Phil Vernon

Free, Prior and Informed Consent, or Free, Prior and Informed Approval?

November 4, 2012

tags: 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, acc, Corporate responsibility, FPIC, Free Prior and Informed Consent, Indigenous peoples, Mining, Social licence to operate

The issue of free, prior and informed consent is pre-occupying the mining industry. To the casual, liberal observer this seems like a no-brainer: ensure you have the freely obtained consent of those likely to be affected by your mining operations before you proceed, after making sure they fully understand the consequences of what you propose; altering your plans to take account of their concerns and interests; and being ready to walk away if you can’t obtain their agreement without undermining the viability of your project.

But when you capitalise the phrase – Free, Prior and Informed Consent, or FPIC – it becomes freighted with the politics of the oppressed. Because FPIC (pronounced “effpick”) is jargon for getting a social and political licence to operate from indigenous peoples with rights over mining land.

Drawing on the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and a host of other international documents and agreements, FPIC is the result of years of campaigning by and on behalf of indigenous people all over the world. These are people whose rights have for centuries been marginalised as a result of settler colonisation, and who still too-often need special attention if their voices are to be heard in the maelstrom of competing interests that attends debate around significant mining (and agribusiness) projects. FPIC is an international standard which says that indigenous communities have the right to be fully informed about what is planned, and that their consent to those plans is needed. It is inherently flawed and compromised, since it attempts to solve what are essentially national and local political issues with an international model. Nevertheless, as part of redressing a balance which is way out of whack, this is a necessary compromise, especially in countries where government and governance are inadequate for resolving competing interests fairly, and where the level of trust between government and citizens is low.

Competing interests, competing visions

Indigenous people fear mining projects for all kinds of different reasons specific to their context, and in some cases are implacably opposed. One common reason for their fear is that they have a centuries-old history of being shafted by outsiders and incomers who have more power than they. So there is an understandable mistrust, and often an assumption that any new project represents yet another opportunity to shaft them. Behind that, they calculate the economic, social, political, environmental and cultural opportunity-cost of any new project, and this is something that can be affected and changed through information, argument and negotiation. Not that “indigenous communities” are homogenous of course: like any community they tend to reflect a variety of opinions and perspectives.

Governments likewise reflect different interests. Even where they genuinely reflect the interests of indigenous people, they also need to square these with the interests of other citizens, and of the economy and society as a whole. Good governments regard mining revenue as scarce capital, a once-only opportunity to re-invest the patrimony of the nation in ways which secure a better future, e.g. in infrastructure, in education, in environmental conservation or improved governance; and while they need to take account of the specific interests of indigenous groups, their job is to govern the country as whole, not just special groups within it. No government is infallible; most are very fallible. Indeed, many governments are ill-structured to represent the diverse interests of their people and the nation as a whole, and unfortunately do a much better job of representing their own interests, and those of people closest to them.

Many of the big international mining companies have made great strides in corporate behaviour. They understand the need to mine in a responsible way, taking account of the social, cultural, political and environmental realties, rather than just spreading a few goodies around nearby communities while they get on with digging and removing what they need for sale elsewhere. This is not easy. They are faced with competing interests: shareholders who wish to maximise short-term profit; host governments with a desire to maximise royalties and taxes; some local communities looking for them to provide infrastructure, jobs and other local benefits; other local communities preferring things to remain as they are; regulators and international campaigners pushing for increased transparency; and so on. And all of these interest groups disaggregated into much narrower sub-groups, making up a complex tapestry that is hard to understand. But provided the economics of a particular project allow it, these often competing interests can usually be accommodated where the systems and culture of trust, political openness and compromise exist. The problem is, in all-too-many mining environments, they don’t. Which is where international measures like FPIC are needed, to set a bar which responsible companies and national governments need to meet in terms of their engagement with indigenous communities.

The existence of an official standard – “FPIC” in capital letters as it refers to engagement with indigenous people – should not detract from the need to ensure that as far as possible, all affected people are involved in giving free, prior and informed consent – i.e. “fpic”. Because, ethically speaking, all affected people should have the opportunity to be informed and consulted about any project likely to have a major impact on their lives, through a process of engagement designed to obtain compromise, consensus and consent – and which is designed to allow for almost any possible outcome, including a decision for the project not to go ahead.

Consent implies veto

But this raises the thorny question at the heart of the FPIC (or even the fpic) debate. Does the need to obtain consent imply the possibility of veto? Miners fear FPIC because they fear the power of veto, and especially in contexts over which incompetent, unrepresentative or venal governments preside.

Companies fear losing out on good commercial opportunities where they believe compromise, consensus and mutual consent would be possible, but for the failure of politics. Some of them understandably feel that enshrining the principles of FPIC might make negative outcomes more likely. They also cite ethical and moral concerns. They point out that it’s not always easy to engage fairly with indigenous communities: who speaks for the community, and can we be sure of their legitimacy? Will the power of veto raise the stakes and cause internal, possibly violent conflicts within and between indigenous groups, as well as between them and others? Might FPIC cause more corruption – with indigenous leaders selling their consent under the table – and thus increase inequity. At worst, could it lead to extreme measures, even the repression and murder of those “standing in the way of progress”?

At the core of all this is the very practical issue, that mutual consent can be hard to come by in a zero sum-game political environment lacking in trust – a fairly accurate description of many situations where indigenous communities and mining projects coincide. Viewed from any angle, if the consent of a particular group of people becomes a sine qua non requirement, that group of people has an effective right of veto. There is no escaping this.

So the concept of “consent” – such a nice, soft word – is really the much more powerful idea of “approval”. From the perspective of indigenous groups, FPIC means that you can only go ahead with your plans if we approve of and authorise them. From the perspective of miners and governments, it means we can only go ahead with our plans if they agree.

The magic crystal

All this is very abstract. The difficulty is that with all mining projects there are genuinely different interests at stake. The conservation of traditional culture and of the natural environment; the need for jobs and local economic development; the need for local and national infrastructure; the need for local and national leaders to retain the support of their constituencies; the need for raw materials; the need of shareholders, and so on: all these and countless other legitimate interests and needs jostling for position. The role of governments, and to some extent of international governance, is to frame these kinds of issues in a helpful way allowing compromise, consensus and consent.

