Are international aid organisations paying enough attention to the ethical complexities of what they do and how they do it?
Last year, as one of my final projects before I left International Alert after thirteen years, I led a review of the organisation’s ethical approach to its international peacebuilding work, and the development of a new ethical guidance to replace the one that had last been updated in the 1990s.
Along with colleagues from various parts of the world with whom I did this, I found it a fascinating experience which reminded me of and helped clarify some of the ethical tensions inherent in international aid, while also reassuring me that my colleagues at Alert were by and large acutely aware of these, and doing their best to navigate them carefully and responsibly -if not necessarily getting enough support and guidance from senior staff such as myself.
An ethical minefield
It is, after all, an ethical minefield to bring resources from far away and offer to help vulnerable people and societies build long-term resilience to the risks of conflict and the blandishments of conflict entrepreneurs. Building such resilience often entails people and communities taking new risks – part of the price of change – but how do you make sure that everyone concerned has provided their prior, informed consent, especially given the short timeframes and unrealistic expectations inherent in most donor funded projects? Is it even possible to do so, in places where governance systems – where one would normally go to discuss and obtain such consent, and develop agreed goals and plans – are often inadequate to the task? It seems irresponsible to suggest peacebuilding ideas which aren’t fully proven elsewhere, but the truth is, very few fully proven peacebuilding techniques exist, and anyway success in one place is no guarantee the same approach will work anywhere else…
We discussed these and many other ethical dilemmas of peacebuilding, and used this process to elaborate a short ethical guidance document for Alert. At its heart, this contains the organisation’s purpose, core values, and a set of ethical principles. But what I felt most useful about the guidance was its explicit recognition of the ethical difficulties and dilemmas peacebuilders face, and the importance of debate and discussion whenever decision makers were unsure of how (or whether) to proceed in a particular case.
Another project in which I was involved last year was a joint research initiative by Alert and Oxfam on civil society in conflict-affected countries. This raised some very troubling ethical questions about how local civil society organisations are typically treated – knowingly or unknowingly – by some of their international partners. This too was a reminder of the need for more attention to be paid to ethics in international aid outfits
What do aid agencies say about their ethics?
After I left Alert, I was asked to contribute a short essay on the question of values in overseas aid, for a document due to be published later this year. In this, I touched on the question of ethics, and spent a little time looking online for other examples of aid organisations’ explorations of the ethics of their development, humanitarian or peacebuilding work.
I was surprised not to find very much, apart from internal codes of behaviour for employees, and the like. As it happened, this issue was not central to the piece I was writing, so I left it at that. But I always intended to come back and take another look, and did so today. I picked a small number of well-known and influential aid agencies: DFID, Oxfam, Save the Children, CARE, SIDA, USAID and the OECD-DAC. My methodology was simple: I looked for easy-to-find ethics statements or ethical guidance on their websites (for example under the “What we Do” or “How we Work” tabs), and also entered “Ethics” and “ethical” into their website search functions.
Obviously this methodology – if one can even dignify what I did with that word – would not stand up I court if I were using it to judge any of the organisations involved. But that’s not my purpose here. All I want to do is suggest that more formal attention seems to be needed to the ethics of aid.
From my rather superficial search I came up with no single document published by any of these major players in the sector, which acknowledged the ethical complexities of aid, and suggested how to address these. What I found instead was as follows:
- A plethora of policies and statements about agencies’ procurement policies, and the lengths they go to, to avoid any of their funds being misspent or stolen.
- Codes of behavioural conduct – USAID’s is one example – which cover issues like how to behave in respect of receiving gifts from outside sources; financial conflicts of interest; the misuse of position for private gain; outside activities; seeking other employment; post‐employment restrictions, etc. Most agencies had policies about whistleblowing, modern slavery and the like, and policies about sexual ethics – perhaps some of these were a response to the recent scandals in a number of international NGOs.
- Many, many references to the need for others to improve their ethics: developing country politicians and civil services, international trade, mining companies, etc.
- Some useful articles explaining why giving foreign aid is morally the right thing for rich countries to do. A good example is Jeffery Sachs’ 2017 piece in the Boston Globe arguing against Trump’s proposed aid budget cuts sets out the moral case as well as a case based on justice, quoting St Ambrose that ‘You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich,’ and the even more rhetorical John F Kennedy: ‘If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich’.
- Specific policy guidance in particular technical areas of aid, such as principles for research and evaluation.
- Some organisations did have easy-to-find overarching statements: Oxfam, USAID, CARE and Save the Children, for example. These tended to set out high level principles and/or lists of values, but there was no indication that they acknowledged the ethical complexity of the enterprise in which each has been involved for several decades, such as thorny questions about the relative power of those with or without resources. CARE was the only one to use the word “ethics” in the title of the document. But they all, including CARE, came across as rather superficial, mainly containing lists of rather similar and over-used abstract words: responsibility, transparency, accountability, integrity, respect, passion, excellence, inclusion, a commitment to learning… Indeed, some of these seemed quite glib. If an organisation is “accountable … in particular to people living in poverty”, what does that mean? To hold someone accountable is to have power over them, exercised either through a carrot or a stick. What is the carrot or stick which people living in poverty can deploy towards an NGO which makes such a claim?
It’s time to be more explicit and honest about the ethical challenges
There is nothing necessarily wrong with the statements these organisations display on their websites, and it may be that beneath these lists and rather hollow phrases there is a deep lode of organisational reflection and documentation which provides the dimensions I found lacking in the documents I was able quickly to find. Certainly my own experience is that many individuals who work for these organisations do understand and worry about the ethical challenges. But I find it somehow troubling that the international aid sector – a sector which is fraught with ethical complexity and dilemmas – seems not to take this as seriously – or not explicitly, at least – as it should. The things we say most loudly, meaningfully and explicitly are, after all, surely the things we expect our staff and other stakeholders to pay most attention to, and know us for.
