Short Abstract

Accountability in development is complex and often contradictory. Yet genuine accountability matters in negotiating competing power dynamics. This panel addresses accountability to young people in global development, examining the possibilities for genuine and radical accountable to young people.

Description

Accountability within global development is complex, and often contradictory. Power often lies with those who have the money to fund programming, meaning that accountability tends to flow upwards towards donors, rather than towards the people and communities that programmes are purportedly working with and for. Whilst the term ‘accountability’ is used regularly in development speak, scholars have long pointed to it being a ‘buzzword and fuzzword’, losing its meaning in the process of becoming trans-ideological. Yet genuine accountability matters in negotiating competing power dynamics in the development space. In programming with young people, a lack of genuine accountability to young people not only makes programmes less effective, but can limit young people’s agency and result in problematic power dynamics and serious ethical issues, especially when young people are reliant on development stakeholders for support and the provision of basic services.

In this panel, we therefore seek to unpack what accountability to young people means in development programming. We invite papers from both researchers and practitioners whose work address issues relating to this topic, including (but not limited to) those that look to address the key questions of how young people themselves understand and envision accountability and how global development processes should be accountable to them. How development researchers and practitioners can take young people’s understanding of accountability seriously. And how practitioners and policy makers can embed a more radical and youth-led approach to accountability to ensure just and effective policy and programming.

This Panel has 1 pending paper proposal.
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