Of course it is easy – especially at an abstract level and from a disinterested viewpoint – to argue that the expressed interests of the affected indigenous community must predominate; that without their consent, freely given and from an informed perspective, no project should proceed. Most minerals can be found elsewhere, and governments can find alternative sources of tax revenue. So in the scheme of things, leaving one particular mineral deposit un-mined doesn’t seem like a tragedy. But to examine the ethics of the issue, it is sometimes instructive to put an extreme case. What if the substance under the ground were a unique magic crystal, with the power to cure cancer, and it only occurred in one place, where a group of indigenous people have lived for centuries and have rights over the land. In such circumstances, would they really retain a power of veto?

From “licence to operate”, to a shared vision of progress

What this extreme instance illustrates, I suggest, is that the task of those engaged in FPIC-inspired, or FPIC-compliant processes, is to change the terms of the dialogue. Historically, the discussion has been about whether this or that mining project is acceptable, or of how to make it acceptable to local communities, i.e. how to obtain the so-called “social licence to operate”. Perhaps instead, the discussion should be about the larger societal questions of progress and conservation, and of whether and how the proposed mining project fits in to a broader strategy for the future. This means that rather than seeing local communities as “stakeholders” in a mining project, all parties including the miners should see themsleves and each other as stakeholders in something much larger.

This is much easier said than done, and it requires three factors above all:

First and foremost it implies the need for individuals in mining companies, in communities and in government need to provide leadership for a changed approach. In all three cases, this means persuading others within their constituency to step outside what’s normal, and stand above the narrow interests of the group.

A critically important tool for this is dialogue. Do not mistake me: without leadership, dialogue alone can change very little. But combined with risk-taking leadership, the process of dialogue can be transformative, allowing people to see and understand the valid interests of others, helping participants develop a shared sense of purpose, and to behave responsibly.

The powerful combination of leadership and dialogue can be instrumental in producing the commodity which is often so lacking in situations where mining projects are proposed or ongoing: trust. By increasing the level of trust between different actors, those working to resolve difficult issues where mining and indigeneity coincide can not only improve the prospects for a mutually successful outcome – they can also help create a broad political culture more characterised by positive-sum, not zero-sum approaches.

Kyrgyzstan and Guinea?

October 25, 2012

tags: Guinea, Kygyzstan

I am fond of saying that one of the biggest problems in the international development & peacebuilding sectors is the hammer-nail phenomenon. I.e. when organisations tend to identify the problems (nails) for which their particular methods and tools (hammers) just happen to be the most likely solution. This applies most worryingly with the big international beasts of the development sector like the World Bank, UNDP, USAID and DFID; but also to smaller NGOs like the one I work for. It also applies in a slightly different way to individuals, each of whom when designing strategies and projects tends to bring the same set of analytical lenses to the task. I’m the first to admit that I tend to analyse any context in terms of the political economy of peace first and foremost, and I also tend to see the need for interventions which influence the policy discourse, wherever I go. This inherent “professional bias” is why individuals need to work within diverse teams when doing strategic analysis, and why organisations need to make sure they integrate multiple perceptions when they do theirs.

The scope of my job changed this year. Having previously been overseeing International Alert’s Africa and its cross-cutting thematic work, I took on a wider responsibility, including for our work in Asia. After working in and on Africa since 1985, it has been fascinating to try and understand the peacebuilding context in Asian countries where we work. During a trip to Nepal, I was struck by how ideological some of the peace and conflict issues are, compared with my experiences in Africa over two and a half decades. If African conflicts are all too often about how to cut the cake of power, in Nepal I had a sense that at least some of the conflict actors have a genuine desire to bake the policy cake in different ways. One young ex-Maoist soldier interviewed for a documentary was genuinely puzzled that her leaders had agreed to a peace in which they hadn’t yet achieved their (her) aims of changing society.

On my first ever visit to Kyrgyzstan this month, I had another surprise. During the week or so I spent there, I found myself referring again and again to programming options we had selected in the Republic of Guinea, in West Africa; and seeing them as highly relevant to the Kyrgyzstan context. People were surprised and, frankly, so was I. While human societies everywhere exhibit many similarities, I hadn’t expected to find many connections between vast, mountainous landlocked Kyrgyzstan, with its sub-zero winters and ski-resorts, and hot, tropical Guinea, nestled on the West African coast. Yet barely an hour went by without me thinking of similarities in programming, so what was going on? Undoubtedly this was partly because of my professional bias, but was there something more?

On reflection, I realised that there were an uncanny number of similarities between the two countries, for example:

They were both colonised by European powers in the nineteenth centuries; both cynically exploited by the metropolitan power in question, and both decolonised in a rush. The leadership of both was captured by big men, post-independence.
Neither had much of pre-colonial history of the “nation-state” as the basis for political governance and identity. In any case, the colonial powers undermined and skewed the governance systems they found in place.
Both were coloured by communism: Kyrgyzstan as part of the USSR, and Guinea as a soviet client after independence.
Both countries have an interesting and at times difficult ethnic mix, and in both cases, one of the main ethnic groups is traditionally pastoral, and another primarily sedentary. In both countries ethnicity and ethnic identity provide simple labels which have been exploited for political and economic purposes by leaders.
Both are sparely populated countries with limited infrastructure, and the inherent challenges of communication that brings.
In neither country does the population have a great deal of confidence in the capacity of the central government to represent its interests well – although both countries are currently presided over by elected heads of state who seem genuine about promoting national reconciliation, following political disruption in the recent past. Probably it is also fair to say that both governments are operating in a political system which inherently obstructs such efforts.
Both are situated in an inherently unstable neighbourhood, where conflicts can spill across borders.
Both are countries in which high value improved agricultural land is at a premium.
Both face the challenge of exploiting mineral wealth peacefully, in the face of all the well-known ingredients for mining to spark violence.
Both have a tradition of out-migration for jobs and economic opportunity.
Both have a large bulge of young people with limited economic, political and social prospects – and who are easily attracted to religious or ethnic narratives offering an apparent alternative.
Both are major transit routes for drugs – from Afghanistan to Russia, and from Latin America to southern Europe.
Both countries are receiving a great deal of assistance from the international community, which finds it hard to figure out where and how best to apply its help conflict-sensitively.
In Guinea a few years ago, when designing a project, my colleagues and I were struck by the difficulty Guineans had in pursuing political discussions to consensual outcomes. As a then senior politician said to us: “we have difficulty talking about issues in ways which allow us to find feasible solutions”. This month in Bishkek, a civil society activist told me “we don’t know how to talk about the difficult issues in Kygyzstan”… Uncanny.

