Focus on experiences of the local community
As advocacy organizations increasingly intend to shift power to Southern partners, questions about community interactions and local power relations regain relevance. The toolkit therefore zooms in on experiences on the local community level, and community members’ relations with advocacy organizations that are based in regional capitals as well as in the Global North. It presents academic literature on these interactions based on research conducted from 2018-2023 in Ghana and Kenya around case studies on land and extractives.
The toolkit first summarizes literature from a previous project commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs to research the assumptions behind its previous policy framework ‘Dialogue and Dissent’. This study found the legitimacy of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to be a balancing act: different actors value and prioritize various sources of legitimacy, and CSOs cannot cater to all needs equally. The follow-up project focused specifically on the perspectives of local communities, while acknowledging that other stakeholders in the advocacy chain may have different and sometimes competing priorities.
Local community spokespersons
After an overview of this research, the toolkit zooms in on the experiences of local community spokespersons who are selected by advocacy organizations to represent their communities. This section highlights the unique position of these informal intermediaries and some of the challenges they face in their work, particularly in relation to community demands, financial constraints, and threats to their safety. The last section presents a set of discussion questions that advocacy organizations can use within their own offices as well as with partners in project countries in order to assess their legitimacy towards the communities they aim to assist.
Science comics
As part of this project, science comics were designed in collaboration with RIVA Illustrations. Links to the full science comics can be found at the end of the document. The toolkit can be freely downloaded from the websites of Partos and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and may be printed and reproduced by all interested parties.
