January 2013: The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) has launched a draft toolbox to assist countries in addressing grievances and disputes arising from REDD+ activities. The toolbox highlights the importance of ensuring that any grievance and dispute mechanism is: accessible, predictable, fair, transparent, compatible with national and international standards and possesses adequate capacity to address issues.

The toolkit consists of a set of questions to evaluate existing mechanisms and identify priorities for improvements, a grievance redress mechanism manual with introductory information on grievance management and a draft guidance note on strengthening grievance capacity during REDD+ readiness. Overall, the toolkit identifies four stages of grievance resolution: complaint uptake, assessment acknowledgment and response, resolution or closure, and registry and monitoring.

The toolkit is intended to support countries in the allocation of the US$200,000 provided to each FCPF country participant for national feedback and grievance redress mechanisms. Thus far a workshop on grievance and disputes was held for countries in Africa and lessons learned have been consolidated from Mexico. [Draft toolbox for addressing grievances and disputes during REDD+ readiness preparation]