Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a best practice method of doing research that sees the implementing organization as a research facilitator and the communities as researcher. It is a research facilitation method that comes from the field of anthropology and has the community designing and conducting the research from start to end, including determining the research objective, developing the methodology, creating the questionnaires, conducting interviews, data analysis and writing the report. The community then does advocacy with the research, knowing more about it than any other person, and can better argue for its findings and recommendations due to the intimate knowledge of the research. By its very nature it creates knowledge generation through self-reflection on oneself and one’s experiences, rather than knowledge collection by outsiders.

Project Backround

In 2006, Africa’s commitment to youth development and welfare was strongly stated when the African Youth Charter was adopted by African Heads of State. The charter provides a framework for developing and implementing more tangible youth policies and programmes.[i] Article 11 of the African Youth Charter gives every young citizen “the right to participate in all spheres of society,” mandates that states encourage youth activism and ensure gender equity in political representation and participation – and encourages full participation in civic duties such as voting in elections and volunteering.

Although some progress has been made since then, youth in Africa are being left behind with regards to many human rights issues. For example, despite the increased needs for SRHR, youth-friendly reproductive health services often rain in a pilot form in Africa and are always dependent on the support of non-governmental development partners. These services have not been consistently scaled up by the public sector, and there is a dire need for this to be prioritized. [ii]

There is a huge unmet need for contraception among young people which is directly related to maternal mortality. Evidence shows that more than 60% of adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa who wish to avoid unwanted pregnancy, do not have access to modern contraception. Unsafe abortion contributes significantly to maternal mortality among young girls, with an estimated 36,000 women and girls dying each year as a result of this.[iii] The evidence also shows that for very young adolescents in low and middle-income African countries, the risk of maternal death and obstetric fistula is twice as high than women who are older. Young people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) as well.[iv]

Data shows that young women’s knowledge on HIV has risen in all African regions[v], but the progress remains fragile with young men demonstrating low levels of HIV knowledge and condom use. This all demonstrates that efforts to improve accountability to young people must expand and persist. Child marriage continues to remain a huge problem across the continent. Africa accounts for 17% of 700 million women alive currently that were married before their 18th birthday.[vi] Although, African Union members states have agreed to end child marriage through several policy instruments, the issue continues to affects girls and women’s quality of life at a social and economic level as well as it hindering their sexual and reproductive health rights realisation.

The lack of accountability to youth must be understood in relation to the lack of civic engagement of youth. African youth civic engagement has been in decline according to research done by Afrobarometer. For example, youth attending community meetings has dropped from 63% to 51%; active leadership including of religious groups declined from 50% to 34%; collective action to raise issues dropped from 49% to 38%; while active leadership of voluntary associations declined from 21% to 19%. The gender gap in political participation in the African countries studied is marked, with Mauritius then Kenya revealing the greatest disparity of men attending political rallies compared to women, and with Benin, Burkina Faso and Togo leading the pack in the disparity between men and women participating in civic action. .[vii]