Duncan Green's Blog, page 88

Links I Liked

A wonderful statue in Berlin, entitled “Politicians Discussing Global Warming.”

Oxfam America has come up with a ‘Best States to Work Index’ comparing labour conditions across US states. Washington, DC ranks first in the nation and neighbouring Virginia ranks last.

‘”There are grassroots leaders of movements against discrimination & inequalities in every region…the real store of moral courage & leadership among us.” Powerful, uplifting valedictory essay by outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein

Why I love the interwebs. Example 1. Example 2. Example 3. OK, I’ll stop now

The Guardian’s Larry Elliott with a brilliant retrospective on how a historic window of opportunity was squandered. ‘Ten years after the financial crash, the timid left should be full of regrets’

If you’ve got nothing better to do at 3pm UK time on September 10, I’m doing a free webinar on ‘Research for impact’ for the ‘On Thinktanks’ network. Register here.

And finally, a great Venn diagram

 

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Blog break for a holiday, including Silent Disco…..

Taking a blog break for a couple of weeks. Off to the Edinburgh festival, where each year I try to cram in enough plays, music and other events to replenish my parched cultural hinterland for the rest of the year. By the time you read this, I will have embarrassed myself by taking part in the Guru Dudu silent disco, through the streets of the city. Thankfully no video exists of last year’s effort, where I was forced to dance solo to James Brown. Utterly terrifying…..

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What matters more in a disaster response – evidence or judgement? Lessons from the Nepal earthquake

Imagine you’re a mid-level policymaker in a government agency or a manager in an NGO. A major incident has just occurred. You have to drop everything you’re doing and shift all your attention into understanding and managing the situation. This is what managers in Nepal were faced with when a powerful earthquake struck in April 2015. They had to work out how many people had been affected, where they were and what help they needed. They also needed to know if there were going to be aftershocks and how this would affect the delivery of relief. So what factors shaped managers’ actions in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and what role was there for scientific evidence if any? Recent research reveals some useful insights.

Psychological and environmental factors that drive managers’ judgement

Managers were driven by considerable anxiety, a desire to do their job well but crucially a need to act quickly. This was helped by most managers being given a lot of autonomy. They subsequently improvised in uncertain conditions using their judgement and ‘gut instinct’. Judgement was in turn informed by a range of other factors which included those that were 1) psychological and 2) environmental.

Psychological factors included:

Values or principles: these included the need to keep people alive, to prioritise vulnerable groups and to work in partnership with government authorities;

Assumptions and ideas: including that the worst hit area would likely be at or close to the epicentre of the earthquake, that affected people would primarily require shelter in the event of an earthquake and that secondary effects of the earthquake such as landslides were unlikely to cause a lot of damage;

Experience: managers, especially those who had flown in from overseas as part of the ‘surge’, often had considerable experience in managing emergencies in other contexts;

Preparedness work: immediately after the earthquake, some managers focused initial relief and search and rescue efforts in the Kathmandu Valley which had been the focus of considerable preparedness work;

Estimates: some managers made estimates of the most affected populations and their locations by combining primary information from international sources, such as the USGS ShakeMap with secondary information from local sources, such as food and nutrition vulnerability;

Risk: some managers did not actually want to know if roads and trails were damaged by landslides. They felt under so much pressure to act and do something, that they’d rather take their chances and give the go ahead for trucks and porters to deliver supplies, even if satellite images told them that important routes had been damaged due to landslides.

Environmental factors included:

Historical: some managers chose to provide relief in areas where their organisation had existing programmes, where they supplied forms of relief they were familiar with and/or worked with target groups who they had previously worked with;

Competitive pressures: managers would often choose to work independently to distinguish themselves from

What’s the downside of branding?

other organisations, enabling them to provide a stronger account of their own work to regional and international headquarters and overseas funders;

Social and other forms of media: many managers received information about the earthquake, building damage and casualties through social media and traditional local media outlets. For instance, a lot of airtime was given to news about the destruction of historical sites in Kathmandu in the first few days of the response, which influenced early search and rescue efforts.