So perhaps, yes, I find it hard to shed the analytical lenses I tend to carry from country to country. But perhaps, too, it’s not that surprising that conversations with West Africans and Central Asians lead me to think that a similar mix of programming options make sense in both locations:

Extended dialogue, based on a comprehensive political analysis, carefully facilitated to allow participants to explore difficult issues without retreating to knee-jerk pre-defined positions, and linking them too readily to questions of ethnic identity.
Research and policy dialogue on how economic development can better serve the interests of peace – and including a focus on the extractive mineral sector and land.
Finding ways to help young people shape their future, through education and economic support.
Building a local capacity for mediation – i.e. so that people within communities can intervene at an early stage in local disputes, and help avoid them escalating out of control and taking on an ethnic hue; and in so doing reinforce the idea of peaceful co-existence.
Working with local actors to try and shape the institutional environment – governance – to be more conducive for peace; and with international institutions like the UN and the World Bank so that their programmes do the same.

The EU as Nobel Peace Prize winner?

October 15, 2012

tags: Barroso, Cyprus, EU, European Union, Kissinger, Martin Schulz, Nobel Peace Prize, Obama, Van Rompuy

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the European Union. Seems an odd choice: in figuring out who will accept the prize “on behalf of the EU” – or should that be “on behalf of the citizens of the EU”? – we see how far the EU still has to go as an institution. Will it be Van Rompuy (president of the European Council), Barroso (President of the Commission), Schulz (President of the EU Parliament), or even Cyprus (currently holds rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, and still a divided country itself). I guess someone will check the Lisbon Treaty to see who picks up international prizes on behalf of us all.

The timing is interesting. At first I had the impression that Norway – sitting resolutely outide the EU – is giving us unionized Europeans the prize as a way of saying “sorry you people seem to be going through hard times just now with your Euro-difficulties, and all. Here’s something to cheer you up.” Sympathy, with perhaps a wee bit of schadenfreude thrown in.

Or are the Nobel Peace Committee making a deeper point? Are they saying – as I did in a blog on this site last year – that the rift between the economies of northern and southern Europe is a genuine conflict akin to that which developed into the US Civil War, that the EU’s peace mission is not yet over, and thus its member states and their citizens need to continue working together with peace as the goal?

Either way, makes more sense than giving the Prize to Kissinger or Obama.

Neutrality: an ethical or a pragmatic issue?

September 29, 2012

tags: Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda, Conciliation Resources, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, Imperial War Museum, International Alert, International Committee of the Red Cross, Iraq Body Count, Médecins sans Frontières, Neutrality, Utility of violence

Last week I took part, with colleagues from Conciliation Resources (CR), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), in a debate held at the Imperial War Museum in London. Chaired by Tim Jacoby of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, the debate was constructed around the issue of neutrality as seen from the perspective of humanitarian and peacebuilding organisations. In an interesting discussion, what struck me in particular was how instrumentally each organisation seems to view the idea of ‘acting neutrally’.

Neutrality – studiously not-taking-sides or pronouncing on the rights and wrongs of the behaviour of governments and other parties to conflict – is sacred to the ICRC, because only by remaining studiously neutral can they obtain the laissez-passer they need from governments and rebel groups, allowing them to perform their vital humanitarian functions. For CR, a peacebuilding organisation with a strong focus on mediation and dialogue, neutrality is an important public good which, when genuinely practised by those supporting peace negotiations, enhances the power and strength of their ‘good offices’, and thus the prospects for peaceful outcomes. For MSF, neutrality is a fiction: by intervening in a humanitarian disaster one is immediately engaging in a political act and – however slightly – affecting the outcomes in a way that goes beyond the purely humanitarian, but is not something to dwell on, as it gets in the way of their critical mission, saving lives. And for International Alert, where I work: although we don’t discuss neutrality often, it is quite clear to us that peacebuilding is an intrinsically political enterprise, and that by espousing the values and cause of peace we are not neutral, because we clearly believe that certain outcomes are better than others.

I hope I have not misrepresented the perspectives of my fellow panellists, in highlighting merely one aspect of what I heard each of them say. While we had different positions on acting neutrally, all panellists agreed that as NGOs it made good sense to act impartially towards different players in a conflict situation, i.e. to be seen by all sides not to take sides, and to garner a reputation for so doing in order to maintain the space to operate.

What struck me was that all four of us described our approach to neutrality in terms of its relation to our specific mission and the outcomes and aims we seek to attain, meaning that we all took what I would call an instrumental view of the issue. And this implies that neutrality, far from being the much-vaunted ethical principle it is sometimes made out to be in humanitarian circles, is actually much more of a pragmatic choice, even – especially? – for the Red Cross.

THE UTILITY OF VIOLENCE

A second aspect of the debate was, for me, far more challenging. The chair asked all the panellists – who were united in their commitment to peace – how we felt about the utility of violence. Were there occasions when we felt that violence was the right option? This was difficult. I work for an NGO whose raison d’être is building peace; I know from the (albeit victor’s) history I was taught at school in the UK that peace of sorts has often been attained through violence, and am not myself a pacifist… I can certainly think of situations to which the rational and ethical response involves committing acts of violence, not merely in defence but also to obtain a political change where other means have failed. But can I imagine a situation in which the peacebuilding organisation for which I work would explicitly support the use of violent means for peaceful ends?

