Strengthening democratic local governance

As the country is going through a historical political transition, marked by a change of government through credible elections and by the launching of a peace process, the project aims at strengthening democracy and peace efforts at subnational levels. The project will focus in particular on making local processes more transparent, inclusive, accountable and participatory in order to improve citizens’ satisfaction with public service delivery. On the one side, UNDP will strengthen the state and township authorities to conduct participatory planning and budgeting, using discretional grants to the township level as an entry point that mimics fiscal transfers. On the other side, an (I)NGO subcontracted by UNDP will support the demand side to engage meaningfully and actively in those processes, with specific support to women and vulnerable groups. Newly elected ward and village tract administrators will be in particular empowered to better represent their communities’ priorities in their biweekly meetings with the township administration, characterized currently by top-down interactions. The commonly agreed use of the discretional grants will provide concrete and visible improvements of public services.

This project will be implemented in all townships of a state in SDC’s focus area in Myanmar, either Mon or Kayin, giving a minimum coverage to be relevant to inform and help shape future national policy development on local governance and decentralization. It is timely, as the government has just announced a decentralization of its general administrative department (GAD).

The project also aims at strengthening good governance practices in ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) areas, to the extent possible, and support better coordination between EAOs and state and township administration. How to do so will need to be further elaborated during the inception phase.