Duncan Green's Blog, page 71

Audio summary (5m) of FP2P posts for w/b 8th April, and a quick hello vlog from the Philippines

and here’s me burbling on in the Philippines

The post Audio summary (5m) of FP2P posts for w/b 8th April, and a quick hello vlog from the Philippines appeared first on From Poverty to Power.

Combating corruption through community

David Riveros García

David Riveros García makes a strong case for placing communities at the centre of anti-corruption work, based on the experience of organisations and movements in Paraguay. David is the founder and Executive Director of reAcción, an NGO that promotes civic participation and transparency in the education sector.

 

Growing is often its own trap. For social initiatives, increased visibility brings the temptation of growth for different reasons, including perceived impact and success. Expanding initiatives often attract attention, raise public expectations, demand larger teams and increased resources. In these scenarios, it appears counterintuitive to try to work closely with communities given the time and effort that entails, often with unpredictable developments and outcomes that are hard to measure.

And because expansions are usually financed by large external grants, there is seldom a focus on local resources. Dependence on foreign donors usually results in independence from communities, or in the very least it hinders the work of building sustainable communities that don’t rely on the resource-intensive presence of organisations. Thus, connecting with communities sounds like a nice, yet inefficient, goal. However, avoiding this type of work might lead to local communities becoming increasingly distant from platforms that they do not feel connected to.

Paraguay is a young democracy that still carries the historical weight of 35 years of dictatorship. It is one of the most corrupt countries in Latin America, according to Transparency International. Land distribution is among the most unequal in the world. And for all the positive macroeconomic indicators, social inequality and poverty have recently increased. With such pressing challenges, it is not unlike many developing countries struggling with a restrictive social environment, while rushing to tackle as many development problems as possible. In such a scramble, it is hard to visualise the relative importance of community-building.

As in most places, social media campaigns and symbolic victories by civil society leaders fail to empower and connect with people. Locals might perceive that those victories happen because “they are famous, educated, and have resources”, as one old man working in the streets of our city, Ciudad del Este, once told us. Consequently, victories that are not rooted in community work might unintentionally further alienate average citizens.

If anything, I believe this holds true for anti-corruption organisations—with all the political weight usually attached to their work. Namely, anti-corruption workshops mean little if there is no follow-up on strengthening communities. Similarly, appropriate legislation or public agencies that promote transparency matter little if anti-corruption movements have little power, especially if there is no long-term strategy on engaging communities.

 

Towards an ecosystem working against corruption

In 2008, when I was 17 years old, some of us students led a month-long demonstration exposing corruption in the education sector of Paraguay. A year later we created reAcción, a youth-led anti-corruption NGO, which despite winning some mini grants from Transparency International and the World Bank Institute, lacked significant funding until 2015. In the first 7 years, all our resources went into activities and we lacked paid staff members. Still, we expanded as a volunteer network to three of Paraguay’s largest cities, implemented different community projects, and experimented with rigid organisational models not fit for our dynamic network. We were lucky to make many mistakes early on, and the tensions between community and programmatic work taught us plenty.

The incentives in our sector are clear: follow a development model that favors size and expansive geographic presence, and cultivate a perception of impact. In such a model, it is not enough to act a local level. “Never mind your focus on the education sector, corruption is everywhere and so should your initiatives”, we were once told. Noise from organisational success will always be louder than the voice of the people in the communities one works with.

But our experience tells a different story: our progress in battling corruption within the education sector has mainly stemmed from the community we patiently built and the competences we developed during the process.

Building and sustaining connections is hard. But it is worrisome that as organisations, many follow incentives that lead us to become much like a virus, which needs to constantly multiply while feeding off problems in different places. Sometimes this seems to reflect a business model of sorts. Instead of working with the aim of becoming redundant by extinguishing the problems we tackle, we continue to see them as raw materials to sustain entire industries and enterprise-like organisations.

Community facilitation with students in Ciudad del Este, 2018.
copyright: reAcción

Our team members were in their early 20s when we got our first major grant (at least for us). We had no advisors or people to guide us. Contrary to expectations, we invested in a couple of 18 year-olds as reAcción’s first staff members, former volunteers. Our first major project emphasised community-building for anti-corruption in the education sector. We bet on training our volunteers. Technology and other fashionable components were present, but most of our time was spent on activities with people from the community.

We knew we wouldn’t see much impact for a few years. In hindsight, it was a risky bet. But our focus on maintaining closeness with community was such that we designed two of our initial projects to eventually become autonomous organisations—this process has already started as they have developed their own approaches and teams. Instead of becoming big, we’ve started to become an ecosystem.

