Getting Beyond Participation to Ownership
Posted on 15 October 2010 | 2 responses
By Dayna Brown
Across the places the Listening Project has visited, people have talked a lot about their roles in relief and development efforts – what they have been and what they would like them to be. They have often talked about “consultations” and “participatory processes” which have been cosmetic or superficial, and they desire a more meaningful and powerful role in the entire process. As one person in Kenya said, “there should be nothing about us without us.”
People involved in and affected by international aid efforts have talked about how true participation – which most aid agencies believe will support local ownership – should mean having the power to decide, instead of only the power to carry out what others have decided.
For all the efforts aimed at “empowerment,” many feel disempowered by the prevailing aid delivery process. As a grassroots development worker in Ecuador suggested, “this is how the verb ‘to participate’ is conjugated: I participate, you participate, they decide.”
People want to be involved in making decisions about the assistance that is intended to affect their lives – about what priorities to address, what should be done, how the assistance will be provided, what local people will contribute, who receives or benefits from the assistance, and how the efforts should be evaluated.
Innovative Financing Mechanisms for Global Health
Posted on 13 October 2010 | No responses
Rahim Kanani recently sat down with Sophie Delaunay, Executive Director of the U.S. section of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), to discuss the intersection of innovative mechanisms in global health financing, advocacy, accountability, and civil society.
Rahim Kanani: Explain a little bit about the intersection of global health financing and health priorities, and from there we can move into new ways or new mechanisms that are being explored to address this enormous gap.
Sophie Delaunay: Let’s start with malnutrition, for example. Malnutrition is affecting millions of children worldwide. A study conducted by the World Bank last year estimates that $12 billion a year is necessary to address childhood malnutrition. At the moment, the overall spending on malnutrition is 350 million dollars a year. MSF is actually one of the five largest contributors. We alone cannot respond to all the needs.
In terms of HIV/AIDS, the gap is so abysmal that it’s hard to provide detailed data, but the fact is that there are only 5 million people on treatment today when 15 million need to be on treatment. Among those who are on treatment today, the vast majority resides in sub-Saharan Africa, and they can only access a less expensive stavudine based first line regimen that we now know has numerous side effects and is no longer recommended by the World Health Organization for this reason. So the gap is not just about the amount of additional treatments needed, but also about reducing the double standard and making new, more effective treatments accessible to these countries. The Global Fund estimated that they needed 20 billion dollars in order to be able to scale up their commitments to the countries for the next 3 years and move forward with an aggressive response; they needed $13 billion just to keep their doors open with their existing commitments. However, the recent Global Fund Replenishment Conference ended up with less than 12 billion of pledges from the countries, so this is very disappointing to see that these needs won’t be covered.
The Big Push Back!
Posted on 11 October 2010 | 19 responses
By Rosalind Eyben
In my book Relationships for Aid, I wrote about the international aid culture that ignores power, relations, the partiality of knowledge and complexity, and pretends there are no surprises and unplanned consequences.
In the last couple of years, it has only got worse. British government aid (DFID) is now imposing extraordinary demands in terms of reporting against indicators of achievement that bear little relation to the manner and possibilities donor-funded activities have for supporting social transformation. Researchers and NGOs in other European countries report a similar phenomenon. And because the pressure is coming from international donors, we know that the same trend is being experienced all over Aidland.
Theoretical and contested concepts such as civil society, capacity or policy become reified and then numbers assigned to the reification e.g. ‘state the number of policies influenced’. Answers are required to absurd value-for-money questions in which institutions are considered as if they were motor cars.
Last year a government donor organisation asked me “what evidence exists of the relative cost, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and quality demonstrated by civil society organisations, in comparison to the UN or profit-making organisations?” That was the moment when I decided it was time for a big push back.
Foreign Assistance Reform: Wrong Again
Posted on 8 October 2010 | No responses
By David Holdridge
Humanitarian aid workers with experience in the field bring an intimate perspective to the question of foreign assistance reform. For decades, my colleagues and I have borne witness to how foreign assistance has met the reality overseas with negative consequences: negative for U.S. citizens and of little sustainable value for the intended recipients.
The reform of foreign assistance currently being considered by the State Department is based on the following assumptions, all of which must be re-examined before committing U.S. tax dollars to an investment that promises little return.
1. Expanding USAID. This does not make sense and runs contrary to current calls for fiscal responsibility. Why would we want to enlarge such an ungainly federal apparatus to manage taxpayer assistance overseas? Growing the number of our civil servants working overseas is hugely expensive; they are encumbered by security concerns and a bureaucratic infrastructure and, importantly, they are shackled by an inability as ‘official’ Americans to integrate into the local landscape.
Why We Shouldn’t Teach People to Fish
Posted on 7 October 2010 | No responses
By John Coonrod
As debate heats up on reforming the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act, we will hear – time and again – the chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”
This proverb is surprisingly and dangerously misleading.
Most of the hungriest parts of the world produce more than enough food. India – the country with the largest number of hungry people – has tens of millions of tons of surplus food in storage.
If hungry people don’t lack “our” food, then surely they lack “our” knowledge? Don’t they need our technology and expertise to solve their problems of hunger and poverty?
No. People are not hungry because they are ignorant. Some of the world’s greatest knowledge of sustainable fishing, herding and farming reside in the world’s hungry villages. We in the West could frankly use a few lessons ourselves in sustainable food production.
