Deadline: 22-Mar-21
The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is pleased to launched a call for proposals for applied research projects of up to three years in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
This cohort of projects will seek to generate knowledge and evidence on how legal empowerment strategies work to overcome structural inequality and exclusion, expand participation, and promote public accountability.
IDRC seeks proposals for applied action research projects of up to three years which can be either single country studies led by local organizations or multi-country studies, led by local organizations across countries. Research projects will focus on generating evidence about innovative legal empowerment approaches and experimentation from the field. Research will contribute to building a comparative evidence base on how legal empowerment approaches draw on the grassroots and community-level experiences of addressing specific violations and the leadership of those directly affected to achieve systems change. In particular, they will focus on how legal empowerment approaches can contribute to addressing the root causes of inequality and exclusion and to promoting public accountability (see research questions).
Proposals will aim to contribute to promoting the rights of vulnerable groups and fostering more inclusive and accountable governance institutions through the following goals:
- Support innovation in community-driven, people-centred justice effort;
- Build regional knowledge and capacities of legal empowerment organizations and practitioners to achieve transformative systems change; and
- Strengthen regional and global policy engagement for community-driven, people-centred solutions to justice.
Funding Information
- IDRC intends to provide grant funding for research projects of up to a maximum of CA$450,000 for individual country studies and up to a maximum of CA$800,000 for multi-country studies (up to three countries) for 36 months.
- Proposals must include an overall plan of activities for 36 months.
- Contribution in the form of co-funding and mobilization of third-party resources (public or private sector, other donor or stakeholder funding, etc.) to support and expand the research is encouraged.
Eligibility Criteria
- The proposed research must demonstrate how it would contribute to the overall goals and questions for this call for proposal.
- Applicants from non-governmental organizations, academia, and private and public-sector organizations with a strong research focus are eligible for this global call
- They encourage applications from multi-disciplinary consortiums of organizations within a country, or across countries, bringing together capacity in terms of community-level or grassroots support, applied research and national-level advocacy. Given the focus on action research, strong preference will be given to consortia with organizations engaged in community-based justice work. A demonstrated history of successful collaborations by consortium members will be considered an asset though not a requirement. They will also consider joint project proposals that include up to three countries, particularly those that demonstrate a past history of successful collaboration, and include a cross-cutting thematic focus in the learning effort.
- Applicants from the United Nations system cannot apply to this call as lead or co-applicants. UN organizations may participate as collaborating organizations. A person cannot be the lead applicant for more than one project.
- IDRC encourages diverse and gender-balanced research teams.
- The lead applicant and co-applicants may negotiate and develop funding arrangements directly with third-party organizations for specific services. IDRC will not contract directly with third-party organizations. Applications that involve third-party organizations must clearly justify their involvement and explain their role(s).
For more information, visit https://www.idrc.ca/en/funding/call-proposals-closing-justice-gap-legal-empowerment-research-and-learning-agenda
