Strengthening Grassroots Advocacy in India in the COVID Era

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly widened the divide between refugees and the organisations and individuals working towards advancing their rights. Lockdowns and travel restrictions had a devastating impact on refugee communities in India, who experienced an alarming increase in unemployment and crime, particularly Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV), and struggled to access essential services, including vaccines. Containment policies led to the breakdown of the traditional service delivery mechanisms on which refugees depended; most service providers had to temporarily suspend their outreach activities and were unable to access these communities for months at a time. 

Further, with the continuing impact of the pandemic, most service providers have moved to a remote or hybrid service delivery format. Marginalised communities, such as refugees, often lack the digital infrastructure to access these services and so have been further distanced from protection systems. For example, during the height of the pandemic, courts in India moved to a completely virtual model, making it difficult for refugees to access redress and leaving them more vulnerable to exploitation. 

While India’s state and central governments have introduced various measures, such as healthcare schemes, insurance benefits, etc., to address the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on marginalised groups, refugees continue to be excluded from these given their lack of legal status, which has rendered them invisible and voiceless for decades. Within this context, sustained advocacy with multiple stakeholders has been central to building a protection framework for them. However, these movements are almost exclusively led by civil society organisations, academics, and practitioners, with little or no participation from refugee communities. This leads to the concentration of power and resources in the hands of a few and prevents important dialogue and decision-making from percolating to those who are directly impacted. 

Traditionally, those advocates have adopted a confrontational or hostile approach towards those in positions of power – the underlying ideology being that officials can only be held to account through adversarial methods such as debates, protests and demonstrations. However, given that refugees have less negotiating power or privilege (relative to their advocates), considering their tenuous legal status and dependence on institutional mechanisms for support, they typically remain excluded from these advocacy movements and thereby from their own protection agenda. Therefore, there is a critical need for ongoing advocacy initiatives to include refugee perspectives and incorporate their lived experiences.

Grassroots initiatives in India: A case study 

In the months following the outbreak of the pandemic, civil society in India began piloting a series of programs to address the growing disconnect between refugee communities and those working with them. The inspiration for this was drawn from the ‘Local to Local’ (L2L) dialogue model, a participatory methodology that seeks to empower rights-holders to effectively communicate and collaborate with their decision-makers to set protection priorities. The methodology is considered a bottom-up approach that brings similarly placed communities together to jointly prioritise issues, create hyper-local partnerships, build consensus, and initiate dialogue with local authorities to bring about social change. The L2L model was first piloted in India by women’s rights NGOs as a political participatory strategy that facilitated new democratic platforms for engagement between women and their local leaders. Given the success of this model, the UN Habitat supported its replication in several countries across Latin America, Europe, West Africa, and South Asia. 

With the long-term objective of building a similar community-initiated movement for democratisation and decentralisation of power within the refugee protection context, a three-pronged strategy using the L2L methodology was developed, which sought to: (a) empower the community to own and lead local advocacy movements; (b) connect the community to State-led grassroots initiatives; and (c) boost the community’s digital capacity so as to enable them to participate in ongoing decision-making processes that affect their lives. While these initiatives are in early stages of implementation, some of them, discussed below, have already given impetus to grassroots activism. 

Community-led advocacy

As a first step, in order to understand the levels of awareness of protection issues, the local support systems, and the gaps in protection, my Delhi-based research organisation MAP, conducted rapid needs-assessments in underserved settlements in New Delhi that comprised both local and refugee communities. The study revealed that the local community in these settlements was predominantly made up of domestic migrant workers, who faced similar challenges to refugee with respect to lack of legal identity, documentation, and access to mainstream systems, and who were as vulnerable as their refugee counterparts. The study further revealed that the main obstacles faced by the two groups were also similar: (a) lack of awareness about their rights; (b) fear of the authorities; (c) language and cultural barriers; (d) unavailability of quality legal aid; and (d) lack of digital infrastructure.    

This led to the understanding that for the L2L model to work, it was crucial to design and implement initiatives for all community members, irrespective of their status as a migrant worker or a refugee. A strong community-led movement would best be achieved by building synergies and solidarity within the refugee and migrant communities at the local level. 

With this objective, a widespread, tailored legal-awareness drive began across these settlements in different vernacular languages. These sessions covered a range of socio-economic and legal rights issues, with a strong focus on creating awareness about SGBV laws. With the government legal aid authorities agreeing to participate and run these sessions, the community had the rare opportunity to directly interact and build a relationship with their local state lawyers. Further, to reach the more vulnerable groups within the community, the local Accredited State Health Activists (ASHA), who function as community health workers, were enlisted to conduct door-to-door counselling for women and girls, to inform them about their rights and ways to enforce them. 

