Evolution of GAF
S ince 1997 , WAVE Foundation has been working with the Local Government Institutions (LGIs), in the areas of capacity development, facilitating active standing committees, monitoring public services through standing committees involving People’s Alliances; participatory plans and budget for Union Parishad (UP), Pourashava and Upazila and development of 5 Years Strategic Plans for UP, Pourashava & Upazila, activating Village Court and Arbitration Council (at UP level), resource mobilization of LGIs, etc. From the extensive experiences of field level program implementation and logical sequence of its program learning WAVE facilitated the formation of Governance Coalition-GC, a network of NGOs and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) involved in promoting responsive governance and rights of poor and marginalized people through raising awareness, campaign, lobbying and advocacy at local and national level in 2004. Gradually GC consists of 41 members working in 16 districts of Bangladesh. While continuing to work on own priorities, the members of the Coalition move together to advance common vision and mission towards promoting responsive governance in Bangladesh.
At the end of 2006, WAVE Foundation and GC organized a country wide campaign program on `Strong Local Government’ and it continued till mid-2007. In June 2007, the past Caretaker Government formed a seven members committee titled “Sthaneeo Sarkar Protishthan Gotisheel O Shaktishalikaran Committee” (The Committee for Accelerating and Strengthening Local Government Institutions) to review the local government acts at that time and recommend necessary amendments to guide an effective reformation of the entire local government system with a view to building efficient local government institutions. To complement and supplement the initiatives of the government, WAVE Foundation and GC invited organizations working on local government to jointly (a) identify and suggest required reform agenda based on grassroots reality; (b) analyze and finalize the recommendations for LG reform and (c) recommend strategies to ensure proper implementation of the reform. A total of 27 civil society organizations and institutions responded to the call for a broad based support towards promoting strong local government and decentralization in Bangladesh. These organizations decided to organize a National Convention with the slogan “Strong Local Government Must be Established for Good Governance” to finalize a set of recommendations developing through bottom-up discussions and assisting the Government in its local government institutional reform initiative. Accordingly, the national convention was held in July 2007 and finalized 40 points recommendations, submitted those to the committee and most of the recommendations were included in the committee report. Since then the 27 organizations were advancing their advocacy initiatives towards local government reforms together and in 2008, all the organizations unanimously decided to name the new platform as Governance Advocacy Forum (GAF). As part of continual engagement along with deepening its experience in promoting local government reform, at the end of 2009 the forum started ‘Democratic Decentralization & Local Self Government Campaign’ and has continually been undertaking different initiatives to take this issue forward.