Mutual Responsibilities to Tackle Corruption
Posted on 24 September 2010 | No responses
This is the third in a series of blog posts on the work and findings of the Listening Project, which explores the insights of people who live in societies receiving international assistance. More than 130 international and local organizations contributed over 400 staff members to Listening Teams that held conversations with nearly 6,000 people over the last 5 years.
By Dayna Brown
After watching President Obama’s speech at the MDG Summit at the UN on Wednesday, I was happy to hear him say we need a “new approach to development” and that the charity-based model of the past needs to change.
Many of the things he said reflected concerns brought up by people on the receiving end of aid efforts whom we heard from in the Listening Project. They too want a path out of poverty, not to be dependent on assistance, and for aid efforts to do more to improve their lives for the long-term.
I remember a village chief in Ethiopia who said, “We are still poor, even though we are being helped. Aid is life-saving, but not life changing.”
People in aid recipient societies would agree with Obama’s call for “shared responsibility, mutual accountability, and concrete results that pull people and countries out of poverty.” It was also good to hear him talk about the importance of reducing corruption and that donor countries have a role to play.
At Long Last… A U.S. Global Development Policy!
Posted on 23 September 2010 | 3 responses
By Sherine Jayawickrama
After a complex, year-long, inter-agency process, President Obama announced yesterday the adoption of the first ever U.S. global development policy.
If you have not been following the ins and outs of this process, you may be surprised to hear that the United States has never before had a global development policy! But, yes, it is true.
There have long been policies related to trade, defense, diplomacy, energy, agriculture, aid, labor, migration, etc., all of which have important implications for development. Yet, there has never been a process that tried to make sense of how all of those policies hang together, what the fundamental goals of U.S. government are related to global development, and how the myriad policies related to development should be aligned to meet these goals.
So that makes the simple fact that a U.S. global development policy now exists a cause for celebration. But what about the policy itself (especially its substance and viability)? Personally, I find much to like in the policy.
I like the focus on local ownership. President Obama drew applause when he declared that “the days when development was dictated by foreign capitals must come to an end.” The principle of developing countries taking the lead in setting development priorities is vital. The new U.S. global development policy (see White House fact sheet here - the policy directive itself is not public) promises a new operational model that supports country ownership and responsibility, and pledges to “work through national institutions rather than around them.”
NGO Collaboration and Specialization for Systemic Change
Posted on 22 September 2010 | 2 responses
By Joe Stuckey
Following the thread of Sherine Jayawickrama’s September 6 post and Sarah Stroup’s September 20 post, I offer the following.
Summarizing the thread:
- Sherine argues that “the advancement of the missions of [NGOs] requires much greater coordination and collaboration,” and asks “Are there realistic limits of collaboration?”
- Sarah notes that collaboration has produced imperfect results and asks, “Why is collaboration the answer? Why isn’t specialization a viable alternative? …Why [do] many practitioners speak of creating shared standards and coordinated campaigning rather than of dividing up the formidable task of combating poverty…[?]“
In my mind, collaboration and specialization can and should work together. An organization’s values, vision, mission, and operating culture, along with its total wealth of assets and opportunities (contacts, knowledge, and position or niche in the world) uniquely identifies it and defines what it should specialize in.
Collaboration is only valuable when the costs are less than the added benefit that collaboration will bring to fulfilling the organization’s mission. In other words – first you define your identity so you can specialize (i.e., in your mission), then you collaborate if it makes you more effective.
NGO Collaboration: Limited or Limiting?
Posted on 20 September 2010 | 4 responses
By Sarah Stroup
In her September 6 post, Sherine Jayawickrama argues that “the advancement of the missions of [NGOs] requires much greater coordination and collaboration.”
This got me thinking about my most recent homework project – I’ve been reading up on studies of international NGOs from the 1970s and 1980s to understand continuity and change among relief and development NGOs.
In 1977, John Sommer wrote in Beyond Charity: US Voluntary Aid for a Changing Third World that NGOs “should seek ways to overcome their traditional tendency to act alone and instead collaborate more constructively with each other and with local organizations in recipient countries.”
In sum, it’s a little depressing to think that experienced NGO analysts have been calling for greater NGO collaboration for decades with seemingly little change.
Images and the Slow Response to the Flooding in Pakistan
Posted on 13 September 2010 | No responses
By Jennifer Rubenstein
Why has the international response to the flooding in Pakistan been so stingy and slow? Commentators have offered various explanations: donors’ concerns about aid benefiting the Taliban; “donor fatigue” after the recent earthquake in Haiti; the relatively low number of immediate deaths (about 2,000), compared to the number of people affected (about 14 million).
Slate contributor Nicholas Schmidle offers a different (though not incompatible) explanation, however:
If only it had been a tidal wave. One giant swell that, in a matter of moments, arrived from the Arabian Sea and washed upcountry, into the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains. Such a disaster would have had the flash-bang effect of an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, or a hurricane. One violent act of nature.
A first question is: is Schmidle right? Is the slowness of the response due, at least in part, to the slow-motion onset of the disaster? (He does not offer any evidence either way.)
If the answer to this question is “yes,” (and I suspect that it is), then the next question is: why? Why might a slow-onset disaster be less compelling to third parties watching from a distance than a rapid-onset disaster? There are several possible explanations, but a slide show accompanying Schmidle’s article highlights one possibility in particular.
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