Leon Kukkuk (Random Ideas and Thoughts)

Seems Worth Thinking About All Of This Rather Carefully

2010-09-12T10:21:00.000+02:00

From: agerard@omaralbachir.org [mailto:agerard@omaralbachir.org]

Sent: 25 August 2010 21:15

To: hotline_undp@yahoo.ca

Subject: JOIN THE COALITION OMAR EL BECHIR

Dear Leon,

As a Angolan writer, We will appreciate, you join THE COALITION OMAR EL BECHIR. I'm suggesting you to accept a to be a member of the Coalition . As mentioned in Coalition Statutes, your travel fees and charges regarding Coalition activities, as a member are paid by the Coalition. Our next meeting will be held in Khartoum or Accra by mid-september 2010.

Please have a look on all details of what's going on in Sudan and What the Coalition is for. Please get back to me as quick as possible.

For any further information, please visit our website:

www.omaralbachir.org

www.omarelbechir.org

www.coalitionomaralbachir.org

And send us your profile or resume and photo.

Best Regards!

Armand Gerard OBOU

From: Leon Kukkuk

Subject: JOIN THE COALITION OMAR EL BECHIR

To: agerard@omaralbachir.org

Received: Saturday, August 28, 2010, 2:23 PM

Dear Mr Armand Gérard Obou,

I am very flattered to be invited to join the THE COALITION OMAR EL BECHIR.

Unfortunately I will not be able to accept.

I am largely in agreement with the stance of the African Union, League of Arab States, Non-Aligned Movement, and the governments of Russia and China in regarding the warrant as unwarranted. I also feel that it demonstrates a selectivity and double standard with concern to war that could hamper, rather than help, efforts to bring peace to Sudan .

However people are complicated, and I very, very rarely support individuals, especially those in positions of power, as wholeheartedly and uncritically as membership of a coalition would demand.

I am more than happy to join any coalition that support principles that I believe in such as pan-African humanism, a commitment to overall human development of Africa, the full independence of our continent and the promotion of democratic values through ongoing dialogue with opposition, universal suffrage, free expression, freedom of religious practices and gender issues.

Within such a coalition I would be in a much better position to support President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir to the extent that he upholds the above principles, through action rather than rhetoric, and still be able to speak out in the instances where he does not.

Thank you again for the offer.

Best wishes

Leon Kukkuk

The Image and the Pseudo-event

2010-02-26T15:10:00.003+01:00

Human: Characteristic of people as opposed to God or animals or machines, especially susceptible to weakness, and therefore showing the qualities of man.

Just a brief interlude.

After the chaos following the overthrow of a murderous American-backed dictator there had been a terrible famine. By the end of 1992 it was virtually over. Red Cross supplies were getting through to the people. The situation appeared to be under control. It was at that point George Bush (Papa Bush not Baby Bush) decided to make a spectacular show of “humanitarian aid.”

Marines were sent in. Naturally all the news networks were notified. What would be the point otherwise? There was a night landing in front of TV cameras waiting for them. It was so comical that even the television teams couldn't take it seriously. But the marines with their night vision equipment were blinded by the camera lights and the crews had to be ordered to shut them off. Of course, there was no resistance.

Then followed a tragicomedy in which some lives were saved by humanitarian aid but many were lost by heavy-handed military tactics. All of this was later blamed on the United Nations. It was a fiasco, and it was all under American military control. Almost all their most elite troops were there. The Americans estimated that between 7 000 and 10 000 locals were killed. Fewer than a hundred Americans lost their lives. They seemed to accept that for what it was worth. Specialists who have worked in the area estimated that about as many people were saved by the humanitarian intervention as were killed by the military operation. They could even have been the same people. It was felt that the whole matter may even have proceeded better without the military. It also appears that the whole thing was done mostly for Public Relations purposes. It was at any rate promoted that way. That's only the beginning.

Genuine offers of assistance and subsequent intervention in other peoples’ lives would often be considered a good thing. It is often quite easy.

There is much soul-searching and a lot self-flagellation on why we so often get it wrong.

As a result of this shambles and the subsequent soul-searching, the Americans refused to get involved in the Rwandan genocide. When they refused, all in the West also decided not to intervene to stop it.

Today Rwanda is often mentioned as an example of the failure of the United Nations, and it was that indeed. But what is possibly even worse is the failure to mention that the UN failed because the United States kept UN peacekeepers from being reinforced, cut off their supplies, and pushed ceaselessly to have them removed. Or the failure to mention that the State Department deliberately covered up its clear knowledge that what was happening was genocide.