Formal guidance: this was issued by various authorities and groups including the formal humanitarian cluster system, government, donors and humanitarian agencies. Guidance included identification of the most severely affected areas and on occasion came in the form of standard operating procedures.

Informal relationships: managers were influenced by other, less formal groups, comprising people from a variety of sectors including those from knowledge or science institutions. For instance, government officials were able to acquire information about building damage from NGO practitioners who happened to be their friends.

Managers’ judgement wasn’t always sound. Mistakes were made (unintentionally). For instance, initial response efforts were skewed towards the epicentre and areas near Kathmandu. In fact, the worst hit areas were not at or close to the epicentre or in the Kathmandu Valley, but concentrated in a band running east to west with the hardest hit areas located to the north of the Kathmandu Valley. And with managers not recognising the potential for landslides to cause a lot of damage, parts of the country that were severely affected by landslides were left isolated, leaving thousands of households vulnerable despite response efforts elsewhere.

Expert Advice is more useful than evidence

Evidence, including scientific evidence, about the location and intensity of the earthquake, how the earthquake may have evolved over time and the nature of any secondary hazards, such as landslides, could have improved managers’ judgement, but was not considered during the immediate response. The time needed to produce reasonably robust scientific evidence made it impossible. What was considered useful by some managers, however, was expert advice from trusted and credible scientists in the hours and days after the earthquake had struck. In providing advice, these scientists were able to draw on a considerable experience and evidence, much of which they had acquired and generated during long careers.

How think tankers can help managers to improve their judgement

It’s (not) all about the temples

So, what does this mean for the role of scientists and think tankers during times of crisis? Well, they can play an important role in supporting managers to make better judgements. But this involves building longer-term relationships with relevant managers well before disasters strike. For instance, during conversations with managers, scientists and think tankers can help them to reflect on the sorts of assumptions that managers tend to make or the ideas they have, that are likely to inform their actions. Scientists and think tankers can also help managers think about what they might do (differently) and how they can be more improvisational and creative given a specific disaster scenario (through for instance, scenario planning).

Finally, although I am arguing here for scientists and think tanks to help managers improve their judgement rather than their use of evidence, during emergencies or crises, I would argue that this is as relevant during non-crisis situations in policy areas such as health, education and employment. It is not unusual for policymakers’ attention to lurch from issue to issue unpredictably, often at short notice and where there simply isn’t the time to commission and/or consider robust evidence.

For more on the role of scientific evidence during the 2015 Nepal earthquake relief efforts, see the ODI research report.

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Links I Liked

videos this week.

The gig economy ht Robert Went

Soccer girl power. Gotta love her swagger. She’s speaking Farsi, apparently – anyone know the origin of this wonderful 30 sec clip?

Francis Fukuyama on What’s Wrong with Public Policy Education?:

“Being skilled in policy analysis is woefully inadequate to bring about policy change in the real world”

“If we are to start telling people what to wear, maybe we should ban suits.” Ht Dr Laura Gavaghan

Fox News v Denmark. No contest.

Simple and very effective. Thankyou Amnesty

Brexit: A Titanic Disaster. This gets better/worse with each passing month. How can they work in a cliff edge next March?

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Make Change Happen: a new online Oxfam course for activists. Please check it out.

MOOC business with ‘Make Change Happen’ – a training course for activists. You can register any time, and the course starts 15th October.

I’ve contributed my usual spiel on power and systems, and will be one of the talking heads on video, but the MOOC is a big cross-Oxfam production, with the Open University, drawing on our internal campaigning and advocacy training materials, work on active citizenship, and lots of examples from around the world. Here’s the blurb:

‘Learn what drives positive social change in your role as a changemaker.

If we want to make effective and lasting social change, we must understand power dynamics, social systems and how change really happens.

This course will help you to understand the context of your situation, along with your existing sources of power and influence. You’ll be guided by examples of successful international movements and local community action – connecting with other changemakers around the globe.

Ultimately, you’ll finish this course equipped with the skills you need to spot and act upon opportunities – bringing about the change you want to see in your community and the world.

What topics will you cover?

Week 1 – What kind of change are we talking about, understanding change, changemakers and their stories, and different forms of change.

Week 2 – Understanding the context of change, looking at what context is, and the change you would like to see.