One contributing factor might be the fear that acknowledging our ethical problems might put off potential supporters. After all, as I’ve argued elsewhere, the public message these aid organisations have all conspired to communicate over several decades is that they can solve poverty overseas, and that the task is simple, if huge.
But it’s time to change that. In my experience ethical guidance is most useful when it is explicit about the ethical risks, and when it recognises uncertainty and grey areas as well as red lines; when it encourages debate. After all, medical students don’t simply learn the Hippocratic Oath, they are taught why it matters in situations of unequal information and power, and how it has been applied.
International aid organisations – from donors through to international NGOs and the consulting firms who deliver donors’ projects – all need make sure that every staff member carries out her work reflectively, with an appreciation of its ethical dimensions, and in the knowledge that she is expected to put any project on hold until any ethical question has been answered satisfactorily, even if this goes against the perceived short term interests of her employer. That seems at least as important as making sure she understands the procurement and whistleblowing policies, or knows which particular list of abstract nouns her organisation has decided to put on its website. The more she and her colleagues work reflectively, with access to ethical guidance, the more the aid sector will evolve into a better enabling environment for effective and sustainable development.
No guarantee
Overnight, the valley’s turned.
Its trees and hedges, wearied by
the endless summer days, have spurned
their tender murmuring for dry-
as-paper rustling in reply
to breezes brushed with leaf more rare
than gold, beneath a cloudless sky –
a beauty he can hardly bear.
He sees leaves fade then fall; then bare
limbs silhouetted under rough
storm clouds; then spring – all he can know
is how their scent suffused the air,
the feel and soft sound as he scuffed
through dampened drifts, lifetimes ago.
Published, Kent & Sussex Folio, 2018, and The Curlew, 2019
Winter gardens
You see your gardens in the space between
the plants, raze every weed without a trace
lest it disturb the balance of your scheme,
deadhead each stem before its flower fades,
lift every labelled bulb to plant again,
and prune your trees and shrubs as each dictates.
I grow my plants so close they all complain
they’ve insufficient room to breathe, or sun
to drench their leaves, or share of summer rain,
let young weeds grow to be what they become,
and poppy stems and seed heads twist and dry –
then rot, when frost and winter rainfall come.
I watched you tend your silence constantly,
then found a careless way to nurture mine:
we’ve made our different landscapes home, and still
we touch each other’s quiet awkwardly.
But looking now, when winter’s worked its spell
of levelling, our gardens seem as one.
Forthcoming in Kent & Sussex Folio, and 4th prize winner
Conceptualising human security in international aid
The aid system we know today emerged in the 1970s as a way to provide succour for people in emergencies, and to support human progress in poor countries through what became widely known as development. This article focuses on development, with particular emphasis on improving human security in fragile, conflict-prone contexts. It explores the meaning of human security and how human security has accrued in history, with lessons for theories of change today.
1. The complexity of development in fragile contexts
Development aid was initially often seem in relatively simple terms: building the capacity of the state and the economy, and poverty reduction. This was to be addressed through the transfer of capital and capacity. Indeed, the origin of the idea that rich countries should allocate 0.7% of their national income as aid, appears to have been a ‘back of the envelope’ calculation of the gap in infrastructure investment needed, to bring the developing countries as they were in the 1960s, up to par with the developed world (Center for Global Development (2005). Working paper no. 68. Ghost of 0.7%:
Origins and Relevance of the International Aid Target, By Michael A. Clemens and Todd J. Moss). This simplistic translation of the development challenge into a need for financial capital illustrates the rather technical way much of the aid world then saw its role.
Since then, the notion of development has become ever more complex. Western donors and multi-lateral institutions became newly interested in good governance and human rights after the end of the Cold War. Meanwhile a plethora of other concepts has entered the lexicon: climate adaptation, environmental sustainability, fragility, gender, human security, inequality, landscapes, livelihoods, middle and low income countries, the Millennium Development and Sustainable Development Goals, peacebuilding, political settlements, poverty reduction or eradication, pro-poor growth, reducing violent extremism, resilience, state building and value chain enhancement. Explanations for all of these – and a hundred others – are easily found on-line and in development studies primers.
Although perhaps confusing, this conceptual breadth and diversity is not a problem in and of itself. If we replace the overused and rather meaningless word ‘development’ with ‘progress’, this takes us closer to how non-experts might describe people’s improved circumstances, welfare and opportunities. It also reminds us that we are dealing with a politically freighted concept. What ‘progress’ means, who should benefit, and which path will take us there, are probably the three most important questions of politics – and questions on which people will – rightly – never agree. Karl Marx, Amartya Sen and Adam Smith have provided quite different answers, to pick just three influential development thinkers. Therefore it makes sense for the international aid sector to be pluralist, embracing diverse, often competing ideologies, analytical lenses and delivery vehicles, on the basis that no single concept or approach has so far been agreed. How does this apply to human security?
2. What is human security and how does it accrue?
Human security is a simple notion. At its heart is the idea that people’s security is a better measure of public good than state security – though state security, provided in the right way, remains an essential component (United Nations Development Programme (1994): Human Development Report). It also looks beneath the surface at underlying factors that influence people’s security, such as culture, incomes, social capital, gender relations and governance. Now, human security can in principle be achieved by suitably targeted services, perhaps provided by external organisations: services of protection and provision. But such services, while perhaps sustainable in the short-term, are unsustainable over a longer term. To start with, it is politically unacceptable for external agencies to provide them, supplanting and relieving the government and other members of society of their responsibilities, and raising questions about the legitimacy of all concerned (Eric A. Heinze, 2011. Humanitarian Intervention, the Responsibility to Protect, and Confused Legitimacy). Second, being protected and provisioned by others undermines human dignity and this is insufficient as a long-term response. And in any case, external agencies providing and funding them will eventually tire of the task, and move on to elsewhere.