As a panellist at that point I had to disassociate myself from my organisation and say that while I could personally support the use of violence in some circumstances, and particularly when applied by a legitimately elected government to provide security to its own citizens and/or following the rules of just war, I could not imagine International Alert coming out explicitly to condone violence. Alert’s published Programming Framework – the core philosophy of our approach to peacebuilding – says “though we recognise that there are times when fighting is justified, this is a last resort that is best avoided”, and I cannot recall a time when I was in a group of colleagues discussing or agreeing that a given situation where we work had reached the point where fighting was indeed justified, much less saying so publicly. In practice, we are an organisation which believes not only in peaceful outcomes but also in peaceful means of reaching them – and certainly as far as our own involvement is concerned. And I think this is true of pretty much all international NGOs operating in conflict-affected places.

But consider this: international humanitarian NGOs have been evolving apace over the past couple of decades. They have moved from being rather technical instruments of service delivery, to understand more and more, and embrace in their practice, the essentially political nature of the issues on which they intervene, and of the interventions themselves. As part of this journey they have increasingly embraced a campaigning and advocacy role, in their countries of origin, internationally, and in the countries where they intervene. They are, without a doubt, far more switched on and more interesting than they once were. Some of them sail pretty close to the wind – inevitable perhaps, when engaging in politics in and around situations of humanitarian intervention and underdeveloped and fragile contexts where poverty and exclusion abound.

At the time of the Biafran War, MSF’s founders knew they were committing a profoundly political act by intervening to save lives. The humanitarian imperative led them to act politically. At the time it was new, yet would seem normal today. NGOs continue to evolve and become yet more political, and yet more conscious of the nuances and subtleties of the contexts where they intervene. Some have found themselves – perhaps unwittingly – acting as the “humanitarian wing” of western armies – the way some of the NGOs collaborated with Washington in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion is good evidence of this. NGOs get sorely frustrated by the inability of politicians to resolve armed conflicts which seem tractable. So far, this has led them to respond with ever-increasing political advocacy, and in some cases this has been quite effective. The Iraq Body Count is a simple and effective example. The Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda coalition was formed by a group of frustrated service delivery and human rights organisations saying enough is enough, and I believe it had a significant impact in changing international and Ugandan attitudes to the never-ending LRA war.

But the political tools available in conflict are often too blunt to make enough of a difference. Just as politicians at times find themselves using military force to pursue ‘politics by other means’, I wonder how these increasingly political NGOs will end up. Many humanitarian NGOs – as distinct from peacebuilders or human rights organisations – have long accepted an overlap with armed forces: think of NGOs protected by militias in Somalia, or armed military escorts for humanitarian convoys in almost any other war zone. As their political evolution continues, can we envisage, at some point in the future, humanitarian NGOs operating a paramilitary wing? Or will they from time to time, but outside the public glare, raise funds from politically interested billionaires to hire Executive Outcomes to intervene with force, as a rational and ethical response to the lack of political will for peace which they so often encounter in long-running, vested-interest, status quo-reinforcing civil wars where they so often find themselves sticking a band-aid on a festering wound?

OK, I know it’s nonsense. Just a thought experiment and a mere blog. But it is intriguing to wonder how the political evolution of values-based international NGOs will continue.

The politics of development is the development of politics

September 27, 2012

tags: Aid, Aid effectiveness, David Cameron, MDGs, subsidiarity

Lots of good buzz in and around the UN General Assembly in New York this week on the international development front. David Cameron making it clear he’s still committed to a growing UK aid programme – and co-chairing the first meeting of the UN’s High Level Panel on a new development framework to replace the MDGs after 2015. A large group of NGOs involved in the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding produced a great 6-pager – Bringing Peace into the post-2015 Development Framework – explaining why the post-2015 framework needs to have peacebuilding and conflict prevention at its heart, which would help fix one of the problems with the MDGs, which are far too technical and not nearly political enough.

At International Alert, where I work, we discussed whether to sign up to the Bringing Peace paper. We wanted to – we agreed with practically all of it, and it made sense that we’d show solidarity with fellow NGOs working on the same issue as ourselves. But in the end we decided we couldn’t, because the paper diverged from something we’ve been saying consistently for the past two years. The Bringing Peace paper suggests the need for the MDGs to be replaced by another set of global goals, and that individual country plans must be tailored to hit these goals and targets.

From our perspective, global goals and targets make no sense, and we have explained why on our website. We have developed a set of principles the post-2015 MDGs need to follow. One of these is subsidiarity, which Wikipedia defines as follows: ‘Subsidiarity is an organizing principle stating that a matter ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized authority capable of addressing that matter effectively. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.’

With subsidiarity in mind, along with the widely accepted aid doctrine of Taking Context as the Starting Point, it seems absurd to set goals, targets and indicators globally, when development happens nationally and locally. We’ve instead proposed on our website a post-2015 framework with three dimensions:

1. The need for a global vision, drawing heavily on the Millennium Declaration, setting out in broad terms the kind of world we aspire to live in, where people would have access to economic opportunity, justice, security, representative governance, the chance to participate in a supportive community, and steadily improving prospects for personal and family well-being.

2. Meanwhile the main focus of planning and implementing progress would continue to be the nation state and its component parts, right down to local level; national and other plans would be encouraged to show how they will make progress in line with the global vision, but they will be tailored primarily to the needs and opportunities of their specific context.

3. Meanwhile international organisations, regional groupings of nations, and businesses would also play their part.

In the end, even though the international community can do its best to incentivise individual countries to do their utmost to move in the direction of the global vision, it seems pointless to say that each country must make its plans to fit the vision. That ignores local politics, would utimately leave the international community whistling in the wind, and would feed cynicism about the whole endeavour.

Because in the end so much development is about politics, in two ways. First, the process of development itself is primarily political, concerned with highly political issues like equality, equity and changes in access to knowledge, power and resources. Secondly, development is also about the evolution and acceptance of a different politics – of institutions, practices and norms which favour broad participation and accountability.

