Overview

USAID’s support to Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA) has allowed IWA to expand its Community-Based Monitoring (CBM) methodology to include key infrastructure projects in Afghanistan.  CBM allows communities to monitor hundreds of infrastructure projects in provinces throughout Afghanistan, including Parwan, Panjshir, Badakhshan, Herat, Nangarhar and Balkh.  These projects include roads, schools, faculties, hospitals, clinics, irrigation structures, electricity dams, and police stations.  Support from USAID enables IWA to: empower communities at the village, municipal and district levels to monitor infrastructure projects, report on performance, and hold state, military and development agencies accountable through a participatory and transparent process. Key objectives of the project are to:

• Improve citizens’ and donors’ access to information regarding infrastructure projects, thereby allowing for improved quality and responsive service delivery.
• Increase trust among citizens, elected bodies and local government.  The project will increase community partnership with local government through Provincial Monitoring Boards (PMBs) and mutual information-sharing mechanisms to prevent corruption and abuse of authority.
• Increase local ownership of projects and identify and address problems in the targeted infrastructure projects.

Activities

• Community-Based Monitoring: IWA mobilizes communities to monitor local infrastructure projects, which increases the accountability of these projects to Afghan communities.  IWA will sponsor community-based monitoring of 200 infrastructure projects each year.   
• Capacity Building and Community Mobilization: IWA will train and select 400 community members each year to monitor infrastructure projects.  These community members are referred to IWA by local non-state actors, such as local shuras and Community Development Councils (CDCs).
• Identifying Challenges: IWA’s previous experience with CBM suggests that community monitors are able to identify approximately 70 percent of problems in infrastructure projects.
• Community-Driven Solutions: IWA will empower community monitors to address the identified problems, and in cases where the community members cannot resolve the issues themselves, will teach them how to negotiate a resolution with contractors and local officials.
• Access to Information: Communities will have access to scopes of work and other key documents related to the infrastructure projects being monitored.

Accomplishments

• Activities under this project began in June 2012 and will be reported on in an annual achievements report.