Our Vision

Accountability International’s vision is a world where there is accountability for the lives, human rights, and well-being of all persons, across all spheres of society.

Our Mission

As a watchdog ourselves, our mission is to amplify the diverse voices of marginalised communities, by ensuring that the voices of the community lead all our work. We collaborate with marginalized communities to actively exercise their role as watchdogs and hold various leaders accountable. We do this by enabling increased transparency, promoting dialogue, and supporting action as catalysts for increased accountability.

• Accountability International (AI) is an international hybrid NGO working to improve accountability on human rights matters and hold various leaders accountable. 
• Accountability International is a global civil society organisation that works to improve accountability to the most marginalised. We have a global footprint with offices in South Africa, Botswana and Stockholm. The founder and chairman of AI is Rodrigo Garay, who is based in Sweden.
• We conduct research and advocacy that allows us to do our work as a watchdog and hold various leaders accountable.
• We conceptualise and implement innovatively designed projects that are often led by our collaboration with marginalised communities. We put a huge emphasis on needs-based research and community-led advocacy. 
• We provide technical advice in many spaces, and yet remain committed to ensuring that our spaces, communications, and products are all highly accessible to all people.
• We play a watchdog role and work to enhance the capacity of other civil society actors to also take up their role as watchdogs, for sustainable, resilient, and inclusive human rights for all.  In this way, our work is not only beneficial to our partners, but it also spreads across their networks and reaches a wider audience and network. 
• We use the Participatory Action Research (PAR) model, a best practice in which communities co-develop and lead the methodology, development of research tools, conduct the research and produce the final analysis & context-specific and advocacy-focused reports.
• Our work will be a contribution towards the attainment of the Sustainable 
• Development Goals adopted by the UN. It applies to goals no. 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 17.
• Our commitment to and expertise in transparency and accountability is strongly reflected by our Accountability Framework, which we innovatively use as a Theory of Change in all our work. 

Our History 

• Began in 2005 as a response to a need to hold leaders accountable on the response to HIV and AIDS.
• We developed the first comparative grading scorecards for health and human rights.
• We have produced over 65 research reports and scorecards over 17 years. Please click here to view our projects and scorecards.
• We have had significant advocacy wins in global and regional spaces.
• We have innovated various experimental projects which have proved highly successful.

What we do

Additionally, through our collaborations and consulting work, we conduct accountability literacy trainings including scorecard development, stakeholder engagement consultations, impact assessments (with a focus on accountability), capacity building curricula and workshops, including conferences on accountability, etc...

Accountability International is acutely aware that many people do not fully understand the meaning of accountability, often mistaking it for accounting, monitoring and evaluation, governance or responsibility. As a leader in accountability, in Africa and globally, for nearly 15 years, Accountability International has been conducting Accountability Literacy and Scorecarding trainings since 2011.

Few people have had access to information and training on whom to hold accountable, what makes one accountable, and what can be done to increase accountability. Because AI prides itself on only working on needs-driven research and advocacy, we designed tailor-made trainings on Accountability and Scorecarding that can be adapted to any audience, duty-bearers, activists, and even the private sector looking to improve their human rights and inclusion!

These workshops have thus been developed as a response to the needs of partners and evolved based on feedback from participants.

AI workshops are the most hands-on way in which capacity for accountability and developing scorecards for advocacy can be built. Workshops can be customized to suit the background and experience of the participants, and the emphasis is altered while the workshops are in progress based on the dynamics of the group. For example, a workshop for HIV-positive youth would be run differently from that for LGBTI activists. Similarly, the discussions in a women’s workshop reflect different issues to those that are raised in a youth workshop.

AI is proud to have been a leader in popularising the use of scorecards to demand accountability on HIV, SRHR, health, and human rights. AI built on the work of the “Balanced Scorecard” that was being done by others and popularised it for use by health rights activists by applying it to the United Nations data on HIV and AIDS. Thereby launching the Country Scorecard (2008), the first result of an effort that has involved over one hundred international experts and over two years of work to develop its concept and methodology.

Other UN bodies and many other organisations followed and a scorecard is now a common tool for demanding human rights.

AI has developed over 25 scorecards since we began in 2006 and has advised on the use and development of scorecards, bringing accountability to many movements including The International Diabetes Federation, The Global Alliance on Road Safety NGOs and the African Union Scorecard on Financing for Health.

Scorecards by virtue of ‘grading’ countries against each other on a number of elements and indicators, allow us to better identify regional best and worst practices. The AI Scorecard Methodology and Accountability Framework were developed over 2 years with more than 100 global experts on HIV, epidemiology, communications, data and statistical analysis, advocacy, key populations, governance and accountability. 

