Avocats Sans Frontières (ASF) IS LOOKING FOR:

An audit firm that meets international audit certification standards to conduct Expenditure Verification for the European Union project CSO-LA/2019/413-940 titled, “Empowering communities and civil society to demand good governance in natural resources management”

Assignment to be undertaken and finalized in August 2022.

Project 

• Empowering communities and civil society to demand for good governance in natural resources management is a project funded by the European Union.

Objective of the assignment

• The objective of this assignment is to carry out expenditure verification on the books of accounts of ASF and her partner; Advocates for Natural Resources and Development (ANARDE)

Project Budget  

• 500,000 Euros for 26 months from 1st January 2020 to 1st March 2022

Contract and deadline

• Please submit applications by 22nd July 2022 at 5 pm, including the following:
• Proof of audit firm registration.
• CVs of key personnel demonstrating relevant skills and experience and at least 2 references, preferably from organizations with which the auditor has conducted similar types of work.
• Expenditure verification fees in Uganda Shillings, number of days, and daily rate. The budget must include all taxes.
• Expenditure verification will be done as per the procedure set out by the donor under annex I.
• Declare availability for the expenditure verification to start on August 1st and be finalized by end of August 2022.
• The documents should be submitted to Moses Kinyera at, Mkinyera@asf.be copy to lfickers@asf.be under the subject line “EU Expenditure Verification 2022”.

Project Summary

The Albertine Graben is currently witnessing intensive infrastructure building in preparation for commercial production of oil in Uganda, due to start in 2023. Vast oil deposits have been discovered in the Moroto-Kadam basin where exploration is due to start in 2020. On the mining side, efforts to revise the Mining Policy and Act have been going hand in hand with intensified mineral exploration, especially in Karamoja. While earmarked in national policies as a key driver of development, EIs have so far yielded little of the promised benefits to local populations. On the contrary, our observations show that the rise of Extractive Industries (EIs) exacerbates their pre-existing state of vulnerability and tends, among others, to fuel gender inequality. The situation is worsened by violations of the human rights of the communities living in the vicinity of extractive resources, particularly women, which range from preventing their access to water, food and livelihood to gender-based violence and breaches of property rights, cultural rights, and the right to a healthy environment.

Moreover, there are consistent breaches of information and consultation rights, opacity around licensing processes, and corruption that nurture a sense of distrust, skepticism and disempowerment among local populations. The reduction of civic space has also been observed by Avocats Sans Frontières (ASF) and the Advocates for Natural Resources and Development (ANARDE) during the implementation of their projects; while freedom of expression and assembly and the defence of human rights are found to be regularly cast in opposition to economic development in official discourse. Increasingly, central and local governments perceive CSOs as antagonistic stakeholders and very rarely recognize their contribution as intermediaries between the duty-bearers and the right-holders of EI projects.

The mandatory impact assessments, carried out by the State and companies, are limited to environmental and social issues and thus fail to inform the specific human rights impact of projects. Uganda’s adhesion to the EITI mechanism contributes to open dialogue between stakeholders, but does not directly integrate human rights issues. On the other hand, institutions (local and national authorities, justice mechanisms) struggle to provide adequate support to the local communities facing EIs development. So do ad hoc consultation and grievance mechanisms set up by companies, which tend to reproduce exclusory societal patterns through their reliance on the local leadership as interface with communities, yet marginalizing groups such as women and the youth. As a result, communities lack channels to express their human rights-related grievances, fears and expectations towards projects from their own perspective and in their own language.

Contextual analysis

In the last two decades, Uganda has witnessed an unprecedented increase in foreign direct investment and actual economic activity by both multinational corporations and local business enterprises in its economy. Alongside the infrastructure sector, foreign investment primarily targets the country’s primary (land, forestry etc.) and strategic (oil deposits and rare minerals) natural resources. While this trend presents opportunities for development, it also carries potential harmful impacts on individuals, communities and the environment. Corporations’ activities have proved a fertile ground for human and environmental rights violations and abuses, including child labor, gender-based violence, fraudulent compulsory land acquisition, environmental degradation, workers’ rights violations, and land grabbing. In a context of widespread corruption, the investment in natural resources also fuels predatory behaviors, often with the involvement of State agents. Likewise, the development of extractive industries produces a gender-differentiated impact, whereby women tend to bear the bulk of negative consequences while economic opportunities are more accessible to men. All this adds up on the existing limitations on affected populations’ access to justice. The weakness of the State schemes (Local Councils, the Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS)’s legal aid structures) and the often compromised role of local leadership (cultural and administrative) deprive the populations of legitimate and peaceful avenues to claim their rights or solve their conflicts. The population relies on services from Legal Aid Service Providers (LASPs) and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), which are increasingly constrained in a context of reducing civic space and lack of consideration for human rights. While the local civil society can play a crucial role in filling existing institutional gaps, both through ensuring public participation and advocating towards policy change, there is a strong disconnect between the work carried out locally in the community and processes of national policy formulation leading to continued frustration and rights violations among the project-affected populations.

The project action

ASF is jointly implementing this action with ANARDE funded by the Delegation of the European Union in Uganda. The action’s general objective is “to contribute to good governance in the management of extractive resources in Uganda.”

