19 villages talk to us about their rights

In the village of Nanaba in the Central River Region of The Gambia, the villagers were seated under a big mango tree. They were all men. In an unusually hot climate in this part of the country, the place was relatively cool as the tree under which they sat, provided a much needed shade. Not too far away from them, another group of women were sitting under another mango tree.

Nearby, some of the village girls were drawing water from the well and a carpenter was busy polishing a wooden furniture he was trying to finish. ‘Asalaamualaikum’, the village chief called out in the usual way of greeting. ‘Wa Aleikuma salaam’, replied the villagers. The Chief then went on to ask about the welfare of everybody in their usual traditional way of greeting. He then joined the group of men sitting under the mango tree.

After a brief introduction of his delegation, Bakary Fadera, the Manager for the Development Area (DA11), outlined the purpose of their visit which is a follow-up to an earlier visit that was made to sensitise the villagers on the Participatory Baseline Indicator (PBI) programme which ActionAid International The Gambia is piloting on behalf of ActionAid International. The villagers were all very attentive and highly welcomed the initiative. One of them told me, ‘I am happy that my village was chosen for this exercise’. The villagers participated actively in the different methods and tools that were used to facilitate the PBI data collection exercise. There were Focus Group Discussions, Poverty and Wealth ranking, Venn diagrams, Seasonal Calendars among others. When asked about their impressions of the exercise, Amat Nget said:  

This is a very good exercise because it has helped me to identify the causes of poverty in my village and to know what I can do to alleviate poverty. It has also helped me to know that I have little knowledge about my rights and how I can claim them.

The data collection exercise was also done in nineteen other villages Niamina West and Niamina Dankunku districts in the Central River Region.

AAITG embarked on the Participatory Baseline Indicators (PBI) pilot programme to develop baseline information for the DA with a rights register to enhance effective monitoring and evaluation of programmes. AAITG was chosen along with ActionAid International Kenya and Myanmar to do the pilot on behalf of ActionAid International. This will help the existence of a strong local rights programme that is built on sound analysis of context, power, institutions, actors and rights. It will further enable effective planning and monitoring with a sharp clarity on rights work at the local level. Although the PBI was developed by ActionAid International, it will also be used by partners in the communities where we work. This fact was re-iterated by the acting Executive Director of AAITG Omar Badjie at the opening ceremony in Tendaba Camp in the Lower River Region on behalf of the Executive Director Kujejatou Manneh.

Mr. Badjie stressed the importance of the pilot programme noting that as this is a pilot programme, the whole world will rely on AAITG for the information gathered from the field. He therefore emphasized the importance of having the correct, relevant and reliable information from the communities in which we work. Omar went on to say;  

This is important because the information will be used to inform planning processes and five years down the line, we will use the same information to measure our progress.

Almost thirty participants from ActionAid Nigeria, Burundi, South Africa and AAITG national partners from government agencies, non-governmental and community based organizations took part in the exercise. Having been exposed to the different participatory rural appraisal methods and tools that will be used to facilitate the Participatory Baseline Indicators data collection exercise at community level, participants were then divided into four teams to engage the communities in collecting the relevant information. They were later joined by AA staff from Liberia, Sierraleone and Ghana.

When I spoke to Momodou Wuri Jallow, AAITG Partnership and Right to Food Manager about his team’s findings of the data collection, he said the findings can only be described as interesting. Generally, problems in these villages relate to food deficits followed closely by inadequate safe drinking water. In the three villages of Kerr Ma Alima, Pinyai and Jawuluba, over 50% of the households were very poor as they cannot afford two square meals a day. The reason for this is lack of adequate access to production inputs such as farm implements, fertilizer and seeds. In one of these communities, there was high labour intensity on women as they combine both domestic and field work using rudimentary tools on the farms and have no improved farming implements. At Kerr Ma Alima, access to land is a major problem for women who in most cases would pay D1000 dalasi or two 50kg bags of groundnuts for a plot of land. On the issue of rights, members of these communities said they have some knowledge of human rights but indicated that these are not attained because the duty bearers are not doing much to educate them about their rights.

At the end of the pilot, ActionAid International The Gambia will recommend appropriate participatory tools and methodologies and develop a rights register that will give a clear idea about rights issues based on the constitution and the local context. The outcome of the pilot programme will be used to update the Global Monitoring Framework of ActionAid International based on the new M&E system and the new Global strategy.