ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the author’s time in Nepal as the coordinator of the World Bank’s new Social Accountability project there called PRAN. The World Bank was expanding this topic and Nepal was one of the first country programmes. Nepal had recently finished a 10-year civil war between the Monarchy and the Maoists: the Comprehensive Peace Accord of 2006 passed many valuable laws to help the poor and marginalised citizenry. However, their work soon showed that many of these laws were not being implemented so providing scope for a programme to help citizens hold the government accountable for non-implementation of their rights and entitlements. In many cases, the women, poor and excluded (World Bank terminology) were not aware what their rights and benefits were (because government officials had not told them); they had, not surprisingly, not received these benefits; and when they questioned or complained to local government, they were told that the funds had been spent elsewhere. The PRAN programme worked through four national NGOs, 32 regional CSOs and numerous citizens’ groups to educate them about their rights and entitlements, and to teach them how to claim them. Interestingly, local government corruption was funnelled to political parties rather than individuals.