In what, then, does sustainable human security consist? There is fairly wide agreement that human security is most likely to be sustained when people, irrespective of their gender, religion, sexual identity, age, ethnicity or other facet of identity, have fair access to:
• A voice in decisions which affect them
• Economic opportunity, including the opportunity to save or invest
• The means of safety and justice
• Opportunities for education, health and a decent living environment (International Alert. Programming Framework, 2017).
The more these conditions – which are essentially about fairness as well as security – are met, the more likely societies are to be characterised by functional and trusting collaboration between citizens and the state, and among citizens themselves. And such relationships are, ultimately the measure of peace and stability, and thus of human security.
3. How do we get there?
But if this is the desired vision, how can people living in insecure environments get there? How do societies evolve, to reflect the characteristics outlined above?
One place to look for answers to this question are in history, as we have not yet had sufficient time to judge whether human security improvements have genuinely been sustained, since the concept was introduced in development aid in the 1990s.
There are many uncertainties in the trajectory of a country’s development, and historians will never agree. Nonetheless, it is possible to tease out the kinds of changes that have taken place in the liberal societies which have made the most sustained progress in improving human security. These include opening up access to political and economic opportunities, developing an increasingly dynamic civil society, and establishing states which are accountable to and have a strong sense of ownership or membership by the people they govern, and which adopt progressive goals and policies. They also include the establishment and incremental extension of the rule of law, and new ways of participating in the economy, in politics and in civil society. For example, the evolution from personal to shareholder ownership of businesses, from ‘big man’ political leadership to the idea of ‘political office’ in increasingly representative and accountable forms of government. Of course sustained and shared economic growth is critical, as is the development of a culture that supports the exercise of initiative and encourages creativity. And perhaps most crucially of all, the control of organised violence should be transferred from the hands of powerful individuals or factions, to the accountable state (North, Douglass C., Wallis, John Joseph & Weingast, Barry R. Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009)).
Drawing on a 2010 critique of aid in fragile contexts, co-written with Deborrah Baksh (Working with the Grain to Change the Grain. International Alert, 2010), I look briefly at each of these, below. For reasons of space, historical examples are not given, but readers are invited to explore and validate or improve this thesis from their own reading.
Opening up access to political and economic opportunities, and developing an increasingly dynamic civil society
When ruling elites have relaxed their exclusive hold on political and economic opportunities, and progressively allowed others to participate, this is a signal of progress. This has usually happened when it was in the elite’s own perceived political and economic interests to broaden access. This process has generally entailed – and has been partly the result of – a restructuring of the economy, for example changes in land tenure, the commercialisation of agriculture, or industrialisation. Changes in the economy were then reflected in changes in politics, and vice versa. This was also accompanied by the growth and increasing dynamism of civil society: i.e. people from across society acting together in pursuit of what they saw as shared interests, which was an important factor in the development and opening up political institutions.
Establishing states accountable to and with a strong sense of ownership and membership by the people, and whose governments adopt progressive, developmental goals and policies
Societies that have been most successful in making sustained progress in human security have established some version of the nation-state, i.e. a well-defined polity with clear boundaries and citizenship, and with a large part of its population committed to membership of the nation as a primary identity (equal to or above other identities such as ethnicity, religion, etc.), and an accountable state with authority to act. This means that issues of identity have been resolved or are being managed in a way which prevents them from being obstacles to progress, and also that different polities and states have found ways to co-exist cooperatively out of self-interest.
Governments in such cases have focused, among other things, on purposeful (developmental) national economic policies. These have differed according to ideology and context, including for example protectionism, industrial planning, free trade, empire-building, etc. The point is not the particular policy choice – which depends on internal and external circumstances anyway – but the idea that purposeful policy choices in the perceived interests of the country were made and purposefully implemented.
Establishing, gradually extending and eventually universalising the rule of law
Another change was to extend the rule of law to more and more people, allowing them to participate in the economy with the confidence that they would be treated fairly. This extension of rights from the elites to others happened when it was in the interests of those who had initially established such rights for themselves – the elites – to do so, i.e. because it suited their own economic interests to allow others to participate. For example, land is an important political and economic resource in developing economies, and the sale of land by elites becomes a great deal more profitable when the potential pool of customers is widened because more people are deemed to have legal rights protecting their ownership of land.
This went hand-in-hand with the evolution of civil society. As people increasingly combined outside their narrow caste, kinship, gender and patronage circles, in pursuit of shared economic, social or political aims, they needed the protection of law instead of patronage and kinship loyalty in so doing. This created further incentives for widening the scope of the rule of law, which further encouraged people to combine, and so on.
Evolution from personal to impersonal forms of participation in the economy, politics and civil society
A critical aspect of development has been the move from leadership based on personal strength and patronage to leadership by legitimate, temporary occupants of permanent or semi-permanent offices and institutions of state. The same kind of move happened from personal buccaneering to shareholder corporations, from factions to political parties, and from kinship to other forms of civic association. This entailed the institutionalisation of governance and the creation of corporate organisations – in government, the economy, security, and civil society – and went hand-in-hand with an increase in freedom of association.
Achieving sustained, shared economic growth
Sustained shared economic growth per capita was essential for the growth of political and economic opportunity. This happened when capital was freed up: for example, through the development of a market in freehold land, allowing the possibility of mortgage and sale to realise capital for investment; and the establishment of corporations, partnerships and shareholder companies. A critical aspect of this was also the progressive de-linking of conjunctural political power from economic power, as a rules-based economy gave increasing confidence to investors that their interests would be protected even if political changes were to occur.