Week 3 – Taking a power and systems approach, defining power, the tools for analysing power, and understanding systems.

Week 4 – The power of collective action, working in partnership with others, and what drives a changemaker.

Week 5 – Spheres of influence, understanding influence, and where the power lies.

Week 6 – Developing strong stories for change, influencing strategies, and developing messages.

Week 7 – Taking action to make change happen, strategy and tactics, developing your action plan, and the steps to implement your plan.

Week 8 – Tackling challenges and taking your next steps, reflecting on change, overcoming challenges, and staying inspired and focused.’

This first run is a bit of a pilot, and we’ll be aiming to tweak according to feedback on how it goes. Exciting stuff. Please check it out and tell your networks.

Here’s the link again

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Can Adaptive Management help clear Africa’s rubbish mountains?

A second vignette from my recent visit (with Irene Guijt) to Tanzania to look at adaptive management (AM) in

The problem is messy, and so are the solutions

the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID) programme.

It may not set the pulse racing, but rubbish disposal (formally known as solid waste management, SWM) is a big deal in any city, and is really bad in Dar es Salaam. Here’s how I4ID describes the problem:

‘Waste collectors must plough their way through a mound of hurdles. The government provides waste collectors with little subsidy or help with fee collection. Many residents fail to pay refuse collection charges because their service has got so bad, and the only legal dumpsite is dangerous and out of control, a long way from the city.’

The resulting accumulation of rubbish and illegal dumping sites is not only ugly and smelly, but dangerous: Soil and water contamination affects public health and marine life, while the build-up of rubbish in waterways contributes to devastating and deadly flooding every year.

How can a relatively small AM programme like I4ID make a dent on Dar’s rubbish mountain?

That is a rubbish cup….

To find out, we visited three venues that gave us a sense of the range of Dar’s SWM challenges and how AM approaches can help resolve them. First up 10 flights of stairs in a grimy office block, we meet GreenWaste Pro, a modern company collecting rubbish in some of the richer parts of Dar – their 450 employees serve an estimated one million people.

The system, where residents can pay, works by companies winning a licence to manage a whole Ward, to collect fees set by government (50p per family per month), collect their garbage, and keep the streets clean.

The main barrier to Greenwaste’s expansion is non-payment, so they’re trying some tech innovation. Next week, they are attaching small plaques with RFID chips to the front doors of some of their customers, so they can monitor their payments. The politically smart bit was getting the municipal government to agree to having its logo on them – that means residents won’t touch them. In exchange, the government is hoping the data from the chips can help it with tax collection, among other things.

I4ID’s contribution is paying for the 5,000 RFID tags for an initial pilot (the company has its own bright young techie who developed the idea – no need for tech help there), brokering a relationship with University of Dar es Salaam Data Lab who helped with the open source mapping tool and an army of students to go door to door installing the tags and gathering information, and a plan to broker conversations with other waste companies to advocate for much needed reforms.

Then it’s off to a giant dusty packing shed, where Allen Kimambo, a classically hyperactive and driven entrepreneur,

Allen Kimambo

has set up Zaidi, a company that recycles cardboard. Now he wants to move into ‘white paper’ as well. As we talk, two women in dust masks are sifting through piles of paper collected mainly from big corporate offices and embassies. Here I4ID is paying for the initial wage bill and some technical support – Allen is loudly appreciative of the technical advice he’s had from a recycler-cum-consultant, who I4ID is hiring to advise both Zaidi and Greenwaste.

By some estimates, less than half of Dar’s 4,600 tonnes of daily waste reaches the landfill. Less than five per cent of the city’s wards are served by formally regulated companies, mainly in the richer and commercial parts of Dar (or as one I4ID staffer puts it: ‘the Council wants the sitting room to be clean, but doesn’t care about the sleeping rooms’).

SWM in Dar’s poorer quarters is left to each neighbourhood to manage, where leaders at the lowest tier of government, the mtaa, are responsible for finding a fix. Some leaders take it seriously and are able to source decent service providers, although rubbish collectors often struggle to provide a good service and still break even, while others do deals with their cronies, allowing them to collect some fees while leaving waste uncollected or dumping it in fields and rivers.