One of the civil society representatives at the UN this week, Lancedell Mathews from Liberia, put it well when he spoke at an event in front of several heads of state, including his own. Referring to the New Deal for Effective Engagement in Fragile States, an agreement between donors and fragile state governments which is laced with good ideas (and fancy acronyms), he said – my emphasis added:

“It is our thinking that the New Deal is not only about the Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals, FOCUS, TRUST and other acronyms. For us, it is essentially about building and maintaining honest, respectful and mutually accountable relationships, not only between the international community and states, but also and more importantly between both of them and the people they serve. As already mentioned throughout various messages that we spread this week, we believe that the New Deal should be used to change national planning processes because we strongly believe that peacebuilding, and conflict prevention, should and certainly must be made the priority if we want to see progress in development. This agenda is not only relevant for societies that are already conflict-affected – the events of the Arab spring and the global financial crisis show us that no society is immune from fragility – and that all societies can guard against it through the principles of inclusiveness, responsiveness, fairness and accountability.”

Justine Greening: The Reluctant Minister for International Development?

September 11, 2012

tags: Aid effectiveness, DFID, Justine Greening, ODA, statebuilding

“I didn’t come into politics to distribute money to people in the Third World”, Justine Greening is said to have told PM David Cameron when he moved her from Transport to DFID in last week’s UK government reshuffle.

At first sight it looks like a double whammy for the British overseas aid programme: on the one hand, losing Andrew Mitchell who, whatever his original reasons for getting into politics, had shown every sign over the past five years that he was very happy to devote his political career to overseas aid, and who had impressed his staff and others with his sincerity, energy, and some of his ideas. On the other, finding that he’d been replaced as Secretary of State for International Development by Justine Greening who it seems would have preferred almost anything other than DFID; indeed, is said to have seen her move to DFID as a demotion.

I too regret that DFID has lost Andrew Mitchell’s leadership: he brought commitment but also a welcome degree of skepticism to his brief, and he was quite rightly very conscious of the need not to take UK taxpayers’ generosity for granted, and to treat them with respect. But what’s done is done, and I also see two bright aspects of Greening’s arrival on the scene.

First, the good news for Greening which I hope her officials have already shared with her, is that in general DFID’s role is not to “distribute money to people in the Third World” [wherever that is]. Instead, it’s to help stimulate and promote the values, institutions and practices which both enable and represent development progress. As her officials have no doubt explained, this is a challenging business bearing little relation to the distribution of money in poor communities which, as Graham Greene illustrated in The Comedians many years ago, is not usually very effective, and can contribute to conflict. If Greening likes a challenge, she should find her time at DFID very stimulating indeed.

Second, there is a great deal to be said for the idea of The Reluctant Minister. I don’t recall the exact circumstances of Douglas Alexander’s appointment to DFID in 2007, but do remember very well how his initial skepticism led him to ask much more difficult questions of DFID than his predecessors had done. At first this was confusing, and some of us doubted his commitment. The word from some corners of DFID was that “he didn’t get it”. Thank goodness for that, because as a result of his questions and the directions he set as Secretary of State, DFID produced probably its best ever White Paper – Building our Common Future – in 2009, focussed clearly on critical issues like climate change adaptation, economic recovery, and strengthened citizenship and citizen-responsive state institutions in fragile and conflict-affected countries.

DFID is a world leader among international development institutions. It’s been among the pioneers of new thinking about what “development” means, and how rich countries like the UK can promote and stimulate development in poor and fragile countries. But there are still many many questions to answer, and I’d like to think that once the new Secretary of State gets her head round her new brief, she’ll bring a fresh set of eyes to these.

Olympic Games and development progress in the UK

July 29, 2012

tags: Development, Doreen Lawrence, Liberty, London 2012, MDGs, Olympic truce, Olympics, Shami Chakrabarti, The High Weald, Universality

Out running this morning in the beautiful countryside of the High Weald in South East England, I was (in my mind, at least!) combining athletics with quintessentially British surroundings. And so I reflected on the opening ceremony of the Olympics last Friday, which nicely combined the themes of Britishness and the Olympics.

The Olympic Games is a fantastic global moment – reflecting a fantastic global movement – which showcases and celebrates talent, endeavour, collaboration and organisation. It creates and strengthens links between individuals, between individuals and their societies, and between societies. It will never on its own bring peace between all those waging war. The Olympic Truce might perhaps have worked in ancient times, when the Olympics was a regional event, but it can’t possibly work on a global scale: truces can’t be universal or global unless wars are. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that increasing people’s exposure to those who may look and sound different, and who come from far away – and yet experience the same human emotions as I do – contributes to an increase in empathy and reduces the likelihood that those from one group or nation will want to harm those from another.

The choice of the nine flagbearers who carried the Olympic Flag was interesting from a symbolic perspective: The Secretary General of the UN, a local peace activist from Liberia, a conductor who uses music to build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, two legendary and inspirational Olympic athletes, an international campaigner for environmental justice, an international humanitarian, and two campaigners for justice and freedom in the UK.

The inclusion of the last two, Shami Chakrabarti and Doreen Lawrence, made me reflect on the link between Britishness and the Olympics. Both people campaign for a better UK. The first is head of Liberty, a human rights campaigning organisation; the second, a longstanding campaigner for justice and against racism, following the racist murder of her son in South London nearly twenty years ago. At first I wondered why they were included: surely the Olympic flag should be carried by international figures? But on reflection it seemed very fitting that global figures like Ban Ki-moon and Muhammad Ali were accompanied by two people whose concerns – while universal in nature – are mainly focused within the UK.

Including the two British campaigners was in keeping with the idea that the 2012 Olympics is at the same time an international, a national and a London event. The opening ceremony referred to many aspects of British history and culture, and one thing that stood out was how much sheer disruption Britain has been subject to in the name of progress. The industrial revolution of two hundred years ago is doubtless one of the main foundations of my ability to live a fairly free and healthy life in Britain. But it was a tough time for most people alive then: development progress came at a great cost. And the Olympics opening ceremony showed that.

Working over the past 27 years in support of societal change in places less developed than the UK, one of my abiding questions has always been to what extent do such places have to pass through similar disruptive periods as British people did in the name of progress? I know there are many paths to development, indeed many definitions of “development”, and I do not subscribe to the idea that less developed countries should simply try to “become like us”. Indeed, the exigencies of climate change mean that they simply have to follow a better and more sustainable path than the OECD countries have done so far.

