Civil society and government representatives from the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea met in Manila last week to launch the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability, or ANSA-EAP. The network is designed to support and advance demand-side governance initiatives across the Asia and Pacific region, building on a successful model established in Africa last year. The launch was hosted by the Ateneo University School of Government, which is partnering with the World Bank in sponsoring the initiative. ANSA-EAP will provide a common platform for exchange of information and experience on social accountability in the region, along with delivering capacity building initiatives and technical assistance for both civil society organizations and governments. A joint initiative of the East Asia/Pacific region and the World Bank Institute (WBI), it is supported by an initial three-year endowment from the Bank’s Development Grant Facility. 
“There are a rapidly growing number of applications of social accountability tools and approaches not only in the region but all over the world,” said Philippine country director Bert Hofmann in his remarks at the launch. “The Philippines is a fitting location for ANSA-EAP given the strength of civil society here and the many positive experiences to date.” ANSA-EAP acting director and dean of Ateneo’s School of Governance, Tony LaVina added, “We are proud that we are part of this major effort to raise social accountability to a new level of sophistication in terms of methodologies and ways of engaging governments.” Ateneo University is well known within the region and globally for spearheading the Textbook Count Initiative, which tackled widespread corruption in textbook procurement in the Philippines, as well as Government Watch, which was the national coordinator of civil society organizations under the initiative. The government sponsor of the textbook initiative, Juan Miguel Luz, is chair of ANSA-EAP’s Asian-led executive committee, which governs the new network, “There are many in-country networks in the region that can benefit from being better linked.” ANSA-EAP will build on this country experience by working to improve the application of current methodologies, such as citizen report cards, participatory public expenditure tracking surveys, social audits, third-party monitoring, social contracts and other methodologies. A key role will be to research new methodologies and to explore how to best assess the development effectiveness of existing approaches. 
“This is a way to strengthen implementation of the GAC by supporting a local institution’s capacity to provide assistance and technical advise,” said Mary McNeil of WBI, who along with Andrew Parker in the Philippines country team manages the initiative. Referring to the launch of ANSA-Africa last year she added, “With the launch of ANSA-EAP we are building a global network of regional institutions that are linked and can learn from one another.” Assisting ANSA-EAP’s executive committee is a twelve member technical advisory group drawn from across the region. The first meeting of the group was held prior to the launch and connected via videoconferenceing to teams working on social accountability in Cambodia and Papua New Guinea.The network will continue to rely on videoconferencing and other distance learning approaches to reach its far-flung constituencies. For more information see www.worldbank.org/wbi/accountability |
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