Enabling Environment for Social Accountability in ... - SASANet

WSP-UV’s coordinator remains in close contact with her former colleagues as the organization’s main
office is in the aimag government house in the provincial capital of Arvaiheer. In their two-room office,
they are equipped with a telephone and fax machine and three computers donated by the WSP-UB after it
received a prize of $20,000 as the recipient of the 1998 Civil Society Award. This prestigious award was
given jointly by the European Union and the United States to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the
Marshall Plan and the fortieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.
Aside from the WSP-UB contribution, the WSP-UV has relied heavily on international funding. This is a
very common phenomenon among active Mongolian CSOs. Since its inception, WSP-UV has
implemented projects totaling more than $70,000 that were entirely financed by grants from foreign
donors. Their funders have included British Globalization Fund, Canadian International Development
Agency, Gobi Regional Economic Growth Initiative, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Technical Aid to the
Commonwealth of Independent States, The Asia Foundation, UNDP, and UNESCO-Asian Region. Such
significant and diverse international funding has permitted the WSP to encourage citizen participation in
local government and to monitor its actions (Finding WSP 2).
Nevertheless, the greatest challenge WSP-UV faces is the dearth of financial resources. In a 2003
Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats analysis, the staff attributed funding insecurity to the lack of
a reliable long-term donor (WSP-UV 2003). During an interview in Uvorkhangai, the coordinator sharply
criticized the “short-termism” of the donor community as undermining the growth of Mongolian civil
society. In 2003, WSP-UV’s desire for financial autonomy led to its involvement in the marketing of
women artisans’ products in foreign countries. Although the WSP-UV noted in its business plan for
2003–04 that it should “seek donations from UB-based companies, gifts in kind” and general fundraising,
it concluded that these options “do not look very promising as they will not adequately improve WSP’s
financial resources” (WSP-UV 2003:20). In this sense, the WSP-UV provides an excellent illustration of
the importance of CSO access to resources, particularly foreign, for successful social accountability as
well as the fiscal precariousness of the few Mongolian CSOs that do have access to these resources, given
the limited opportunities for fundraising in Mongolia. 65
Perhaps one of the greatest potential sources for self-financing is the WSP-UV’s popular newspaper,
Gurvalijin Medee (Triangle News), which has been critical to its mission to promote good governance at
the local level.
PROVIDING INFORMATION THAT PROMOTES
SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY: TRIANGLE NEWS
The name Triangle News refers to the trilateral relationship that the WSP-UV seeks to promote among
government officials, the private sector, and civil society to enhance local governance and economic
development. The WSP-UV began publishing the newspaper in 2002 “to deliver local information to the
local citizens” and enhance their participation in local government (WSP 2003).
In 2000, a grant of $4,600 from the Globalization Fund enabled WSP-UV to publish six issues with a
circulation of 9,000 per issue, covering approximately a third of the households in the aimag. The
following year, the Mongolian Foundation for an Open Society (now the Open Society Forum)
contributed $10,000 to publish 12 issues. Unfortunately, in March 2004, after these 18 issues had been
65 Although this study did not focus on the complex resource issues confronting CSOs in Mongolia, various stakeholders cited the
need for improved tax breaks and incentives (for example, on charitable donations) to improve the fiscal autonomy and stability
of CSOs.
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