Capacity Building for Local Councils

Ever since the first decentralisation reforms were initiated in Cambodia, more and more functions have been delegated to communal, municipal or district authorities. This is a positive development, as decisions indeed need to be made as close to the citizens as possible.

Yet if the local administrations are to efficiently perform these new roles and become really responsive to the public’s demands, then much more has to be done to increase their institutional capacity. Officials have to learn how to accomplish their mandates in a professional and accountable way.

Although the organic law broadly defining the sphere of competence of sub-national authorities was passed in 2008, the Government began to take more courageous steps toward real local autonomy only by mid of the next decade. The decentralisation process has been slow and difficult, especially because various functions have often been delegated in a formalistic way, without offering local officials the actual means to exercise them.

Up until today, the necessary financial and human resources are still missing in most rural or smaller urban areas, but there is an even more fundamental problem too: Councillors are lacking the capacity needed in order to address and eventually solve the issues raised by citizens in their constituencies.

Moreover, according to the latest estimates, the poverty rate in the target provinces (Pursat, Banteay Meanchey, Kampong Speu, Kampong Thom, Kandal and Kep) is almost 20 percent, which is much higher than the national average and further limits the instruments at one’s disposal, emphasizing the need for effective action.

The National Committee for Sub-National Democratic Development (NCDD) is now in the final stages of implementing its first 10 year programme aimed at decentralisation. Recently, the focus has shifted here toward service delivery at the local level, and, most importantly, fiscal decentralisation. There is a strong participation and social accountability component involved, too, under which the Government has joined systematic partnerships with civil society organisations.

API has been active in this field through various I-SAF related initiatives, as described here, here, and here. On the other hand, as far as capacity building for local councillors is concerned, our main goal is to contribute to a real change based on the real needs these officials perceive, as well as on the demands that becomes apparent once a constant dialogue between them and their constituents is initiated. We have therefore taken pains to assess both the institutional capacity of the sub-national authorities and the personal skills of individual councillors in a serious and thoroughgoing way, in order to come up with an offer we have tailored on the basis of these findings.

Against this background, at the beginning of 2019, API has launched an initiative called “Enhancing the Institutional and Operational Capacities of the Provincial Associations of Local Councillors”, in order to primarily fulfill the general demand for more professionalism and more efficiency at the level of the district and commune authorities.

Officials working there had already joined provincial associations in the early days of the decentralisation process, so our project has been able to use this existing infrastructure as a convenient mechanism to organise numerous meetings, coordinate action and disseminate know-how in a systematic way. Within a timeframe extending until the end of 2021, we are offering various trainings ranging from financial management and proposal writing up to resource mobilization and public accountability.

The first results are encouraging: After attending our workshops or using the online learning platforms we created together with our partners, a significant number of local councillors are now more confident that they could plan and implement small initiatives, thus responding to the demand in their communities. While our choice of provinces has been based on our previous experience and contacts, we strongly believe that, in the future, our initiative can and should be extended to cover the whole country, since the need for capacity building is definitely there.

With over three million final beneficiaries in six provinces, and a budget of almost 500,000 dollars, this is one of the most ambitious endeavours we have recently dedicated to local governance. The project is funded by the European Union and implemented by a consortium in which API is joined by Aide et Action and AMDCSPUR, the association of local councillors in the Pursat province. While the latter assumes a leading role, bringing in valuable first-hand experience with the actual needs of sub-national administrations, the former contributes expertise in the field of modern lifelong education, professional training and e-learning.

The capacity building measures directly involve more than 2800 commune and district officials, as well as 1750 representatives of women, youth and persons with disabilities. This is because, here too, we want to make sure that the voices and demands of these vulnerable groups are really heard and taken into account.