) Working Group of The Calgary Institute for the Humanities on the topic of Navigating action-research partnerships for accountability: Lessons from practice for theory.

Supporting Citizen Researchers: Action Research for Health System Change (HSR 2020 skill-building session)
 
Action-research is defined by purpose: it is focused on learning from action to inform change strategies and advocacy campaigns. On January 27, 2021 ARC collaborated with colleagues from ANANDI (Gujurat, India), CEGSS (Guatemala), and GOAL (Uganda) presented a HSR2020 skill-building session on Supporting Citizen Researchers: Action Research for Health System Change. This session featured experienced practitioners from Guatemala (Walter Flores), Uganda (Vincent Mujune), and India (Neeta Hardikar) with ARC’s managing director Angela Bailey coordinating role in the virtual session. The session focused on a few themes in some depth: distinctions between research about affected communities versus research by communities; strategies to support citizen research capacity development; and links between citizen-led research to advocacy to strengthen health system performance. Our session presentation is available here.
Other ARC News
New Project: Debt Relief
 
The Open Society Foundations (OSF) awarded ARC a small grant for a project that aims to increase Southern CSO participation and leadership in debt relief advocacy targeted to the World Bank. In 2020 OSF launched a global platform on debt relief, recognizing that a huge gap exists between the northern INGOs that typically lead such campaigns and the Southern communities the campaigns are meant to serve. ARC plans to utilize this new grant to pilot a research and partnership approach for bridging this gap.  ARC researcher Dr. Rachel Nadelman, who currently leads ARC’s World Bank citizen engagement program, will launch this new initiative beginning in April 2021.
Team Transitions: Suchi Pande and Julia Fischer-Mackey
 
January 2021 marks the end of an era for ARC, as two long time researchers (Dr. Suchi Pande and Dr. Julia Fischer-Mackey) will be reducing their time with us.

Suchi has been a thought partner since the planning stages for ARC in 2015. Suchi is a committed activist, and as an affiliated researcher, she led the research collaborations on social audits in India with partners FACTLY and SSAAT. Based on original research, she co-authored ARC’s first Working Paper Citizen Oversight and India’s Right to Work Program: What Do the Social Auditors Say? with Rakesh R. Dubudu in September 2017. She collaborated with Samir Garg on Learning to Sustain Change: Mitanin Community Health Workers Promote Public Accountability in India (August 2018) which is also ARC’s first publication in Hindi. Suchi has also closely supported a research collaboration with SATHI on community-based monitoring and planning in Maharastra India (Working Paper forthcoming).

Julia completed her PhD at American University in May 2020. She began working with ARC in 2017 as research assistant to Jonathan Fox, and has adeptly managed ARC’s publications production pipeline since 2018. In 2020, Julia co-authored ARC’s first interview-based publication with Benilda Batzin and Paulina Culum Defending the Right to Health in Guatemala: Reflections of Two Indigenous Women on the Frontlines (a version of which was also published in The Journal of Peasant Studies in May 2020). More recently, she was the focal person for a strategic communications review and updating our internal monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems. Julia will be off for a few months, returning later in 2021 on a part time basis to wrap up both of these work streams.

We are so grateful for the commitment of these two researchers to the ARC mission, and to our collaborators. We will miss working with Suchi and Julia on a daily basis, but they maintain academic appointments with ARC/American University and we look forward to continued, substantive collaborations in the future. Thank you, Suchi and Julia!
Please share with colleagues who may be interested to sign up for future monthly updates on publications and highlights of our partner organizations’ work for social change and greater accountability. You can also follow ARC on @AcctResearchCtr, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Follow the health worker protest pilot on @HealthWorkerPro.
 
With Regards,
Jonathan Fox
Director, Accountability Research Center
Professor, American University School of International Service
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