 

Development in the hands of community

We could have applied for larger grants earlier. But it would have come at the price of our community-building. We could have hired development practitioners to speed up our monitoring mechanisms and increase the impact of our projects. But it would have come at the cost of time with our volunteers and their critical engagement with the reality of the problem. This is not to demean the value of expertise; it’s to shed light to the need for that expertise to be shared with more than simply exercised on communities. What some might say we lost in time, we gained in integration, experience, fellowship, and cohesion.

Hence, when we found evidence to suggest that our anti-corruption efforts have contributed to an increase in the number of poor schools that received funds for infrastructure, it was an entire community’s win. The neediest schools receiving resources went up from 20% in 2015 to 80% in 2017. This was recently highlighted in an article published by the Open Contracting Partnership.

Workshops with students include sessions about monitoring budgets and civic tools to hold the Paraguayan government to account.
copyright: reAcción

At a recent meeting, I mentioned how our organisation is looking to get funding from our community’s members and small businesses. One gentleman applauded our idealism, stating he wished things worked that way. Upon reflection, I understood something. Probably for most well-established NGOs, it must sound quite naïve to think the local community might actually support a worthy cause. So, I wonder, how many of our victories and failures are advancing our communities’ power to claim ownership of their own development?

Of course, different issues require complementary types of interventions. And yes, working in the grassroots requires a lot of extra work. But corruption, fundamentalism, xenophobia, and crime have an easy time spreading in places where people have no platforms, and no alternative communities through which to join other people that have similar demands. What I’ve learned from our anti-corruption work in Paraguay is that we urgently need community organisations as platforms that can bridge the gaps between policy-oriented NGOs, think-tanks, environmental groups, and so forth. The current model’s incentives and certainly most donor requirements do not facilitate such a transition.

It’s difficult to avoid the trade-offs inherent to growing as an NGO. But when growth comes at the expense of community-building, it concentrates benefits to the few, while the rest steadily become passive spectators—much like growth in economic terms. In anti-corruption, this is a flaw we unconsciously pursue. From NGOs to the economy, we should stop self-justifying  that is not community-centred.

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The new head of the UK’s aid watchdog wants your advice on its workplan – can you help?

Imagine this: you are in charge of scrutinising all UK aid spending by the government. Of giving public and Parliament assurance about how a perennially controversial £14.5bn budget is spent.

You want to ensure your findings are taken seriously by government departments and people with the power to make changes to the spending – so it’s best that they don’t think you’re solely out to ‘bash’ them, to chase headlines, or just to look tough.

But you also want to ensure that where aid could be better spent, that you uncover it, quickly, so changes can be made.

So where would you look? Where would you focus? And how would you go about this?

As the incoming chief commissioner for the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) – the UK’s aid watchdog – these are just some of the questions I’ve been asking myself as I look to the future.

And now I want to ask you them too. What do you think? I genuinely want to hear as many views as possible, from suggestions of review topics, to thoughts about how we could change the type of products we produce to better fulfil our mandate (which, by the way, is to provide independent evaluation and scrutiny of the impact and value for money of all UK government Official Development Assistance – ODA).

That’s why ICAI recently launched a public consultation asking two straightforward questions (personally I hate long surveys and never complete them!)

What areas do you think ICAI should focus on over the next four years, and why (these could include areas of particular interest or concern, or suggested review topics)?
What do you think of the current ICAI products? Do you have suggestions for different products?

You can write as much or as little as you want, and we’ll read every single response. So your suggestion really could result in a previously overlooked area of UK aid spending being scrutinised, and improved.

What kind of things am I looking for? Honestly, I’m open to all ideas. But to set out my thoughts a little more I’ll explain the type of changes I’m looking to make as ICAI enters its next phase.

Firstly I want to focus more on hearing from the people who are meant to be helped by UK aid. Their lives and their stories are ultimately what matters. How does UK aid spending affect them? Does the way in which it is spent impact them? What’s the best way to ensure UK aid programmes really work to ensure that no one is left behind? And how would you like to see ICAI ensuring the voices of these people come through in our reviews, while also ensuring our evidence remains robust and credible?

I also want to do more to increase public trust in the very system of aid scrutiny itself. That’s part of the reason we’re opening our consultation to anyone at all who has thoughts or opinions. It’s clear to me that it is important that thorough scrutiny is not just done well, but also that it is seen to be done.

ICAI was established in 2011, as the 0.7% commitment was coming into force, to ensure that taxpayers felt the increase in spending would not result in money wasted. Since then, ICAI’s reviews have regularly shown that, in general, money spent under the UK aid banner, is making a difference to people’s lives. We have also on occasion highlighted that mistakes are being made, on one occasion resulting in the summary closure of a programme.

But although this crucial work has been done to provide the public with assurance of aid spending, too often they are unaware of our work. And I’d like to change that, so that more of the general public know that ICAI (along with Parliament and the NAO) are investigating aid effectiveness on their behalf.