But I don’t feel that there is anything intrinsically wrong in saying that many of the attributes of Britain today are things that people in Kenya, Kazakhstan, Russia, Guinea, Guatemala, Congo, Brazil and China can and should aspire to and aim for. I am talking about things like the rule of law, democratically accountable politics, access to education and health services, freedom of speech and association, and economic freedom. And about the existence of instititutions which help maintain, improve, deepen and expand them.

But the presence of Shami Chakrabarti and Doreen Lawrence in the Olympic flag-carrying party was a good and welcome reminder that there is no room for complacency. Doreen Lawrence’s son was killed because he was black, and the crime was compounded for years by the inability of a police and justice system undermined by institutional racism to bring the killers to justice. Meanwhile Shami Chakrabarti runs Liberty, an outfit which has campaigned for over 75 years for human dignity, equal treatment and fairness as the foundations of democracy.

I have no hestitation in asserting that the United Kindgom is more developed than most countries in the world. By this I mean it has made more progress in institutionalising factors like democracy, fairness, openness, participation and human rights. But I am just as clear that there is still a long way to go, and that it is just as possible to go backwards as to travel forwards. Not only that, but others have made progress in different ways, from which we can learn. Hence the critical importance of campaigners like Lawrence and Chakrabarti in our public sphere. And hence their importance as symbols in the Olympic flag-carrying party. Britain has exported much to the rest of the world: our exercise of colonial rule of large swathes of the planet and our leadership role in the slave trade have been among our worst exports. But we’ve also exposed other parts of the world to institutions, ways of living together and making political decisions which have much to recommend them. Indeed, the President of the International Olympic Committee noted at the opening ceremony that the rules and codes for several olympic sports had initially been established here in the UK. Nevertheless we still have plenty to do here at home, to protect the progress made by those who came before us, and to keep moving down the road of progress. By including Doreen Lawrence and Shami Chakrabarti as flag-bearers, and by some of the other content of the opening ceremony, I think we were perhaps sending three messages:

1. Look at what good institutions we have here in the UK;

2. Good as they are, they remain a work in progress;

3. We are keen to work in partnership with others outside the UK in protecting and improving them.

One final thought: this implies that the UK is still a developing country. When the 2015 Millennium Development Goals are replaced they should, as many have been arguing, be conceived and construed to apply to all countries including the UK and other OECD members, following the principle of universality.

Squaring the Circle: is it time to stop this 0.7% nonsense?

July 13, 2012

tags: 0.7%, Aid, Aid effectiveness, DFID, ODA

People and organisations in the UK’s overseas development sector are getting hot under the collar. This is because the government is not prioritising legislation to enshrine a perpetual commitment to spend 0.7% of UK Gross National Income (GNI) on overseas development aid (ODA). Letters are being drafted, articles are being written, politicians are being lobbied. After all, this issue has cross-party support, so why not just rush it through parliament?

Well, there are several reasons why not.

First, it’s politically naïve to push this issue now. In case NGOs haven’t noticed, most voters are not clamouring for this to be made into law. In fact, most people would rather see UK aid reduced, not increased in line with the 0.7% pledge. The Daily Mail is among voices asking why we are helping people far away when we have so many problems at home. On the whole it’s only aid specialists and some among the political elite who want to increase aid. So pushing the Overseas Development Spending Bill through parliament now would be like raising a red rag to a bull. Asking a government already under pressure to raise a red rag to a bull seems rather naïve – especially when it has already committed itself to raise the aid budget to 0.7%, and when its own backbenchers already have difficulty explaining the overseas aid budget to their constituents.

Second, there’s no logical basis for 0.7%. In fact, what is this obsession with 0.7% all about? No-one really seems to know where it came from. As far as I know, someone calculated a few decades ago that the investment gap in what was then known as the Third World was the equivalent of 0.7% of OECD GNP, ergo by transferring that amount from the First to the Third World over a period of a few years, developing countries would catch up. That rather simplistic notion of “development” has long been blown apart, but somehow the mythical, or perhaps I should say “mystical” figure of 0.7% remains. Paul Collier has argued that because aid is a global public good, there is a problem of free-riding and therefore it’s useful to have a target, however arbitrary, to aim for and hold governments to. Hmm, fair enough perhaps, but why should it be 0.7%?

Third, surely it’s basic economics that an arbitrary target creates a perverse supply incentive?

Fourth, it seems absurd to enshrine this in law. Are any other budgetary targets similarly enshrined, such as the percentage of GNI to be spent on defence, education, health, etc? I doubt it, as it would make little sense to base one’s national education, health or any other policy on the cost of inputs, when one should rather be focused on the outcomes. The same should be true of aid. In any case, I find it profoundly undemocratic to pass laws which simply cannot be enforced, and which bind the representatives of future UK voters to spend a fixed proportion of their voters’ money on overseas aid, whatever circumstances they may be in at the time.

Fifth, and most important: it’s the quality of aid that matters, not the volume. The current government has rightly emphasised results and value for money in its approach to overseas aid. This is partly to head off the anti-aid critics, but it’s also a healthy reaction to more than a decade in which UK aid grew and grew and grew, but with far too little attention being paid to whether it was targeted at the right issues, in the right places, nor whether the theories behind it and delivery mechanisms being used were right. One can certainly argue that the current government has swung too far in the other direction with its near-obsession with value for money, but even so it’s understandable it felt the need to do so.

Squaring the circle

The UK government has a difficult circle to square. It is committed to increasing aid to 0.7% of GNI, with or without passing the Bill. Even though we are in recession, that implies an increase of more 25% in aid expenditure over the course of a few short years. Meanwhile, its criticism of the previous government’s approach to aid means it has called into question some of the delivery mechanisms which allow DFID (the UK’s Dept. for International Development) to spend money in fairly big sums at a relatively low internal cost: large scale budget support to developing country governments, large grants to the UN and other inefficient multilateral organisations, and strategic grants to UK-based development NGOs, to name three. It is also committed to bringing down DFID’s in-house costs, which are already among the lowest in the world compared to DFID’s international peers, by cutting staff numbers and their admin support (ask any DFID staff member how easy it is to get a new stapler, or get the photocopier fixed….). The government is also committed to spending about one-third of its overseas aid in so-called fragile states, where systems are weak, governments are relatively undemocratic and unaccountable to their people, and where aid needs to be programmed with particular care if it is not to be wasted, misused, stolen or to do outright harm. And finally, people in the aid sector now understand that “development”, especially in fragile contexts, is far more complicated than providing roads, schools and clinics – it is about the emergence of stable, democratic and accountable insitutions including a social contract: thus development aid is also far more complex and complicated than we used to think.