For 100 days, people were killed at the rate of about 8 000 a day. It is the same as about a third of the number of children who die every day in the world from easily treatable diseases, not for 100 days, but every day.

This is far easier, but not very glamorous, to stop than sending troops to Rwanda. All that is required is to spend a small amount to bribe drug companies to produce the required remedies. It would require them to do something different than that which they are required to do by law: maximize profits at all costs, often by making medicines only for the rich.

That should be enough to stop ongoing Rwanda-style killings, and stop this not just for one hundred days, but constantly.

Is anyone doing it?

What does that tell us about the alleged humanitarian concerns over Rwanda?

Or Darfur? Or Aghanistan? Or Iraq? Or the Congo?

What it does tells us, very clearly, is that humanitarian concerns are wonderful so long as it's someone else's crimes and we do not have to do anything about them apart from striking heroic poses.

It also tells us a lot more.

Much of the formal structures on which we depend, and told that we have to depend upon, are simply a motley collection of institutions, a few individuals that had conferred upon themselves a series of mandates of their own choosing, and now function as a mutual backslapping society, giving one another high office and all the power, influence and prestige that go with it.

Ponder for a moment upon the savagery and criminality of a society that is based on institutional structures so utterly insane that in order to stop, not only genocide but permanent Rwanda-style killings among children of the world, there are no tools available except to bribe unaccountable private tyrannies to pretend to save them.

Paradoxes of Rationality

2010-01-12T07:12:00.005+01:00

Once upon a time, in 1988 in fact, on 03 July, the USS Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner. It killed 290 passengers.

George Bush, on his presidential campaign at the time, was asked for an explanation. He emphatically stated that, “I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are.”

Although the story is old, and completely irrelevant in this context, I like it. It tells us something important about how politicians think. It is for them more important to follow their own agenda. The truth is often seen as some inconvenient impediment. Yet there are always the more troublesome individuals amongst us, who do care what the facts are and who will demand explanations.

All of which brings us to the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference held in December 2009.

It involved some 193 nations getting together to discuss the threat that global warming poses to our planet. It consisted for a large part of the same motley mix of individuals and assorted do-gooders that has persistently failed to do anything about such things as poverty, AIDS, Malaria and an assorted range of human ills.

The objective of this huge talking shop was to create a global agreement that extended and expanded the Kyoto Protocol. They were concerned about what can be done about an apparent and uncontrolled rise in global temperatures.

There is absolutely no doubt that human beings will need to adapt to such a thing if indeed the temperature is to increase dramatically. There would be a number of practical implications for human beings; some good, some bad. But temperature data is generally such a mess of random fluctuations that with enough manipulation you could derive any bogus trend you please. So the fact is that nobody probably really knows if it is rising, and if it is, by how much it will rise, or for how long. The climate has been comfortably uniform for thousands of years. The only sudden changes in the earths’ temperature – sudden such as in over hundreds or thousands of years – tend to be a sudden drop in temperature causing ice ages. Normally the temperature tends to go up for a while – over a few decades or so – and then down for a while. All of this happens within a comparatively narrow temperature range.

Were any of these issues discussed at the Copenhagen Conference?

No. Amidst the apocalyptic talk – how it could be calamitous for the human species - they waffled on about Greenhouse gas emissions. The real connection between greenhouse gasses and the climate, much less any effect human production of greenhouse gasses can have on the climate, was not discussed. Or it was, but was discussed by politicians, do-gooders and people who obviously slept through their high school physics classes. Then the final Copenhagen deal did not even manage to establish any greenhouse gas emission targets for anybody.

They waffled on about how nations – humans in other words - must limit temperature increases to no more than 2o Celsius. Then they lamented on the failure of the representatives of these 193 countries to clinch the “real deal” on how exactly to achieve this.

They did agree that CO2 emissions should be measured, reported and verified by . . . well, they were a bit vague about that one. Apparently some global organization would influence and monitor all nations' efforts to reduce their CO2 emissions. Would it be similar to the multitude of global organisations that monitor and influence all nations’ efforts to reduce poverty? Or promote democracy? Or spend public money properly?

Is it expected that this organisation have the same record of success?

If human beings are to suddenly start messing around with the climate in order to make the planet a more convenient and predictable place to live, why limit human interference only to the climate?