Finally I want to focus more on multilateral aid spending, which accounts for such a large portion of the budget, but

Go on then, make my day

yet so far has been a small part of ICAI’s work, and is often rather invisible to the public.

These new areas of focus – beneficiaries, increasing public trust, and multilaterals – need a new approach, and new topics, which is why I’m asking for your views.

And while I can’t promise it will be possible for us to implement every single idea, I can promise they will shape our approach. For example, I’ve already decided that from July ICAI will publish the literature reviews it produces for reviews. I’ve taken this decision following feedback from the people that use our reviews.

So what else would you like to see ICAI change or review? Visit our online consultation before April 23 and let us know.

 

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A New Scramble for Africa?

to take my course on activism, but I think they’re missing out. If, like me, you’re liberal on social issues, sceptical on economic laissez faire, and just plain confused on politics, then at least read the Economist, which is consistently liberal across all of them, for the social and political stuff.

Case in point – its fascinating recent Africa and geopolitics briefing. Some excerpts.

‘More than 320 embassies or consulates were opened in Africa between 2010 and 2016. Turkey alone opened 26 (see maps). Foreign leaders are supporting the diplomatic push. This year Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is set to host the first Russia-Africa summit, a tribute act to the triennial Forum on Africa-China Co-operation (FOCAC), in Beijing. Hosted by President Xi Jinping, last year’s FOCAC attracted more African leaders than the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly. Japan and Britain are also hosting gatherings in the coming months.

When not hosting African politicians, foreign leaders are visiting them. China’s top officials made 79 visits to Africa in the decade up to 2018. Since 2008 Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has paid more than 30 visits to African countries, most of them sub-Saharan. Emmanuel Macron has visited the continent nine times since becoming president of France in 2017; Narendra Modi has visited eight African countries during his five years in power in India. But not all are so keen. Kanye West and Kim Kardashian have visited more African leaders than has Mr Trump, who has yet to set foot on the continent.

Such visits and summits are in part efforts to make use of Africa’s diplomatic clout. Its 54 nations make up more than a quarter of the UN General Assembly and by custom it always has three of the 15 non-permanent seats on the Security Council. China has persuaded nearly every African state to ditch diplomatic recognition of Taiwan; only eSwatini (formerly Swaziland) remains to be swayed. Russia has petitioned African politicians over its claims to Crimea; 28 African countries abstained on a General Assembly motion condemning the annexation. Israel has sought recognition of Jerusalem as its capital, and now has Togo on its side.

Military ties are strengthening alongside the diplomatic ones. The Horn of Africa has become part of the broader competition between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on one side and Iran, Qatar and Turkey on the other. In 2017 Turkey built its largest overseas military base, and its first in Africa, in Somalia. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have launched attacks into Yemen from their positions in the Horn. Saudi Arabia has also recruited soldiers from Sudan, some of them children. It is also thought to be keen to open a base in Djibouti; the UAE is set to open a new one in neighbouring Somaliland.

China’s military influence stretches well beyond the base in Djibouti. Last year the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted exercises in Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana and Nigeria. Chinese popular culture celebrates Africa as a place for derring-do. In 2017 “Wolf Warrior 2”, a film in which Chinese special forces save beleaguered doctors in Africa, set new records at the box office. “Peacekeeping Infantry Battalion”, a television show, celebrates China’s role as a provider of blue helmets. The country fields more UN peacekeepers than any of the Security Council’s other four permanent members, most of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, South Sudan and Sudan.

This interest in peace goes hand in hand with a brisk business in arms; China sells more weapons in sub-Saharan Africa than any other nation. Chinese expansion has worried other Asian powers. Japan is enlarging its base in Djibouti. India is developing a network of radar and listening posts around the Indian Ocean, though plans for a base in the Seychelles were blocked by the archipelago last year. In March the Indian army will host its first military exercises with a number of African countries, including Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.

Keeping up with the Joneses is not the only reason for military involvement. European countries are stepping up their presence in the Sahel, the arid region on the southern edge of the Sahara desert, aiming both to quell Islamic terrorism and stem the flow of migrants to Europe.

Russia’s moves are more muscular, and more mercenary. Often the key figures are cronies of Mr Putin, like Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former chef, rather than official state employees. Mr Vines likens them to Cecil Rhodes and other 19th-century imperialists who would lead private invasions with the implicit protection of the government back home. Last year, after the Central African Republic (CAR) asked for help fighting rebels, Russia barged aside France, the CAR’s former colonial ruler, quickly sending arms and advisers. Experts in extractive industry soon followed. The defence ministry is now home to a group of Russian “advisers”.

