REGIONAL ASSEMBLY 

Introduction: The regional assemblies were a practitioner assembly space for practitioners and other intellectuals and supporters from research or policy making/implementing institutions to voice out the values, frameworks, challenges towards drafting a global social accountability charter and call for action, demanding health and health care as a fundamental human right. It includes the citizenship right of demanding accountability from various stakeholders in order to strengthen citizenship. There were four regional Assemblies held on 17th October 2019 and the details are as follows-
1. African Regional Assembly
The African regional assembly was engaging and participatory as delegates shared their comments about the accountability charter and proposed suggestions on post symposium events. Some of the highlight of the discussion are as follows-

• Proposed adding parliamentarians among those to ‘call to action’ as they are key to ensure oversight of the executive arm of government and promote accountability.
• Under the NGOs section of call to action; it was suggested to include involving in budget advocacy and tracking for expenditure as well as to be involved in domestic resource mobilization to meet the Abuja target of 15% budgetary allocation to health.
• The “We’ at the beginning of the charter should be clearly defined.
• The role of the media is left out in the call to action, thus, a section should be added on that
• Post symposium, COPASAH should support African practitioners to be engaging with the Africa Union and other regional intergovernmental bodies such as ECSA, ECOWAS, SADC, WAHO etc
• Africa regional symposium should be organized
• Participation of practitioners from Africa in COPASAH should be strengthened via trainings and capacity building and widen opportunity for peer learning.

 
 
2. Latin America Regional Assembly
There were about 40 participants at the Latin American Regional Assembly and most of the deliberations happened in Spanish language. The highlights o the discussion are as follows-

• Several of the participants had not meet up before, so we had a time to introduce each other.
• There is interest in expanding COPASAH members and presence within the region
• There is a need for exchange visits between organizations from within the region
• We discussed the need to have a slogan that would be relevant for the region. We will continue exchanging ideas for a slogan.
• There is an interest in continue communication among all participants through WhatsApp group, webinars and other virtual communication means.

3. South Eastern Europe Regional Assembly
In the South Eastern Europe regional assembly six persons from two countries participated. From Macedonia it was Borjan Pavlovski, Jasminka Frishchikj and Fadil Dzemail; from Romania it was Lavinia Chiburte, Florin Nasture and Eugen Ghita. The main focus of the discussion was how to strengthen the COPASAH network in South Eastern and Central Europe. In this regard the participants agreed on the following steps-

• To map all the relevant organizations in the Region, but also broader in Europe, which would be interested to become members of COPASAH.
• To prepare short information regarding the benefits from joining the COPASAH Network and possibilities offered by the COPASAH Network. To distribute this information to all the identified and mapped organizations in order to enhance and strengthen the COPASAH Network in the Region.
• To identify the needs and expectations of the organizations from their membership in the COPASAH network, which will be further on used to plan activities and linkages with COPASAH on Global level. Main focus will be on technical support, experience sharing, and knowledge generation. But also to explore possibilities for joint advocacy under the COPASAH Network in Europe. It was discussed also to assess how the Global COPASAH Network can assist in these processes.
• To identify other existing networks in Europe which are working on the right to health, including but not limited to: European Public Health Alliance, Peoples Health Movement in Europe etc. To approach these networks in order to establish contacts and to define possibilities for Regional cooperation among COPASAH and these networks.
• It was also discussed about possibilities to address the issues of the Migrants health in Europe in cooperation with COPASAH from different regions. Namely Migrants represent vulnerable group in Europe, and most of the migrants origin from Africa and Asia. Thus possibilities should be explored in exchanging information and findings among organizations from different parts of the world members of COPASAH in order to improve access to right for health of the migrants.

 
4. South Asia Regional Assembly
The assembly was attended by more than 40 participants from India, Nepal and Sri Lanka representing more than 15 organisations including-

1. People’s Health Movement (PHM)
2. Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA)
3. Right to Food
4. White Ribbon
5. Health Systems Global (HSG) South Asia
6. Physicians for social responsibility – Nepal
7. National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights (NAMHHR)
8. CommonHealth  
9. Pension Parishad
10. NGO network – West Bengal
11. Jharkhand women health network
12. Maternal health rights campaign
13. Society of midwives in India (SOMI)
14. Health for transgenders
15. Nari Shakti Sangathan
16. HIV positive women network
17. Medico friend circle (MFC)

 
Abhay Shukla opened the assembly by asking all participants to share their views on priorities for advancing the discourse on practice and policy of social accountability.
The first common issue discussed was to increase the participation of Civil society organisations in decision making bodies.

• Delegates from Sri Lanka called for creating a platform to resist the neo-liberal agenda and private sector expansion in health.
• Keeping in view the threats of Nuclear war from India and Pakistan, representatives from Nepal called for modifying the discourse on health to ‘peace through health’ and ‘health through peace’.
• Others from India asked for strengthening the functioning of Gram Sabhas and Panchayati Raj Institutions to address issues of health and healthcare. In continuation to this, Indian delegates asked from strengthening of community – lead health committees like Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Committees and Rogi Kalyan samitis.
• Importance of partnering with other social movements working on social determinants of health like land and education were brought into discussion.
• Demand to include gender and sexual minorities in health policies was raised.
• Composition of health groups at global, regional and local levels should be examined to make these groups more inclusive and representative.
• Civil society should focus their efforts to hold elected representatives accountable at the local, regional and national level.

Second important thread during the assembly was on expanding the discourse on social accountability from ‘moral to legal grounds’. This discussion got support from delegates of all countries who further suggested that:

• Laws should be enforced to make state accountable to citizens.
• Legal mechanisms to hold the private sector accountable should be introduced and implemented.

This led to the discussion on accountability of private sector, which came out as the most pressing concern of representatives from all countries and called for

• Social audit of Public private partnerships (PPPs)
• Social audit of private bodies engaged by state
• Social audit of authorities ensuring accountability of State for all funds.

After identifying these issues, the discussion was steered towards mechanisms to address these concerns and participants were asked to suggest solutions and their potential contributions. The highlights of the discussion was as follows-

• Building capacity building of civil society to conduct social audits was suggested
• Kaaren Mathias– said they can help with building capacities for research and trainings as a part of Mental Health Network.
• Lila from Nepal said that the profits made by private sector which are earned in health sector but are being invested in other sectors should be brought under check and should be restricted. Demand for price capping of healthcare services, drugs and consumables in the private healthcare sector was also raised.
• Charia association suggested that a ‘donor watchdog’ kind of organisation should be created to engage with donors and hold them accountable to include civil society in designing and implementing their interventions.
• Other delegates called for promoting work in partnership with journalists and media to strengthen reporting on health issues
• Mira Shiva called for making a list of public interest lawyers, to protect advocates and activists against arbitrary exercise of state power.
• Binoy- asked for collecting and documenting the experiences of social accountability from various settings and develop a book from that.
• Increasing youth representation and voices in the forum was raised.
• Formation of interest groups to share knowledge was also suggested.

 
The session concluded by asking for volunteers from each country and forming of a core group. The core group met again the same day and finalised few of the core tasks that they would like to pursue as a regional group. After a rigorous brainstorming a consensus was reached to address the following three issues:

1. Strengthen participation of community led organisations in all health-related decision-making bodies at different levels.
2. Advocate for a law on social accountability of various stakeholders.
3. Advocate for mechanisms to seek accountability from private sector.

The proceedings from the regional assemblies was use during the Practioners’s Assembly, where the social accountability charter was discussed in detail. The regional delegates could also add to their understanding of the charter through the thematic briefs that was discussed during the practitioner’s assembly on 18th October 2019.

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