To strengthen the community’s capacity to advocate for themselves, local legal aid providers formed a vibrant community watchdog network of more than 50 local influencers and volunteers representing different groups, and trained them in relevant laws and policies. Today, the network members operate as ‘barefoot activists’ by undertaking community-mapping exercises, engaging constructively with local authorities to represent the interests of the community, linking the community to informal mediation/conciliation systems and support services, and mobilising the community for advocacy efforts. One of the tangible achievements of this group has been the coming together of female leaders in the settlement to identify and report domestic violence cases within their settlements and seek police intervention and redress for the survivors. 

Linkages with state systems 

Given that the L2L model focuses on constructive, sustainable engagement between grassroots groups and governing structures, the next step was to identify local authorities or community-based systems that could be employed to further the rights of the community.   

In 2009, the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), which provides pro bono legal services to those in particular need, introduced the Paralegal Volunteer (PLV) Scheme, imparting legal training to community volunteers so as to ensure meaningful access to legal aid services. Under the scheme, PLVs were envisioned as a vital community network that could facilitate grassroots justice. To this end, the scheme requires PLVs to be trained to act as first responders to assist in legal-awareness drives, offer informal dispute resolution, and provide pre-litigation support. Today, the network has more than 50,000 PLVs who work at the grassroots across the country.  

The PLV network was therefore identified by legal aid providers as a potential partner to advocate for the rights of the community with local authorities. With this aim, the state legal aid authorities were approached to identify PLVs operating in or around the identified settlements. These PLVs then participated in intensive workshops to help them understand the laws applicable to forced migrants, the demographic profile of the community, their protection needs, and how to provide trauma-informed care. Subsequently, a network of PLV focal points was cultivated and linked to the community support groups, state legal/health centres, and various other service providers working in these locations. A concerted effort was also made to enrol female community leaders, social workers, and NGO officials operating in the identified settlements, as PLVs, so as to ensure grassroots representation and gender-parity within the network.  

Today, there are more than 50 PLV focal points operating in these settlements, with volunteers being trained to provide a range of services, including: providing legal counselling through mobile legal desks, awareness-raising, undertaking vulnerability screenings, and facilitating multisectoral support linkages. Most recently, the PLV representatives assisted women in the settlement to approach the police to file a complaint in a case involving sexual harassment and online bullying. PLVs have also been providing information to the community about the evolving labour laws in India and their applicability to forced migrants.        

Building digital capacities

In India, while the government and civil society have made laudable digital innovations that support remote assistance, these efforts are futile without also enhancing the digital infrastructure and capacity of the rights-holders. To address this, practitioners in India have developed a first-of-its-kind app, specifically designed for communities with low literacy levels, poor digital capacities, heightened privacy concerns, and language barriers. The app, named Talika, which means ‘database’ in local languages, was launched in March 2022 and seeks to: (a) facilitate localised linkages to the user’s nearest community support structures, mainly NGOs, PLVs, health clinics, police stations, legal aid centres, etc, and government helplines; and (b) provide simplified information about applicable laws and policies in both audio and text formats in various languages. The app is being used to assist survivors of SGBV to access legal protection, but it could also be easily adapted to address the protection needs of the larger refugee and host communities. 

To ensure participation and ownership of this initiative by all stakeholders, the app development phase incorporated focus group discussions with the target groups and service providers, to seek feedback and test the app’s workability against ground realities at every stage. It was through this consultative process that a camouflage feature was built into the app to safeguard the user from their perpetrators who might be living in close proximity. 

While the app is in the initial stages of implementation and it is too early to assess its  impact, the process of bringing all the stakeholders together to contribute to the making of this digital platform already has delivered a new robust database of service providers accessible to both the refugee and migrant communities. Many of the service providers on the list, who were exclusively working with the host populations, are now extending their services to the refugees after engaging closely with the community during the consultations on the app development. Further, the process was also used to train community members on using the app and similar digital tools, thereby building their digital capabilities. Today, the community uses multiple digital tools, such as WhatsApp, Zoom, etc, to access asylum/legal systems, refer cases to service providers, share information and updates, undergo training, and participate in conferences.    

Conclusion

In the post-COVID world, where vulnerable groups find themselves further removed from the mainstream support systems, there is an urgent need for diverse stakeholders to come together to reimagine, innovate, and strengthen advocacy initiatives at the grassroots. While the experiences in India may not be easily replicable in other jurisdictions, they underscore the fact that empowering local-led initiatives, no matter how small, can play a transformative role in creating approachable, efficient, and accountable governance structures at the grassroots, while promoting social cohesion and harmony.