African countries are increasingly home to foreign manufacturing firms. Chinese state-backed companies have helped set up “special economic zones” in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Rwanda as well as Djibouti. Olam International, a Singaporean company, operates a free-trade zone in Gabon; India is trying to open one in Mauritius. Turkey has a facility next to the Chinese one in Djibouti, part of a set of ambitious plans for the continent which include building railways in Tanzania, airport terminals in Ghana and much of the “futuristic” Diamniadio Lake City in Senegal. Turkish Airlines, which is 49% state-owned, flies to more than 50 African cities.

As others have bolstered links with Africa, America has cut funding for development and diplomatic programmes. It has announced a 10% reduction in troops in Africa and has left key positions unfilled; it took Mr Trump’s administration 18 months to fill the top Africa job in the State Department.

America’s relative economic importance is also waning. In 2006 America, China and France were the three countries doing the most trade with sub-Saharan Africa, defined as the sum of imports and exports (see chart). From 2006 to 2018 Chinese trade increased by 226% and India’s by 292%. Other countries also posted impressive increases, although from low starting points: 216% for Turkey, 335% for Russia, 224% for Indonesia. The EU, still all-told the region’s largest trading partner, managed only a modest 41%. American trade with sub-Saharan Africa shrank.’

 

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Vikalp Sangam: a search for alternatives in India…and globally

Ashish Kothari: Ashish is the co-editor of Alternative Futures: India Unshackled, a collection of 35 essays on India’s future, by a diverse set of authors – activists, researchers, practitioners, media persons, policy-influencers; and of Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary, a compilation of over 100 essays on radical alternatives from around the world.

Pallav Das and Ashish Kothari  explain the need for alternative visions to the

Pallav Das:  Pallav curates de Radical Ecological Democracy platform, and his conservation work has contributed to the preservation of threatened habitat areas in South Asia, particularly in the Himalayas.

dominant  model  of economic development in India, and beyond. Pallav and Ashish are two of the founders of Kalpavriksh, a 40-year Indian NGO focusing on environment and development issues.

 

Contemporary India is going through a perplexingly critical time in its economic development, as it seems that every step it takes towards tackling poverty further pushes the country deep into the swamp of environmental degradation. Home to six of the ten most polluted cities in the world, with its natural resources being plundered rapaciously to realize an ill-conceived vision of development and its weather patterns becoming increasingly erratic and often lethal, the country seems to be hurtling ever forward towards ecological mayhem.

Moreover, the agenda being foisted on the Indian people is deepening already entrenched social inequities and suffering caused by patriarchy and casteism. The richest 10% in India now hold 3/4 of the total wealth. The super rich, the top 1%, now account for nearly half of the country’s total private wealth, about $1.75 trillion! Meanwhile, India’s share of the world’s extreme poor is still about one third.

Despite this bleak picture, however, there are significant efforts being made by civil society to construct alternative paradigms and pathways towards a world that is sustainable, equitable and just. These are frameworks and visions that aspire to bring together the existing heritage of ideas and worldviews, and cultures, which still survive in the country, particularly amongst the indigenous communities, combining them with new progressive ideas and grassroots practice. Movement activists, academics, thinkers and practitioners of alternatives, indigenous and rural communities, artists and communicators are coming together.

 

Alternatives: the logic

Vikalp Sangam, or the Confluence of Alternatives, is a unique initiative to explore and understand alternative thinking and organizing on a large spectrum of economic, social and environmental issues in India. The chief aim is to create a platform where alternatives that don’t rely on ecological self-destruction and the bitter calcification of economic inequality, reach a large audience and become viable for discussion, analysis and eventual replication in other places.

Vikalp Sangam is a collaborative effort that started in 2014 by four prominent Indian civil society organisations, Kalpavriksh, Bhoomi, Shikshantar and Deccan Development Society which have been actively seeking solutions to environmental, developmental and educational challenges confronting the country.

But, why are we searching for alternatives in the first place? It’s true that movements can periodically encroach upon the accumulated power of the ruling elite, but only an alternative way of thinking and being can ensure the equitable distribution of economic, social and political power within the society. From the perspective of meaningful change the most important question is, are contemporary movements able to demonstrate that they’re not only questioning and resisting the existing structure, crucial as that is, but also have viable, well thought-out alternatives to offer? Moreover, are such alternatives already in action in some form and, in fact, showing promise for scaling up?

 

What counts as an ‘alternative’? What are its underlying principles?

Let’s take a look at what constitutes an alternative. According to the “Alternatives Framework”, which is in a continuous process of evolution through discussions among the Vikalp Sangam participants, “alternatives can be practical activities, policies, processes, technologies, and concepts/frameworks that lead us to equity, justice, sustainability. They can be practiced or proposed/propagated by communities, government, civil society organizations, individuals, and social enterprises, amongst others. They can simply be continuations from the past, re-asserted in or modified for current times, or new ones; it is important to note that the term does not imply that these alternatives are always ‘marginal’ or new, but that they are in contrast to the mainstream or dominant system.”

