The Great Lakes Civil Society Project (GCP) is a regional programme implemented since January 2010 by the Danish Refugee Council in partnership with civil society organisations in six countries of the Great Lakes region: Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Central African Republic, and South Sudan.
The project’s vision is for civil society to hold governments accountable to the commitments made for protecting displaced persons in their country, by proposing realistic policy solutions to conflict and displacement.
The project supports national civil society organisations in documenting and analysing specific displacement and conflict issues, and translating these analyses into practical advocacy goals at the local, national and regional levels. It draws on existing legal and political frameworks for the protection of refugees and IDPs, such as the Great Lakes Pact on Security, Stability and Development, and the African Union Kampala Convention, as well as national-level IDP and refugee policies and legislative tools. Where possible, it encourages cross-border learning between civil society organisations and regional initiatives aimed at providing joint solutions to regional displacement problems.
Activities supported by the GCP
The Great Lakes Civil Society Project (GCP) offers technical and financial support to civil society organisations involved in the following types of activities:
- Monitoring and documentation of displacement dynamics: IDP/refugee profiling and movements, return and reintegration modalities, needs assessments.
- Qualitative analysis of specific displacement issues: resettlement and access to land, inter-community conflict, quality of the humanitarian response, State functions in IDP/refugee assistance.
- Legal/political audits: analyses of gaps in existing legal frameworks, institutional implementation frameworks, mapping of existing policies and sectoral laws on displacement.
- Drafting of national legislation/policy: participation in processes of elaboration of national IDP policies, monitoring of timelines.
- Consultation with beneficiaries: facilitation of formal mechanisms for consultation of IDPs and refugees.
- Sensitisation of stakeholders: training of government/security forces/civil society on existing laws and policies, dissemination of research findings, exchange visits.
- Advocacy towards governments and regional institutions: translating of research findings into policy recommendations, identification of advocacy targets at local, national and international levels, dissemination of research findings, and participation in policy development workshops at national/international levels.
GCP partners and activities
Democratic Republic of Congo
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Great Lakes Civil Society Project supports a joint project by Action pour le Développement et la Paix Endogènes (ADEPAE) and Solidarité des Volontaires pour l’Humanité (SVH) in the Eastern province of South Kivu.
The project follows an initial piece of research undertaken by both organisations looking at the challenges of returning Congolese refugees from Burundi and Tanzania. This research offers recommendations to various stakeholders in the Democratic Republic of Congo that were validated in a series of workshops throughout South Kivu in 2011.
ADEPAE and SVH are undertaking advocacy and sensitisation activities in Bukavu, Fizi, Uvira and Minembwe aimed at raising awareness of the challenges of the repatriation process and demanding increased government accountability in managing this process. These activities include further research around refugee perceptions in the camps in Burundi and Tanzania.
Burundi
In Burundi, the Great Lakes Civil Society Project supports Rema Ministries in capacity-building activities for local returnee associations in several communes across the country. In conjunction with these associations, Rema is carrying out a research project looking at the reintegration of Burundian returnees within the country’s current socio-economic context.
The research analyses land and asset recovery in the context of these returns, as well as access to education and healthcare, inter-community conflict and transitional justice in Burundi.
The aim of the research is to provide Rema with updated data to consolidate its strategy for the coming years, and to offer a basis for advocacy activities which will take place throughout 2012 in Burundi as well as within the framework of the Great Lakes Pact and the East African Community.
Kenya
In Kenya, the Great Lakes Civil Society Project works with the Refugee Consortium Kenya (RCK) to support the adoption of a national-level IDP policy and legislation. These activities range from the organisation of advocacy meetings and workshops with government and parliament officials to explain the rationale for this legislation, to awareness-raising and media campaigns targeting local IDP communities and the general public.
RCK draws on concrete case-studies from its work with displaced communities in Kenya, and has developed a leading role within the Protection Working Group at the national level.
Since 2011, RCK has been working on documenting this multi-stakeholder participatory process to offer an account of the strengths, as well as the shortcomings, of the process that went into the preparation of the IDP policy. This account will serve as reference material for other civil society actors undertaking similar activities in other countries of the Great Lakes region.
In addition to its work around IDP-related legislation in Kenya, RCK also works on the unfolding legal frameworks on forced migration within the different countries of the East African Community, with a view to prescribing common strategies in conjunction with other actors.
Uganda
In Uganda, the Great Lakes Civil Society Project supports the Refugee Law Project (RLP) in a research project aimed at documenting the impact of Uganda’s national IDP policy and its relevance for addressing displacement issues in country, seven years after its adoption.
The research evaluates the policy’s modalities of implementation, its relevance for addressing different displacement situations in country, and its impact on the quality of the humanitarian response. It compares it with other existing policy frameworks, drawing on several case studies across the country to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the policy both in terms of content (IDP categorisation/labelling, types of displacement covered, roles and responsibilities of different actors etc.), and practical implementation (use of the policy as an overall framework/guideline for intervention, coordination between actors, availability of resources to implement, etc.).
It also analyses the political, institutional and financial blockages that may have impeded its effective implementation since 2005-6, and seeks to determine whether the IDP policy is still an appropriate instrument to deal with displacement.
The aim of the research is to provide RLP, as well as government authorities, humanitarian actors and policy-makers in Uganda with updated qualitative material to address some of the shortcomings of the policy, in specific advocacy workshops that will take place throughout 2012.
Central African Republic
In the Central African Republic, the Great Lakes Civil Society Project supports a national-level initiative aimed at domesticating the IDP Protocol of the Great Lakes Pact into the country’s legal architecture. The initiative is spearheaded by members of civil society and the CAR government, and aims at elaborating national legislative and policy tools to improve the response, by all intervening actors, to displacement in-country.
Regional LRA initiative
The Great Lakes Civil Society Project supports a cross-border project to document displacement dynamics linked to the activities of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Central African Republic (Zemio), Democratic Republic of Congo (Faradje) and South Sudan (Yambio). This project supports information-sharing and networking between civil society organisations in the three countries monitoring activities of LRA-induced displacement, and helps consolidate local-level initiatives aimed at sensitising leaders and better preparing local communities to the LRA threat. These activities range from providing adequate assistance to LRA victims, to conducting joint analyses of the governance structures that may perpetuate the threat in these zones. The aim of the project is to feed into existing advocacy initiatives at the local, national and regional level, by demanding increased assistance for managing and resolving the LRA crisis.
The GCP’s main partners in this initiative are APRU (Association pour la Promotion Rurale) in Faradje, Democratic Republic of Congo, and JUPEDEC (Jeunesse Unie pour la Protection de l’Environnement et le Développement Communautaire) in Zemio, Central African Republic.
Linking the local to the regional
At the regional level, the GCP collaborates with the International Great Lakes Secretariat in Bujumbura towards the domestication of the IDP and Property Protocols of the Great Lakes Pact in several countries of the Great Lakes region. The GCP project acts as a link between national civil society organisations wishing to input into regional policy-making processes, and international institutions such as the Great Lakes Secretariat or the African Union, bringing together these actors around specific research findings to discuss the relevance of existing policies and to set common advocacy targets.
Funding
The Great Lakes Civil Society Project is funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) under the Peace and Security unit of its Regional Cooperation office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Contact
Alexandra Bilak, GCP Programme Manager
Email: gl-pm.hoa@drc.dk
