Deadline: 14 June 2018
Increased Demand and Engagement for Accountability (IDEA), funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is seeking applications for a program entitled “Consolidation of Democratic Gains and Promoting Rights Protection” to support civil society to consolidate democratic gains and promote rights protection accountability at regional and national levels in Sri Lanka.
Focus Areas and Sub Issues
- Good governance sub-issues:
- Fostering active citizenship and government transparency by building upon initiatives like Right to Information, Open Government Partnership and other mechanisms at national and local levels, ensuring that awareness and utilization of these mechanisms become more broad-based and their benefits felt by many, including women and youth.
- Combating corruption by addressing the culture of impunity, asset recovery and fostering greater citizen engagement with institutions like Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC).
- Campaigning for reforms for greater transparency and participation like the National Audit Act, the Assets and Liabilities Declaration Act and improving implementation of laws on participatory budget preparation, and policy and practice changes in public sector procurement and financial management.
- Promoting “clean politics” and electoral reforms that are inclusive and gender-sensitive and that ensure better democratic behavior and outcomes.
- Encouraging greater participation, visibility, inclusiveness and safety of women and disadvantaged groups in governance and reform initiatives.
- Rights protection and rule of law sub-issues:
- Ensuring promotion and protection of fundamental rights, such as freedom from fear, due process, equality before the law, integrity of person, liberty and freedoms of expression, assembly and beliefs. This includes working on addressing issues like torture, detention, militarization, disappearance, land rights, hate speech and violence against religious minorities.
- Improved redress and accountability mechanisms through active citizenship, advocating for legal and institutional reforms and accessing the judiciary, independent commissions such as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), National Police Commission (NPC) and Right to Information Commission (RTIC).
- Inclusive and transparent development and economic policy, ensuring that the government’s recalibration of economic policies is transparent and is developed inclusively and accountably with marginalized stakeholders, including women and youth.
- Advocating for and encouraging effective implementation of full set of transitional justice commitments including the recently set up OMP. This may be through analysis, advocacy, and CSO watch groups, as well as well by providing gap-filling support.
- Addressing the differential impact of rights violation on women and making rights protection and promotion gender sensitive through analysis and grounded advocacy
- Gender equality and improving the rights of women sub-area include:
- Addressing gender-based violence in a systematic and structured basis in collaboration with responsible government actors
- Improving the status of women at home and in public life and reducing discrimination through legal and policy reforms.
- Fostering greater inclusiveness and leadership of women in local economic systems and governance systems including through economic empowerment.
Grant Information
Grants to be awarded under this RFA may vary in size from USD 80,000 to a maximum of USD 120,000.
Eligibility Criteria
- Applicants must be Sri Lankan organizations with a recent history of implementing activities in the focus areas of this RFA. Applicants can be any organization with legal personality in Sri Lanka that is not a public sector or a for profit private sector institution. Such local organizations may be registered under a variety of statutes, and take the form of Non-government organizations, not-for-profit companies, societies, trusts, cooperatives, independent trade unions, professional associations, and community based organizations. They must also be responsible, law-abiding organizations with a record of business integrity. Grant funds awarded under this RFA cannot be used towards any profit by the grantees. Applicants can propose to work with smaller locally based CSOs and community based organizations, registered or informal.
- In addition, the applicants under this RFA must be organizations that are recognized for playing a role in the advocacy of chosen thematic area. They must have been in active and continuous operation under the current registration for at least two years. They must have demonstrated experience working on the chosen issue or on a directly related issue at multiple levels (local/regional/national). The applying organizations should have high level of capacity in one or more of the following lines of advocacy work: Mobilization and Popular Campaign, Research and Analysis, Documentation and Victim support, Networking at different levels, Media and Communication and Accessing judicial remedies
How to Apply
Applicants should submit their application online via given website.
For more information, please visit Request for Applications.