The Vikalp Sangam process is rooted in the realization of the ecological limits of human activity and the consequent rights of nature to survive and thrive. Committed to simplicity and sufficiency, Vikalp Sangam advocates self-reliance in meeting basic needs of the people as well as respect for the dignity and creativity of labor and work, and equity between physical and intellectual labor.

In the same spirit, the governance model is also designed to be closer to local rural and urban communities linked at bioregional, eco-regional and cultural levels such that each person can participate meaningfully with largely face-to-face decision-making as part of a participatory democracy. Ultimately, the process emphasizes the inextricable interconnectedness between humans and their environment, as well as the intrinsic relationship between cultures, ways of living, knowledge systems, values, economies and livelihoods, and polities.

Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence) in Ladakh

The Vikalp Sangam process is geared towards the propagation of this idea of “alternatives”. In the last three years the initiative has established an active website for dissemination of news and views on the “alternatives” to bring thinkers and practitioners together to learn from each other and to further sharpen the debate (for reports on these and other related material, see here ).  

These Vikalp Sangam deliberations have resulted in the following five interconnected and overlapping spheres as the cornerstone of the exploration for alternatives:

Ecological integrity and resilience
Social well-being and justice
Direct and delegated democracy
Economic democracy
Cultural diversity and knowledge democracy

 

The “Alternatives” World View

For the Vikalp Sangam framework, the “center of human activity is neither the state nor the corporation, but the community, a self-defined collection of people with some strong common or cohesive social interest. The community could be of various forms, from the ancient village to the urban neighborhood to the student body of an institution to even the more ‘virtual’ networks of “common interest.”

The inputs coming to the Vikalp Sangam discussions are based on the alternatives experiments being conducted by organizations all over India. Let us give you an idea of the various experiments taking place:

Alternative economies & technologies: initiatives that help to create alternatives to the dominant neoliberal ‘logic’ of growth, such as localization and decentralization of basic needs towards self-reliance, respect and support of diverse livelihoods; producer and consumer collectives; local currencies and trade; the gift economy; production based on ecological principles; innovative technologies that respect ecological and cultural integrity; and moving away from GDP-like indicators to more qualitative, human-scale ones that account for well-being.

Alternative politics: people-centered governance and decision-making, including forms of direct democracy or the Gandhian idea of swaraj in urban and rural areas; re-imagining current political boundaries to make them more compatible with ecological and cultural contiguities; promotion of the non-party political process; methods of increasing accountability and transparency of the government and of political parties; and progressive policy frameworks.

Farmers and consumers harvesting jowar together in Sangareddy district.
photo: Mohd Arif

Energy: alternatives to the current unsustainable sources of energy, including decentralized, community-run renewable sources and micro-grids; equitable access to energy; promoting non-electric energy options such as passive heating and cooling; reducing wastage in transmission and use; putting caps on demand; and advocating energy-efficient materials.

Environment and ecology: promoting ecological sustainability, including community-led conservation of land, water and biodiversity; reviving degraded ecosystems; creating awareness leading to greater respect for the sanctity of life and biodiversity of which humans are a part; and promoting ecological ethics.

Livelihoods: the search for alternative, localized economies; satisfying, dignified and ecologically sustainable livelihoods and jobs including traditional occupations that communities choose to continue, such as agriculture, pastoralism, nomadism, forestry, fisheries, crafts, and others in the primary economy; or jobs in manufacturing and service sectors that are ecologically sustainable and dignified.

Food and Water: security people’s sovereignty over food and water, including ensuring community control over processes of food production and distribution, and the commons from where uncultivated foods are obtained; sustaining the diversity of Indian cuisine and promoting uncultivated and ‘wild’ foods; use and distribution of decentralized, ecologically sustainable, efficient and equitable producer-consumer links; making water storage a priority and promoting democratic governance of water and wetlands.

Similar experiments are taking place on Health and Hygiene, Learning and Education, Settlements and Transportation and Culture and Media. A huge treasure trove of opinions, facts, theories and data is emerging. We believe it shows the way towards the creation of what we call “Radical Ecological Democracy”, based on climate justice, environmental sustainability and socio-economic equality.

Global alternatives

Finally, we’re also exploring the possibility of replicating the Vikalp Sangam model at an international level. A one-day Sangam has already taken place in Lebanon, involving groups from Jordan, Egypt and Palestine. And now a Global Tapestry of Alternatives is to be launched soon, building on the experience of the Vikalp Sangam and similar processes elsewhere such as Mutua Crianza in Mexico. The idea is to enable exchange of experiences amongst the myriad movements for justice and ecological wisdom, to mutually strengthen each other, collaborate on activities, and create a stronger political mass for transformation.

We are convinced that human wellbeing can be achieved without endangering the earth and without leaving behind more than half of humanity.