Developing a culture that increasingly supports the exercise of initiative and encourages creativity
Cultures have been shaped by, and in their turn have shaped, the historical development of societies and regions. Important elements in this have been, for example, the extent to which cultures have supported and encouraged indivi
dual or collective enterprise and initiative, and progressively greater freedom of expression and action (Landes, David. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor. (Little, Brown, 1998).).
Transferring control of organised violence from the hands of powerful individuals or factions, to the accountable state
The control of violence, and especially of organised violence, is a critical aspect controlling access to resources. As states developed and became accountable to those they served, so they also took over the control of organised violence, and limited the capacity of others to use it for their own ends.
Adopting increasingly democratic, or representative and accountable forms of government
In places where the changes described above happened, they were accompanied by an increase in the extent to which the governed were able to choose and hold to account their governors. While confined initially to the elite, this gradually became more open, as the institutional rules of the game were strengthened, and access to the economy widened to include more and more people whose interests became critical to success and thus needed a legitimate voice in politics. Local democracy within a decentralised polity has also often been a critical feature of successful democratisation.
4. Cross-cutting features of change
The above list is hugely subject to challenge, and is certainly not comprehensive. But it summarises some of the most important development processes from history, all of which are critical to human security. Looking within them, we can identify four common features:
• Negotiation. Most of these changes have come about largely through a process of negotiation. This includes members of the elite negotiating among themselves and thus creating bargains and systems for the effective management of resources, and members of the elite re-negotiating non-elites’ access to privileges and rights.
• Relationships. Effective (functional) relationships are critical to progress. These include relationships among the elites, between the state and civil society, and within civil society.
• Incentives. Changes have happened when it was in the interests of those with the most power, to make (or accept) those changes.
• Leadership. As Machiavelli wrote, ‘There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of new order of things’. Progress happens when a number of factors come together; some of these are circumstantial, but human agency and therefore leadership are critical. By leadership, I mean the ability and willingness to take risks, provide inspiration for change, and navigate politically towards change.
5. Implications for development aid
This summary of development processes – depicted in figure 1 – is necessarily short, incomplete and lacking in detail. It is rightly open to challenge. Nevertheless, much within it is common sense and although different ideologies interpret history differently, many of the processes summarised above are relatively uncontroversial. It seems therefore obvious that it should be reflected in ‘development’ paradigms applied to fragile of conflict-prone contexts, and in the mandate and structures of international aid institutions.
It is beyond the remit of this article to examine the extent to which this is the case. Nevertheless, we can at least draw the conclusion that successful aid programmes should:
• Frame their mandate and their policy and programme goals around historically-based theories of change.
• Use programming approaches which recognise the uncertainty of progress, centred on a long-term vision of improving human security in a given context, using adaptive strategies, rather than fixed, pre-defined pathways, to achieve this.
• Be managed by staff who are politically astute, not just proficient in technical areas of development such as health and education.
• Be willing to take risks with their own resources and reputations, while being careful not to expose others to risks they have not opted for.
• Be heterogenous and – between them – work at multiple levels and on different issues.
• Identify and leverage incentives for change, in the form of carrots or sticks.
Practical guidance for anyone who wants to build peace
Among the key features of successful peacebuilding, one often stands out. This is that contributions to peace are made in almost any walk of life, and usually by people who do not see themselves first and foremost as ‘peacebuilders’. They may be politicians crafting legislation to help reduce economic imbalances in their society, diplomats negotiating to restore international relations and overcome a crisis, teachers building relationships between children of different ethnic or religious groups, or members of host communities taking the trouble to welcome and integrate refugees fleeing a disaster. There are thousands of ways – often commonplace ways – people contribute to reducing tensions and improving trust and collaboration among and between people, and between people and those who govern them – the essence of peacebuilding.
But how do people wishing to make a contribution to peace know how to get started? Often they either have to make it up for themselves, or else they decide not to get involved after all, for want of some basic guidance, and they and their communities are the worse for it.
Building Peace Together, a Practical Resource, was published by the Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) last month, and it was designed with just this challenge in mind. After a short introduction setting out some of the basic concepts of peacebuilding, it goes on to provide simple, accessible and practical guidance under 12 headings: diplomacy, democracy & politics, justice, security, communications & media, arts & culture, education, business, trade & economics, infrastructure & planning, agriculture & the environment, and healthcare.
For each topic, it explains some of the ways people can help build peace. Under Education, for example, this includes designing curricula that encourage critical thinking, or which include an inclusive and tolerant narrative of national history. Under Planning, it includes the need for urban planning to be done in a consultative way that builds fruitful relationships between citizens and the authorities, and for urban environments that minimise segregation and isolation. And under Media it suggests that responsible and truthful reporting can avoid inflaming tensions and even help to reduce them.
What’s also great is that each chapter provides specific practical examples, which hopefully will inspire non-expert readers wanting to give it a go. Each chapter also sets out some caveats and limits: for example, the need for thorough background research and thorough training for journalists, along with a reminder that politicians may resist or try to counter attempts to use the media for peacebuilding. This is important, because although all of us absolutely can contribute to peacebuilding within our own spheres of influence, we also need to understand where the risks and limits lie.
Another feature of Building Peace Together that stands out is its essential humility. The world is unfortunately awash with exhortations and commands: what we should or must do… By contrast – and perhaps this is in keeping with Quaker culture, or perhaps it’s simply a clever tactical communications approach, or perhaps a little of both – this book is careful not to be too sure of itself. For the truth is, although peacebuilding is usually successful, there are no prescriptions: each situation has to be taken on its on terms, and a suitable approach defined accordingly. Hence, the handbook suggests approaches, rather than prescribing a clear course of action. To take just one example, under Justice:
“If victims hear the testimony of aggressors, and have the truth of war crimes recorded, it may increase understanding of how violations came about, creating a basis on which future violations can be prevented.”
