Grievance Mechanism

The project’s Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM) serves as a pivotal avenue for stakeholders, Partner CSOs, vendors, and community members to voice their concerns, complaints, or grievances and assist in resolving complaints in a timely, effective and efficient manner. The GRM is designed to be accessible, transparent, and responsive, ensuring that every grievance is acknowledged, documented, and addressed promptly.

Requests for information, complaints, and grievances can be related to any project activity, including beneficiary and application selection process or procurement irregularities.

Grievances are investigated and addressed by the Project Implementation Unit of ATRC.

To uphold confidentiality and encourage transparency, the grievance mechanism also allows for anonymous submissions, offering individuals the option to report concerns without revealing their identity. This feature aims to promote inclusivity and ensure that all stakeholders feel empowered to raise grievances, contributing to a fair and accountable working environment.

Supporting evidence is not necessary but may be helpful in reviewing and resolving the complaint. The complaint may also include suggestions on how the individuals believe the complaint could be resolved. All complaints will be treated as confidential. ATRC will not disclose any personal data that may reveal the identity of complainants without their consent.

Grievance mechanisms for applicants, vendors, and Partner CSOs

Complaints related to beneficiary and Partner CSOs selection outcome will be accepted within 2 weeks of the publication of results. ATRC provides a written explanation to all applicants whose proposals are unsuccessful. Applicants are encouraged to contact the Contract and Grant Teams if they have additional questions about the decision. If the applicants are not satisfied with the response, a grievance may be submitted on the website that allows grievances to be made anonymously.

Grievance Redress Mechanisms for Project Workers

ATRC has a grievance mechanism in place, which allows all direct workers and contracted workers (and, where relevant, their organizations) to raise workplace concerns. They include alleged corruption, coercion, or fraud or conflict of interest that are regulated in the specific ATRC Regulations and Guidelines on Dealing with Corruption, Fraud and Conflicts of interest. Cases of mobbing, sexual harassment, child abuse and abuse of authority are regulated in the Prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) policy, Child Abuse and Abuse of Authority.

Types of grievances to be addressed.

ATRC wishes to be alerted of any suspected or actual violations of:

• ATRC policies or regulations, including Standards of Conduct for ATRC staff and contractors;
• The regulations and code of conduct that is provided to all organizations that receive contracts from ATRC;
• Any legal obligation ATRC, its Partner CSOs or third parties it contracts are subject to;
• And more generally, any form of wrongdoing, misconduct, or negative impact directly or indirectly caused by ATRC’s activities or presence in the community.

Procedures for handling of grievances

ATRC will be responsible for receiving and recording all complaints and disputes received in the grievance register.

The first step of Grievances is to be recorded in the grievance register. Each grievance record will include the date it was received, the emitter, a description, the date of acknowledgement, description of the actions undertaken. The record will also include a hard copy of all the documents this grievance has incurred.

The second step is the screening and assessment of the grievance by a designated complaint-resolution staff team. This assessment will:

• Clarify the parties involved, the issues and concerns raised, and determine initial options;
• Include engagement with the complainant if needed to get a better idea of the nature of the complaint and/or in case of doubts about the complaint;
• Include engagement with different staff members if their expertise is required (e.g. procurement, human resources, environment, etc.)
• Classify the complaint in terms of potential impact (high, medium, low) on both the community and ATRC;
• Decide on the most appropriate way forward and formulate a response to the complainant, specifying who will communicate what response through which method solution staff team.

This decision can be categorized in three scenarios, namely that the complaint will be: 1) rejected, 2) solved locally led by ATRC staff, 3) referred to an external party as appropriate.

All complainants will be informed of the decision.

Appeal Process

If a complainant is unsatisfied with the resolution of a grievance, they have the right to appeal. The appeal process is clearly defined in the manual, ensuring that every grievance is addressed fairly and impartially. Appeals to this rejection can be filed in response to the decision within 10 days, orally or in writing, at any time during the implementation of the project. In this case, the complaint will be reassessed.