Why not go the whole hog?

Although the Copenhagen commitment to limit a global rise in temperature to two degrees is laudable, there are a number of other equally deserving causes that are being completely ignored:

1. Stopping continental drift. The current arrangement of continents is just fine. Humans have gotten used to it over the last few millennia. Besides airfares are likely to get completely out of hand should continents continue to drift apart unchecked. The negative impact on an already fragile airline industry will threaten to disrupt a whole way of life, dependent on easy and cheap international travel.

2. Limiting volcanic eruptions to one major eruption per millennium. Volcanic eruptions, especially, are really disruptive events. These eruptions tend to spew billions of tons of dust into the atmosphere, playing all sorts havoc with the climate as well as with the comfortable visual familiarity of sunsets and sunrises. Small eruptions, however, should perhaps be increased due to the tourist attraction value.

3. If global temperatures are indeed rising, then the warming effect of the Gulf Stream on some remote North Atlantic islands and the west coast of Scandinavia would become redundant. It would be much more sensible to reverse the direction of this oceanic current. It can then flow south-westwards from the comparative cold of the sub-arctic to cool down the Caribbean. Since this would be in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a global organization could be established to have this rather silly law annulled. This organisation can then also influence and monitor all sorts of other laws of nature that have become dated or inconvenient. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, for one, springs to mind. Imagine the possibilities for human invention if scientists are no longer obliged to work their way around all sorts of uncertainties as is the case under the current laws of nature.

The possibilities for international conferences, first class international travel, pompous reports and general scaremongering are endless. And making money. What makes these causes any less deserving than the climate from being under human control rather than that of nature?

The problem with defining and discussing the challenges that face human beings is that it is not done through elected governments that may become unelected if they loose touch with reality. Defining and discussing the challenges that face human beings nowadays tend to be the domain of a bunch of unelected power brokers, who always pop up just where the action is. Under a variety of different guises, they press their agendas on all manner of things. The majority of these they also invent and define themselves. The prime movers in a complex new system of power and influence, this shadow elite make public decisions without consulting the public. They make decisions about everything - from the economy, to national policy of countries of which they are not even citizens, to foreign policy and financial rules. Ultimately, they answer only to each other.

They make no distinction between the weather and climate. No distinction between our responsibility to take care of our natural environment and controlling the climate.

Having defined CO2 as the great evil facing all of humanity they are now preparing to do with carbon what they have done with a number of other things: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. Carbon-related financial products are just about ready to be sold to investors.

Banks will apparently allow a mandatory carbon-trading system to save the planet at the lowest possible cost. In this manner a completely new U$D2 trillion market can be created by turning climate change into yet another commodities market. Derivatives, by the way, are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity. In this case it is CO2 and other greenhouse gases (the most common of which is water vapour).

Selling fluff in the truest sense of the word . . .

Really, Really Small Science (propaganda in other words)

2008-03-06T12:08:00.001+01:00

The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.— Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister

In the UNDP Turkey newsletter for January 2008 there is the following article:

UNDP TOPS GLOBAL ACCOUNTABILITY RANKING

“UNDP received top ranking on the 2007 Global Accountability Report launched in London on 4 December by One World Trust, a leading expert in the field of global governance and accountability.
UNDP is among 30 of the world's leading organizations from intergovernmental, non-governmental, and corporate sectors assessed by One World Trust according to four widely-accepted dimensions of accountability: transparency, participation, evaluation, and complaint and response mechanisms.
Commenting on the report, UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis said, “UNDP finds the key dimensions of the Global Accountability Framework -- transparency, participation, evaluation and complaint/response management -- to be particularly useful and instructive. The Framework independently validates UNDP’s current work and sheds light on areas of possible improvement. This feedback is critical to UNDP’s continued progress in this area and adherence to the best practices of accountability.”
For UNDP’s profile and results in the 2007 Global Accountability Report, click here. The full report is available on the One World Trust website.”

Kemal Dervis, the present administrator of UNDP, is Turkish.

This report was launched By Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Administrator 1999-2005, in London.

The Introduction to the report was written by Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Administrator 1999-2005.

The section in the report on UNDP has as its only contributor Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Administrator 1999-2005.

The biography, admittedly a selected one, quotes as the only source for UNDP, “UNDP (2000) The Way Forward: The Administrator’s Business Plans 2000-2003, UNDP” written by Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Administrator 1999-2005. (or at least written on his behalf.)

This glowing endorsement of UNDP is only slightly tempered by the admission that:

“While the UNDP has a high quality policy, the organisation’s practice of handling complaints has come under strong criticism recently. Two high profile cases have emerged of UNDP personnel in West Africa and North Korea who claim to have reported malpractice and consequently lost their jobs. UNDP disputes the claims. The West Africa case is currently before the UN Joint Appeals Board, where UNDP will be bound by any ruling. The North Korea case has been taken up by a broader Independent Investigative Review (IIR) of UNDP operations in North Korea. The IIR is expected to produce a final report in early 2008. UNDP along with the other UN Funds and Programmes are in the process of harmonizing whistleblower protection policies into a common UN ethics system. The UNDP is also consolidating its existing protections under a new UNDP Ethics Office. Therefore, while the UNDP policy is of a high quality, ongoing efforts will likely be required to ensure good practice principles protecting complainants are integrated throughout operations and embedded within the organizational culture to ensure consistent treatment of complainants across the organization.”

What we have here is not a “framework (that) independently validates UNDP’s current work and sheds light on areas of possible improvement” but a piece of propaganda and a very insidious one at that.

Big Science

2008-03-06T12:07:00.003+01:00

The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.— Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister

Econometrics, the application of statistics to social science questions, is without a doubt the biggest and most respected of all the Pseudo-sciences. It is a tool remarkable for its ability to demonstrate whatever a researcher wants it to demonstrate. As a political tool it is unsurpassed for its predictive powers; competing only with astrology in this regard, but having the benefit of sounding far, far more credible (it has lots of numbers and graphs in it).

Econometrics is particularly popular with economists from the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and United Nations development agencies.
The same tool can be used to conclusively demonstrate that foreign aid “works” and will solve all the worlds’ problems as propagated by Jeffrey Sachs. It is just as effective to demonstrate that foreign aid is a waste of time and even counter-productive as William Easterly wants us to believe.
Fortunately David Roodman, a researcher at CGD, provides some excellent papers to help ordinary mortal make sense of all of this:
Through the Looking-Glass, and What OLS Found There: On Growth, Foreign Aid, and Reverse Causality - Working Paper 137, Macro Aid Effectiveness Research: A Guide for the Perplexed - Working Paper 134, Aid Project Proliferation and Absorptive Capacity - Working Paper 75.
The Center for Global Development (CGD) is a very informative and competent organisation “that works to reduce global poverty and inequality through rigorous research and active engagement with the policy community.”

In one of the Abstracts from these papers David Roodman explains the nature of the problem:

“Like many public policy debates, that over whether foreign aid works carries on in two worlds. Within the research world, it plays out in the form of papers full of technical language, formulas, and numbers. Outside, the arguments are plainer and the audience broader, but those academic studies remain a touchstone. While avoiding jargon, this paper reviews recent, contending studies of how much foreign aid affects country-level outcomes such as economic growth and school attendance rates. This particular kind of study is ambitious: it is far easier to evaluate a school-building project, say, on whether the school was built and children filled its seats than to determine whether all aid, or large subcomponents of it, made the economy grow faster. Because of its ambition, this literature has attracted attention from those hoping for clear answers on whether aid “works.” On balance, the quantitative approach to exploring grand questions about aid effectiveness, which began 40 years ago, was worth trying and is probably worth pursuing somewhat further. But the literature will probably continue to disappoint as often as it offers hope. Perhaps the biggest challenge is going beyond documenting correlations to demonstrating causation—not just that aid went hand-in-hand with economic growth, but caused it. Aid has eradicated diseases, prevented famines, and done many other good things. But given the limited and noisy data available, its effects on growth in particular probably cannot be detected.”

These are ambitious aims, and although the papers go some way in providing clarity, the author himself contributes, in his own small way, to noisy and limited data, through the all-too-common gymnastics of garnering authority through references to scientific principles. The problem with these principles is that they belong somewhere else and explain other things. The principles of physics and mathematics - as a rule - have no place in justifying social arguments.