Relying on the established nexus between local participation and good governance, the specific objective of the action is that “affected local populations demand and have their rights respected and protected at all phases of extractive resources exploitation projects.” For this objective to be reached, three steps are required:

1. local populations are informed about their rights;
2. they are able to articulate those rights in a language that can be heard by duty-bearers and formulate demands; and
3. the duty-bearers act upon those demands.

In regard to the above, there are several ongoing projects working on raising the awareness of rights among the local populations, including projects led by ASF and ANARDE. However, an important link is still missing in order to ensure that the duty-bearers act upon the demands of affected local populations. This is mainly because the work done by CSOs at the grassroots remains disconnected from policy formulation processes.

The action is therefore focused on bridging this existing gap by enhancing the capacity of local populations to articulate and voice their claims towards the duty-bearers. The inability of civil society to frame issues arising in the context of oil and mineral exploitation in the language of rights has made them unable to impact policy-making.

Therefore, the major assumption held is that strengthening the work done by CSOs at grassroots level and linking it with the policy formulation processes at national level will foster the integration of local interests and human rights in EI-related legislation and planning, making them more fair and sustainable.

Intervention approach

The project will adopt a bottom-up process that hinges on community-based human rights monitoring to activate/strengthen the structures through which voices from the grassroots can be included in policy formulation. This is to ensure that community participation increases the positive perception of EI projects and a sense of inclusion in economic development among the local populations. Meaningful participation, however, requires going beyond mere compliance with the current Ugandan legal framework, which asks very little from project developers to ensure locals’ involvement and respect for human rights in general.

Expected results 

Result 1: Local populations are able to monitor and frame violations resulting from EIs projects through harmonised community-based human rights impact assessment;

Result 2: The interests of communities affected by EI projects are reflected in policy formulation at national level

Type of activities

• Development and capacity building of networks of human rights monitors;
• Monitoring of human rights violations and abuses;
• Transnational exchange of experience between CSOs;
• Dialogues between affected populations, CSOs, and duty-bearers;
• Publication of policy papers and research reports
• National conference on Business and Human Rights in Uganda.

Final beneficiaries, target groups, and stakeholders 

1. The project’s final beneficiaries are the populations affected by oil and mining industries in the Albertine Graben and the Karamoja Sub-region, who lack knowledge of their own rights in natural resources governance and are often unable to meaningfully participate in the consultation mechanisms;

2. The project’s target group are the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) at the local level comprising of Community-Based Organisations (CBOs), Local Interest Groups (in particular women, youth and miners’ groups), and grassroots networks of monitors and volunteers;

3. The project works with two types of stakeholders:

• Coalitions (esp. the Civil Society Coalition on Oil (CSCO), the Albertine Region Land Platform (ARLP) the Uganda Consortium on Corporate Accountability (UCCA) and the KAMIG);
• The duty-bearers, i.e. State actors – who have the duty to protect human rights in the context of economic development projects, and corporate actors – who have the responsibility to respect human rights.

Project partners

The project is implemented under the leadership of Avocats Sans Frontières and in partnership with Advocates for Natural Resources Governance and Development (ANARDE). ANARDE is a Ugandan CSO that is active in litigation and legal representation for communities affected by extractive industries. ANARDE works to promote understanding of effective management of natural resources and knowledge about the sustainable use of natural resources within marginalized communities.

General Overview of ASF

ASF is an independent international non-governmental organization founded in Belgium in 1992, whose mission is to contribute to the establishment of institutions and mechanisms that allow for access to independent and impartial justice, and which are capable of guaranteeing the protection of fundamental rights (civil and political, economic and social), including the right to a fair trial. For more than 20 years, ASF has been implementing programs with the aim of facilitating access to justice for the most vulnerable population in fragile states or transition contexts.

ASF’s strategy rests primarily on:

1)  The affirmation of law as a vehicle of change (protection and development); and

2)  The promotion of the social role of the lawyer as an agent of change (lawyers are both guaranteeing legal security, and access to human rights via the access to justice and a quality defence).

ASF places lawyers, bar associations and other civil society organisations promoting human rights at the core of this strategy. ASF's intervention strategy includes recognizing access to justice as a fundamental right and an indispensable precondition for realizing and defending other human rights; and building advocates and lawyers' capacity to achieve the above objectives: ensure access to justice and support human rights realisation.

General Overview of ANARDE

ANARDE is a non-profit group of researcher’s activists, organizers, and lawyers with expertise in human rights advocacy, environmental governance, corporate and government accountability. It is a Ugandan CSO that is active in litigation and legal representation for communities affected by extractive industries. ANARDE works to promote understanding of effective management of natural resources and knowledge about the sustainable use of natural resources within marginalised communities. ANARDE also provides legal assistance for the most vulnerable, organises training on human rights in the context of oil extraction, and represents members of affected communities before the courts

Goal/Objective of the Expenditure Verification

The goal of this expenditure verification is to ascertain the eligibility of expenditures and conformity of financial reporting of the project to the Grant Agreement and the General Terms and Conditions of the project grant agreement.

Deliverables/ Expected Results

The expenditure verification is to be conducted in accordance with the detailed terms of reference provided by the donor under annex I.

Meet the reporting deadline to the donor as shown below: