Mar 06

JPC Bamenda Participates in A Civil Society Working Group Meeting at the U.S Embassy

jpc-bamenda-in-civil-society The Cameroon Civil Society Working Group on Governance and Accountability met on October 4th 2012 and agreed to submit the four policy recommendations below to its counterpart working group in Washington. The group deeply appreciated the opportunity to contribute, and suggested that American policy regarding governance and accountability should:

Focus program assistance on institutional partnering to support greater trust and confidence-building between civil society organizations and governments through joint activities or similar funding innovations;
Promote Information Communications Technology to encourage transparency, inclusion and information access/exchange among the private sector, government (FOIA), and civil society across the entire policy process from drafting legislation to program implementation;
Monitor the operating environment for civil society via annual country reports with criteria for civil society space such as enabling legislation/regulations, transparent guidelines defining the meaningful representation and participation of civil society, and the protection of civil society activists; and
Enhance the global standing of Civil Society as an active strategic development partner with a mechanism for sustainability of conducive environments of Civil Society activities at the world, regional and local level.

The Working Group decided to convene at least quarterly with the next meeting planned for early January. The members also look forward to the web chat on governance and accountability planned for November. As noted in the vision paper, with many thematic civil society groups already operating in Cameroon, the Cameroon Governance and Accountability Working Group will serve as an umbrella group as a reflection of the cross-cutting nature of the issues.

Civil Society Working Group Participants: