Trouble in paradise?
The news of a military mutiny, possibly a coup, in Mali is being reported on the BBC World Service in terms of damaging “a beacon of democracy in the region”. This takes me back to the mid-1990s when I lived in Bamako. Malians were then experimenting with democracy after years of dictatorship and I wondered how succesful this would be.
By chance, I happened to read Eric Hobsbawm’s book The Age of Extremes which was published then, in a chapter of which he explored the resilience of democracy in Europe between the two world wars. As I recall, he framed his analysis within four factors which he deemed structurally necessary for democracy to survive the political, economic and social stresses which were prevalent in Europe in the 1930s. These were wealth, tolerance, decentralisation and a sense that people’s citizenship of the country – France, Britain, Germany, say – prevailed over other aspects of identity such as protestant, catholic, Bavarian, working class, etc. How did Mali look, and how does Mali look, when viewed through these four analytical lenses?
Wealth
Mali was very poor then, and remains very poor now. GDP per capita is around $1200 at purchasing power parity, up from about $850 in the late 1990s, so growth has been strong. But using Hobsbawm’s assumption you need to be somewhat comfortably off, as a nation, to have a resilient democracy, Mali always seemed vulnerable, and still does. The majority of Malians worked on the land then, and still do so, which confers some resilience provided the rains are adequate and the locusts stay away. The Gini score for wealth distribution was 50 in 1994 and has improved to 40 today (Sweden is 23 and Sierra Leone 62). If GDP and wealth distribution are taken into account, democracy looked vulnerable in the 1990s and still does today, despite improvements.
Tolerance
Hobsbawm’s idea was that in a resilient democracy, people in the minority must accept and tolerate as legitimate, a situation in which their political choices are superseded – through elections – by those of the majority. Meanwhile the majority has to accept that even if its candidate has won the election, he or she must govern in the interests of everyone, including those who voted against. This always seemed difficult to me in Mali in the 1990s, as I wondered how people could have this sense of “adherence” without being brought up in a democracy, which Malians had not been then. Now, of course, many Malians do have several years of democracy under their belt, and have been fairly well-led by presidents willing to relinquish office through election. Looking back, I also think that Mali had something else going for it on this score, because there is a genuine sense of mutual tolerance within Malian society – except perhaps in and vis-a-vis the north – a sense of live-and-let-live, and of being content and confident enough of one’s own identity to accept others. Perhaps therefore on this criterion of tolerance, Mali scored higher than I then thought back in the 1990s, and higher still today. The fly in the ointment is certainly the north, where actual or potential Tuareg insurgency has always been a feature of Mali’s history, and has been dealt with outside democratic politics, through a combination of military action and short-term political-economic deals. These have not just disrupted democracy in the north, but nationally.
Decentralisation
Hobsbawm’s view was that democracy is more resilient in a decentralised polity, because decentralised decision-making means the central executive has less to do, and can therefore be held to account more effectively by parliament. In a more centralised system, there is simply too much national government going on for MPs to be able to keep up. In this respect, Mali probably scored quite well, and still scores well today, as the country is governed very locally using quite traditional systems in many respects, and the national government has limited means at its disposal with which to interfere. Civil society in Mali is so strong it is almost tangible – one can almost touch the web of interlocking relationships between people, and Mali is rich in social capital.
Identifying with the nation
And so to Hobsbwam’s final criterion: that people should identify themselves as Malians above their sense of their other identities – membership of an ethnic group, for example. I am not sure if most Malians would declare themselves Malians first and foremost, and ethnic identity remains very strong in what is a diverse patchwork of tribes, castes, etc. Nevertheless I always felt in the 1990s, and this is still true today, that mutual tolerance among Malians is one of Mali’s strongest qualities with regards the resilience of democracy. There is a genuine historical sense that Mali exists as a natural nation, rather than simply as a creation of European colonists like so many other African countries. The north, of course, is the part of Mali where this rings less true.
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So, looking at these four criteria, one might suggest that Mali today scores one out of three for wealth, and two out of three for tolerance, decentralisation and national identity. Thus – from Hobsbawm’s structuralist perspective – there is every chance that the apparent coup will be reversed and progress towards democracy resumed.
The difficulty is the north: many people in the north see Mali as another country, with a distant state which consistently fails them, and therefore to which they do not feel allegiance. It is a vicious spiral. Yet the “northern problem” is too seldom viewed in terms of improving the sense of citizenship among people in the north. Malians from the south, their government and its foreign backers too often see the north in terms only of insecurity, terrorism, international drug smuggling, innate backwardness and as a set of problems which are somehow not “Malian” but “northern”, “Sahelian” or “other”. Thus policy is designed instrumentally to resolve northern issues as though they were not part of the Malian mainstream; and while perhaps providing a temporary solution to the problem as presented today, thus reinforces the separation of northern people from the state and from their fellow Malians in the centre and the south.
I hope that the military mutiny will be reversed, and without bloodshed. I think it will. Mali deserves to continue the progress towards democracy which started with the courageous citizen uprising of 1991 against Moussa Traoré. The mutineers appear to be motivated by the lack of resources provided to the army in its current fight against northern rebels who have recently beaten them back in a series of attacks, and humiliated them by occupying northern towns and barracks. This rebellion is a symptom of underlying stresses which are threatening democracy and testing its resilience. But the deal which will be done with the mutineers to persuade them to back off and hand power back to President “ATT” Touré must not be based simply on giving them the firepower to beat the rebels: it needs to be seen as part of a long-term process of nation building which brings all Malians, including those in the north, into a responsible and responsive relationship with the state and with their fellow Malians further south. Otherwise the “northern problem” will continue to undermine democracy and will continue to reduce the degree to which Mali – taken as a whole – scores highly against Eric Hobsbawm’s four criteria of democratic resilience.
Kony 2012 – is slacktivism enough?
The International Criminal Court (ICC) today handed down its first verdict in the ten years since it was established, when it found Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga guilty of a range of horrendous war crimes. That’s a good and a bad piece of news.
Good because it’s about time people were punished within some kind of rule of law for committing the kind of crimes Lubanga did. Good because it’s about time the ICC got a result. Bad because he should have been brought to book in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where he did it – justice which takes places thousands of miles away has far less impact on the society where the crimes were done; and is therefore less “just”. And bad also, because it should not have taken ten years for the ICC to achieve its first result – that’s got to be a failure of design or execution.
Interesting that the Lubunga case should come to an end now, just while the infamous Kony 2012 video is doing its rounds. You’ve no doubt heard of this video, which advocates US military action in support of the arrest of Joseph Kony, ICC-indicted Ugandan leader of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), a militia group once active in Northern Uganda but now roaming around South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Central African Republic (CAR). Perhaps you are one of the 78 million plus people who have watched the video so far, or one of the countless others who have heard or read expert commentators denouncing it as counterproductive, neo-imperialist, exploitative or just plain naïve. I watched it this morning, after hearing a debate about it on the BBC.
I should declare an interest: I work for a peacebuilding organisation active in Uganda; which I joined after working in Uganda for five years, much of which I spent trying to contribute to peace in Northern Uganda, which the LRA at that time terrorised constantly, attacking villages and internment camps, abducting and abusing children, brutally killing and causing mayhem and havoc. The LRA were finally pushed (or pulled) out of Uganda a few years ago, but my joy at the return to relative peace there after twenty-five years was tempered by the news that Kony had taken his marauders to the DRC, South Sudan and CAR, where they have carried on abducting, killing and causing mayhem to this day.
Well-equipped with GPS technology and arms, they thrive in the remote, ill-governed circumstances where they now find themselves; where the state is ill-equipped or ill-disposed to protect people, and where Kony and his lieutenants can easily exploit local and regional rivalries to act as mercenaries on behalf of one armed group or another, as their price for being left alone or perhaps re-armed. The Ugandan People’s Defence Force has hunted and harried the LRA for years inside and outside Uganda, and has captured and killed many. But they have always failed to get Kony himself, and he constantly replenishes his numbers through further rounds of brutal forced recruitment from wherever he happens to be at the time.
So I watched the 30 minute video with interest and – I must admit – the expectation that I’d not like it, after what I’d heard the experts say on the radio and in the press. It’s a simple film, which tells six simple stories.
A film of six stories
The main story is that of the American film maker Jason Russell. He went to Uganda ten years ago, was deeply affected by the stories of the young Ugandans he filmed, whose lives had been severely disrupted, and some of then deeply traumatised by the experience of civil war. In his own anger and sorrow he promised one young boy named Jacob, and recorded this on film, that he personally would stop Kony. Since then he appears to have devoted his life to helping children in Northern Uganda through a charity called Invisible Children, and campaigning for the US military to help find and arrest Kony.
The second story is the story of Jacob. Jason only gave Jacob a walk-on part. His role in the plot was to provide the emotional spur to motivate Jason’s own commitment to the cause; and also flying to America to motivate others (more of that later). It’s a pity he has such a small part, as he seems to have a powerful story to tell, and hopefully one of recovery after the terrible experience of seeing his brother murdered.
The third story is that of Jason’s young son, who is blonde like his father and must be about five or six years old. Jason uses him to tell the story of Jason – who as explained by his son spends a lot of time in Africa making things right. Like his Dad, he is young and naïve. Unlike his Dad, he’s of an age where one is supposed to be young and naïve.
The fourth story is that of the thousands of other young people, mostly Americans – disturbingly dressed at times in identical uniforms and chanting uniform slogans uniformly – who appear to have signed up to help Jason in his cause…
… which is the defeat and arrest of Joseph Kony, by American soldiers authorised by the US Congress. And Kony is of course the fifth story, and by far the simplest of all. Kony is at the top of the ICC’s most wanted list, and is quite simply a Bad Man who does Bad Things. As Jason’s innocent young son says: go get the bad guy, Dad.
And so to the sixth story: this is the story of the campaign of which the video is a part. For Jason and the Invisible Children organisation, 2012 is the year to bring Kony to justice, and this will happen because Jason and his thousands of activists, and the twelve celebrities and twelve politicians they are recruiting for their cause, simply want it to happen, and they insist that the US Congress commits the US army to help catch Kony this year. The film is slickly edited with nice graphics, and no less an authority than actor George Cloony declares his support. Angelina Jolie is somewhere in there too. We are exhorted to share the video with our friends and spread the word; and there is a kit full of Kony 2012 bracelets, stickers and posters you can send in for (or at least you could until the amazing success of this viral video meant they ran out of Kony 2012 kits).
Naive, neo-imperialist and offensive?
It is easy to sneer, and many have . One wants to be generous, as Jason’s heart is in the right place; and from its website, Invisible Children does appear to have made some sensible project choices (education, livelihoods, etc.) But there is plenty wrong with the film. First, it comes across across as very naïve indeed. Did Jason really think that Ugandans would welcome a film which implies they need help from a bunch of American idealists and can’t sort out their own problems? No wonder they’ve accused him of being offensive and neo-imperialist. In an ungenerous moment, I allowed myself to be reminded of Hollywood films about Africa which almost always seem to give the only real parts (roles with depth and agency) to the white guys from the USA or Europe – as with the Leonardo Di Caprio character in Blood Diamonds – while the African characters are often merely ciphers.
The film is also quite extraordinary in the absence of any contextual information – or even many facts, come to think of it. Apart from a map showing where Uganda is, the film is pretty much devoid of history or geography; or, indeed, biography since apart from Jason, no-one else’s story is really told, not even Kony’s! There is no attempt to explain the state of Uganda at the time the LRA emerged, its earlier history of civil war, or the ill-feeling between the north and other parts. Nothing is said of the resentment felt by many Nothern Ugandans against the government of President Museveni who some northeners saw as having ousted them from power.
The American military has been assisting the UPDF in its search for Kony for a decade without much success, but that was not said in the film. And the film’s throw-away mention that Kony is at the top of the ICC’s wanted list is correct – but only in the sense that he was the ICC’s first ever case, not because he is the “most wanted”.
And as for the Kony 2012 campaign itself: all it asks people to do is watch and share a video, and perhaps send off for a Kony 2012 kit. That reminds me of writing to the Chinese and Cuban London embassies for free Mao Tse-Tung Red Books and A Luta Continua revolutionary posters to decorate my bedroom as a teenager in the 1970s – I got the cool posters and the little red book, but it didn’t make me an activist. People have called this “slacktivism” – the sense that you’ve done something worthwhile just by watching and sharing a video on your laptop. It does seem to demean the suffering of people in Uganda, South Sudan, the DRC and CAR to reduce your activism on their behalf to something you can do in an armchair with no risk or sacrifice.
Ultimately, there is no doubt in my mind that the film is naïve, and it misrepresents the situation in a dangerously simplistic way as though there were a military-only solution, and as though only America can solve the problem. And it sends a strong subliminal message that for those of us sitting with our laptops far away, all we need to do is spend 30 minutes watching a video and then send the link to our friends (thus “taking part” in the campaign). We don’t need to think about politics, or about whether the way we live our laptop-enriched lives contributes in any way to the global injustice whereby boys like Jacob can have their lives potentially ruined because of poor governance and security where they happen to live.
And this is a pity, because the beauty of our inter-connected world is that we do have the technology and mechanisms to communicate a more complete and accurate picture. The beauty of our educated world is that more and more people have a level of education which allows them to understand a more sophisticated and nuanced analysis of poverty and political fragility, if we only chose to share it with them instead of feeding them simplistic versions which frankly insult their intelligence.
I have no qualms in recognising there is a military component to solving the Joseph Kony problem: it’s always been pretty obvious that he’s nothing much to gain by giving himself up. And that he continues to enjoy support and protection from others. If the Ugandan army wants US military assistance, that too makes sense to me. After all, they have the technology and know-how. The ICC like any justice system needs to be able to arraign those it indicts: it needs some teeth. (It is somewhat ironic that the US, which regards itself as above the jurisdiction of the ICC, is providing this service regarding Kony.)
But please, let’s not reduce it only to that. The problem is one of poor governance, insecurity and under-development, and it will take a concerted effort over many years to resolve. Even after Kony is arrested and taken off the scene, it will leave a gap exploitable by other Bad Guys. Proper governance and security won’t be achieved in 2012, and certainly not just by watching a half-hour video clip.
It’s something of a truism that the Reintegration component of Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes for ex-combatants is often the hardest part to get right. Provided the politics and security situation are conducive, it’s often not that much of a push to disband and retrieve at least some of the weapons from armed groups. But the tricky business of helping ex-soldiers and militia members back into civilian life has long bedevilled the international and national agencies responsible.
Some of them have committed acts of violence against their own communities, even their own families. Some were recruited – often press-ganged – as children and have been educated into violence and institutionalised into the command structure and brotherhood of their units. In many cases, the economy into which they are supposed to “return” and find a place is threadbare – sometimes that was one of the contributory factors to the very conflict in which they fought. Many – often most – have little in the way of practical skills to offer in the peacetime jobs market. Many are traumatised by what they have seen and done. Girls and women frequently face even more of a challenge than their male counterparts in returning to civilian life.
A lot of wars have ended over the last twenty years – it’s one of the dividends of the end of the Cold War. A large international industry has grown up around DDR. Unfortunately, the “R” component has often failed to work well. Reasons for this vary from context to context. But we can identify some of the more generic ones. Skills training is often provided, but is ill-matched to the actual jobs and self-employment opportunities which exist in the market. Being trained as a plumber in a place without running water, as a fish farmer in an area without a market infrastructure for selling fish, or as a hairdresser when the ratio of salons to customers is already high, is not much help for a young man or women trying to adjust to civilian life. Indeed, when participation in these training and rehabilitation programmes leads only to unemployment, it can be even more demoralising to ex-combatants than if they had received no training at all.
Often the programme planners fail to involve the soon-to-be ex-combatants in planning the programmes they are supposed to benefit from – where do they plan to go? what would they like to do? what networks do they have? – so the service providers fail to address their real interests and needs. Frequently they also fail to consult businesses to find out what kinds of skills they need, and what opportunities they might provide. Meanwhile, seldom are many ex-combatants provided with the one-on-one attention and advice many of them need, and for some, the psychological help they need to come to terms with what they have seen and done. Not only is such help too expensive to provide, but the number of clinical psychologists in many war-torn countries tends to be low.
The fact is, it is devilishly hard to help some ex-combatants back into civilian life, whether in the USA, Liberia or Sri Lanka. In the end, “reintegration” is something far too complex to reduce down to a simple “project”. And it is doubly hard for those working in the UN and other international institutions to do so, because their systems for project design, approval and implementation are so rigid, and so slow when they should be quick, and quick when they should be slow. And because it is hard for them to engage in the post war politics which also play such an important role in defining what is and isn’t possible.
The case of Nepal
So it is interesting to see what has been happening in Nepal. The Maoist rebellion ended with a peace agreement in 2006, which among other things called for around 23,000 People’s Liberation Army fighters to be housed in cantonments, pending the integration of a proportion of them into the Nepalese army. The rest were to be disarmed, demobilised and reintegrated. Politics has slowed this process down. One issue under discussion has been whether to provide the first 7,400 or so people opting for demobilisation, and who are now leaving cantonments under the DDR scheme, simply with a cash payment, or with a more internationally typical “package” of training and assistance, plus a smaller pay-out. Eventually, the total number demobilising will rise to about 13,000, once a second round of demobilisation happens.
The international agencies – such as donors and UN – involved in these discussions with the government and other Nepalese stakeholders, have been adamant that the ex-combatants should get the “package”. As far as I understand things, this is partly because they have a genuine fear that unleashing all these ex-combatants with money in their pockets and insufficient preparation will destabilise Nepalese communities and society; partly because they fear for the safety of those who fail to reintegrate successfully or are subject to revenge attacks – and especially of the more vulnerable among them.
One international representative explained in a meeting in Kathmandu last week that donors were concerned about the “fiduciary integrity” of the funds provided to ex-combatants – presumably code for a worry that some of the recipients might be “taxed” by the Maoist party to which they presumably still owe loyalty, or by other factions or gangs. As it turns out, the cash payments (around 500,000 – 800,000 Nepalese Rupees or $6,000 – $10,000 each, five to eight times Nepal’s per capita GDP at purchasing power parity) are being funded by the Nepalese government, not external donors. But since money is by definition fungible, and donors are paying for other elements of the peace deal, it is easy to see why donors and the UN feel they have an interest in this issue.
The libertarian in me says why not just give them the cash? They are adults, they have borne arms, many among them have lived and fought in difficult conditions over a number of years – why should they not be able to fend for themselves in civilian life now? With half a million rupees each at their disposal, most of them should be able to buy some land, build a small house or a business, or fund their entry into the large pool of Nepalese migrant labour in the Gulf and South East Asia and make a living. If nothing else, the combined total payout will mean a boost of almost $100m to GDP.
Far from being bereft of social support, a lot of the ex-PLA are married with children; many will presumably go home, and where necessary will ask and obtain forgiveness. They have been in cantonments since 2006, but not cut off from communication with friends and family. Indeed, they have been out on leave, and many will have visited home or elsewhere, prospecting for where to start their new lives. No doubt the party itself will remain an important network, even an institution, for many.
There will, no doubt, be problems. Some will spend their money too fast and then be left on their uppers. Perhaps others will spend their money on drugs, drink and prostitution; or buy into or start new criminal gangs; or join hardline Maoist or ethnic factions to wage further armed struggle. There will also, no doubt, be instances of revenge attacks on life, limb and property. There’ll be problems here and there when young men flush with cash return home to communities where husbands of young wives are away working in the Gulf. But Nepal is a big place, with plenty of existing social and economic problems; it can withstand a few more. Can 12,000 ex-combatants really destabilise a large and diverse country of 30 million people? Yes, probably. Are they likely too? Maybe, but I don’t think the question of “cash or a UN package” is what will tip the balance.
In any case, the politics of the situation – which the international agencies as so often are ill-equipped to engage with – seem to say quite clearly that cash pay-outs are the answer. I was in Nepal for a few days recently but can’t claim to understand the politics well. One issue seems to be speed: politicians have dragged their feet on this issue for so long, and time is officially running out for the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Emptying the cantonments – into either civilian life or the Nepalese army – is a critical milestone in that process, and it needs to be completed soon. Giving people a wad of cash has the merit of being quick.
Another apparent issue is murkier: the ex-combatants still owe some kind of allegiance to the Maoist cause, and may be asked to contribute some of their payment to the party. Indeed, many may be keen to do so, having been indoctrinated into the cause during their time in the field and while in cantonments. It is a lot easier to tax a $6000 cash payment, compared to someone’s UN package, consisting of a smaller pay-out and the receipt of training and advice.
Some in the international community in Kathmandu remain vexed about this outcome, finding it hard to accept that their advice, based on international best practice, is being ignored. They are looking for other ways to help the ex-combatants. Fair enough, provided they get their targeting right, and make sure they help reintegrate the ex-PLA into a decent and functioning local economy, wherever they settle. That means above all two things: targeting development assistance at the wider communities into which ex-combatants will be absorbed; and knowing enough about the individual ex-combatants to target the assistance appropriately.
The 60:25:15% rule?
In some ways this issue of targeting is the nub of how to “do reintegration”. An ex-colleague of mine Tony Klouda once demonstrated convincingly to me that for most social improvement programmes, one can divide the “target group” into three segments of unequal proportions. At one end of the spectrum, you have the people who are easiest to help, but who least need help. For teachers, these are the easiest pupils to teach, as well the ones who would most easily learn with minimal help. For reproductive health projects, these are the better-off men and women in the most stable family environments, who will readily agree with and respond to suggestions about safe sex and family planning, and might well have had fairly safe sex lives and spaced their births anyway. For micro-finance projects, these are the trustworthy people with collateral who can most easily access loans. Let’s call this the 60% group.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the hardest to reach, and the ones least likely to change. In class, these are the pupils who really don’t want to learn; would rather be elsewhere, and disrupt the learning of others. In the field of reproductive health, these are the risk-taking young men and women who practise unsafe sex with multiple partners, and whose circumstances and attitudes make it very hard indeed to reach them or change their practices. In the field of mico-finance, no-one would willingly lend these people money. Let’s call this the 15% group.
In between, we are left with the remaining 25%. These are the pupils who could learn, given a decent opportunity to do so; and the individuals and couples who could and would adopt safer reproductive health practices if only you and they both had the time and resources needed. They are the people who take loans at extortionate rates, and who can thus never get their heads above water, but who could change their lives if only they could access cheaper capital.
Tony Klouda’s thesis as I remember it, was that projects and programmes tend to focus too much on the 60% and 15% groups, ignoring the 25%. In doing so they not only squander scarce resources, but also fail in their objectives. Very few of the 15% actually change their attitudes and bevahiour; and while projects will be reporting great success from providing services to the 60%, this is largely a false claim because many of the 60% would have passed their exams, practised healthy good reproductive lives or accessed loans anyway. Of course we should not be ignoring the 60%, nor consigning the 15% to oblivion. Nevertheless the rational application of scarce funds must surely be to the 25%.
Applying this knowledge to the world of DDR, it seems to me that the task is to identify who is in each of the 60:25:15% groups, and target the DDR programme accordingly. In public policy and programming terms, this might look as follows.
|
|
15% |
25% |
60% |
|
Who? |
Those unable to cope outside institutional life; sociopaths; unlikely to fit in, and likely to cause trouble wherever they go | Those with the potential to succeed, but who are somewhat traumatised, ill-educated, lacking in confidence…. Women especially | Relatively stable & intelligent well-adjusted individuals, with family or other networks; perhaps better educated (either formally or informally); they have a plan for what they’ll do in civilian life |
|
Policy/ approach |
Keep them in uniform if possible, or otherwise under surveillance. Take steps to protect the most vulnerable, especially children, girls and women, from abuse. Eventually, if resources permit, extended psychosocial counselling | Intensive training and follow-up and monitoring; proactive follow-up by case workers; advice with live skills; smaller cash pay-out, perhaps in small tranches and conditional on certain milestones or personal achievements. | Cash, a bit of advice; remote monitoring –perhaps some kind of helpline in case they have questions they need help with |
This is a generic approach, not in any way designed specifically for Nepalese ex-PLA. But the advantage of this kind of public policy approach is that it channels the resources to those who can use them. Those who will benefit from it most, get the most attention; while those who least need it don’t get encumbered by having to deal with too much attention. It seems like a win-win.