So our final visit is to the ‘Cashpoint’ company in a poor area of Dar called Manzese. The ‘office’ is actually Jenny and Kyalo Mbatha’s front room, one of ten households in a busy compound with lines of washing drying over stagnant, evil-looking puddles.

Back in 2008, Jenny was running an M-Pesa (mobile money) kiosk and got annoyed by a large fly-tipping site right opposite her stall. She took matters into her own hands, hired a truck and cleared 4 truckloads of rubbish from the site, then put a watchman on the site to keep it clean. Enterprising local mtaa leaders promptly dropped round and asked if she wanted to take over the waste contract.

She decided to give up the kiosk and go into the waste management business, but found hardly anyone paid their monthly fees. Since then it has been an endless struggle to collect enough fees to make the collection viable, complicated by the additional obligation to keep the ward clean – so you can’t punish non fee-payers’ by leaving their rubbish on the street.

The contrast with the electricity fee system is striking. When the electricity goes off, Kyalo makes a payment via his phone, gets a text code in return and goes outside to tap it into the compound’s meter, the electricity comes on again within minutes. No payment → no electricity, so everyone pays.

Jenny’s fame has spread and she now has contracts for 5 mtaas – about 3000 people. I4ID is supporting her to expand by experimenting with an approach she piloted in her first mtaa – embedding the service charge in a Pay As You Go pre-paid bright green rubbish bag. In the past, Cashpoint has managed to change the culture of payment and get fee payment rates up to 70% in 6 months, then stop using the green bags (they’re expensive) and get people to keep paying.

What’s interesting is that Jenny and Kyalo have already thought of and/or tried every idea we come up with for improving fee collection (and we have at least 2 PhDs in the room). Collective peer pressure, a la microfinance; punish defaulters with delayed collection; a premium service for good payers; name and shame.

Which really got us thinking about I4ID’s ‘USP’ – unique selling point. Just for comparison, the much larger World Bank concluded a few years ago that the institutional breakdowns behind Dar’s rubbish mountain were just too complex and messy for them to get anywhere. Can an adaptive management approach designed precisely to navigate such messiness do any better?

Too early to say. I4ID’s current offer seems to be a combination of technical assistance/research, convening and brokering conversations between players who don’t normally meet, and small pots of quick money to try things out, unblock processes and build relationships. I think it might also be worth drawing on a wider range of knowledge than just TA – for example, exchanges with SWM experiments elsewhere in East Africa. Or exploring the ‘positive deviance’ of people like Jenny – maybe there are lots more frustrated kiosk owners who are dying to tackle Dar’s rubbish problem?

And here’s a short clip from I4ID’s Mary Benda, showing collection day in Manzese – see if you can spot the green bags!

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Adaptive Management meets Menstrual Hygiene

I recently visited Tanzania to look at adaptive management in the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID)

Mishy

programme, a big (£12m over 5 years) project that is trying to use AM approaches in a fast-closing political space (more on that to follow, once Irene Guijt and I finish the draft paper). One highlight was watching some top convening and brokering in action, on the topic of menstrual hygiene management (MHM). It was a fascinating insight into the people and tactics that need to come together to make AM work.

The issue: only a small fraction of Tanzanian women are using improved menstrual products like sanitary pads. The remaining 80% are reported to be using a variety of materials from cloth rags, ugali, soil, cow dung, to corn cobs. Reusable cloth rags are mostly used, but due to cultural sensitivities, poor management of them has been linked to increased cases of discomfort, fungus, UTIs, and other related diseases.

The key figure for I4ID is an Exfamer, Mwanahamisi Singano (universally known as Mishy, above). She’s a classic campaigner and a great networker. Before joining I4ID, she’d been active in the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP – Tanzania’s largest women’s/feminist movement). On International Women’s Day this year, Mishy was facilitating a TGNP event, after which they got into a conversation about MHM.

TGNP wanted to lobby for free sanitary pads in schools (girls miss classes because of the lack of facilities). The trouble was that the politics were all wrong – an opposition MP had already proposed the idea, and been rejected. What’s more Kenya’s experience when it adopted a similar policy was that it was very difficult to implement in practice. Mishy and TGNP had allies in government (feminists, old school friends etc) who wanted to move forward, but needed a different angle to distinguish their demands from those of the opposition.