Note the use of the word “may”, reflecting that the authors are confident of their ground, but are responsible enough to know that the line of cause and effect in social change and peacebuilding is seldom a straight one, and that – to adapt a military maxim – no plan survives contact with the real world. Hence, they are offering the intelligent reader some decent clues and well-informed broad guidance, while quite rightly leaving it up to him or her to work out the right thing to in their particular circumstances.
The book is being translated into Arabic, Russian and French, and executive summaries are already available in Dutch, French, German and Russian. While the document is free to download, and is produced under a Creative Commons licence, I sincerely hope the QCEA has a sizeable budget for printing and distribution, too. Because this is the kind of document that ought to be physically available: in libraries, and on the desks of civil servants, business people, NGO staff, international agencies and – yes – even politicians, all over the world. Indeed, if I’m allowed a cheeky suggestion, anyone with a few hundred dollars or a printing press to spare, and who wishes to make a contribution to peace, might even consider offering to expand the print and distribution run.
This welcome practical handbook represents a genuine step forward for peace, and joins other important manuals such as Responding to Conflict’s still excellent Working with Conflict as a major resource for all those interested in making a contribution. Its importance cannot be overestimated. Congratulations to the Quaker Council of European Affairs for this initiative, and to Olivia Caeymaex, Darijn Dilia Zwart and Terri Beswick, who wrote it. I humbly suggest that all those in a position to do so, help spread the word.
Promoting collaboration between people, not just organisations
This article was included in the February 2018 newsletter of INTRAC – the International NGO Training and Research Centre – where I am a trustee. INTRAC believes, as I do, that when people come together and organise in ways that are effective, sustainable and legitimate, they make the world a better place. INTRAC’s staff and associates provide high quality support to help civil society across the world challenge poverty and inequality, empowering people to gain greater control over their own future.
INTRAC, Peace Direct, Instituto de Comunicación y Desarollo (ICD), and Y Care International organised a webinar during the CIVICUS International Civil Society Week last November. Participants from across the world discussed responsible partnerships between international and indigenous civil society, which clearly remains a challenging ethical and practical issue.
The distinction between indigenous and international civil society is important. People from any context should be in the lead when framing the problems most in need of solutions there, and guiding international counterparts in identifying where and how to offer support. But external actors in many places still call too many of the shots, and – as the webinar report just released shows – changing this will need a sustained effort by all concerned.
The CIVICUS event led me to reflect further on this. I have been a volunteer or staff member in international development NGOs since 1985. I’ve always been conscious of my status as an outsider in other people’s countries, and tried to calibrate my behaviour accordingly – not always as successfully as I’d have liked. But I’m also a little uncomfortable with how ‘North’ and ‘South’ have come to be used in the context of this discussion: with North being code for outsiders with limited legitimacy, and South for those with more legitimacy.
A simple definition of civil society is when two or more people work together peacefully to promote or prevent something about which they jointly care. This can be short term – a group of traders mobilising to stop a fellow trader being harassed by border officials – or a longer-term initiative to advocate for a change in agricultural policy, or a women’s savings and loans group. It can be local or much wider in scope: protecting this stretch of river from pollution, or preventing global accumulation of greenhouse gases. It can be something overtly political, linked to protecting and expanding freedom of expression, or may have a simpler, social purpose: my local poetry society, for example.
If this is a useful definition, it’s one that allows for people from different contexts to work together. This is the basis of my trusteeship and support for INTRAC: the notion that collaboration across international boundaries can be beneficial. But international development norms can get in the way. Words like partnership, capacity-building, strategy, exit and sustainability conjure up images of organisations, not activists.
Looking back at my own experiences, it’s working with people I most recall – activists defined by their passion, competencies, values and actions, not by their employer. So in considering how to improve cooperation between international and indigenous civil society, I think we should focus as much on maximising collaboration between people, as between organisations. While it remains self-evident that sustainable solutions are normally those emerging locally, rather than those brought in by outsiders, this does not mean that outsiders have nothing to contribute.
To be sure, collaboration must be done ethically and responsibly. Collaboration must be freely entered into by all. Organisations must still define and enforce codes of quality and conduct for their members, staff or volunteers, and provide them with protection and practical resources. But we do need to remind ourselves, when considering big picture notions of strategy, sustainability and the like, that in the end, civil society is people coming together to work on something they jointly care about. We therefore need to ask how leaders in organisations can liberate their people to collaborate first and foremost as fellow activists, rather than as representatives of their organisations.
What’s it all about, Oxfam?
We should seize this opportunity to re-examine the future of foreign aid.
(First published on, and helpfully edited by Transformation, 20th February 2018)
The public heat generated by Oxfam’s scandal is focused on three issues. First, the absolute importance of protecting vulnerable people—project beneficiaries and collaborators, staff and volunteers; second, accusations of hubris, arrogance and self-serving behaviour by aid agencies; and third, the bigger questions of whether and how aid makes a difference. How are these connected?
The mechanisms required to protect vulnerable people from being preyed on by staff who abuse their positions of power (in any sector) are well-known: more care and better vetting in recruitment, including a mandatory phone call to previous employers; more open whistle-blowing policies; better induction and training of staff; an emphasis on clearly articulated and modelled ethics; and a commitment by managers to act swiftly and decisively, and steer away from impunity.
Although the aid sector can and should work collectively on an informal basis to strengthen these mechanisms and attributes, I think it’s a mistake to establish global regulations or a mandatory database of international development workers, because the sector isn’t really a single entity in the way that (perhaps) medicine is, and because of the messy, unpredictable, international nature of aid. How , for example, is a young woman in the Philippines supposed to register as an aid worker before the disaster which leads to her recruitment even happens? I also fear that external regulations can be the enemy of the proper internalisation and ownership of ethics.
