Since independence, Parliament and its processes have been treated by young people as something alien to them, their needs, views and aspirations. As a result, for years the youth has had certain conceptions, some true and some false over the business that is conducted within the walls of parliament in Harare. As such, the author argues that Zimbabwean youths’ views were never put into consideration, decisions with a direct bearing on them were made without their input, simply put, the youth saw Parliament business in Zimbabwe as having nothing of interest to them and as a mere preserve for the older generation. However, all this is set to be a thing of the past. Parliament debates, bills, thrills, spills and lighter moments will soon be easily accessible in just a few clicks on a smartphone, anywhere, anytime, thanks to OpenParlyZW, an online non-partisan initiative created by a group of enthusiastic youths with the aim of bridging the gap and demystifying misconceptions existing between the youth and Parliamentarians. The group believes that to move forward the youth need to be a part of this conversation and should at least know what’s going on in the houses of power and participate in the future of the nation. OpenParlyZW will run as a standalone platform but also on Twitter and Facebook among other social media platforms capturing events each time Parliament sits and providing young people with vital information.
Governance and participation in health
"Sembene!" is a feature documentary on continental Africa's most celebrated filmmaker, the late Ousmane Sembene, from co-directors Samba Gadjigo (author of Sembene’s official biography) and Jason Silverman. SEMBENE! tells the true story of the self-taught novelist and filmmaker who fought, against enormous odds, a 50-year battle to give Africans the power to tell their own stories. SEMBENE! is told through the never-before-seen archival footage and verite footage. It follows an ordinary man who transforms himself from a manual labourer into a fearless and often polarizing spokesman for the marginalized, becoming a hero to millions. The film is about, not only Sembene, but also about the importance of reclaiming African stories.
This paper explores the extent, nature and quality of community participation in health systems intervention research in low- and middle-income countries.
It used peer-reviewed, English language literature published between January 2000 and May 2012 through four electronic databases. Search terms combined the concepts of community, capability/participation, health systems research and low- and middle-income countries. Most articles were led by authors in high income countries and many did not consistently list critical aspects of study quality. Articles were most likely to describe community participation in health promotion interventions (78%, 202/260), even though they were less participatory than other health systems areas. Community involvement in governance and supply chain management was less common (12%, 30/260 and 9%, 24/260 respectively), but more participatory. Articles cut across all health conditions and varied by scale and duration, with those that were implemented at national scale or over more than five years being mainstreamed by government. Most articles detailed improvements in service availability, accessibility and acceptability, with fewer efforts focused on quality, and few designs able to measure impact on health outcomes. With regards to participation, most articles supported community’s in implementing interventions (95%, n = 247/260), in contrast to involving communities in identifying and defining problems (18%, n = 46/260). Many articles did not discuss who in communities participated, with just over a half of the articles disaggregating any information by sex. Articles were largely under theorized, and only five mentioned power or control. Majority of the articles (57/64) described community participation processes as being collaborative with fewer describing either community mobilization or community empowerment. Intrinsic individual motivations, community-level trust, strong external linkages, and supportive institutional processes facilitated community participation, while lack of training, interest and information, along with weak financial sustainability were challenges. Supportive contextual factors included decentralization reforms and engagement with social movements. Despite positive examples, community participation in health systems interventions was variable, with few being truly community directed. Future research should more thoroughly engage with community participation theory, recognize the power relations inherent in community participation, and be more realistic as to how communities participate and cognizant of who decides that.
This paper is part of a series of outputs from the research project on The Politics of Domestic Resource Mobilisation for Social Development. It examines the linkages between resource mobilisation and social outcomes by looking at institutions that play a key role with respect to resource mobilisation and social spending in Uganda. It looks at three institutions—the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) and the Ministry of Health (MoH)—which were selected because they are key organisations in either revenue collection or social service delivery or both, and all three were targets of reforms with varying degrees of success. The paper analyses how these institutions compare with respect to political prioritization, and in particular, to what extent they benefit from key institutional reforms and organizational capacity. The analysis reveals how varying political interests in, and priorities of, public institutions serve to explain differences in the delivery of public services and their organizational capacity. It illustrates the bigger picture that only politically important organizations—those perceived to be key for the political survival of the ruling elite—are well equipped with resources. The findings also stress the point that organizations that tend to perform better do so because they are politically prioritized and offered political protection.
With the recent adoption of a new global development agenda for the next 15 years and negotiations on a new climate regime ongoing, what’s changed for governance of the global economy in the last two decades, and what have we learned? This article maps the shifting context for trade, investment, and sustainable development. It puts global governance efforts into historical context of a globalised economy with lesser attention paid to questions of equity and social inclusion, and an underestimation of persistent and deep-rooted asymmetries in capabilities among countries at different levels of development and perilous levels of inequality among and within most countries around the world. The author suggests that global governance will continue to be a matter of striking the balance between global direction-setting, monitoring the ongoing leadership role of government policy, and supporting the subsidiary implementation of commitments at ground level. The paper points to aligning national policies and ensuring trade and investment systems work for sustainable development rather than funding discrete projects. The author argues that policies, their frameworks and the institutions needed to implement them constitute the most powerful lever for change.