The Better Angels of Our Nature: what implications for peacebuilding?
Has the incidence of violence declined over history, and if so, why? These are the two questions Stephen Pinker sets out to answer in his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The decline of violence in history and its causes.
As with other long multi-disciplinary books of scholarly secondary research, one sometimes wonders whether it wouldn’t have been easier just to read the much shorter essay which the author must surely have published too – at 700 pages it just takes so long to read! But, as with other such books – Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, War in Human Civilisation by Azar Gat, and The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David S. Landes come to mind – reading the longer version is worth the time spent. In The Better Angels of Our Nature (the phrase was used by President Lincoln in his 1861 Inaugural Address), Pinker takes a scientific approach, being careful to explore his hypotheses and assumptions through the analysis of a great deal of data. The book is replete with graphs and tables, and for a non-academic reader, provides an opportunity to acquaint or re-acquaint oneself with data and ideas drawn from a variety of disciplines including history, philosophy, the social sciences, game theory, and the arts.
Pinker repeatedly refers to Hobbes’s analysis of the incentives to violence in terms of Gain, Fear and Deterrence (or as Hobbes called them, Competition, Diffidence and Glory). He reminds us of or introduces us to Kant’s framework of Perpetual Peace, underpinned by democracy, commerce, universal citizenship and international law. He takes us on a long and winding ride through modern studies of behaviour and incentives, such as those of Zambardo and Milgram, which illustrated how easily people could be persuaded to use or connive in the use of violence if they felt it was “useful” or “called for”, or simply if others appeared to be doing so without being sanctioned.
He recognises the need to look beneath the surface. For example he cites experimental data which show that people find it far easier to hurt (or fail to protect) those who are “other”, or “not like me”. This is fairly predictable stuff. But then he goes deeper, demonstrating that “people like me” is a far more complex lens than often thought: in fact it is based on people’s need to be in coalitions of mutual support, which quite easily transcend notions of race and shared identity, once mutual trust and confidence is built.
Pinker takes us on a historical excursion to the Thirty Years War, one of the bloodiest periods in European history; and to the 8th Century An Lushan Revolt and Civil War in China which I had not heard of, and which he claims killed 36 million people, two-thirds of China’s and one-sixth of the world’s population at the time. He describes mediaeval torture and punishment regimes, the practices of Atlantic slavery, the prevalence of rape and other once-widely condoned acts of violence in excruciating detail. He explores the role of the arts in society, identifying trends and tropes.
And of course he makes repeated use of and reference to the famous Prisoner’s Dilemma, which neatly explains why people so often opt for violence against one another, when their mutual interest is genuinely better served by cooperation, if only they trusted and had more information about what the another might do.
In the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma, two prisoners are arrested for a crime for which the police have insufficient evidence to convict them. Interrogated separately, each is offered the same deal. If he testifies against his confederate, while the latter refuses to do the same to him, he goes free and his confederate gets ten year in jail. If both prisoners betray each other, they both receive a two-year sentence. If both refuse to cooperate with the authorities – i.e. they effectively cooperate with one another – they both get a three month sentence. The scenario is one in which mutual cooperation between the two prisoners is the optimal strategy when seen by an objective observer with both thier interests in mind, and yet the rational decision for each, absent any knowledge about how the other will respond to the police’s offer, is to betray his confederate. The basic game is shown below.
| Prisoner B stays silent (cooperates) | Prisoner B betrays A (defects) | |
| Prisoner A stays silent (cooperates) | Each serves 3 months | Prisoner A: 10 years Prisoner B: goes free |
| Prisoner A betrays B (defects) | Prisoner A: goes free Prisoner B: 10 years | Each serves 2 years |
Pinker is well-read across a very broad spectrum of disciplines, and the book presents a great opportunity for the non-academic reader like myself to catch a glimpse of some of the fascinating data and reasoning which is available to those with more time, knowledge and intelligence at their disposal.
Pinker’s approach does have some important limitations. It covers a huge amount of ground, and thus risks skating too thinly over it. Also, however hard he tries to be scientific and empirical, one can’t help feeling that there is a liberal bias to the book. In one section he asks whether the reduction in violence could be explained by rapid genetic evolution over the past few millennia. Hovering behind this enquiry is the tantalising concern that if so, the evolution may have been focused on only some human populations, and not others. Thus it might have happened differentially in difference races, which is a conclusion no liberal would be eager to arrive at. When he gets to the point where he can demonstrate both theoretically and empirically that this is not so, one senses a genuine feeling of relief on Pinker’s part: phew, the data are aligned with a liberal view!
Another limitation is that so many of the data he uses are from the West: Europe and the New World, especially the USA. This is understandable, given his milieu – he is a professor at Harvard – and the relative lack of historical series and experimental data from elsewhere. But it does leave a gap in his narrative and therefore in the robustness and generalizability of his conclusions.
Finally, his determination to rely on empirical data at all costs is exasperating at times. Among the most commonly repeated phrases in the book must be “holding other factors constant”, and “other things being equal”. For every hypothesis explored, he seeks to explain the phenomena in terms of the influence of exogenous factors, and of course this is right if one wishes to draw robust conclusions. And yet at times as a reader I just wanted to scream, for example “but it’s common sense that people who trade with each other are less likely to fight each other, you don’t need three more graphs to persuade me of that!”
But these are relatively trivial limitations, alongside the grand task he set himself. So what did he find?
The decline in violence
Examining the data, Pinker finds that over history, humans have on average committed less and less violence against each other. We are more peaceful in family relationships than we used to be. We use torture and other “unusual punishments” far less than we used to, indeed they are outlawed in a growing number of countries. We are more civil in our relationships with neighbours and others we encounter on a regular basis, and more tolerant of those who are different from us. We rape less, we stab less, we mug less, we murder less, we enslave less and we execute less. We go to civil and inter-state war less often, and when we do, the casualty rates are far lower than they used to be.
Pinker seems to expect his readers to be surprised by this, though I wasn’t. Nevertheless it is very useful to see the trends summarised and explained using data. What was particularly interesting to me was the rapidity of the change, and the steepness of some of the declining curves. Many are so steep that he has to use a logarithmic scale to compare the modern day incidence of violence with that of the past.
Pinker is at pains to note that plenty of people still live in consistently violent circumstances: his data on violence within societies are primarily taken from stable Western democracies. He also makes it clear that he has no evidence to support the idea that reduced levels of violence will be sustained in the future. Indeed, while societal violence and warfare trends point consistently downward, they can and have been reversed at times, and we only have to look around us to see there is no room for complacency. In fact, while the overall shape of the curves for the incidence and magnitude of warfare slopes distinctly downward, it is also saw-toothed, with sudden and jagged increases often lasting many years, before the curve resumes is downward trajectory. The up-tick in war and atrocities during the first two thirds of the Twentieth Century is an example.
This is quite difficult. To see 70 million people killed in two World Wars, and a further 60 million at the hands of Mao and Stalin, to say nothing of Cambodia, Rwanda, the Iran-Iraq war and other major conflicts and atrocities as an up-tick in data trends is hard to swallow. But on closer examination, it is not obvious that the twentieth century was the worst. Pinker identifies five wars and four atrocities in prior ages each of which killed more people than the 15 million of the First World War. And in a ranking of major wars and atrocities in which the number of deaths is taken as a proportion of the world’s population at the time, Stalin’s 20 million ranks only fifteenth, Mao’s 40 million deaths ranks eleventh, and the Second World War with 55 million is “only” number nine. First, second and third places in the list go to the Al Lushan Revolt, the Mongol conquests, and the Middle Eastern Slave Trade.
Pinker calls the sustained spike of 20th Century violence a “hemoclysm”, but does not accept that it should legitimately be seen as a single phenomenon, and does not allow it to derail his main thesis that overall, levels of violence have declined. Instead he suggests that the horrors of the Twentieth Century can largely be explained by random factors and by the presence of sociopaths like Stalin, Mao and Hitler in positions of power, and by accidents of history such as the shot fired in Sarajevo which was famously “heard around the world”. Hmm.
The explanation
What I find particularly interesting about Better Angels is Pinker’s attempt to explain the sustained reduction in violence. While he does examine neurological and physiological aspects of this, his thesis is that humans have become less violent essentially due to five mutually interacting factors which are psychological, social, economic, cultural and political, rather than neuro-physiological. Like most of the best findings, they mostly seem like common sense, though some are perhaps more obvious and familiar than others. In the end, it’s the way we live together and how we organise ourselves to do so, which best explains the level of violence within and between human societies.
- Governance: locally, nationally, regionally and globally, people have found ways to organise themselves so they can increasingly manage and resolve conflicts and differences without recourse to violence. The apparatus of the state is essentially a set of systems, underpinned by values and a social contract, which serve this purpose. These are reflected at the sub-state level too, as well as in the intergovernmental organisations to which states belong. Pinker demonstrates a strong correlation between the evolution of the state and the reduction in violence; and especially between the evolution of democratic governance and the reduction in violence. Effective governance increases the chance that people or states will opt to collaborate with other people or states rather than commit violence against them – i.e. they will not “defect”, in terms of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The rule of law means that either party will be sanctioned for committing violence, thus the incentive to collaborate becomes higher; each “prisoner” can have more confidence that the other will not defect, and it thus becomes more rational in some circumstances to assume he won’t. Meanwhile, the evolution of states has engendered an increasing respect for human rights.
- Commerce: when people trade and do business together, they get to know each other, develop trust and confidence in each other, share an interest in stability and – all else being equal – are incentivised to cooperate rather than fight.
- Feminization: societies which have become more peaceful have come to organise themselves less around the need to be able to fight. The typically masculine, martial culture has become less important. Women play an increasingly important role as leaders and in other walks of life, and society has – in Pinker’s words – become feminized. This is particularly true, so far, of Western society. This has also allowed men’s more feminine side to come to the fore. Experiments find that women more often opt for a positive-sum approach, while men opt for zero-sum. Feminized societies are more likely to seek and achieve positive-sum solutions to problems and issues, and thus to find ways to resolve them without violence.
- Empathy: one of Pinker’s most interesting findings is that the more we come to know about others, the less incentive we seem to have, to do them harm. Knowing other people or “peoples” helps us see how alike us they are, and thus reduces their “otherness”. Studies have shown that we are more likely to take care of, and less likely to be willing to harm people, if we know them or know enough about them to perceive them as like us. Pinker talks about an Expanding Circle, in which increasing numbers of people are part of the same meta-coalition or set of coalitions, and therefore the smaller identity-based coalitions (based on location, nation, race, ethnicity, etc.) become less important. The growth of this circle, and the depth of the connections within it, can partly be traced to culture: the advent of reading and writing made it possible to share information from elsewhere. The development of plays and the novel made it possible to consider what others are going through or thinking – to put oneself into others’ shoes; to develop a capacity for empathy. Pinker identifies the evolution of humanitarianism as a historical trend linked to the increasing prevalence of empathy.
- Reason: finally, enlightenment has played a critical role. The ability to reason, to calculate our best option when faced with a problem for which one of the options involves violence, allows us to weigh up costs and benefits rationally. Reason has edged (or is edging) out superstition in communities around the world, arming people with the ability to develop less violent solutions. Pinker quotes enlightenment thinkers from Renaissance Europe who started to realise and argue – and then demonstrate – that torture is an irrational way to find out the truth, as people will say anything, true or false, under torture. (In one horrifying story he quotes a renaissance nobleman who tortured his own manservant horribly, to see if he would confess to an imaginary crime: he did, thus proving the hypothesis, but also surely demonstrating to the modern reader that humanitarianism was still nascent.) This was then followed by the progressive elimination of torture as a routine practice in country after country. For Pinker, the ability to reason and argue, to test and prove or disprove hypotheses, enabled this change.
The implications
I work for the peacebuilding organisation International Alert , so I read The Better Angels partly to see what lessons there might be for us and other peacebuilders. The first, I’m happy to say, is that Pinker’s relentless search for empirical evidence has done us a big favour, as his thesis is very much in line with our own, as expressed in our programming framework . Like Pinker, we see peace largely as a result of good governance, systems and culture which allow people to manage their conflicts without recourse to violence, while making equitable progress. What Pinker shows is that the progress itself reinforces the tendency towards peace. But like Pinker we would reject the whiggish notion of an inexorable reduction in violence that happens as an inevitable outcome of history. Peace is something to be built and constantly strengthened, rather than something which comes about of its own accord. And one has to avoid prescribing how peace will evolve in one set of circumstances, simply because it has happened like that elsewhere. One has to be particularly careful in taking lessons from the way the mature western democracies have evolved, and trying to apply them elsewhere.
Nevertheless, thinking generically about how peace can be enabled or built does make sense, provided strategies for specific circumstances are devised based on good context analysis. Pinker’s book seems to support, among others:
- The idea, very popular just now in the international development and peacebuilding communities, of working to establish and strengthen the social contract between responsible citizens and a responsive and accountable state. For example by improving the services provided by the state, and giving citizens a greater voice in how they are delivered and monitored; and by bringing more people into the tax system, so they have quite literally a greater stake.
- The integration within peacebuilding, of programmes designed to widen the Expanding Circle of empathy. For example using cultural events and artefacts – plays, music, films, novels – to increase the likelihood that people will habitually imagine and envisage the lives of others, including others outside their immediate ken. Another approach to this might involve bringing people from different ethnic and national groups together in the education system, thus getting to know people who might normally be seen as “other”.
- The promotion of non-identity-based civil society groupings, as coalitions of mutual support which rely on a non-communal concept of community and thus reduce the opportunity for inter-communal violence. These groups could be formed to provide services, to argue and advocate for common interests shared across traditional divides, or to manage commonly used natural resources such as water, farming and pasture land, and municipal resources in the cities. They could also be political parties – or embryonic political parties.
- The promotion of commercial links and joint enterprises across formal and virtual borders. For example Alert does this across formal borders (DRC: Rwanda); unrecognised de facto borders in the Caucasus; and across the virtual, psychosocial borders which separate people locally in Rwandese communities. In some ways this was one of the founding ideas of the European Economic Communities back in the 1950s.
- Supporting the virtuous circle in which incremental peace empowers men to become less martial, and women to play a greater and more explicit role in governance and business; and thus engender further incremental progress towards peace; and so on…. There may be some surprising elements to this. For example, polygamy frequently excludes young men from taking their full adult role in society, as it often excludes them from marriage until later in life (while older, wealthier men monopolise the marriage market). The evidence is clear that married young men are far less likely than bachelors to commit violent crimes or to join militias. Thus peacebuilders from polygamous societies might wish to consider trying to change this practice, as a step towards feminization and peace.
The good thing is, many of these kinds of ideas are already being practised, along with countless others that fit with Pinker’s thesis. But we can do more. Reading his book, I see arguments for peacebuilding strategies – such as the one just mentioned – which don’t often get aired. I therefore recommend those who think they have time for Pinker’s 700 pages to give it a go.
Defining the pathways between the different buildings of the EU: the EEAS one year on
At the end of last year the European External Action Service celebrated its first full year in operation. During that time it has established and largely staffed its organogram, absorbed 140 EC delegations as EU embassies, integrated a large number of staff and units from existing EC departments, and of course engaged in a fair number of external initiatives on behalf of the EU institutions and member states. Sometime in 2012 it should move into its own building, rather than lodging in the spare rooms of eight different premises in Brussels. The service has around 1550 staff in Brussels, with a further 2050 or so in embassies abroad.
It would be no exaggeration to say the leadership and staff of the service were dealt a difficult hand. Pre-existing EU institutions and of course some of the member states have conspired to limit the room for manoeuvre and the mandate of the High Representative and her staff – and have then added insult to injury by slamming the European External Action Service for its inability to live up to its name. A simple way to caricature the problem is to say that the Council has the political clout, the Commission has the money, and the EEAS gets the problems others don’t want, but without the tools and resources to solve them; has humbly to request resources from the others when they ask it to act; and then gets kicked in the teeth for not doing enough, quickly enough. To quote one recent source: “Throughout [2011], the UK led a diplomatic guerrilla campaign to block the EEAS… from speaking on behalf of the EU at the UN or the OSCE, even where precedents existed”.
As far as I can tell, the EEAS gets to run the embassies abroad, which are then staffed by Commission personnel who have control of the development funding through which the EU makes friends. Meanwhile the French and UK embassies just down the road in the various foreign capitals not surprisingly run their own foreign policy including aid programmes, under no apparent obligation to collaborate with their EU colleagues. It’s tempting to suggest that the creators of the EEAS set out to establish a service which would only ever partially succeed, would seldom have the space or resources to fail, but might just muddle through to add value from time to time, under good leadership and with good staff.
The High Representative herself has come in for a great deal of personal criticism, for neglecting this or that key project or issue, and other assorted errors of omission and commission. Her neglect of security issues appears to be the number one criticism from member states, but they have also attacked her leadership on both style and substance. In December she published a long, rather defensive report of what the service has so far done, and a reminder of how constrained it has been by its own circumstances, especially when faced with the foreign and internal challenges that 2011 threw up. Her report could hardly be accused of being inspirational – but then again, no-one with power actually wants her to be inspirational… She seems rather stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.
From a peacebuilder’s perspective, the EEAS probably should have been set up with a more evident capacity for peacebuilding than it has. Many argued for the establishment of a head of peacebuilding at a very senior level. Instead, it was decided to integrate peacebuilding into the service’s other departments: to mainstream it, if you will. Fine with me: I’m no expert in how to set up a multilateral foreign affairs department, and happy to judge the EEAS on its results and outcomes, rather than on the shape of its organogram.
One year on
One year is far too early to measure success or failure definitively. Nevertheless, at the end of 2011 a number of reviews were published, looking back at and assessing the EEAS’s first year. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Chatham House, The Quaker Council for European Affairs, Concord, and the European Council on Foreign Relations were just a few of the organisations which published views. What these have in common is a sense that although the EEAS has got a few things right, for example its coordination role vis-à-vis the Arab Spring, and briefings on some other specific crises, it could and should have done better. Putting aside narrow special interest issues, the essence of their criticism seems to be as follows.
First, it’s widely recognised the service was constrained from the start – with what the Carnegie Endowment politely calls “a number of design flaws” – and that member states and other EU institutions have continued to squeeze its room for manoeuvre. But conspiracy is not the answer to everything; there’s also plain old disorganisation, with for example no proper secure communications system yet in place. Martina Weitsch on her blog describes some of the bureaucratic nonsense in detail and if she is (as she usually is) right in her facts, then she is also right to see it as “scandalous” and “beyond belief”.
Second, there is insufficient leadership, nor any clear strategy, with the service at times just picking up titbits others don’t want, or issues others fear they’ll fail at. Yes, the EU now has a recognised place in the UN, which is all very well. But did it really make sense for the EEAS to take responsibility for finding a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue on behalf of the UNSC? Surely that is a task best achieved – if by anyone – by a more experienced outfit than a new, highly constrained service in its infancy.
Third, the embassies are understaffed (it is claimed that some have only the Ambassador and no other substantive EEAS staff at all – just staff from other EU departments often working in an uncoordinated and incoherent way); and are wrongly distributed, for example far too thin on the ground in the BRICS countries and the Arab Gulf states.
Fourth, the service has been underwhelming in its delivery. Even though all the commentators modify their criticism by saying “it’s only one year old”, they still claim it should have done better and more in response to the economic crisis and the Arab Spring, for example; and they seem unanimous that it should have done more on security.
Fifth, the service has failed to create functional links with the Member States – as evidenced by 12 member state foreign ministers writing a “non-paper” of complaint. A very basic criticism is that the monthly meetings of EU foreign ministers are poorly prepared and chaired; and that the EU’s “demarches” (positions) are being elaborated and presented by its embassies without prior coordination with member states.
What are their proposals?
For someone like me who has followed the establishment of the EEAS with no more than half an eye, all these criticisms ring truly enough, though it’s hard to know which is caused by which, and who is at fault. It all seems like a fairly well-woven web of mutually reinforcing constraints. I am, however struck that very few of the commentators seem to draw much attention to the EEAS’ role in building peace; nor are they suggesting the EEAS should be closed down. Of course, they provide a set of recommendations for improvements, of which the main threads emerge fairly naturally from their criticisms.
They say there’s a need to enhance the buy-in and coherence of EEAS-implemented actions by and with the member states and other EU institutions. Practically, this might mean increased involvement of member state foreign ministers in EEAS interventions, and filling more EEAS positions with officials on secondment from member states’ civil servants. It also means taking steps to improve the coherence between diplomacy and the other external instruments (trade, energy, development aid, environment), both conceptually, at policy level, and in practice in Brussels and on the ground.
They go on to add the need to provide leadership and set clear priorities. Some – notably Chatham House – call for the elaboration of an EU “Grand Strategy” – and this might be focused on security. Others of course think the focus should not ignore their own issue, so Concord for example wants the High Representative to take more of a lead on poverty reduction.
Next, the EEAS is urged to “get the basics right”, e.g. by streamlining decision-making for rapid response, sorting out bureaucracy and lines of command, getting the computers working, improving staffing procedures, and so on.
Conclusions
At the risk of repeating and/or mangling what others have written and said, three main conclusions come to mind.
1. Those with the power and control to shape the EEAS really ought to get real. In a national context, what would be the point of setting up a foreign office, only to narrow the space available for its ministers and its staff to act to a mere sliver? Similarly – perhaps even more so – in a multilateral context. Not that the EEAS can expect to play the same role as a national ministry of foreign affairs: that’s out of the question, as the member states’ own foreign ministries still exist and will continue to do so. But the member states need to clarify, as far as they can, the role available to the High Representative and the EEAS, make it a useful one they can be proud of abroad and at home, provide the financial and human resources needed, and then support and hold them accountable.
2. Develop a “grand strategy”, and make sure it fits with the mandate given and space available. For my money – because yes, my taxes do contribute in small way – this should be about how the EU as an institution born out of war, designed with only one object – peace – in mind and thus in its genes, can contribute to building peace elsewhere in the world through its diplomacy, the careful investment of its overseas development funds, and the shaping of its trade and other policies so they contribute to peace in fragile and conflict-affected countries…
3. … But despite the need for a “grand strategy”, it will take time to develop one, and some of the constraints referred to earlier in this blog may be too firmly cemented in place for the time being. So for now, what matters is pragmatism on the part of the leadership and staff of the EEAS, and a willingness just to get on with it. Syria is falling apart. The revolution in Egypt risks fading away. The people of Congo, Guinea and Burma and elsewhere need careful and conflict-sensitive support, based on careful context analysis and implementation expertise which the EU should be able to supply and/or support. The EEAS, armed with some clever staff, their expert external networks, flexible finance mechanisms like the Instrument for Stability, and the potential for operational partnerships with member state foreign and prime ministers with a capacity for international leadership and mediation, can do a great deal to help and support them, even while waiting for new mandates or grand strategies to be elaborated and agreed.
There’s a famous story (perhaps true, perhaps not) beloved of MBA professors about a new university campus that was built in the USA. After the construction was more or less complete, the Board of Regents was shown round the campus by the chief architect. At the end of tour, one of the regents congratulated the architects on a job well done.
“I’m impressed” she said, “but I just have one question”.
“Go ahead”, replied the architect.
“Well, I love the buildings, and you’ve designed a beautiful campus worthy of the university’s reputation and an environment conducive to study. But one thing I’ve noticed is that there are no paths connecting the different buildings. Have you forgotten them?”
“Aha!” replied the architect, “I’m glad you brought that up. Our policy is to construct the buildings, and then wait and see which directions the students take as they walk between them. Once they’ve done so, we’ll see where the paths and pavements should be, and we’ll pave them accordingly.”
It’s just so with the EU. Its founders may have designed an imperfect campus, and have perhaps even built the EEAS in the wrong place. But now it’s up to the students and faculty – staff, commissioners, MEPs, member state governments, civil society, business-people and others – to figure out how to join up the various parts to make the externally-facing institutions of the EU work as a whole, to contribute not only to peace within the EU – fulfilling the founders’ intentions – but also elsewhere in the world – fulfilling the spirit of the founders’ dreams.
More than thirty governments and a bunch of multilateral organisations endorsed the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, while attending the 4th High Level Forum for Aid Effectiveness at Busan in South Korea last year. The New Deal emerged from two years of discussions in the International Dialogue for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (IDPS). This dialogue involves representatives of conflict-affected or fragile countries and a number of donor and multilateral agencies. It has been supported by the International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF).
“Fragile States” is of course one of those useful-but-lazy classifications beloved of international relations and aid professionals. At its core it refers to countries whose institutions are inadequate to manage the differences within society, and are thus at risk of violent conflict. I prefer think not of fragile states, but of fragile countries or fragile societies. This reinforces the inclusion of non-state institutions in analysis. It recognises that states emerge from and within societies, rather than the other way around, and emphasises the importance of citizenship.
The seven fragile countries initially represented in the IDPS were Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Southern Sudan and Timor Leste. They have been joined by others, making up a group of around sixteen known as the g7+. According to their website, the g7+ aims to “provide a fragile state perspective on fragility in order to work with donors to improve the effectiveness of their assistance and help the membership to transition out of fragility – to say ‘goodbye to conflict and hello to development’.”
The IDPS produced the New Deal document for the Busan forum. They based it on two earlier IDPS documents: the Dili Declaration and the Monrovia Roadmap. (There is clearly some good attention being paid to branding here!) Interpeace’s IDPS Policy Brief #6 summarises all three documents nicely, emphasising that they should be taken as a whole, not read in isolation.
They provide a general discourse on and a framework for reducing fragility and strengthening the resilience of fragile countries. This is organised around five Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals, PSGs, within which changes are needed in countries wishing to reduce their fragility and risk of conflict:
- Legitimate politics – fostering inclusive political settlements and conflict resolution
- Security – establishing and strengthening people’s security
- Justice – addressing injustices and increasing people’s access to justice
- Economic foundations – generating employment and improving livelihoods
- Revenues and services – managing revenue and building capacity for accountable and fair service delivery.
This is very encouraging language. Meanwhile the New Deal itself lays out a set of principles for collaboration between fragile countries and international aid providers. In the original, these are grouped in a long list under the acronyms FOCUS and TRUST (more branding!), but to save space I’ll summarise them in a shorter list as:
- Country-led processes for change, based on a frequently updated context analysis of fragility, using and strengthening a country’s own systems, and emphasising inclusive political dialogue and leadership
- A single vision and plan shared by the country, donors and multi-lateral agencies, adopted as part of a “compact” to improve harmonisation and donor coordination, and used for multi-stakeholder monitoring
- Transparent aid and fiscal systems, mutually informing and involving governments, donors, parliaments and civil society
- Aid flows which are timely and predictable, more accepting of risk, and which strengthen and are increasingly channelled through a recipient country’s own systems.
The IDPS process continues, post-Busan. Participants met in Paris at the end of January to chart next steps. Among others, they emphasised the importance of keeping their process going in fragile countries, and in this respect discussed a generic operational framework for “exiting from fragility”. They also agreed to push for wider involvement and recognition of their work, e.g. by having the PSGs recognised at the UN.
So, what does the New Deal represent?
Like many others, I have been critical in the past of some aspects of the aid and development sector. In particular, of our seeming inability in practical terms to understand “development” in the round as an organic and political process of evolution, in which societies become more peaceful, fairer, better governed, freer, more open and more prosperous – rather than reducing it to “poverty reduction” and a set of mainly technical goals as summarised in the MDGs. With this in mind, what opportunity does the New Deal represent?
There is plenty to celebrate in the process and outcomes of the IDPS so far – and for more details see the well-informed recent analysis by Interpeace in their new IDPS Policy Brief #7. The IDPS has successfully brought together a growing number of individuals, agencies, countries and governments, to discuss development in its broader and historically accurate sense, as progress towards peaceful and resilient societies served by responsible states. The IDPS, by starting small and gradually attracting interest from others, has used this discussion to create an incipient international movement with some influence over national and international policies.
Some of those associated with the IDPS have become comfortable using this broader narrative of development as progress from fragility to resilience, even though it goes largely against the grain of their previous approaches, and arguably against their short-term interests. The process has helped remove some of the unhelpful stigma attached to the (otherwise helpful) concept of fragility, by engaging representatives of fragile countries in the discussion. It has become less of a subject-object or us-and-them debate, in which those in fragile contexts previously felt they were being unfairly criticised. This change has allowed participants from all sides to consider how to operationalise this narrative, e.g. by identifying new generic goals, “pathways out of fragility”, and the need for new partnerships between donors and fragile countries.
So the critical thing now is presumably to support and reinforce this momentum. But first, let’s be aware of some of the challenges, lest our wilful or witless ignorance of them becomes an obstacle to success. The first thing to note is that the IDPS focuses more on the question of effective aid, than on the question of effective development. E.g. it is telling that the New Deal is framed mainly in terms of what donors must do differently, seemingly negating its own language of local leadership, dialogue and inclusion.
Another challenge is that the process has so far engaged specific individuals, ministries, departments and agencies, rather than governments, and much less “countries” – i.e. the people and institutions of the countries involved. And the involvement of civil society has been patchy. It is therefore less representative than the list of its members and endorsers might imply. This means it risks marginalising itself, like so many of the more difficult aspects of public policy, through lack of genuinely broad ownership.
Finally, the IDPS uses a very generic language of fragility. So far, the IDPS has failed to explain the general concepts either in detail or in terms of the specific realities of the actual fragile countries which are members of the IDPS. It has skated over the political realities and dilemmas inherent in its own narrative. For example, how does one develop an inclusive “compact” between a country (rather than a government) and aid providers, in places where politics are based on patronage and winner-takes-all, rather than inclusion, representativity and dialogue. Above all there is no narrative of how actually to move from fragility to resilience, when the vested interests of those in power tend to coincide with the circumstances of the (fragile) status quo, whatever their good intentions.
Ultimately, most of the institutions engaged in the IDPS process have a vested interest in things staying much as they are, at least in the short-term. And they are largely driven by short-term incentives. So whatever their rhetoric and however well-meant, the New Deal represents a big opportunity for change, but not yet a change that’s ratcheted in place.
There is plenty that can be done to support and continue to promote the kind of progressive thinking represented in the Dialogue so far, and in particular to help answer the question: we know roughly where we want to go, but how do we get there from here? It seems to me there are main two tracks to this. I call them the International Discourse and In-Country Momentum.
International Discourse
The language of the IDPS is good, in so far as it goes. But history shows that the combination of fragile state governments, international aid agencies and geo-political realities is a powerful force in favour of the status quo. There are good reasons why the rhetoric of fragility as used in the IDPS so far has skated over the surface: it is genuinely difficult for all these vested interests to change their behaviour, in order to achieve the kinds of changes envisaged by the PSGs. Patronage-based governments need to stay in power, and to do so they need to feed the patronage system – a system which the PSGs say must change. Most bilateral donor agencies are accountable to parliaments and will have trouble making the case for operating with a greater degree of risk, especially as they have for decades under-reported the risks and losses actually occurring. To make things worse, they have also over-simplified the development narrative in their communications to taxpayers and MPs, making it that much harder now to introduce the more complex model implied by the IDPS. Meanwhile the multi-lateral agencies are tied to the status quo by the sheer weight of their bureaucracy and by their mandates and political status; and arguably neither the bilaterals nor multilaterals yet have the tools or the institutional incentives needed for the new agenda.
Therefore it is incumbent on the rest of us to help them keep the discussion going, to shine a light honestly and with care on the dilemmas and contradictions thrown up by the IDPS, and help identify practical ways forward. A few years ago, I would have been much more pessimistic of the prospects, but the work of the IDPS fits in well with other, parallel processes such as the World Bank’s 2011 World Development Report, and the growing realisation that the MDG narrative ill-serves the world’s poor. A momentum for change does seem to be building. To support this, we need to keep the language of the IDPS alive, using and reinforcing it for example in published articles, on the radio and TV and yes, even blogs. We need to use it when submitting questions and in evidence to parliamentary committees in donor and aid-recipient countries, and at international gatherings. We need to help journalists understand the importance of changes in the way development is seen and understood. And we need to use the language of resilience and fragility in practical ways, pointing out or suggesting how resilience can be built; as well as identifying policies which seem likely to undermine it.
A key element of this must surely be to move the debate away from a narrow focus on aid, to examine other international currents and behaviours which either undermine or support resilience. But ultimately, what seems most important is to focus attention on changing the story – the narrative – of progress. People need to get used to the idea that development is not just about poverty reduction and a series of technical changes, but about historical and political changes in society.
With this in mind, a sustained, honest debate is still needed about what kinds of changes can be realistically and legitimately expected over the short- and medium-term as part of progress towards the PSGs. Honesty will be very hard, as the very legitimacy and continued access to resources of those around the table, will be on the table. The IDPS has the ambition to get the PSGs adopted by the UN, perhaps as part of the “post-MDGs” framework. This is a great idea, and must be done in a way that learns the lessons of the MDGs themselves. For example, we must not create another set of “global goals”: the goals must be set at local and national level, inspired by, rather than designed to fit, the PSG framework.
The IDPS will have made a truly significant contribution to the international policy environment if it can provide to the UN and other development actors, not just the paragraphs already written about the PSGs, but a truly comprehensive conceptual framework showing how its members see the emergence of more peaceful societies, and legitimate states with fair and functional relationships with their citizens. I.e. not just where to go, but some honest and disinterested guidance on how to get there. Because we don’t know that yet.
In-country momentum
The “international discourse” is all very well, but the place where all this matters most is in fragile contexts themselves. This is where practical and locally specific answers to the questions raised above will be found. As the IDPS continues to grow, it will become heavier on its feet, and may find it harder to reach consensus on its mandate, much less its views. It will continue to play an important role as a discussion forum, but I suspect practical progress will largely take place elsewhere. Therefore the place for civil society to get engaged in promoting and supporting the ideas of the IDPS must be mainly in the member countries of the g7+.
The IDPS has helpfully provided activists in all those countries with a language and a reference point for action – and one which their governments have to some degree formally embraced. Civil society in fragile contexts – supported by internationals where appropriate – can thus use the language of the IDPS to mobilise change. They can demand their inclusion in “One vision, one plan”, and in the “compacts” to be agreed between countries and international donors. They can refer to their government’s membership of the g7+ and therefore its commitment to inclusive dialogue, to providing people-centred security, access to livelihoods, basic services, and so on.
Most importantly I suggest, they can use this language not just to hold their leaders accountable, but to identity pathways of progress, and thus move politics into the realm of progressive thinking. As with the international discourse, there are no easy answers in, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo to the question: how can we achieve a more legitimate politics, able to resolve conflicts with justice and without violence? Nor is it obvious how Sierra Leoneans can develop a growing economy with room for wide and equitable participation, in a timeframe consistent with people’s expectations. Likewise, the people and governments of Burundi, Liberia, Central African Republic, East Timor, South Sudan and the other g7+ members face similar and other challenges meeting the aspirations represented by the PSGs. What they all have in common – and this is shared by the international agencies, when they dare to admit it – is they don’t exactly know how to get from here to there. As the Frenchman famously said when asked the way to Paris: “it’s hard to reach from here; may I suggest you start from somewhere else?”
And yet, we have to start from where we actually are. So the PSGs can be used by politicians, business people and civil society in fragile countries to stimulate discussion about whether these are the right goals and, if so, how can we start making progress towards them. They can thus become an important basis of political planning and accountability, and can slowly help turn patronage-based politics into policy-based politics.
This will lead in all kinds of different directions, depending on circumstances. It will generate useful learning internationally, but local and national processes need their own time and space. One of the worst things the IDPS could do is mandate some kind of new PRSP-type or “national action plan” framework, to be replicated in all member countries, and forming the basis of the “compact” with donors. One of the great and long-overdue insights of the past few years is that development is above all a political process. Therefore we must guard against a generic set of prescriptions and formulas for “exiting fragility”.
Overall, it is easy to criticise and be cynical about the IDPS, seeing it as yet another example of new wine in old bottles, and old wine in new. I suggest it is better to take a sceptical view, seeing the IDPS as a process which has opened important doors. It is up to the rest of us to wedge these doors open and keep pushing them on them, both locally and internationally.
What Did the High Level Forum do for Conflict-Affected Countries? A scorecard from Busan
This blog post was adapted from an article co-written with Dan Smith, and which appears on the International Alert website. Versions also appear on OpenDemocracy and the The Broker.
At the end of November, more than 2,000 representatives of governments, international organisations and NGOs convened in Busan at the fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. Just before the meeting I proposed a set of four criteria by which to judge its outcome as far as conflict-affected and fragile countries are concerned. I suggested that success at Busan would be measurable by the degree to which participants:
- Recognised how little is really known about how aid can promote and foster the emergence of better governed societies in fragile contexts.
- Disagreed on the best way forward, and thus retained the good ideas around which there is no consensus, instead of marginalising creativity in the search for what everyone can agree on.
- Decided to stop holding forums on aid effectiveness, and instead began a discussion about what effective development – human progress – looks like; and linked this to the process of replacing the MDGs with more appropriate measures of progress, and with the need for governments and others to change their behaviours outside the narrow realm of aid.
- Committed to operationalizing some of the exciting new ideas in development, such as building more peaceful and better governed societies, if necessary changing the architecture and mandate of aid and development institutions.
So how well did they do at Busan? To what degree does the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation that was launched with the Final Statement from the meeting reflect this approach to meeting the needs of fragile and conflict-affected states? I wasn’t at Busan, and have based this assessment on the Final Statement, which is the official summary of the outcomes of the conference. Rather than assess the statement as a whole, I am simply concentrating on its relevance for development in conflict-affected or fragile countries. I rate the outcome of Busan as fairly mediocre with a score of 40%, as explained below.
1. Change & uncertainty
Change, yes – it frames the opening discussion in the Final Statement. The role of China at the meeting made some aspects of change vividly present. The document reflects on the increase in co-operation between developing countries and on the emergence of new aid providers. But this is not developed in the rest of the statement. Taken as a whole its flavour is more-of-the-same. Where it might have been possible to recast how to meet the challenge of development in the light of the changes in our understanding and in the world over the past and the coming decades, what we get in the Final Statement are just a few tweaks.
Fragile and conflict affected countries are mentioned on page one, but then pretty much relegated to a single paragraph much further on. This seems like not enough recognition considering that 1.5 billion people live in them.
As to uncertainty, it is barely acknowledged. Being realistic about this, perhaps it’s not really permitted in official communiqués of this nature. But that means that a lack of humility is still hardwired into the international aid and development discourse. That perhaps helps explain a failure to ask hard questions about how to promote peace and development in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, which is something international donors and agencies are still struggling to work out – as they readily admit informally.
Score: 3/10
2. Consensus
The Final Statement says “Our partnership is founded on a common set of principles that underpin all forms of development co‐operation.” So far, so good. But given the superficial recognition of the need for change and for new approaches, it is no surprise that a superficial – perhaps one can call it a fake – consensus was once again contrived. The temptation to go for it proved irresistible.
These shared principles are in themselves fine but they are neither profound nor inspirational:
a) Ownership of development priorities by developing countries.
b) Focus on results
c) Inclusive development partnerships
d) Transparency and accountability to each other
Apart from the welcome emphasis on results, this contains little that is new and masks a wide range of different interpretations, goals and strategies. Because of that diversity of interest and opinion, I argued that agreeing to disagree is preferable but, to nobody’s surprise, the Busan forum reverted to type for such meetings and promoted agreement on technical means rather than strategic goals. Thus the final statement lists numerous examples of ways in which actors must cooperate and collaborate, but is quite silent about what they can and should agree to achieve. Obviously it’s a lot easier to agree on how to work together, than on goals or strategies, which are inherently more ideological.
Because a too-easy consensus among everyone would be wrong, a sign of success would be a recognition of the need for a deeper and therefore more selective collaboration. The one place where this comes through is in relation to the New Deal developed by the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding. This is a valuable statement by a group of fragile and conflict-affected states, donor governments and international agencies that is specifically directed at the development and peacebuilding needs of fragile and conflict-affected countries. The Final Statement welcomes the New Deal and continues, ‘Those of us who have endorsed the New Deal will pursue actions to implement it’ – thus distinguishing between those who are prepared to give the New Deal a passive welcome and those who want to make it work. Had it not been for this willingness to forego unanimity in action – which usually results in inactive unanimity – the New Deal would have been seen as an initiative that failed at Busan. Instead, it is one that comes out of Busan as a going concern with an increased degree of international legitimacy behind it.
Score: 5/10
3. Aid, or development?
There is an all too common elision between development and development aid; the latter tends to dominate discussion of the former yet is in the end merely a potentially important but relatively limited component, rather than its central element. Thus a successful HLF4 would have agreed that future forums and the international development discourse should be about promoting effective development progress, not just best practice in aid. HLF4 did not go so far but does include this statement:
‘Aid is only part of the solution to development. It is now time to broaden our focus and attention from aid effectiveness to the challenges of effective development. This calls for a framework within which:
- Development is driven by strong, sustainable and inclusive growth.
- Governments’ own revenues play a greater part in financing their own development needs. In turn, governments are more accountable to their citizens for the development results they achieve.
- Effective state and non–‐state institutions design and implement their own reforms and hold each other to account.
- Developing countries increasingly integrate, both regionally and globally, creating economies of scale that will help them better compete in the global economy.
‘To this effect, we will rethink what aid should be spent on and how, in ways that are consistent with agreed international rights, norms and standards, so that aid catalyses development.’
As far as verbal commitment goes, this represents some progress. Yet when one gets beyond the broad statements of principle, this and rest of the Final Statement is still overwhelmingly about aid modalities, rather than about how governments, citizens, businesses and international institutions can bring about change. Nothing much new is said about international trade or international crime and nothing at all about the need to change foreign policies that reinforce repressive governments in fragile countries. So it remains to be seen whether the words will be matched by action. At best, the statement provides a useful marker for future intentions, to which governments can be held to account in the future.
Score: 4/10
4. Operationalisation
The high ambition of getting global agreement tends to lead to an unambitious convergence on the least demanding positions and commitments. Therefore I argued that some of the most important progress over the next few years will not be based on global undertakings but on commitments made between a smaller number of actors. This gives a chance to put into practice the new thinking associated with the World Development Report 2011 and the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding. The role of a global gathering should be to highlight and encourage such innovative work.
There is the endorsement of the New Deal as already remarked, and an acceptance of the need to take a less risk-averse approach to change, and for development agencies to delegate greater responsibility to their in-country staff. And Hilary Clinton’s unexpected acceptance that the USA would join the International Aid Transparency Initiative received applause. But otherwise the HLF4 Final Statement falls pretty flat in this regard. The closest the statement gets to supporting innovative approaches is in this passage: ‘We welcome the opportunities presented by diverse approaches to development co-operation, such as South-South co‐operation, as well as the contribution of civil society organisations and private actors; we will work together to build on and learn from their achievements and innovations, recognising their unique characteristics and respective merits.’
Score: 4/10
Overall Score
Taking the average of the four scores given above, and based on the Final Statement and with regards its relevance and positive impact on development in fragile countries, the HLF4 gathering in Busan gets an overall score of 40%. If that were the mark given to a student, I’d have to assume his or her professor would add: Not good enough; more effort needed.
Of course I’d be interested to know how others felt, and especially those who were present at Busan who will no doubt have picked up positive outcomes which I’ve missed.
How can responsible international mining and oil companies use their social investment funds?
In this longer than usual post (six pages in A4, sorry), I explore the evolution of mining and oil companies’ approach to what they have come to refer to and report on as sustainability. I celebrate the progress many companies have made, and propose that most need to do more to comprehend and take account of their impact on, and potential contribution to society in a broad sense. This is the next frontier for companies wishing to act responsibly. There are many ways they can push forward this frontier, among them a creative use of their social investment funds. In illustration, I propose a few ways they can do this.
Health and safety, environment and community
Over past decades, international mining, oil and gas companies have gradually embraced a series of additional “non-technical” elements in their work. At first these were seen as marginal, but one by one they’ve come to be accepted as part of the core business. First, companies took on board the need to improve health and safety, and as a result their assets are no longer routinely the risky and dangerous places many once were.
Next, they accepted the need to pay more attention to the environment. This remains a challenge. While health and safety can, with the right funds and commitment, be brought under control in most circumstances, there is virtually no way extractive companies can operate without having a negative environmental impact. But they have made great strides and now typically treat as routine the need to protect the environment for nature and for other users, and to restore it in some way once they have extracted what they seek.
Third, they increasingly accept the need to treat local communities as partners; to provide them with benefits to balance the disbenefits which having a mining, gas or oil company as your neighbour can bring. Some of these benefits are simply part and parcel of normal operations: upgraded roads and other infrastructure needed for the mine also benefit other local users; the mine and its suppliers and contractors provide jobs; and so on. Other benefits are purely compensatory: for example building new homes and schools for mine-displaced communities. Others still are ways of buying the support of people whose goodwill will smooth the path for mining operations in the area: supporting local community projects, improving facilities at the local school or health centre, drilling a water borehole for a remote rural community, and so on.
This is all very well. Through adding and integrating health and safety, environment and community lenses to the way it views its place in the world, the industry now provides a safer work environment, a less disrupted ecology, and happier neighbours. All this contributes to what companies call their “social licence to operate”, i.e. helps them obtain the “soft permission” needed to dig and punch holes in the ground and extract the minerals they need to fuel the global economy and provide a return to shareholders. In short, health and safety, environment and community have become normal and important features of responsible company practice alongside more traditional elements like engineering, cost control, logistics, and good people and financial management. As such they commonly feature as chapter headings in the “sustainability reports” of most extractive companies.
Being a responsible actor within society: responsibility vs. accountability
There is a fourth element in this model of responsible practice which has yet to be fully integrated. It’s about taking responsibility to look beyond the short-term licence to operate, and consider what it means to be a responsible actor within society, viewed on a wider scale, and thinking longer-term.
Just to be clear about the difference here: the concept of a social licence to operate is premised on the need to have the permission of others to mine or drill. It’s often an informal permission, to be sure, but the very concept implies that it can be withheld or withdrawn by those with an influence over the company’s ability to operate in a given location. It’s therefore more about accountability than responsibility: accountability is when others reward or sanction one’s behaviour; responsibility is when one sets high standards for oneself, regardless of what others require. Responsibility comes into play especially in contexts where accountability standards are low, for example when the interests of some communities or environmental stewardship are not taken seriously by government.
So responsibility is about the values the company holds and the standards it decides to meet. While it may be held accountable for some of these by outsiders, it also holds itself responsible for keeping and meeting them. Thus internal accountability becomes key to being a responsible corporation. Being a responsible mining company may mean going beyond what is required by government partners in some political contexts, and it means examining the context through a societal lens.
A societal lens
Using a societal lens requires companies to ask additional questions about their context and the impact of their own presence within it. The kinds of questions they ask may include:
- How does the political economy within which they are operating function, and what are their own interactions with and influences on it?
- Who are the winners and losers in relation to their investment, and is this reinforcing or lessening fairness within society? Do women, young people or other specific sections of society stand to benefit?
- Is the government re-investing its royalties in society, e.g. in education, or to underpin an alternative economic sector that will replace mining when the ore body is exhausted?
- Is their own company’s procurement privileging local suppliers and manufacturers rather than importers, to help stimulate the economy; and perhaps going even further by seeking to purchase from businesses run by members of disadvantaged groups?
- What will be the impact on the political economy if a mine provides hundreds of millions of dollars per year to an opaque and corrupt government – especially when mining and oil provide so few local jobs, per extra dollar of GDP generated?
- What will be the long-term impact on the relations between the people and the government, of a foreign mining company building a local school to keep the local community sweet, when it is actually the government’s job to build schools?
- In conflict-affected contexts they will ask whether their operating practices might inflame existing conflicts.
- At a larger scale they may ask a much more fundamental question about their own role, e.g. a coal mine company may question its contribution to global goods and bads in the context of climate change.
- And so on….
All these are difficult questions; in fact more often dilemmas without a clear answer. Sometimes the only responsible answer is to say “we won’t operate here, no matter what the opportunity cost”. But usually it’s more nuanced than that, and mining and oil companies all-too-frequently do find themselves working in places where the government’s relationship with its people – or some of its people – is dysfunctional; where the people have less voice and less protection or access to fulfilment of their rights than they ought; where the presence of the mine may either damage the fabric of society, or help to knit it. And international companies aren’t consistently held accountable – yet – for taking these issues seriously; thus it’s a question of how far they want to or feel they can take responsibility for understanding the context in which they (plan to) operate, and how far they feel they can go in minimising negative impacts. To do so certainly entails taking a much broader and deeper look than merely at what will give them their social licence to operate here, today.
So responsible mining and oil and gas companies need to make sure that they are equipped to deal with such situations as expertly as possible. This is why they need political-economy analysts on their staff at all levels, with a role not just in analysing what benefits and harms might befall the company as a result of political risk, but also what benefits and harms might befall the people and the society within which they are drilling and mining. Above all, companies need to be willing and able to understand the impact of their engagement with the context over the long-term, and using a very broad frame of reference.
Just as health and safety, environment and community projects have become mainstream, and are included in the production budget, so the costs of this wider engagement in and with society need to be, too.
Funding mechanisms
Companies have long found ways to pay for the costs of health and safety, environment and community relations work, and these are all now factored into production budgets and organograms. Typically each physical company asset will have a fund available to contribute to local projects, and some of these not only improve community-mine relations (the social licence to operate) but also have an impact as social improvement projects in their own right. Many companies have set up foundations or trusts, which is a useful way of protecting their ability to make community and environmental investments when commodity prices are low – a mechanism to smooth out the impacts of income fluctuations.
As companies understand their interactions and relationships with society better and make adjustments to their policies, strategies, approaches and plans accordingly, they will become more adept at mainstreaming it into their core work. This will have an impact on their work in a variety of ways. There may be some projects they would no longer regard as feasible when examined through the societal lens – e.g. because it would require them to collaborate with a repressive government which tramples on people’s rights. Other projects take longer to get off the ground, as the company takes extra care to avoid operating in ways which frustrate particular – and potentially disruptive – sections of society. Company operating practices may have to adapt, for example ensuring that railways built for the transport of ore are also accessible to passengers. They may decline to extract oil at the too-rapid rate the host government demands – as the government of Sudan demanded – on the basis that this will provide short-term gains at the expense of the long-term production. In a country like Guinea, the expected rapid increase in GDP due to mining over the next decade will provide huge royalties payments into a not very transparent tax system, without creating many jobs for Guineans, the resulting frustration among sections of the population may lead to violence; and thus companies operating there may need to sit down with government and proactively advise on investment or job creation schemes – thus going quite far beyond the limits of what oil and mining companies normally see as their role.
This is where the social investment funds come in
All extractive companies set aside funds for community projects, but they should really look at them more as “society funds”, designed to help ensure that their impact on society more broadly is a positive one. It is tremendously important for companies to set the mandate for staff running these funds as clearly as possible. This means getting the purpose right, and I’d suggest that an appropriate generic purpose might be:
Supporting initiatives which increase the social, economic and environmental capital in the societies where the company operates.
This reflects the very simple and basic idea that when minerals are extracted and sold, it is the capital and patrimony of the nation – the society – which is being used up on a once-only basis. Therefore the process should be done in such a way as to capitalise society in one way or another, i.e. use the natural endowment to endow society with public goods.
This implies widening the kinds of activities to be supported quite significantly. It doesn’t necessarily mean stop funding the kinds of community projects most often undertaken, but it does imply adding new ones. These would depend absolutely on the context, and should be defined accordingly, but it is possible to illustrate my point with a few generic examples.
Governance: societies in so many places where minerals are extracted face a problem of inadequate governance, and this is often revealed even more clearly when mines are dug, oil wells are drilled, and large sums of money are paid out. Governance is thus an obvious area of focus for mining and oil companies. Some of the ways companies can use their social investment funds to help improve governance, without being seen as “interfering”:
- Support national and local civil society initiatives to educate voters and monitor elections in places where democracy is still quite new and evolving.
- Build a governance component into other initiatives, e.g. enlist the parent-teacher association in decisions over how to improve the local school, and in overseeing or managing the company’s contribution; support local patients’ oversight groups to monitor health clinics’ choices and performance; support local groups advocating with government for improved health or education services; take steps to make sure community development initiatives are genuinely inclusive, providing benefits and giving a voice to those on the margins of the community.
- Sponsor debates on radio and TV about policy issues linked to natural resource extraction and management.
- Fund research and the dissemination of research results on issues related to governance, such as how natural resource extraction skews governance and how this can be mitigated; use long-term grants to link universities from different contexts to work together and pool knowledge on this issue.
- Sponsor visits by local and national government, MPs, journalists and civil society to countries where natural resource endowments are being well and fairly managed for the good of society.
- Provide training and other support to journalists through journalists’ associations or unions, thus contributing to improved political accountability.
- Support non-governmental participation in and monitoring of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
- Support civil society – nationally and locally, including in localities far from the mining area – to publish and disseminate transparent data about mining operations and payments made to government by mining companies; and to ask government how royalties and taxes have been used.
- Build the capacity of civil society groups to advocate and hold government, companies and other powerful economic actors to account.
A well governed environment is ultimately a public good and a better investment environment, so the impacts of initiatives like these would eventually be a benefit to the company.
The Economy: mining and oil companies generate economic growth, jobs, sub-contracts and taxes, and they build or attract public infrastructure, so are contributing value to society. Nevertheless, there are additional things they can do using their social investment funds, to help make sure the economy grows sustainably, e.g.:
- Support micro-finance NGOs which help capitalise small businesses, and enterprise advisors who can advise businesses on expansion and diversification plans.
- Invest in improved infrastructure in remote areas, such as broadband.
- Support research and policy advocacy/design into ways that mining- and oil-dominated economies can diversify and create more jobs and economic opportunities, in collaboration with universities. Subsequently, support the implementation of policy. This would be both locally, in mining regions, and nationally. Build research and advocacy capacity by supporting networks involving established and newer universities.
- Invest through local institutions in non-mining vocational training opportunities for young people.
These kinds of investments would make for a healthier economic and thus social and political climate in which to operate, and would create an environment in which the ultimate exit of the company, once the mine or well is spent, would be substantially easier for all concerned.
Social: The presence of the extractive industry in countries and localities has both positive and negative social impacts. Social investment funds are already used to mitigate the local negative impacts, and can go further, e.g.:
- Encourage public debate and action about the impact on society of creating employment honeypots in remote and underserved locations, and of how negative impacts can be mitigated; where appropriate, seed-fund some of these mitigation strategies.
- In countries where indigenous people are marginalised in the political economy, and yet disproportionately affected by mining, support moves to harness this opportunity to foster greater integration. E.g. by linking indigenous groups with mainstream civil society to create an integrated debate about how to harness the benefits of mining for the whole society, rather than sections of it.
- Support civil society initiatives to promote greater equality in society, e.g. for men and women, and for ethnic different groups.
As a result of these kinds of projects, society will be less divided, and the extraction of its natural endowment of resources will have contributed to fostering greater unity and sense of nation.
Environment: a healthy, well managed environment is a classic public good, therefore an indicator of a functional and forward-thinking society. Contributing to this is thus a subtle way of contributing to societal well-being. It’s fairly typical for mines and oil companies to restore land after use, and to fund small tree-planting projects and the like near their assets as an environmental or carbon sequestration offset. Using the societal lens, they might also use their social investment funds to:
- Sponsor research and engender debate about energy choices and sustainable mining/oil extraction, designed to promote good policy choices in an era of man-made climate change. This is not the same as direct lobbying: the objective of this would be to foster informed debate and informed policies.
Through this kind of project, companies would foster the kind of vibrant policy debate which is needed for an open society.
How to manage the funds
As to the mechanisms best suited to these kinds of projects, each company needs to figure out the best approach. Clearly there will be tensions and a degree of discomfort at the idea of supporting non-core interventions which may also seem a bit too “political”. But mining is after all already a highly political act. And there are ways to distance the company from direct involvement, e.g. by funding a national “umbrella grant” to a disbursing agency (likely a national NGO), or by giving large grants to NGOs operating internationally. It seems to me that there are three cardinal rules to follow:
- Get the purpose right: be as clear as possible regarding the purpose of the fund, and review its use and impact regularly accordingly.
- Staff up accordingly: e.g. if the fund is to support the kinds of activities listed above, ensure that staff involved in decisions and monitoring are knowledgeable about those kinds of activities. Where needed, engage advisors with the requisite skills.
- Develop monitoring and evaluation indicators appropriate to each project, rather than trying to determine them generically on a company-wide basis.
In conclusion
In this article, the focus is on what companies can do through creative use of their community or social funds. Some of the illustrations are examples of service provision, but most are about supporting ways for people to engage in shaping their society, through research and policy debate, or through their economic choices. Of course beyond their community or social funds, there many other ways companies can – and some do – proactively contribute to societal value, through the strategic and operational choices they make.
Why should companies spend shareholders’ money on issues that don’t seem to be directly necessary to provide their social licence to operate – and are also harder to address, because they concern very complex societal issues which may seem outside the competency areas of the average oil or mining company?
On the first part of this question – why spend scarce resources on societal issues not obviously connected to our commercial interest – there are two main answers. First, if you plan to operate somewhere over the medium term, it may be more in your interests than you think, to invest in a stable and better governed society. But the second reason is a more powerful one: it is about responsibility. The mineral reserves belonging to a country belong to society, as represented by their government. They are part of the patrimony and can only be extracted and sold once. Therefore they represent capital in its purest form, and it is the government’s responsibility to use the royalties to improve the capital base of society in some way: infrastructure, skills training, basic education, secondary and university education, etc. Frequently governments do not do enough of this. At worst, the funds are used to fuel a patronage-based political system which undermines rather than strengthens society; even in better cases they are just used to cover recurrent costs. In these circumstances the company has a responsibility to go further than simply saying “we pay our royalties, it’s up to them to do the right thing”.
The second question – how to work on societal issues? – is indubitably harder to answer. If the challenge of extracting minerals from deep below the earth’s surface seems tricky, it is nothing compared to the challenge of contributing to a “better society”. Nevertheless, it’s not impossible, it’s a key element of “sustainability” and therefore highly relevant in the run-up to Rio + 20, and there are many ways it can be done with the resources already available. One step on the way to doing so is to revise the purpose and goal of companies’ social investment funds.
Is Accountability of Aid the same as Countability of Aid?
Last week the Belgian Ambassador to the UK held a “salon” at his residence, on the subject of aid accountability and measurement, and a big focus was on Results. The three speakers were Paul Collier, Professor of Development Economics, Oxford University, Stefan Dercon, Chief Economist DFID and Professor of Development Economics, Oxford University and Marcus Leroy, Senior Advisor to the Belgian Minister of Development Cooperation.
It was particularly interesting to hear the views of Prof Dercon, who plays a leading role at DFID in the process of analyzing the business case made for all major new projects. A few highlights from the presentations and discussion:
- In the past, spurious “bad evidence” was often used to justify big DFID projects. Taxpayers were also wrongly treated as fools who could not be expected to understand how their taxes were being spent overseas. So more rigorous and transparent evaluation of proposed DFID projects responds to a genuine problem. Nevertheless, there is a real risk that oversimplification will lead to a rejection of the good projects which can make an important difference which is hard to measure or count.
- We are entering the Second Age of the Development Economist, who is recapturing the space s/he lost to political and social scientists over the past fifteen years. Not only that, but also the resuscitation of the lost art of cost-benefit analysis, which had fallen out of favour even among many economists. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as we keep in mind that for development projects, CBA is not a bad way to compare alternatives, but not suitable for use as an absolute evaluation tool. Prof Dercon spoke of the need to provide “five or six alternatives” against which to compare the proposal.
- There is a real danger of bias in the system of cost-benefit analyses and making business cases for DFID projects, because staff will increasingly send proposals for approval which are overly linear, have very obvious and countable outcomes, and are based on what has been done elsewhere. I.e. a combination of simplicity-bias and risk-aversion. Prof Dercon acknowledged this, but claimed it would be to some extent counteracted by their use of the average predicted outcomes when evaluating proposed projects. (I.e. I think he meant they ignore the worst and best case, and use the mean case to evaluate the benefits of proposals).
- … Not necessarily linked to this, but DFID are apparently undertaking a review of their capacity to innovate, which might mitigate the risk-aversion bias to some extent. Meanwhile, the Research and Evidence Dept at DFID has apparently grown from 12 to 240 staff – indicative of the shift in thinking form faith-based to evidence-based programming perhaps.
- The point was made by all speakers that aid as a sector has a ridiculous approach to risk. E.g. if you believe the official story, everything works, and very little money is lost or wasted. That approach would never work in business: there’d be no entrepreneurs and no creativity. Or is it, as Marcus Leroy said, that there’s a “truth aversion”, rather than a risk-aversion….?
- Dercon also accepted that in some cases, such as work on reconciliation in fragile contexts, where you simply can’t quantify your expected outcomes, nor produce 5-6 alternatives to compare them against, you simply have to be very clear about your theory of change and evaluate the business case on that basis. But even in such cases you still need to cite data from places where similar programming has worked. (Which might be seen as a strong discouragement to taking the context as your starting point, as the OECD-DAC rightly suggests aid agencies ought to do).
- What is the cost-benefit of doing cost-benefit analysis? One DFID-funded implementing agency which was represented at the meeting estimate they have spent 25% of their staff effort in one project over the past year fiddling around with this issue and revising and re-re-revising their logframe (which has over 200 indicators!).
- The point was made that it’s ironic that DFID is pushing for its projects to be justified with a business case, when it has made an entirely political decision to increase its budget by 30% over the next two years. Paul Collier, in his reply, gave the best answer I have yet to hear in justification of the 0.7% GNI figure. As I understand it, it goes like this: ODA is a global public good, and is therefore almost by definition under-supplied. Therefore it makes sense for a progressive country (the UK) to make a commitment to supply it at a rate which is higher than others, as a way to counteract their undersupply. Quite nifty, I thought.
Interesting stuff. It’s certainly right that the UK’s aid money should be spent transparently and with a view to making a difference according to a clearly articulated theory of change. But getting the balance right between what’s most easily measured now and what makes the most important difference in people’s lives over the long term will be hard.
As mentioned above, CBA is a decent enough method of evaluating alternative uses of capital. So for example, it helps determine whether a given sum of money is best used on project A or project B. But what it does not do is provide the information you need to determine if it is the most appropriate action to take in a given context. For that, you still need rigorous and creative context analysis which asks questions about how people can build a sustainably peaceful and equitably prosperous society; whether there is a role for outside agencies, and if so what role? That is a very different problem than the much simpler one of whether we should spend our money on this or that.
This is not to say that DFID, staffed by highly competent individuals and teams, ignores the need to invest in solid project design. But Andrew Natsios had it right when he said that the most easily measurable projects are the least transformative, and vice versa. We must take care not to let institutional incentives make the staff of organisations like DFID too risk-averse and less able to work in the fragile and conflict-affected contexts they are committed to helping. Accountabilty does not equal Countability.
The landscape within which new MDGs will emerge, post-2015
I attended a round table meeting with staff from one of the UN agencies in Geneva last week, brainstorming on their approach to the discussions about what should come after the MDGs in 2015. Like other UN agencies, this one has begun to mobilise its own ideas as the debate about what comes after 2015 begins to take shape. One thing we discussed is the global environment within which the new MDGs will emerge. The world is ever-changing in multiple dimensions to be sure, but if one limits oneself to the “aid sector”, one can discern six obvious trends relevant to this discussion.
1. The Need to Show Concrete Results
Three factors have contributed to an increased demand for aid and development programmes to demonstrate relevant and concrete results. First, the economic recession has made donor country taxpayers less generous, so their elected politicians are reassuring them with stories of concrete achievements in combating poverty overseas. Second, fifteen years of ever-rising aid budgets and an increasing proportion going to opaque multi-lateral organisations and government budget support somewhat on faith has made those in the sector nervous about whether this “faith based” approach to aid is having an impact commensurate with the amount of money spent. Third, and most important, people in many aid recipient countries are paying more attention to aid inflows than in the past, and asking harder questions of their governments and donors: this too provides an incentive to be clearer about the intended and actual results of aid.
All this is very welcome: who could argue with results and accountability? But the concern associated with this trend is that we need to avoid being driven by what’s most easily measurable, rather than by trying to measure what matters most.
2. Collier’s Bottom Billion
Well, not really Paul Collier’s but he did coin the phrase Bottom Billion. What I mean by this is the recognition that at least a billion people – the 2011 World Developent Report claims 1.5 bn – live in conflict-affected or fragile contexts, where the very same circumstances which allow conflict and violence to flourish also conspire to keep people poor, living undignified lives with insufficient income, assets and services, and with limited voice and power through which to reshape their circumstances.
The two main themes emerging from this line of debate are the need for better institutions, more fit for the purpose of governance and providing security; and the need for a major boost in the availability and accessibilty of decent economic opportunities for people, notably jobs.
The concern associate with this trend is we need to avoid seeing this as an emergency or a crisis. Emergency and crisis approaches to promoting improved institutions seem oxymoronic and doomed to do more harm than good…
3. Sumner’s Bottom Billion
Last year Andy Sumner identified an additional bottom billion, i.e. a billion extremely poor people living in Middle Income Countries (MICs). Some of these are also members of Collier’s club, but in the main this is a different group.
Much of this group lives in countries with established and emerging middle classes, paying taxes, politically engaged and with an eye on their own priviliges and benefits, and in some cases with a fair degree of democratic accountability, e.g. in India. Thus the importance of political debate in each country, to figure out its own tolerance of and approach to structural poverty. A swift look at Venezuela gives a sense of how this can play out: a left-wing populist president committed to redistribution, pitted against a middle class who claim he is destroying their wealth, and the nation’s with it – and with some reason. It’s by no means clear that Venezuelans’ institutions are up to the task of mediating their political differences peacefully. So poverty in MICs is above all a national, not an international issue; and it is highly political in a way that can put institutions under a great deal of stress and spark instability and violence – look also at Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 to see how …
4. New players within a changing architecture
Meanwhile, there are new players out there. According to Andy Sumner and Clare Melamed’s recent paper, the BRICS are providing over $11bn per year in aid, compared with $129 bn from the OECD countries. So the proportion is still low overall, yet is growing in importance, and in specific places and cases is more significant than in others. They also point out that BRICS provide an alternative role model for debveloping countries – perhaps helping some of them see ways to make progress somewhat different from the OECD prescriptions.
There’s also the looming $100 bn per year in climate adaptation and mitigation financing to be added to the pie. And a growing trend of big new philanthropy – pulling in two quite different directions. First, the Gatesian approach, characterised by two big ideas inspired by the world of the techno-entrepreneur: Focus, and Technology. These come together most obviously in projects like the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation. There’s much to recommend this, but it seems rather blind to issues like governance, and the need for better institutions. Bill Gates himself, when asked by a campaigning journalist on British TV recently whether it would not be better to focus as much on governance as on the techniques and technologies for child health, probably spoke and reinforced the view of millions of others, when he responded with a simple rhetorical question: “so are you saying it would be better not to save thousands of children’s lives?”. If only eradicating poverty were so simple…
The other philanthropic strand is symbolised by George Soros and his various Open Society Initiatives and the like: focused at the other extreme from Gates, attempting to foster, promote and incentivise the nudges and little improvements that make governance better and help subjects become like citizens. This seems a very sensible approach, but Soros is much quieter and less messianic than Gates.
Finally in this trend, and looking beyond the narrow world of aid, we have the shifting tectonic plates of global governance. Are we now moving beyond the unipolar world which was declared at the end of the Cold War? It looks like it; and we are also nearing the end of the “western hegemony”. This is greeted with a sigh of relief by so many – but a result of more countries having a say in global governance has so far been an inablity to agree on very much. That’s an indicator of two things: that getting global agreement among countries with different individual interests and needs is always going to be mighty hard by definition; and also that some of our global governance institutions are not fit for purpose in this more complex world. The Doha Round of the WTO – who even remembers what it was about? – and the long-running saga of Climate Change non-agreements are just two examples of how difficult it is to get everyone signed up.
Result: confusion, uncertainty and a very complicated game of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, with many prisoners taking part….
5. From “aid effectiveness” to “development effectiveness”
The rhetoric seems to be convening around the idea – captured already in the largely forgotten Millennium Declaration – that instead of more goals and targets about how poor countries can get better, we should develop a framework which is applied to the whole world, rich and poor. This would have the great advantage of undermining “us and them”, while recognising that all countries, rich and poor, have important equity challenges to meet. It would also take the conversation away from “how best to use aid”, to “how best to improve our societies and the lives of their members” – a far less technically and more politically oriented debate. As it should be.
6. Special interests
And finally: the chaos of special interests lobbies competing and collaborating to be heard. As the post-2015/post-MDGs debate gets underway, which lobby is not being heard? We have the cautious re-emergence of the population lobby, re-booting a Malthusian view of how many human beings this planet can sustain, and lobbying for this to be made more prominent in the gobal development narrative. Environmentalists and climate change lobbyists are pushing their perspectives. Peace and security-focused agencies clamour for peace and security to be central to the development narrative. Human rights activists see a rights-based model as most appropriate, and gender specialists are still quite rightly pushing for gender to be taken properly seriously. And so it goes on: people-with-disabilities, children’s rights activists, people living with HIV/AIDS, the better governance crowd, the statebuilding crew….. and all the rest.
… which tells us above all that whatever we – the international community – come up with, it had better provide space for all these issues and hundreds more, to be debated by those making decisions about development where it matters: in countries and localities where poor people live. Otherwise, it’s a recipe for chaos, confusion and more perverse incentives.
And so?
My own view: perhaps we can’t expect too much agreement between the representatives of 7 billion people, about what’s the right or best pathway to progress. But if the need to devise some kind of replacement for the MDGs provides us all with an opportunity to debate the issue, and we keep our minds as open as possible as the debate proceeds… well, we’ll probably learn quite a bit, even as we are reminded of how little we still know.
Phil Vernon 