So in short, Her Majesty’s Government is trying simultaneously to increase overall aid expenditure, spend a greater proportion in difficult places, tackle ever-more complex problems and find new, more effective and efficient delivery mechanisms which are fit for new and more complex purposes. How can it possibly square that circle?

A few years ago I was discussing this issue with an ex-minister for UK overseas development who by then had long retired. I explained why I felt it was more important to focus on the quality, not the quantity of aid. He readily agreed, but he told me that when he’d been a minister, he had felt constrained by the politics of aid to keep increasing the ODA budget, even when his officials told him they were overwhelmed. I think he felt that it was important to keep stepping up the voltage applied to ODA, lest momentum be lost.

Squaring almost any circle is made harder by politics, and I would not go as far as to recommend cuts in the UK government’s aid spending. That would be naïve, and probably also wrong. But the argument against reducing DFID’s staffing and admin support, making it harder to deliver aid effectively in fragile contexts is one that can and should be made. And I certainly think it’s time to stop pushing for the 0.7% figure to be reached as fast as possible. Above all it is entirely the wrong moment – if there ever is a right one – to enshrine 0.7% perpetually in law.

We have to start having a more honest conversation about development, and development aid. The message of Make Poverty History and those who campaign incessantly for 0.7%, that global poverty can be overcome simply by financial transfers, is misinformation which insults people living in poor and fragile countries while doing little to change their long-term prospects. Development is about political change and societal transformation in fragile contexts, not just financial transfers. It’s time to move the terms of this conversation on, before the Daily Mail does it for us.

The post-2015 MDGs: to which tribe do you belong?

June 25, 2012

tags: Aid, Development, MDGs

Discussions about how or whether to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), after they “expire” in 2015 are gathering pace. I have argued elsewhere that although it is perhaps unlikely to produce a model that will satisfy those of a progressive disposition, the discussion itself is valuable, as it provides an opportunity to debate what “development means” among a wider group of people than are normally involved.

Dorine E Van Norren recently published an interesting article outlining how the MDGs might be expanded and made more useful as a communication tool. Specifically, for communicating a deeper and broader analytical narrative of what “development means”.

She also identifies, rather neatly, four categories of people with regards their perceptions of the MDGs:

Optimists: those who see the items contained in the MDGs as key to change
Strategic realists, who are happy to use the flawed MDGs to hold politicians’ feet to the fire over their commitment to poverty reduction
Sceptics like myself, who doubt the utility of the MDGs and question whether they represent human development effectively
Radical critics, for whom the MDGs represent a waste of space and the failure of the system.

Her article spurred me not only to self-identify as a member of the Sceptics tribe with an eye on how my cousins the Radical Critics and Strategic Realists are getting on, but also to identify four broad categories of questions which those with an interest in the post-2015 MDG agenda are debating. These are, grosso modo:

Ideology: how should we define development or human progress?
Purpose: if we truly need the MDGs or something to take their place, what are they for?
Model: once we have decided on the purpose of the post-MDG thing, what kind of framework is most suitable for this purpose?
Process: what is the right and legitimate process through which to articulate the answers to questions 1-3, and who should be involved?

Big questions, all. And clearly in the right order. Provided that after developing one’s own, or one’s organisation’s answers to all four, one answers them all again, following the process defined in response to question four. And so on until the music stops….

Ten ideas for lobbying David Cameron as co-chair of the post-2015 MDG High Level Panel

May 13, 2012

tags: Aid, David Cameron, Development, DFID, High Level Panel, International Dialogue for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding, MDGs, Millennium Declaration, ODA, Post-2015 MDGs, President Johnson-Sirleaf, President Yudhoyono, WDR

Framing development as history looking forwards

Good news that UK Prime Minister David Cameron is co-chairing the UN High Level Panel to shape an international framework to replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015. His appointment to this role is presumably a reflection of and reward for the leadership role the UK has played in international development assistance over the past fifteen years since Clare Short set up the Department for International Development (DFID). No doubt his appointment was a result of strong lobbying by the UK. (To imagine it as a subtle way for Ban Ki-moon to stiffen Cameron’s resolve in the face of a media and backbench push back against the government’s commitment to increase UK official development assistance (ODA) up to 0.7% of GNI is perhaps going too far!)

Good news also that Cameron’s co-chairs are President Yudhoyono of middle income but still fragile Indonesia, and President Johnson-Sirleaf of grossly underdeveloped and war-recovering Liberia. Both are twice-elected presidents of countries still experimenting with democracy and freedom. One is an ex-general; the other an ex-international civil servant. Meanwhile Cameron is struggling to deal with coalition government, a free media and serious economic constraints. Quite a broad set of real world perspectives, so hopefully suitable for the leadership of such a panel.

Good news also that Cameron has a broad and deep level of aid and development expertise available to him in DFID and other parts of the UK civil service, along with a large professional UK-based aid and development community, and a significant proportion of global academic development expertise based in the UK; and that the country he leads has a tradition of international humanitarianism.

Good news too, that this is all happening after, and can thus draw on the deep and comprehensive work done by the World Bank for its 2011 World Development Report on Development and Security, which laid bare some of the tired misconceptions of how development happens in places where there’s not yet the rule of law or responsible, responsive and representative governance. The ongoing International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding has also produced some useful interim work on how to promote the emergence of peaceful and effective states, on which the new High Level Panel must draw.

Even better news however, that Cameron is not personally an aid or overseas development expert; and nor is Yudhoyono. Because, as I’ve argued before, the great limitation of aid experts is that we tend to have a rather narrow view of the possibilities of development and aid, constrained as we are by our own experiences and by the vested interests of our organisations and allegiances. The co-chairs will be better able to see the wood from the trees if they avoid surrounding themselves too tightly with the usual ODA suspects.

