Weekly Report for February 5 - 11, 2011: Iraq Access to Justice Program

The program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), aims to address the needs of women, widows, orphans, detainees, minorities, the impoverished, and internally displaced persons and returnees. Key highlights from the weekly report include the submission of the Annual Work Plan for Year 1 to USAID on February 5, 2011. Planning for a symposium on issues related to denial of identity has initiated, with the goal of guiding programmatic approaches to supporting institutions assisting populations lacking formal identity. A forum on Strategic Communication Planning is scheduled for March 7, which will lead to training packages for civil society organizations (CSOs) and professional organizations on developing plans for delivering messages to a target population. Component 1 of the program, focused on improving knowledge of legal remedies, has made significant progress. Organizing meetings with members of the Women, Social Welfare & Education Commissions in the Baghdad Provincial Council and local NGOs have taken place. The Development Coordination Officer (DCOP) met with Component 1 team members and the Media Specialist to initiate the work plan and develop necessary steps for building a curriculum for strategic communication plan training. Component 2, aimed at improving legal education and services, has also made notable progress. The Pilot Project framework has been finalized, with confirmation of buy-in from the Iraqi Alliance for Disability Organizations (IADO) and the Iraqi Civil Action Network (ICAN). Formal engagement with local governance structures has been initiated through meetings with the Baghdad Provincial Council and the National Institute of Human Rights. Component 3, focused on advocacy and improved government services, has planned a forum in March on the issue of groups struggling without access to formal government identity cards. This group includes multiply vulnerable populations such as children, and the forum will bring together experts and actors engaged in the issue to discuss causes and potential interventions for improving access to government identification. The program has also made progress in grants management, with the development of responses to comments received from USAID and the updating of the Grants Manual. The Training Specialist has developed a draft framework for curriculum development to assist the three components, and training materials for NGO capacity building and communication have been collected to inform the formal curriculum development process. In addition, the program has made progress in administration and operations, including the recruitment and staffing of new team members, the creation and installation of a file server and network files, and the completion of several interviews with NGOs in the Kurdistan Region for incorporation into the Rapid Assessment document. The Erbil Regional Office has also conducted a meeting with five organizations working on access issues for people with disabilities and completed several assessments for NGOs for inclusion in the Rapid Assessment.