The Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability is an international research partnership exploring new forms of citizenship that will help make rights real for poor people. It involves a network of researchers and practitioners working with research institutions and civil society organisations located in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa and the UK.
The long-term aim of the Citizenship DRC is to identify ways of ensuring that development policy and practice provide more effective support for poor people’s own efforts to transform their rights into realities. The research programme explores poor people’s perceptions and experiences of citizenship, participation and accountability relationships and strategies.The programme is developed through a series of two-year cycles of research and reflection. The current cycle began in June 2001 and is now entering its concluding phase. The next cycle, due to begin in July 2003, builds on the partnerships already established to deepen the Citizenship DRC’s cross-country collaborative research and comparative work in both North and South.
The Citizenship DRC is funded by the Social Science Research Programme of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and by the Working Communities Program of the Rockefeller Foundation.