On the second issue of self-serving corporate behaviour and hubris, there is clearly a problem, but it isn’t quite as simple as portrayed in the media. Aid agencies have long backed themselves into a corner by claiming in their marketing and fundraising that they have ‘the solution’ to poverty, and the public, despite being far too intelligent to think that poverty can be so easily ‘solved,’ have willingly gone along with this narrative.
When a willing buyer (the donor) and a willing seller (the charity) are both intentionally vague about the product they’re trading, they create a problem of accountability. So a flawed accountability loop has developed: you give me your money and I’ll take care of the problem while you continue to live your privileged lives. The seller is thus encouraged to create and sustain a narrative in which those who give money are making a difference through the charity’s actions—and to go to enormous lengths to protect this narrative when the real world threatens to undermine it.
Hence, a narrative has emerged of western charities ‘saving’ and even ‘transforming’ non-western lives. The narrative is an integral part of the model, so it can only be changed by disrupting that model. The interest generated by the current Oxfam story gives us an opportunity to do so, but that means looking at the third question: whether and how aid makes a difference.
Let’s divide aid into two categories for the sake of simple analysis: emergency aid and development aid. If providing help in natural or man-made emergencies is by no means easy, the task is relatively simple to define. There is a need to mobilise quickly, save and stabilise lives, and provide basic services to sustain and restore those who have been affected, so that they can rebuild their lives.
This should, of course, be carried out with all due care and attention so as to avoid the kinds of unintended negative consequences illustrated by the current scandal and described by Matthew Green in an excellent article in the Financial Times. It is also increasingly understood that conceptualising and preparing for post-disaster reconstruction should start as soon as possible, with the idea of “building back better” to create a new, more resilient baseline in terms of disaster-prevention and -preparedness, human rights fulfilment, fairness, empowerment and governance. This takes us into the realm of development aid.
Here, we have a real problem. To explore it we first need to separate development from development aid. The word ‘development’ is thrown around as if we all know and agree on what it means; all too often it is used as shorthand for aid. Orwell was right that jargon inhibits clear-eyed analysis, so let’s replace ‘development’ with ‘progress.’
As soon as we do this, the problem becomes clearer. Perhaps with the exception of ‘religion’, ‘progress’ is the most disputed concept in the world. It’s what politics seldom agrees on, whether ideologically (left and right) or on an issue by issue basis, as in how best to provide health care, for example, or whether to subsidise farming, or if it’s worth destroying hundreds of acres of forest to mine potash, iron or gold; or perhaps even whether to leave the European Union. So questions of development are political questions.
Should a country like Uganda use its limited fiscal resources to provide a mediocre quality of primary schooling to all children free of charge, or should it focus on shepherding a smaller number of brighter children through a better education system so they can play a leading role in politics, business and public service, and thus build a platform for further progress? How should a poor rural community allocate its farming land—only to those of the dominant language group or also to those who have migrated there from other districts? Should daughters as well as sons inherit land? Is stability more likely to improve children’s prospects, or should communities opt for a more risky process of transformative change?
These are not primarily questions about aid. They are typical, political questions about progress. And like most political questions they don’t have simple, normative answers. Nevertheless, they are important questions that do need answers, and which the political system in a country like Uganda may choose to answer in ways that people in other countries might disagree with, absent as they are from Ugandan politics and social dynamics.
The challenge for outsiders therefore—whether the UN, western governments or foreign NGOs —is how to play a legitimate political role without overstepping the boundaries of interference. This is probably hardest for western governments, who at one time, for example, were funding half the Ugandan Government’s budget.
Legitimacy is perhaps a little simpler for foreign NGOs, at least in principle, because they operate on a much smaller scale and with less power to abuse. Nevertheless, it’s a critical challenge they must contend with. It’s hard to see how most Haitians would view Oxfam—and by extension other foreign NGOs—as having much legitimacy after what has come out in the past two weeks.
But legitimacy is a subtle and complex notion; it’s not just about interpersonal behaviour and respect. What’s welcomed from foreign NGOs by local activists might be condemned as interference by their government—as current debates in Russia demonstrate. I once asked a Ugandan activist if the international organisation I represented could legitimately engage in political advocacy there. His answer was simple: pick the right issues and be effective, and you’ll be legitimate. So, for him at least, relevance and effectiveness confer legitimacy.
The more foreign NGOs see themselves as activist agents of specific, contextually relevant change (and not just as service deliverers), the more they’ll need to recruit leaders—preferably citizens of the country concerned—who see themselves as activists too, within the fabric of indigenous civil society and politics. But they should go further. Challenging the status quo implies an element of risk, so to increase their legitimacy foreign NGOs also need to be ready to take risks, including the risk they will be closed down by the authorities even if this disrupts their organisational interests.
Historians dispute the process of development or progress just as much as planners and politicians. So even from a vantage point in the future, it will be hard to know how and why change happened in a country like Uganda, and even harder to know how change will happen —and therefore how best foreign NGOs might contribute. So the Oxfams of the world must take an active part in, and support local groups to take part in, debates about these matters within civil society, holding up their own ideas and plans to scrutiny, and sharing lessons learned to further enrich the conversation. This can have the added benefit of helping to expand the scope of public debate and politics from questions of representation to questions of participation—to the policies governments should follow and the visions of the future around which society might cohere.
One way donors can help in this process is by moving away from models of funding which assume that cause and effect can be predetermined with confidence, and that consultation and political engagement can be carried out on the cheap. The same applies to Oxfam and its public narratives: by creating and sustaining the pretence that it knows what is needed, how to provide it, and how its interventions will work without unintended consequences, the aid sector risks denying itself the posture and resources—and perhaps even the legitimacy—required to contribute to progress where it can.
