HELPING COMMUNITIES SPEAK OUT
It’s not often you get to present your demands to politicians live on television, without even leaving your house. Yet for hundreds of people across Armenia, this is exactly what happened, thanks to our brigade of election postwomen, who visited homes across the country in the run-up to the elections, gathering thousands of questions about poor services, fractured infrastructure and infringed rights. Sorting and summarising them, they presented the issues to politicians in television broadcasts, as hundreds of thousands of voters tuned in to see how they responded. It was only one of many innovative projects we ran around the world over the last year. The day-today realities of corruption and mismanagement won’t always make the headlines, so we work to create new spaces where citizens can make their voices heard – whether it’s door-to-door post officers, community outreach or public debates.
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Take Liberia, for example, where our “Resource and You” forums bring local communities, mining companies and government officials together in packed-out meeting halls, helping raise awareness of the benefits citizens should receive in return for resource exploitation, and enabling them to speak out when they fail to materialise. Facing public scrutiny, officials and parliamentarians have increased openness and agreed to review concession agreements to ensure communities accrue benefits and the environment is protected. Travelling to remote communities, we help involve those who are often marginalised in public debates. In Argentina, we found that many indigenous people were being cut off from basic government support – such as healthcare and education – because they weren’t recognised as citizens. Using outreach events to raise awareness of the importance of citizenship, we’ve already helped hundreds of people obtain identification cards, and we’re calling on the government to recognise the communities as a whole. Most importantly, we want to give people the tools to speak out on their own. Citizens in India, for example, are often denied services by officials who want bribes in return for processing their application. Our community trainings, part of our Pahal project, offer a way to fight back. Learning how to use public information requests strategically, citizens can demand an official update on the status of their application, forcing corrupt staff to move their request forward. From land registration documents to support for new mothers, we’ve helped hundreds of people demand what is owed to them – all without paying illicit fees.
01 Election post officers in Armenia. © Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center
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02 Citizens in India learn about their rights. © Transparency International India