Our Scorecard Methodology is based on a 5-point scale which shows progress or declines sooner, by catching successes for praise or failures that require support earlier, in comparison with other methods that apply a 3 or 4-scale point system. 

Additionally, our Scorecard Methodology includes a No Data (grey) grading, which is vital to accuracy on performance. By comparison, other methods give a rating for an ND response, which is neither accurate nor reflective of the actual situation. We like to differentiate for accuracy and showcase that in fact, there is no data on a specific element or indicator. The fact that there is ND on an indicator, is an equally important finding that shows a lack of political will to respond to a certain issue.

An illustrative example in the context of violence against women is that 17 out of 55 African states have no data at all reported showing the percentage of individuals who believe a husband is justified to beating his wife if she goes out without telling her husband indicator². Therefore, across our scorecard elements on the state of violence against women in Africa, we would be able to showcase the extent to which there is in fact a lack of data on VAW, and implicitly of political will to collect and report on that specific issue/ indicator.  

Voices from the field about our Accountability Literacy and Scorecarding for Advocating for Accountability trainings work work³ 

‘’Last year I worked on doing advocacy around the ministry of health and other partners, and now it’s time for us to evaluate and assess whether this people will keep their promise. Will definitely use this method (accountability scorecard method). Will remember the colours (they got my attention) and will go back to my circle and will definitely use this. I believe it will help us determine which methods and strategy are best for us in Myanmar.’’ 

“I thought when I came here as a young woman that my constituency suffered discrimination. But now my empathy for others has increased, and my anger is up and my hunger is stirred to represent these others too!”

“I will incorporate what I have learnt in my work.”

“The training is very useful, and I hope it will be helpful for future advocacy activities.”

“I have learnt about the accountability framework, transparency, dialogue, and action. I have learnt the scorecard methodology.”

“Young gay activist: “I am able to look beyond myself. I felt isolated but I see that there is company. I feel a fundamental shift in perception. For example, with PWD, they are whole and I should not pity them. I have been schooled and corrected. “

“As a representative of LGBTIQ, I thought only LGBT were stigmatised, but I now realise that PWD have some things too. Imagine to have no interpreter when you go to the clinic, to explain?!”

“The method fostered team spirit; each person delivered well because of the team work.”

“I had the best time in this workshop? It’s definitely the very best experience I’ve had so far this year. I had a new perspective about life first and then people. The workshop taught me selflessness; it isn’t just about me and my community alone, every other marginalised group go through pains just as the people in my community. It gave me the picture of the kind of environment and Nation I want to see – where discrimination is non-existent.”

“The ‘Accountability on African SRHR Instruments’ toolkit webinars, for me, seemed very helpful for Civil societies as well as society at large when it comes to accessing SRHR services. It clearly tells us how we can hold our government accountable at all levels. The Toolkit points out the populations struggling with accessing SRHR in Africa, which will help organisations easily recognize key populations they need to work with in any given community in Africa. Further, I see this toolkit as an eye opener to some of the commitments our governments have signed, as we can use to hold them accountability at global, international and community level.”

“The webinars on Accountability for African SRHR Instruments were good because they explained what African countries agreed to promote the rights of women on SRH and improve access to SRHR services. The toolkit helps Civil Society organizations to hold their government accountable to fulfil the obligations of the instruments they signed like the MAPUTO protocol and the Abuja declaration. The toolkit will benefit actors in the SRHR because it will help for advocacy with the government and other duty bearers.”

As a response to the need to empower CSOs on accountability matters and how to increase accountability for human rights, we aim to develop the Accountability Literacy for Change (ALC) project. 

Starting in 2023, AI aims to develop the ALC as a digital education programme on accountability that will empower human rights defenders in their work.

The ultimate purpose of the ALC project is to enable civil society representatives to meaningfully, and from self-perceived perspectives, become empowered and understand the issue of accountability, and how accountability can be used as an effective influencing mechanism that, can ultimately improve human rights.

Within the framework of the project, we will develop digital training on accountability that will be supplemented with physical workshops.