So they had a problem, allies on the inside, and a coalition of activists, NGOs and aid organizations who were already working on various aspects of the issue and were keen to step it up. They needed a quick win to gain some momentum and profile, and found it in VAT – Tanzania’s equivalent of the tampon tax. Exemption would reduce the wholesale price by 18% at a stroke, paving the way for increased demand. Mishy worked with TGNP to coordinate the lobbying – they got the support of women MPs and the Ministries of Health and Education, who agreed to take it to the real decision maker – the Ministry of Finance. The MoF checked how much it would cost, found it to be fairly small (due to the low levels of demand) and signed off. Voila – quick win!

They had some momentum, what next? I4ID was looking for a niche – something not already being done by other actors. UNICEF and WaterAid were working on infrastructure (eg school toilets and water), Plan was working on menstrual health education. I4ID reckoned the big gap was sorting out the market, which could also benefit out of school girls and older women. Could they pull together the various manufacturers and distributors to work together to boost access and lobby for policy change?

Which is how we ended up sitting in on a meeting of 8 manufacturers at the I4ID office. ‘Human Cherish’, ‘Relief Pad’, ‘Glory Pads’, ‘Elea Pads’ and ‘Lunette Menstrual Cups’, among others, were more accustomed to being in competition with each other, but Mishy had brought them together essentially to try and persuade them to set up a business association. The table groaned under both a range of products and some serious snacks – drinks, biscuits and samosas.

The dynamics were fascinating. Mishy, a quietly determined woman in black headdress with large gold hoop earrings, proved an effective chair. She expertly summed up I4ID’s role: ‘what are we bringing is the glue, we don’t have any product, or interests.’

The discussion rapidly got technical – government certification, medical trials, bureaucratic obstruction, and the occasional Tanzanian twist – reusables are more likely to be popular because in the villages, disposables have a problem: ‘when you throw pads away here, people think the witches will take them and women will never get pregnant’.

Some of the private sector reps are natural advocates. ‘We should make the government feel involved in the

Manufacturers and activists (and a couple of interlopers) form an MHM network

discussion/research from the outset, not just bombard them with findings that they then reject.’ ‘Could we reduce transport costs to rural villages by getting Coca Cola to give us space on its trucks, or doing a deal with medical suppliers?’

Mishy winds up the meeting, and in the last 15 minutes goes round the table, getting the companies to sign up to

a join marketing effort. She says I4ID could find and pay a consultant to design a joint marketing plan, and the reps jump at the idea – research and technical assistance are I4ID’s second main tool, along with convening/brokering.

Summarizing: what I saw was a combination of some key features involved in Adaptive Management.

Well-networked local activists and ‘development entrepreneurs’, with good facilitation skills
Agile money that can stump up small amounts quickly for a meeting hall on International Women’s Day, or a quick bit of market research
Quick wins to get momentum
A systems approach to spotting drivers and blockers of change
It may be easier to do this kind of work on ‘new’ issues – menstruation is hardly new, but it has previously been a taboo in public policy. That means that positions are not entrenched, and institutions and opinions are more malleable and (dare I say it?) amenable to evidence.

Next up, the joys of solid waste management…..

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What would a feminist approach to localisation of humanitarian action look like?

The aid sector’s sexual exploitation and abuse crisis  put into stark spotlight the unequal power dynamics between humanitarian actors and communities they work in, and the injustices this can cause. Discussions on what a humanitarian system, and Oxfam itself, would look like if it was actively trying to transform these power dynamics, have intensified.

In this context, Oxfam Canada conducted research on how a feminist approach would apply to the localisation of humanitarian action. Localisation aims to shift power and resources to local and national actors to lead and deliver humanitarian response.

Both feminism and localisation are at their core about transforming the unequal power dynamics that are so deeply entrenched both in our advocacy targets and in our own sector and organisation.

A feminist approach must be intersectional – meaning that it understands how other factors that cause discrimination such as race, class or disability reinforce power and privilege. It would support agency and leadership, rather than a top down process of outside actors ‘empowering women’.

It is not just about what we do – e.g. focus on achieving gender equality and women’s rights, but also how we do it.

How did we find these principles could be applied to localisation?

We started from the idea that unless localisation includes support for women’s rights actors, it risks further marginalising them and entrenching inequalities they already face within civil society, including in access to funding and decision making. We interviewed women’s rights actors (defined as organisations, movements and activists focussing on gender equality and a rights-based approach). Some top findings:

Recognise the value of local and national women’s rights actors in humanitarian action

Gender equality and the leadership of local women’s rights actors needs to be seen as central to lifesaving humanitarian action. Not all women’s rights actors want to be part of the humanitarian system – and some report that being so resulted in their own agendas being side-lined in favour of donor- or INGO-driven priorities.

But our research also showed women’s rights actors delivering culturally sensitive goods and services, challenging gender based violence, and influencing national humanitarian policies to support gender equality. These are essential to improving the likelihood of humanitarian action both preventing crises and saving lives when they do occur. Challenging this bias in what is considered ‘life saving’, for example through standalone funding for gender work in emergencies, is one thing a feminist approach can bring.

Build bridges between development, humanitarian and peace and security

Women’s rights actors don’t see a neat divide between these. They might support the same women farmers in long term programming, and in times of crisis. An emergency can exacerbate gender inequality, but it can also open opportunities for gender norms to be challenged and transformed, and women’s rights actors are well placed to

support this. But this is often thought of as development work. Gender equality is also a key aspect of preventing conflict and crisis in the first place, and for peace building. To reflect the realities of local and national actors, a more joined up approach is needed.

Some practical steps suggested were to: increase long term partnerships with women’s rights actors in development, conflict and fragility work, aiming to support their leadership if crisis does hit, and investing more in preparedness and disaster risk reduction, particularly with local women’s rights partners.

Base partnership and funding models on feminist principles

Local organisations can end up working with international ones in unequal and patriarchal ways, for example as delivery partners for pre-designed programmes, or attending ‘capacity building workshops’. Instead, women’s rights

Not just men at the table

actors wanted to have their existing work funded (including core costs), and to co-create and share knowledge and expertise in a two-way relationship. Some that we spoke with did see a continuing role for international actors in capacity building – but wanted to be able to define their own needs and request long term support.

We were also challenged to think more about where international actors, including Oxfam, need simply to be getting out of the way, rather than be better intermediaries. Advocating for donor funding models that would allow this (for example consortium models where small local orgs can be included alongside larger ones, or funding women’s funds to disperse grants), and for more democratic process in international spaces, are roles we could play here.

We were also keen to put a feminist approach into practice how we did the research. Prioritising the views of women’s rights actors was a start, but we were also very aware that our research model had its own unequal power dynamics. As Oxfam staff conducting the interviews, it was difficult (if not impossible) to build the kind of trust where people are going to be fully honest and as critical of the status quo as they might want to be, especially those that are financial partners of Oxfam , We were also using the research for advocacy with our own target – the Canadian government – rather than creating products useful for their goals.

How could we do better? Having more time to develop relationships (not always possible in the quick turnaround time expected in policy / advocacy roles), using this time to co-create the research with women’s rights actors, or taking the need for our own products out of the picture and funding the research and advocacy of our interviewees instead, are ideas that we have, but we would welcome further suggestions,

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Links I Liked

new book. Wish she’d done a systems version of no 13 though – complex is not the same as complicated, simple or chaotic

Academic spats are always fun. Here it’s profs v PhD students at the LSE & London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the lessons of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone

“In the context of the summer of 2018, this is definitely not a case of crying wolf, raising a false alarm: the wolves are now in sight.” Guardian on climate feedback loops & tipping points and whether it’s impossible to hold the line at 2 degrees’ warming. Yikes.

So you want to make an impact? Some practical suggestions for early-career researchers

A very British headline

Language is a neglected development issue. New research identifies three main problems: NGO workers don’t speak local languages; anglo-saxon devspeak is untranslatable; minorities are excluded

An enchanting video about puppet making and music, from Ainslie Henderson via Kate Raworth

Stems from ainslie henderson on Vimeo.

