World Bank (WB) and Civil Society dialogue

FAN develops World Bank Civil Society dialogue

FAN Communications Manager, Ceridwen Johnson attended World Bank Water Week in Washington in February with Andres Mora from FANCA and Nadjiam Djirabaye from ANEW to continue discussions around enabling Southern civil society to understand and engage with the Bank.

We have agreed to develop a programme of work which will include the development of a manual for CSOs who want to understand the Bank better. This initiative responds to the World Bank’s articulated aim to engage more with civil society as part of its evolving business strategy to engage with the full public-private spectrum. It also addresses the challenges that southern CSOs encounter when trying to influence the World Bank at national and international levels on water issues.

Creating dialogue between civil society and the World Bank

In 2007 a FAN/World Bank scoping study was carried out to identify a methodology and feasible topics for global, regional and national level dialogues between CSOs and the World Bank on urban water reform, through a bottom-up approach of inviting CSOs and World Bank staff to propose dialogue activities.  

The study opened up some avenues for dialogue between the Bank and CSOs and was a valuable process of learning and developing mutual understanding.

We are now working with consortium member BothEnds to develop a series of dialogues around the right to water.  An expert meeting took place at The Hague, The Netherlands in September and was followed by a political café in Washington in October 2008. 

The following pieces of work under discussion

• Developing a global dialogue on accountability, affordability and equity

• Developing a primer for CSOs to understand how the bank works and how to engage

• A piece of collaborative research mapping experiences of World Bank working with CSOs