 

***

A longer version of this post was first published in Empowering Nonviolence , a project by War Resisters International. 

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Links I Liked

summarized in The Economist. ‘Of the 125 countries for which good data exist, 43 have seen GDP per person and happiness move in opposite directions (in red on graphic).’ economist.com/graphic-detail…

There are 7 universal moral rules: love your family; help your group; return favours; be brave; defer to authority; be fair and respect others’ property. They’re the same across cultures, according to analysis of ethics from 60 societies (600,000 words from over 600 sources). Ht Paul Kirby

Microsummary of nearly 300 papers to Oxford’s recent African economics conference, covering ‘nearly every aspect of African societies, from agriculture to education to firms to health to trade.’ by the human hooverbrain, Dave Evans

‘Scholarly Enticement’ – how to apply viral marketing techniques to your geeky blogpost. Coming to range of posts on this blog in the near future, I fear.

And some top book reviews:

One of my favourite bloggers reviewing one of my favourite books: Branko Milanovic on Francis Fukuyama’s ‘The Origins of Political Order’

Heineken in Africa. ‘Always align with those in power-regardless of government or regime; use a weak regulatory environment to your advantage on favours, subsidies, competition or advertising.’

Muffet McGraw (top US women’s basketball coach) with a brilliant exposition on discrimination in sport and its wider significance. Sports coaches as a new form of public authority maybe?

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Audio summary of FP2P posts (7m) week beginning 1st April

The post Audio summary of FP2P posts (7m) week beginning 1st April appeared first on From Poverty to Power.

Have Children’s Rights Campaigners lost their Courage?

organisation. In advance of next Monday’s conference at LSE on Politics, Humanitarianism, and Children’s Rights, which explores the relationship between these three constructs, he asks whether we, as today’s children’s rights advocates, have the courage of our predecessors.

Do children’s rights count for anything in the modern world? Do present-day supporters of children’s rights have the same courage as – for example – Save the Children’s founders? Or have charities become so dependent on not upsetting their governments that their advocacy has become neutered? Maybe history can help us understand our current purpose better, and suggest what our future role might be.

For a hundred years the interplay between politics, humanitarianism and children’s rights has been integral to Save the Children’s work. The organisation was founded to provide emergency relief to children who were starving in central Europe at the end of the First World War. This humanitarian crisis resulted directly from the economic blockade imposed on Germany by the UK government in order to build pressure around the Versailles peace negotiations. On the back of an unsuccessful political campaign led by the Fight the Famine Council to persuade the government to change its approach and drop the blockade, the organisation came into being. Dorothy Buxton was the driving force in both initiatives, and it was her older sister, Eglantyne Jebb, who later became Save the Children’s leader. Thus a humanitarian organisation was born out of an essentially political cause.

Eglantyne Jebb in 1920

Both sisters proposed that a focus on children’s well-being could help bring about a more just and solidarist international society. Although the idea of children’s rights that emerged was inspired by a humanitarian conscience, it was therefore imagined as a political project. By 1923 Jebb had formulated a concept she called The Rights of the Child, a simple but powerful statement of how the world should treat children. She argued that while it was possible to go on indefinitely providing humanitarian relief it was also necessary to take a step back and challenge why such relief was needed in the first place.

‘I believe we should claim certain rights for the children and labour for their universal recognition.’

– Eglantyne Jebb

In 1924 Jebb got the fledgling League of Nations to adopt the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which was eventually taken up by the United Nations. In 1989 the UN adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), a more mature set of minimum standards that has since been almost universally ratified. Thus a successful political project was fired by a humanitarian passion.

At Save the Children I was always grateful to our founders for this normative and practical underpinning. Clearly children’s rights can only be secured within the context of children’s families, communities and wider society; we cannot single out children for special help without addressing broader social, economic, cultural and political factors. Nevertheless children’s rights constitute a uniquely powerful organising concept for relief and development work.

This is partly because crisis and disruption during childhood have a more damaging effect than at any other life stage. From a practical perspective early intervention makes sense and by caring for our children we are safeguarding society’s future. This was a powerful plank of Buxton’s and Jebb’s thinking; they believed that the best hope of repairing the huge damage wrought by the war lay with the younger generation. In Jebb’s own words: ‘Every generation of children … offers mankind anew the possibility of rebuilding his ruin of a world.’

Power also derives from the general if not universal acceptance of children’s claims on society as a whole. As a relief worker in the Biafran War I could see that both sides in the conflict understood and respected that we were only there to respond to the needs of children, regardless of whose side their parents were on. Although humanitarian space has since shrunk, by and large this is still a powerful moral argument. Of course, impartiality is no guarantee of perceived neutrality, but at least impartiality on behalf of children is unambiguous.