 

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What kind of Tax Campaigning works best in developing countries – top down or bottom up?

things like tax havens and tax evasion by transnational corporations, but what kinds of campaign make sense at a national level in countries like Vietnam and Nigeria? Two new pieces dropped into my inbox on the same morning earlier this week on that very subject. They describe very different approaches and some interesting tensions between them.

First up, Oxfam in Vietnam: A new case study discusses how a coalition of CSOs influenced national tax policy. Here’s some excerpts from the 3 page summary:

‘Oxfam worked with a range of partners to campaign for greater transparency requirements in the tax affairs of multinational companies (MNCs). This resulted in the government introducing new regulations requiring MNCs to file country-by-country tax reports, helping to strengthen tax transparency and tackle tax avoidance in Vietnam.’

This model of campaigning takes the global demand for country-by-country reporting, which helps governments detect tax evasion by transnationals, and translates it into the national arena. The tactics include:

Setting up a national ‘Tax Justice Alliance’
Forging alliances with thinktanks and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Flying in international tax experts to build credibility with the government

As a result, ‘the government agreed to introduce a regulation in Decree 20 which requires MNCs to file country-by-country reports directly with Vietnam’s Tax Bureau. Although this information is only available to the tax bureau and not the general public, it is an important first step in ensuring that MNCs pay their fair share of tax and compensate for the public assets, infrastructure and services they use in Vietnam.’

Fantastic result, and the report more or less echoed my prior picture of national tax campaigning – part of a global movement, and a bit geeky (lots of pictures of people sat round tables with flip charts).

So I was struck by a blog by Kas Sempere on ActionAid’s completely different approach in Nigeria, which starts from a very different place:

‘A trader, let’s call her Amaka, grows and sells her products in a local market in Nigeria – an activity for which she pays tax. In the last two years, her tax payments have risen from NGN2,000 to NGN12,200. She now finds it hard to keep her business running and she has not seen any real improvements in the market’s infrastructure and maintenance or in the public services she accesses. What can the concept of ‘tax justice’ and tax justice campaigns offer her?

In 2012, ActionAid decided to federalise its tax justice campaign, and incorporate demands from the local and national level of several countries, including Nigeria. While up until then the campaign had focused on tax avoidance by multinational companies and harmful tax incentives, ActionAid’s Nigerian partner JDPC-Ondo brought new, locally relevant issues to the campaign. For example, many Nigerians face ‘multiple taxation’, or being taxed more than once for the same thing by different levels of government due to deficient harmonisation between administrative tiers. The decentralised and flexible nature of ActionAid’s campaign allowed this issue to be integrated effectively.

However, there were additional issues faced by Nigerian market traders that were not included in the broader international campaign. These included sudden and steep tax increases, and corruption and harassment by tax officials. While ActionAid could perhaps have provided more support to the actions of market traders, such as when they sent letters to the government and went on tax strikes, there is an inherent tension between organic activism at the local level, and the constraints of more formalised campaigns, which need to prioritise themes and ensure cohesion across national and international levels.

What can we learn?

My recent ICTD working paper explores ActionAid’s journey through the process of incorporating the demands and

Tax Justice Uganda

actions of local market traders in Nigeria into its international tax justice campaign. It finds that trader-led claims are the best entry point for mobilising market populations and ensuring ownership of the campaign. Claims with distant targets are likely to work only later once mobilisation is more consolidated. In Nigeria for example, multiple taxation was the issue that galvanised market traders’ interest in tax justice, laying the foundation for activism around higher-level issues such as corporate tax avoidance and harmful tax incentives. Therefore, the order in which campaign claims are introduced is key.

I also found that locally-specific issues can be effectively incorporated into international campaigns. For example, the inclusion of multiple taxation helped bring much greater visibility to the issue, especially for tax authorities in Nigeria. ActionAid’s experience holds valuable lessons for other organisations involved in tax justice activism, particularly in relation to integrating local experiences into larger international campaigns.’

Fascinating to watch the evolution of tax campaigning, and Kas’ insights into the value of integrating bottom up and global views of tax justice seem very useful. Thoughts?

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