Ultimately, we will:

• Document all the knowledge that we have developed with AI (including but not limited to: research reports, trainings, scorecards, etc.)
• Select parts of our collective knowledge to develop a digital learning platform on accountability.
• We will produce new material that is targeted and tailored in consultation with various stakeholders to ensure it addresses CSOs’ needs. Examples include writing, video, animated files, and documents that are accessible to individuals with auditory or visual impairement.
• Furthermore, we will develop a business model to create a sustainable economic model.
• We will test the digital platform and further improve it to ensure a wide reach of stakeholders that can access, participate and benefit from the ACL.
• We will use our method Participatory Action Research (PAR) when conducting consultations on both, how to develop our MVP and after launching our MVP.
• Enable civil society representatives to use our digital learning platform and use the new knowledge for advocacy work. Through our training, representatives of civil society can learn how to use accountability as a tool to increase accountability on a diverse range of human rights matters, and thus, ultimately, hold leaders accountable. 
• Enable (with the support of our digital education platform and physical workshops) the exchange of information and experiences between civil society actors across the globe.
• Through experience sharing, additional knowldge such as best practices, lessons learned and key experiantial aspects will emerge and be documented. This new generated knowldge can be further used in shaping future content, examples of case studies used during the workshops, and ensure that best practices and lessons learned are shared across, for other CSOs to be able to benefit and learn from these (lived) experiences.

Short-term results/effects:

1. At the completion of the project, participants and beneficiaries of our trainings have gained increased knowledge about accountability, their rights, and access processes and strategies for opinion-influencing work, in global health and human rights on how to hold leaders accountable.

Long-term effect:

1. Increase the representation and participation of civil society representatives in the exchange of experience and opinion work on policies and decisions affecting global health and human rights.
2. Increase the capacity of civil society representatives. 

Beneficiaries:

Our beneficiries include human rights defenders such as community representatives or groups, civil society organisations (CSOs) or representatives in Africa, and internationally.

Our plan:

In 2023 we will launch and a pilot the minimum viable product and get input from representatives of civil society. We intend to reach at least 1000 representatives of civil society. 200 of these will undergo training and provide feedback for further development of the ALC.

In 2024, we will rework and further develop our digital platform with more adequate content. We will reach at least 5000 representatives of the civil society. At least 500 from this group will undergo our digital training.

By 2025, we will scale up our digital education aiming to reach at least 10,000 representatives of civil society. At least 1000 people from this group will undergo our digital training.

By 2027, we will reach at least 50,000 representatives of civil society and 10,000 will annually undergo our digital training.

Our method:

1. AI uses a method to facilitate research called Participatory Action Research (PAR). AI is a leader in the use of PAR for marginalised communities in Africa and the EU. PAR has its origins in the anthropological field and involves actors in the local community designing and conducting the research from start to finish: developing the methodology, producing questionnaires, conducting interviews, analysing data and writing reports. The actor then uses the research results to drive public opinion and is then supported by their unique knowledge base. It will be easier to argue for funding and make recommendations thanks to the in-depth knowledge of this research. This procedure contributes to the natural generation of knowledge via self-reflection and self-examination, rather than knowledge gathering by outsiders.
2. Partnerships are a fundamental part of AI’s work. Over the years, AI has worked out highly rewarding partnerships with hundreds of organizations, from major implementation partners, to community-based organizations at national and local levels, respectively.
3. AI’s way of conducting research is based on the Accountability Framework, which AI itself developed to be used at an international, national, regional, and municipal level.

The project consists of three different phases and will commence over the mentioned timelines:

PHASE 1: March 2023 - December 2023

PHASE 2: January 2024 - December 2024

PHASE 3: January 2025 - December 2025

PHASE 4: January 2026 - December 2027

PHASE 1.

March 2023 - December 2023.

Phase one involves developing a so-called Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The purpose here is to develop a digital platform with various content that we can test on a selection of pre-determined target groups.

These tests will enable us to adapt our service to the target group and further develop the service for phases 2 and 3. The budget for the MVP is US$200,000.

PHASE 2.

January 2024 - December 2024

During this phase, we will further develop the MVP launched in 2023. This will be in accordance with the views and data that we have received from the various target groups and testing.

Phase 3.

January 2025 - December 2025

During this phase, we will further adapt our platform to the needs of the target group. We will create more content and structure so we can scale up our business and project deliverables.

To completely achieve our goals and implement all of the phases, we require funding to the amount of US$650,000 that will be used across the three phases. 

Phase 4.

January 2026 - December 2027

Implementation and expansion phase.

Budget breakdown:

Phase 1 - USD $200,000

Phase 2 - USD $200,000

Phase 3 - USD $250,000

Phase 4 - TBC

Accountability Literacy for Change project contacts:

Rodrigo Garay

Accountability International Founder and Working Chair

Email: Rodrigo[at]accountability.international

Keikantse Phele

Accountability International Program Manager

Email: keikantse[at]accountability.international