Current assignments

Client : Open Society Institute
Project Duration: Four months
Project Title: Developing a citizens’ agenda for elections

Elections are to conducted in a few months in Pakistan .The election manifesto in a functioning and vibrant democracy can be considered as a written contract or list of promises that a political party makes to the public. Therefore election manifestos are a crucial step towards making political parties and consequently the governments formed by them responsible to the public. This in turn leads to the development of an open, vibrant and democratic society where the will of the people prevails.

However, for the will of the people to prevail, it is important that their also be reflected and echoed in the party manifesto in the first place. Unfortunately, the experience in Pakistan has been that either political parties re-cycle old and outdated manifestos from previous elections or there have also been instances where the parties have not presented a manifesto in the first place.

In both cases, the public voice – the citizens’ voice is not reflected leading to an environment whereby a majority of the Pakistani citizens feel divorced from the political process further increasing political apathy. This is the reason why a majority of the citizens do not look upon elections as an instrument of electing truly public representatives and consequently there is low voter turn out. For a public representative is one that articulates the citizens voice.

Therefore it is important that the citizens’ agenda for civic and political issues should be reflected in the party manifestos of the political parties and IL will seek to determine as to what are the issues that concern the public and what do citizens want to be included in the political parties’ vision for the country.

Client: Commonwealth Secretariat and Commonwealth Foundation, London.
Project duration: July 2007-July 2008
Project title: Evaluation of devolution process in Pakistan from citizen’s perspective

Individualland together with the Commonwealth Secretariat, London, the Commonwealth Foundation, London is conducting an evaluation of the Devolution process in Pakistan from the citizens’ perspective through the use citizens score cards. Beginning July 2007, the study would span out in twelve months through out Pakistan

The proposed score-cards would focus on how and what local administrators could do to better meet needs of marginalized segments of society, including the landless poor, women and minorities; what Local Government officials can do to improve/facilitate Citizens Community Boards (CCBs) formation and to enhance community participation in them, what policy options are available for using the ascribed status of local government's as a corporate entity to improve social service delivery and how has this devolution experience been on ground?

Client: Shehri-Citizens for a Better Environment, Pakistan
Project Duration: July 2007-July 2008
Project title: Participatory Citizen-Police Interaction and Training for Improved Policing of Human Rights Violations

The project which will be implemented and executed by Shehri-Citizens for a Better Environment (Shehri-CBE) aims to strengthen the institution of local police by enhancing the capacity of the law enforcement officials to deal with human rights violations. While the main target group would be the local police, by facilitating a positive interaction between the local community and law enforcement officials, a process of developing trust/cooperation would be initiated thus strengthening democratic rule. This is considered essential for sustainability of actions as lack of trust and absence of meaningful communication between the two is mainly responsible for the existing disconnect. Individualland in this year long project supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, USA (NED) will provide documentation and evaluation support to Shehri-CBE.

Completed assignments

Asian Development Bank
Project Duration: February 2007- June 2007
Project title: Consultations for ADB’s five year Country Partnership Strategy for Pakistan (2007-2011)

Individualland‘s Lead consultant was the lead facilitator in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan in a Pakistan-wide consultation organized by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). This process lasted four months, from March to June 2007, and is one input to ADB’s five -year Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for Pakistan, 2007-2011.

Through this consultation process, ADB sought to understand the perspectives of a range of stakeholders throughout Pakistan on key issues and challenges for achieving effective and sustained development results. It was also testing a model of participation in strategy formulation for possible adaptation to other countries in the region in the future. Steps included: (i) orientation for all team members, practice with proposed methods for district consultations, and finalization of the approach in one rural district; (ii) district level consultations in each of the four provinces (iii) a series of meetings in each provincial capital and (iv) a national consolidation meeting in Islamabad.

Client: Client: Commonwealth Secretariat and Commonwealth Foundation, London.
Project: Paper on Strengthening Decentralization in Pakistan and the Commonwealth
Duration: April-July 2006

This paper commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum seeks to study the Pakistan Devolution and decentralization model against the backdrop of international models of devolution.