Thus, Michael Edwards is right that it isn’t gratuitous to link the Oxfam story to wider questions about aid. Indeed, surely we should seize this opportunity to do so.
Is peacebuilding just good development?
When writing International Alert’s report Redressing the balance last year, I shared the draft with colleagues for comments. When one colleague returned it, one of her main comments was that the report needed to say more clearly that peacebuilding is “just good development” in fragile and conflict-affected places.
This rang a bell for me. When I’d joined Alert back in 2004, peacebuilding was still a relatively distant cousin in the international development family, and many of my new colleagues were fiercely protective of its special status. Some, I felt, were even a little precious and esoteric about it. Whereas I was of the view that we were largely applying familiar development programming interventions: dialogue, capacity-building and training, participatory research, advocacy, knowledge transfer, solidarity, supporting local activism, underlying causes analysis, institutional strengthening, and so on, but with a clear intent to improve cohesion and conflict resolution, rather than – for example – to reduce poverty or improve schooling, as in the mainstream development community whence I had lately come. Certainly our desired outcomes largely fell under the same broad headings of changes in knowledge and awareness, and in individual and institutional behaviour.
Indeed, I remember writing an article then, for publication in a now-defunct journal, which argued that the human security and livelihood security frameworks – then both still in vogue – were almost the same, in that both took the individual citizen’s perspective as the starting point for trying to understand what needed to change in order to increase resilience, but applied a holistic and structure-based analytical framework to map opportunities and obstacles. Later I co-led the team that articulated Alert’s Programme Framework – its peacebuilding methodology – and we borrowed unashamedly from livelihood security ideas. So the peacebuilding and development projects were certainly related: cousins, perhaps, if not so distant after all.
A key difference between peacebuilding and development programming, it seemed, was not so much the issues one looked at through the analytical lens (governance, economic participation, services, relationships, security, justice, gender and so forth), but the reason one was looking in the first place. If the mainstream development project was looking for obstacles to, opportunities for and drivers of sustained welfare and economic improvement, peacebuilders were looking at obstacles to, opportunities for and drivers of sustained and peaceful coexistence. Of course, they found many of the same things to work on: good governance was beneficial – essential, in fact – for both; and while peace was good for development, development was also very good for peace.
So, are peacebuilding and development very close cousins, or are they in fact the same thing? I kind of agree with my colleague that peacebuilding is “just good development practice” in places where conflict and fragility are dominant issues, simply because there seems no moral or logical justification for not emphasising peace as the main desired impact in any concept of progress there. And progress, surely, is the most appropriate synonym in normal language, for that jaded and overused jargon word: development. Nevertheless, there are, it seems to me, three things which continue typically to mark out and differentiate peacebuilding approaches from development approaches:
- Goals. When the higher goal or aim is defined explicitly in terms of peace, this affects programming choices. These may at first sight seem the same as development approaches. But there will be subtle differences. For example, a peacebuilding programme focused on economic development will promote the kind of economic development that reduces grievances, and increases good relationships, rather than merely one that improves the livelihoods of a particular set of people or aims to increase GDP.
- Vision-based, vs problem-solving. If development programming is still typically based on articulating and then solving a given and well-comprehended problem – why girls are not attending school, for example – peacebuilding more often requires a vision-based approach. This is because, while there is common agreement on what peace looks, tastes, smells and feels like, less is known about how to reach it. Mainly because the history of peaceful places is disputed, and because the pathways to peace are not based on clear linear relationships between the many variables involved. Transforming conflict into peace is a wicked problem. Using a vision-based approach, peacebuilders may determine the outcomes they seek – perhaps improved trust among people, or between people and those who govern them – and use tentative, iterative approaches which they regularly recalibrate, to do so. In other words, the type of approach appropriate to wicked problems. Not that development programming couldn’t – even shouldn’t – adopt this approach, but typically it does not.
- Appreciative inquiry. If development is still focused on overcoming problems and obstacles, the better starting point for vision-based peacebuilding is rather appreciative inquiry: what peaceful mechanisms already exist, and how can they be reinforced?
There is no reason for mainstream development activists not to follow these same approaches. But typically, they don’t. If my colleague and I are right that peacebuilding is “just good development” in conflict-affected and fragile places, then I’d argue that in such places, they should.
Ethical challenges facing mining companies?
Last week a friend who knows I have spent a fair amount of time working on mining/oil and with mining/oil companies in recent years asked me what are some of the major societal challenges facing mining companies in the next few years. My response to her question led me to write this blog post. I should say that much of what I’ve written is informed and borrowed from what I’ve heard others say. So little of this represents my own original thinking. I thought of five responses to her question.
Fairness/unfairness
In the background is the question which is often wrongly diagnosed as one of trust: a lack of trust in mining companies (along with other institutions, to be sure.) This interpretation seems like a classic example of transactional miners interpreting the problem through the lens of their own interest, as in: “we need the public’s trust, to be able to make money, so how can we restore it?” Just another version of the old, ought-to-be-discredited Social Licence to Operate idea.
Of course there is a trust deficit, but why, and what is the bigger issue? Fairness is a more useful lens to use. Whether you look locally, sub-nationally, nationally or internationally, there is a real problem of seemingly growing inequality – not just inequality of income, but inequality of wealth and opportunity.
People can live with a lot of inequality. It’s normal. What gets people’s goat is not having less, but unfairly having not enough – the idea that they or their people are not getting a fair slice – and in the worst case, losing their dignity. Increasingly people are driven by a frustration that they are being treated unfairly. They can see it first hand when they compare their circumstances with others nearby. And they can see on their phones and tv screens how much better off are others who have no more right to opportunity than they. And they (rightly) blame the institutions for that. Mining companies are not only institutions in their own right, but they are a fundamental and influential part of the institutional rules of the game which are manifestly unfair in people’s eyes – a key feature of the institutions whose success appears to be predicated on maintaining an unfair status quo.