And finally, this is presumably good news for UK-based and -linked groups wanting to influence the post-MDGs agenda – including the global coalition Beyond 2015. How then should we use this opportunity of access to the co-chair of the commission? Here are ten initial ideas.

1. Scope: it’s time for a truly global framework. This is a brilliant opportunity, at a time when globalisation, environmental limits, and climate change really do imply that we are all in it together, to develop a framework which applies globally – not just to poor countries. This means coming up with a framework which is relevant throughout the world, and which avoids objectifying poorer nations. It also recognises that all nations have significant problems to overcome, and different comparative advantages in the overarching global progress project. This approach would also help take the conversation away from a narrow focus on aid.

2. Frame this project around human progress, not aid. Whatever people might say, the MDGs are really about aid, not development; they only really apply to aid-recipient countries, and their real purpose has always been as a spur to increase aid flows and focus them on a few generic issues. That has not worked well: they haven’t served the purpose of mobilising politicians, civil society, businesses and civil servants to develop sustainable development strategies based on a comprehensive context analysis and political vision for change. Instead, because they are so narrow and aid-focused, they’ve probably impeded the development of a broad and far-reaching vision for change in some countries.

3. Timing: take it slow. A very visible and rather contentious high level panel is the kind of scenario in which civil servants and sherpas will typically encourage the leaders to set out an aggressive calendar to pre-form the outcomes much too early in the process. Of course, that’s their job. But in this case they should resist business as usual. Two main points to make here. First, it really doesn’t matter if we have something finalised in time for the 2015 UN General Assembly or not; the world will not stop turning, and development policies, funds and strategies will not grind to a halt. Second, it’s absolutely critical to cast the ideas net as widely as possible before coming up with potential models for discussion. This is a large and diverse world, in which that will take time. And the prize is well worth the waiting. Indeed, in some ways the debate is far more important than the final product.

4. Preparation: get out there and start listening, and avoid formulating specific proposals for as long as you can. The Panel needs to spend at least the next two years simply looking around at and listening to people’s ideas, and consulting widely. It’s important to canvas a whole range of ideas from a wide range of sources, from poor and marginalised people to elites, from political oppositions to incumbents, from NGOs to the UNDP, from insurgent rebels to the militias fighting them, from local businesses to multi-nationals, from scientists to philosophers, from novelists to historians, from children to mums and dads, from heterosexuals to homosexuals, from farmers to hedge fund managers, from Cubans to Americans and Greeks to Germans, from Keynesians to the Chicago School, Moslems to Christians, from migrant labourers to the rentier classes, from the Chinese Communist Party to the American Republican Party, from immigrants to indigenous people, from islanders to continentals, from the Taleban to the US Marines, from DFID to the FCO… and yes, let’s even ask both the Occupy protesters and the bankers what they think.

… And ideally of course, these different groups – and others – need to be brought together to discuss and confront each others’ ideas so the dialectic process can do its work. This is quite a challenge, and it will take time and resources – and excellent project management. Perhaps the greatest challenge will be to find the best marriage between technical and political views of development progress, and between different ideological views. But it’s important not to shy away from ideological debate, as development practitioners have often tried to do in the past.

5. Get the purpose right, so form follows function. There are plenty of people and institutions out there who seem to know what the post-MDGs framework should look like; and of course each of them is pushing a particular agenda. No harm in that, but the first question the Panel needs to answer is: What is the purpose of the new framework? Form should follow function, after all.

In my view the purpose of any global post-MDGs framework should not be to set out precise goals and indicators as with the MDGs. It would be more useful to create a broader vision of how people in different contexts can be better governed and live more prosperous, peaceful and fulfilling lives. Specific countries and institutions can then use these for inspiration as they determine their own goals and strategies.

One clue as to how to frame our aspirations is to imagine how historians in a hundred years might frame the history of human progress in 2015-2030. Put simply, development planning is history looking forwards.

6. Take time to learn what was good and what not so good about the MDGs. There’s masses of literature on this, but I think it’s widely agreed that the MDGs have significant strengths and weaknesses, among which:

Strengths

Weaknesses

The MDGs cover topics which are fairly easy for a broad range of actors to support
Most of them are presented in a simple, easy to understand way
It is relatively easy to measure progress on most MDGs, at least at a national level in stable countries
They were mostly built on pre-existing agreements and data collection arrangements

They are focused on a too-narrow list of mainly technical issues, ignoring politics, justice and security for example; taken together, they do not add up to “development”
One size fits all: the goals were set at a global level, though development mostly happens nationally and locally; the MDGs assume that everyone everywhere faces much the same challenges and opportunities
They confuse ends with means
They take insufficient account of climate change or other sustainability issues
They more or less equate “development” with poverty eradication

7. Don’t aim for a fine level of detail. Last time around, not many people were paying attention to the MDGs as they were developed and agreed. There were a lot of other things going on. So the framers were able to push their product through without too much fuss and argument. This time, every UN agency is already preparing its pitch; Rio-plus-twenty will produce a pitch; every lobby you can imagine will be figuring out what it wants to see and – perhaps more importantly – what it doesn’t want to see included. It will be very hard to get agreement on detail except at the lowest common denominator level. So aim for something broader. But for goodness sake don’t base your ambition on what can most easily be agreed: this issue is more important than easy consensus. It’s worth arguing about.

8. Don’t base yourself only on what we already know how to do: there is so much we still have to learn – the UK still hasn’t figured out how to provide free mass public education effectively, even though it’s the sixth biggest economy and has been “developed” for quite some time now.

9. While thinking outside the box and casting the net widely, nevertheless take care to identify what’s already agreed. A good place to start might be the 2000 Millennium Declaration, which is pretty comprehensive – certainly far more so that the narrow and prescriptive MDGs.

10. Above all, avoid simply injecting new momentum behind the existing MDGs, as has been proposed by some, on the grounds that they haven’t yet been achieved and because it will be hard to find consensus on a better model. That would be a cop-out. Two presidents and a prime minister leading a high level panel should be in a strong enough position not to cop-out.

Phil Vernon

Phil Vernon: Peacebuilding, International Humanitarian & Development (& Poetry).