If we look around today it is easy to question the value of children’s rights. Whether it is the experience of children damaged by armed conflict, children seeking safety in the US from violence and exploitation in Central America, or a child whose mother’s terrorist connections result in that parent’s revoked UK citizenship, it is clear that despite the best efforts of children’s rights advocates the core principles of the UNCRC – non-discrimination, prioritising the child’s best interests, the right to development as well as survival, respect for the views of the child – do not have the normative force that their authors intended.

What would the founders of Save the Children make of this? It is hard to imagine the contemporary equivalent of being arrested in Trafalgar Square for distributing leaflets shaming the UK government for its economic blockade policy, as Jebb was in 1919. As today’s ‘humanitarians’, we must have the courage to stand up and demand respect for children’s rights as these sisters did. Charities have to take care not to be seen as ‘political’ but governments should understand and encourage the continuing importance of a vibrant, occasionally pesky, but robustly independent sector, rather than expecting the sector to fall in behind them by creating a legislative, regulatory and funding environment that constrains such independence. I don’t think Dorothy Buxton and Eglantyne Jebb would have accepted that…

This post first appeared on the LSE Africa Centre blog

 

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Who you Gonna Call? Engaging ‘Public Authorities’ for Rapid Crisis Responses

donors/aid agencies understand power (aka ‘public authority’) in fragile/conflict settings. As seems to be the way in academia, Tom does all the work, and I get to add my name to the result – what’s not to like? Here he is getting enthusiastic about the way World Vision analyses power and politics in a crisis – lots of echoes of other work on ‘adaptive management’, ‘doing development differently’ etc.

In 2014, World Vision’s Johan Eldebo and colleagues set about designing a tool for conducting rapid, yet socially grounded contextual analyses in the middle of escalating crises. The team’s big idea was to systematise and scale up the informal ways that information was being gathered in such places. The result was the ‘Good Enough Context Analysis for Rapid Response’ tool or GECARR, for short.

In practice, GECARRs rely on the relationships and reputations World Vision and its partners have with organisations and people that can tell them what is happening on the ground, who is driving it and what might happen next. To collect data rapidly in often difficult circumstances, informants and focus groups are asked eight simple questions about their situations. Each is road tested beforehand so they do not put respondents in danger. Their simplicity also enables insights to be gathered from children caught in unfolding crises.

This approach helps GECARRs to quickly unearth the micro- power and -politics of the places under analysis, with the aim of better responding to their humanitarian needs. For example, the team investigating the rise of violence in 2017 in Kasai, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, found that many chiefs had lost their legitimacy because they were encouraging youth to join the rebellion. In contrast, pastors and priests were considered by communities to have retained their influence due to providing vital services. This differed from the perception among more removed informants that the Catholic Church had lost influence in recent years. It also suggested to the GECARR team that local religious leaders could play a mediating role and help to unite communities should the conflict abate.

GECARRs don’t only extract data, they also use World Vision’s contacts to facilitate the processes themselves. Last year this was demonstrated along the Colombian – Venezuelan border where it was believed the flow of displaced people was about to substantially increase. The GECARR team used World Vision’s standing with church leaders in the capital to contact local branches. Pastors provided buildings for them to work from, arranged volunteers to help with data collection and put them in touch with refugees’ organisations able to provide access to communities. These organisations have since helped to implement programmes responding to the crisis.

GECARRs also draw upon World Vision’s contacts to help analyse their findings and validate conclusions. Shortly after returning from the field, GECARR team leads, representatives from local communities, faith leaders, civil society organisations, and other INGOs, including the UN, hash out three likely scenarios for the future of the context under study. They include trigger points that indicate when a crisis is moving towards one or another scenario. These exercises have often proved to be eerily accurate, as when GECARR researchers in the Central African Republic’s were evacuated as a proposed trigger point occurred during their work.

During a recent GECARR review in Zimbabwe several principles underpinning the tool’s success emerged:

Iterations – The GECARR has gradually evolved, drawing upon the inputs, trials and adjustments of 100s of participants and practitioners.

Timely – GECARRs take around 3-4 weeks from planning to a completed report. This allows them to used in the short decision-making windows around rapid onset crises.

Simplicity – Simple questions help to reveal people’s opinions, hopes and fears, and allow data collection teams to be trained within a day or two.

Public Authorities – GECARRs draw upon the knowledge, skills and networks of what the LSE calls ‘public authorities‘ – those outside the state that govern and provide services in difficult, often violent and conflict-affected, contexts. They lend credibility to their reports and, in some instances, participate in the responses they lead to.

Actionable Reports – The typical report is only 6-10 pages long, follows a standard template and includes scenarios that help humanitarians get to grips with the problem and its potential solutions.