South Africa has continued to face questions about the recent xenophobic violence directed at African immigrants. The issue was raised during a discussion on migration on the side-lines of the 37th Session of the South African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum meeting at Zimbali north of Durban. Lawmakers, experts and government officials were among those who participated in the discussion on migration. At least seven people were killed and thousands others displaced from their homes during attacks on foreign nationals that started in KwaZulu-Natal in April. Speakers called for the movement of people around the continent - including of South Africans - to be encouraged. The Director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, Professor Adebayo Olukoshi, argued that African countries need to take a developmental approach to migration policies - in the same way that countries like the US have done. A South African provincial special reference group led by former UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay is looking into the causes of xenophobic violence and what should be done to prevent it from re-emerging. The group is expected to conclude its work in October.
The author argues that the report on the WHO’s Ebola response fails to adequately address the problems in global health governance it exposed. The Ebola outbreak was a disaster for the International Health Regulations (IHR)—the main international legal rules supporting global health security. The outbreak highlighted dismal compliance with IHR obligations on building national core public health capacities. During the outbreak, WHO failed to exercise authority it has under the IHR. Many WHO member states violated the IHR by implementing travel measures more restrictive than WHO recommended under the IHR and that lacked scientific and public health rationales as the IHR requires. The final report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel asserted that ‘the global community does not take seriously’ its IHR obligations. However the panel’s IHR recommendations are argued by the author to be largely recycled old, ineffective ideas and to reflect weak analysis of the outbreak, difficulties the IHR experienced before Ebola, and challenges confronting IHR reform after this crisis.
The author argues that responses to the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa were varied and many ineffective. More generally, the author suggests that it stems from a failure of international health justice as articulated by a range of legal institutions and instruments, and that it should prompt us to question the state and direction of approaches to the governance of global public health. This paper queries what might be done to lift global public health as a policy arena to the place of prominence that it deserves. It presents critical reasons for the failings of the global public health regime, including the marginalisation of health and equity in current economic individualist, monetised, market-focussed models and goals, and a fragmented, patchwork and ad hoc nature of the global public health architecture, with wide dispersion of the authority to act and a treatment-oriented and disease-specific focus. The paper articulates a new way forward, identifying three courses of action that might be adopted in realising better health outcomes and global health justice, namely value, institutional and legal reform.
This report of the assessment panel which the WHO commissioned on its response to the Ebola outbreak was meant to review the roles and responsibilities at the three levels of the organization (headquarters, regions, countries) and the WHO’s actions in the course of the outbreak. The report and recommendations fall under the following three headings: the International Health Regulations (2005); WHO’s health emergency response capacity; and WHO’s role and cooperation with the wider health and humanitarian systems. It found Member States have largely failed to implement the core capacities, particularly under surveillance and data collection, which are required under the International Health Regulations (2005); in violation of the Regulations, nearly a quarter of WHO’s Member States instituted travel bans and other additional measures not called for by WHO, which significantly interfered with international travel, causing negative political, economic and social consequences for the affected countries; and significant and unjustifiable delays occurred in the declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by WHO. The Panel concluded that WHO be the lead health emergency response agency but that this requires that a number of organizational and financial issues be addressed urgently. The Panel considered that during the Ebola crisis, the engagement of the wider humanitarian system came very
late in the response.
'Enhancing Regional Disaster Preparedness and Response' was the theme of the first extra-ordinary Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Disaster Risk Management and Ministers of Finance, held on June 26, 2015 in Harare, Zimbabwe. The SADC Region is exposed to a wide range of hazards and disasters that frequently result in heavy loss of lives and livelihoods, displacement of large populations, disruption of economic activities, destruction of assets and loss of investment. The Hazards that affect the Region include floods, drought, snow, volcanic eruption landslides, tsunamis, tropical cyclones, storms, wild fires and earthquakes. These hazards increase the risk of shortages of water, outbreaks of diseases such as Malaria, cholera and other diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition and stunted growth, foot and mouth diseases in animals and other negative impacts. The meeting was organised by the SADC Secretariat specifically by the Disaster Risk Reduction Unit under the auspices of the Directorate of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Affairs in collaboration with the Government of Zimbabwe. The Ministers directed the SADC Secretariat to develop a comprehensive regional disaster risk reduction strategy which should include regional response mechanisms and a humanitarian assistance framework. They also agreed to the establishment of a regional disaster preparedness and response fund and development of an integrated early warning system to ensure effective information dissemination on hazards faced by the region.