There is no simple answer to this. Indeed, it’s part of what’s sometimes known as a ‘wicked problem‘ – one which defies accurate description, is hard to problemetise, let alone solve. But a key to addressing and unlocking this issue – which is part of a set of wicked problems linked to politics, demography, climate change, history, education, governance, luck, etc – is at least to recognise it.
Corporate citizenship – a common stake
This then is the background against which to consider the role of mining companies as corporate citizens. Citizenship can be defined by the nature of a person’s relations with his/her fellow citizens, and with the state. Companies wishing to be good corporate citizens – as they should, and as many already claim they are – therefore need to consider their relationship with fellow citizens. First and foremost, companies need to move away from seeing others as “their stakeholders”, towards seeing them as “fellow stakeholders”: fellows with a common stake in a future which is prosperous and sustainable in terms of the environment, society, health, security, justice, etc. This is a major shift for mining companies, who still tend to see others in transactional terms: what do I need to do for you, so you’ll do what I need you to do for me….
Secondly, the point about the relationship with the state. What does a good citizen do, vis a vis the state? S/he abides by the law, helps out, and contributes to sustainable progress in society. But in liberal democracies in particular, s/he also votes, pays taxes, and desires, campaigns, and lobbies for good government policies: not just government policies which affect his or her immediate interests, but those in line with his or her interpretation of society more broadly. And s/he holds government to account. So enlightened mining companies – which are often among the largest sources of government revenue, and around 40% across Africa – should presumably be taking steps to consult with others and determine what ‘good government policy and investment’ looks like in their operating environments, and using their considerable skills and access to lobby for those. This takes companies out of their comfort zone, but following one’s values and principles often does that, no?
The fiscal element is particularly important here because – as Paul Collier has written – mining royalties represent drawing down the capital or the patrimony of society, and they can only be drawn down once. Collier’s idea, I think, was they should therefore be treated as a special capital fund and only used for capital investment: i.e. an investment in making a better future. That means it’s even more essential that they are spent on only the best ideas, arrived at through only the best, well-informed consultation processes.
Of course its wrong to recommend that giant mining companies should have a voice commensurate with the revenues they remit: that’s a recipe for bad policy, and anyway, a citizen only has one vote. Exercising this citizen role requires a careful approach. But – recognising that there is no monopoly on good ideas, much less the right idea – maybe one of the ways for miners to contribute would be to use their sophistication and wealth and access to support and facilitate well informed consultation processes to help other citizens make up their minds; fund eclectic social policy think tanks, and so on …..
Fragile states
There’s a particular issue for companies operating in fragile or conflict-affected countries, where abudant sources of minable minerals seem to lie. Governance is inadequate there, and the minerals sector is frequently linked to instability, corruption and conflict. Yet natural resources governance is seldom addressed directly in civil war peace agreements – hence the problems recur. This is a major area for companies – especiallty the better companies – take responsibility for helping address. Another very “wicked problem”.
Kramer’s and Porter’s ‘shared value’ concept is the idea of “Policies and operating practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company while simultaneously advancing the economic and social conditions in the communities in which it operates. Shared value creation focuses on identifying and expanding the connections between societal and economic progress.” (M. E. Porter and M. R. Kramer, Creating shared value, Harvard Business Review, 2011). Surely in a fragile state, “social progress” includes – indeed substantially means – reducing the risk of conflict. So mining companies, as corporate citizens who believe in shared value, have to ask, how can they explicitly invest in progress towards peace? (I touched on this question at a much broader level in a published report in 2015: Peace through prosperity.)
Stewardship
There is increasing (legal and moral) recognition that the supply chain is part of the company’s zone of responsibility – for human rights, for example. But downstream also matters. E.g. to me, a mining company should not sell Uranium to nuclear industries operating in societies without a culture of transparency and challenge. We saw what happened in Japan with the Tsunami. Who knows what the scenario would have been in a more open society, but we can say there’s a good chance that safety planning would have been better if there had been a culture of openness and challenge in the sector – something conspicuously absent in nuclear industry in Japan, where even politicians were kept at bay. Uranium is relatively easy to consider in this respect. Quantities are small, and it is anyway subject to extremely detailed and pervasive international tracking systems.
It’s much harder to consider downstream stewardship when we think about the kinds of materials which are commoditised, but surely staff and shareholders of a mining company should at least want to know if the materials they sell are being used – for example – to make weapons, or build torture prisons, or build shopping malls or bridges or schools, and know how they feel about it, as a first ethical step. Coal of course brings another dimension to this story, in an era of dangerous pollution and climate change …..
Automation
Finally, ever since a mining company proudly played me its cartoon video of the fully automated mine, about 5 years ago – a scenario which it and other companies continue to work towards – I have been worried about this. How do you “sit” within society, when your wealth is being created by digging and exporting raw materials elsewhere without even providing many jobs? I don’t know the answer but it will have an impact on the “corporate citizenship” issue above… especially in fragile places….
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I’ve written before on this blog about the importance that companies with an inherently long view of things take their responsibilities very seriously. When you think about it, the major institutions in society are failing structurally to take a long view: democratic governments because voters don’t ask them to; undemocratic governments because their main interest is maintaining power for its own sake; most companies because neither consumers nor their all-too-fleeting shjareholders care enough to ask them to; and the major religious institutions frequently seem more interested in either the life hereafter or compliance with very specific individual and family norms and behaviours. So – strangely, perhaps – we must look to the insurance companies, pension funds and natural resources companies – especially forestry and mining who almost by definition have a long term stake – to take their leadership seriously.
Phil Vernon 