As the GECARR has evolved, others have taken an interest. Of the 26 undertaken to date 6 have been conducted with agencies such as Mercy Corps and Oxfam. The START Network of humanitarian organisations has also become a partner. With a mission to move the sector towards proactive interventions and to counter the media’s ability to dictate responses, they will fund GECARRs to raise emerging or overlooked issues up the international community’s agenda.

So, what’s next for the GECARR? Participants in the review agreed the emphasis should be on refining an already proven product, rather than any major additions or an overhaul. Indeed, they worried about what would happen should a consultant or ‘expert’ be let loose on the tool.

They also felt that interagency GECARRs are the gold standard, as they add further reach and credibility to the process. Nonetheless, participants felt that there can be hesitancy within INGOs over sharing networks and resources, and sensitivities around what final reports say. The challenge, then, is to create a humanitarian system that supports the intimate levels of cooperation needed for successful GECARRs.

In my opinion, GECARRs also hold lessons beyond the humanitarian sector. Most importantly, they should encourage others to see public authorities as valuable sources of information and change in the difficult places they work.

Tom was in Zimbabwe as part of a wider project undertaken with Duncan Green to examine how Oxfam, World Vision and Mercy Corps understand, engage and involve public authority in their programming in FCVAS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Book Review: Nanjala Nyabola, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya

advocate and political analyst, currently based in Nairobi) about how New Power applies to her country’s politics. The book is fascinating. As an added bonus, Digital Democracy is also a highly readable introduction to Kenyan society and politics.

You could hardly pick a better test case than Kenya – a digital hub, home to Mpesa, Ushahidi and other celebrated digital innovations. High literacy levels and 88% mobile phone penetration in 2017, combined with low levels of trust in a traditional media that long ago sold its soul to the politicians, and the room for manoeuvre that goes with a ‘partly free Democracy’ seem to provide the perfect incubator for ‘digital democracy’.

But this book is not one of those tech hype exercises in gee whizzery. It is about how digitization is both shaped by, and influences ‘analogue politics’. Based on numerous detailed case studies (the chapter on women’s rights activism and social media is particularly good), she arrives at what seems like the emerging consensus that New Power needs to be combined with the Old variety: ‘A hashtag is no more a movement than a pencil was prior to the digital age; an online movement without an offline component can often stop at just noise.’

The politics is less uplifting. The book begins and ends with political failure: a horrendous outbreak of election-linked violence in 2007 ‘fuelled a thirst for new politics’, including an effort to sanitize electoral politics through computerization. Techno-optimists ‘thought that technology could bridge the trust gap.’ But they ‘underestimated the tenacity with which Kenyan politicians would continually try to manipulate systems to win elections’. Fast forward ten years and the Supreme Court cancelled the August 2017 elections because of blatant interference in the electronic voting system.

Interestingly, a lot of ‘new media tactics’ are actually not that new at all – they bear a close resemblance to Kenyan traditions. Fake news is just a digital version of the false rumours long spread by politicians during election campaigns; crowd funding is just an online version of the Harambee tradition of community self-help events to help people with big financial moments like school fees or funeral costs. Tweeting a leader is just an updated version of a tradition of a Kiswahili phrase for a direct appeal to those in power, ‘Naomba serekali’ – ‘I request the government’.

Nyabola unpacks the political impact of new tech, and finds that it is deeply ambivalent, nowhere more so than on the issue of ethnic tension, which has been manipulated by politicians to devastating effect in recent year. Social media helps people build trust and cooperation across ethnic distinctions, but also acts as a channel for hate speech, especially through ‘Dark Social apps’ like WhatsApp, which by being away from public scrutiny, seem perfectly designed for the purpose: ‘social media has paradoxically both reinforced and undermined ethnic identities in Kenya.’ 12 million Kenyans use WhatsApp, compared to 7.1 million on Facebook, 4 million on Instagram and only 1 million on Twitter.

Mobile banking, Kenya style

The use of all these new platforms for online politics is dominated by the middle class: Tweets are overwhelmingly in English. But even so, it is a much broader and younger constituency than a conventional politics dominated by old men. Social media have allowed dissidents and outliers to find and support each other (on women’s rights, or sexuality) and so overcome their previous isolation. It seems that social media provide the channel for the rising middle class of Africa and other developing countries to find a space in a politics previously dominated by a tiny and elderly elite. And in that intra-middle class conversation, public shaming via social media can exercise genuine influence on leaders.

The picture painted by Nyabola is one of a country where the impact of new tech is in the balance. Just as elsewhere, the bad guys have discovered its potential (Cambridge Analytica was heavily involved in the 2017 election); we still don’t know whether digital populism and hate speech will triumph over social media’s ability to bridge and connect.

Her overall conclusion is broadly optimistic, however:

‘Underneath all of this tension and upheaval is agency. Kenyans are taking on technology built for the West to tell their own story and chart their own political destiny, for better or worse…. The underlying theme in the conversation is not conflict, it is agency.’

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