Insight
Read our recent publications
This month, GPG launched its 13th publication in the Guide to Parliaments series during a webinar on Youth Participation and the impact of Covid-19 on youth policy with a special focus on Bahrain chaired by Lord Jeremy Purvis of Tweed. The publication was co-authored by Aileen Walker, former Director of Public Engagement at the UK Parliament, and Francesca Danmole, Public Policy Expert. They presented the publication and took part in a discussion with HE Ahmad Alaamer, member of the Bahrain Parliament and President of the Youth and Sports Committee, and Maryam Al Sada, Head of Educational Affairs at the Bahrain Institute for Political Development.
GPG’s MENA Project Manager Nayla Zein provides an outline of the discussion in a blog.
Additionally, we launched a series of interview profiles highlighting the expertise and work of our high-level expert Associates. The first episode of our series focussed on former Deputy Chief of Staff to the Deputy Prime Minister Baroness Alison Suttie.
Discover our new website
If you’re reading this, you may have noticed – GPG got a brand new website! We are very excited to share this fully refurbished platform with you. We paid close attention to the way its navigation works, as we want it to best display GPG’s global experience and the breath of our projects.
This month, discover one of our five areas of expertise:
Local development and decentralisation
Decentralisation is increasingly recognised internationally as essential for good governance. Done well, it leads to greater participation, greater efficiency, and greater diversity and is a driver of economic development in areas outside of the capital. Local empowerment is thus a fundamental building block of a successful representative political system.
GPG has provided support to a range of different countries to design and implement effective decentralisation reform, usually operating at three levels: strategic planning, skill and capacity building, and direct support at the local level.
Explore the area of expertise’s page: find out about our expert Associates for this topic, including Former Secretary General of the National Assembly for Wales (now Senedd) and Chair of the Commission on Devolution in Wales Sir Paul Silk, former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia Gordana Čomić, and Former FCO Minister and Minister for Women and Equality Meg Munn.
Scroll down and explore our diverse case studies, ranging from managing local-central relations in a conflict environment in Iraq to building local coalitions for change in Tanzania.
Finally, discover our range of related resources. You may want to look into one of our Guide to Decentralisation paper – or listen to Episode 13 of our Politics as Usual podcast in which GPG Associate and and former Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt discusses his career. Do take a look at our related Insight: why not try this piece by Former Leader of Camden Council Sarah Hayward about our work in Jordan?
Iraq
GPG Iraq Project to be extended until the end of 2021
We are glad to announce that the Iraq project’s activities got extended until December 2021 to support the Iraqi Council of Representatives (CoR) in the transition process in anticipation of the expected elections in October 2021.
During August, GPG’s Iraq team coordinated with the CoR Finance Committee to develop a guide that would mentor the committee to oversee governmental strategies. This guide mainly tackles the principles for good scrutiny practices and highlights options for how the committee might begin to assess the strength of policy assumptions as well as how it might monitor progress in implementing a strategy. Moreover, we held another session with the Council of Representatives Offices (COROs) to follow-up on the case management system that would help improve parliamentary committees response to issues raised by the COROs.
GPG is currently reaching out to some Iraqi Civil Society Organisations which are available to attend the hearing session organised by the Youth and Sports Committee in light of their inquiry on the laws regulating youth’s training and employment in Iraq. Furthermore, the Women Committee signed off and approved the political manifesto which the committee developed with GPG’s support.
Sudan
Kicking off the Sudan Modern Slavery extension
Work is underway on the project following the extension awarded by the Home Office Modern Slavery Innovation Fund. The team will be concentrating their efforts with supporting the implementation of Sudan’s NCCT’s (National Committee for Combatting Trafficking) national action plan—with a special focus on improving interstate coordination and initiating baseline discussions around the formation of a national referral system. GPG will also continue supporting the human trafficking committee’s capacity building efforts and the legislative reform on modern slavery laws, currently in progress in Sudan.
Sudan’s large territory and high number of neighbouring countries have long challenged efforts from its authorities to curb transnational crimes such as trafficking. With tens of thousands of refugees from neighbouring Ethiopia fleeing the ongoing conflict in Tigray, the government of Sudan will have to step up its efforts to protect vulnerable refugees from exploitation. GPG’s work with the NCCT seeks to increase the impact of governmental anti-trafficking policies in such border states across the country.
Global Partners Governance Foundation
Uzbekistan
Significant strides for Human Rights in Uzbekistan as we prepare the next phase of our project
GPGF team has been monitoring recent human rights related developments in Uzbekistan to identify priority areas for our upcoming cooperation with the Human Rights Commission. One major achievement was the successful hosting by the Republic of Uzbekistan successfully of the World Conference on Youth Rights on 12-13 August – an initiative of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, presented at the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council. Another significant step was the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, through which Uzbekistan recognises that persons with disabilities have legal capacity in all aspects of life as any other social groups.
GPG will resume coordination meetings in early September with the Chair of the Commission Professor Akmal Saidov. Together with our expert Associates we will set the direction of the planned activities until the end of the project in December.