By far the most irritating of all is the butterfly story that goes something like this; “the probability that it will rain in London is determined whether a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon forest.” One finds this statement all over the place, to justify and “explain” a surprising number of things, usually completely unrelated to either butterflies or rain. Or London and the Amazon forest.
However much I would like to rant against this stupid habit in more detail, David Roodman does not sink so low as to use it. He does nevertheless make some other statements in a similar vain, and just as insidious:

“in the intellectual revolution triggered by the twentieth century’s encounter with hard limits to human knowledge. Werner Heisenberg discovered that an observer cannot simultaneously measure the position and velocity of a particle with perfect accuracy. Kurt Gödel showed that there are true mathematical statements that are unprovable and false ones that are irrefutable.”

There is absolutely no statement, in science, or in any of the other knowledge generating systems, that unambiguously demonstrate that there are any hard limits to human knowledge (knowledge is the concern of Epistemology, by the way).
Practical considerations aside – lack of information, too much data, too much work, no funding, not particularly important or interesting – the only limit to human knowledge (if there is one) is human intelligence.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which is what is referred to above, belongs in physics, more specifically in Quantum Theory.
It goes something like this: “The probability with which we can know the velocity of a particle is inversely proportional to the probability with which we can know where it is.”
A more accurate, but more obscure, explanation is that the uncertainty in the velocity of a particle x the uncertainty in its position x its mass cannot be less than Planck’s constant.
There is a number of other more accurate but also more obscure explanations of the same phenomenon.

This phenomenon applies to moving particles only and is an inherent feature of reality rather than simply a quirk of Quantum Theory. Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein argued about this for decades. Niels Bohr won the argument.
The ability to know the exact position as well as the exact velocity of a particle would provide us with information at best, not knowledge. It does not affect our ability to know.
Who would want to know such a strange and irrelevant a thing as the exact position and exact velocity of any given particle? Why?

The same sort of argument applies to the theorems of Kurt Gödel. These are, if anything, even more abused than any other mathematical statement, probably because they sound so compelling.

Kurt Gödel made some rather important contributions to the Theory of Relativity but is best remembered, and abused, for his two Theorems in Number Theory. These are the Completeness Theorem and the Consistency Theorem.
Their very names suggest that they must be very compelling.

They are very boring. They consist largely of very long lists of numbers.
They have none of the elegance of the many other mathematical theorems that caused David Deutch, for example, to consider the power of mathematics as miraculous.
Gödel’s Theorems have no application in the real world.
There is no aspect of reality that is a bit fussy because it is incomplete, or places where we are told not to go because it is a bit inconsistent.

Reality likes to live on the edge, it is often the case that our explanations of it must skirt the very edges of completeness and contradiction, but reality itself is always both complete and consistent.

What is more Gödel’s Theorems apply only to axiomatic systems. Axiomatic systems are systems that postulate things that are so simple that they are considered to be self-evident and then build up a number of theorems from those axioms.
The two main axiomatic systems are Number Theory and Geometry.
Number Theory has several hundred axioms, but has no practical application as far as I know. Physics rely on axioms only very weakly, and mostly in that interface where it justifies using mathematics to explain physical phenomena.

Geometry has only five axioms, and a lot of practical applications. It only becomes incomplete and contradictory under very strange circumstances, such as the behaviour of space and time in or near singularities. To fully explain what happens there we can cheat and use algebra. Or something else.

The quirks of mathematics and physics should not be considered to have correlation in all of reality.

Werner Heisenberg and Kurt Gödel cannot be blamed for the weakness of Econometrics.
Econometrics itself is responsible for this. I will cop out at this point in trying to explain it in detail, there is too much of a risk of boring both myself and everybody else.
David Roodman admits to the major weakness when he claims that “Theories are merely nice stories describing reality.”

A nice story about reality is simply that – nice story.

Even the most simpleminded view is that a theory is a model of the universe, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make. A theory is only any good if it satisfies two requirements. It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

Invoking the limitations of one knowledge generating system to explain weaknesses in another or, worse, invoking a fundamental, inescapable property of unrelated real things (particles for example) to explain systemic limitations, is quite simply making excuses.
One cannot systemically determine what is knowable and unknowable in any particular system if there is no coherent underlying system to do it with and Econometrics is notable, if anything, for its incoherence. It is notable for the way that equations are arbitrarily invented and imposed on haphazardly collected data, its obsession with smoothing out inconvenient little details and its ability to see straight lines and “Ordinary Least Square” graphs when the most logical explanation is the fact that the data is scattered all over the place.

The power of mathematics may be miraculous but it does not and cannot explain everything.

It is impossible to imagine doing Biology without mathematics and without assuming at least the truth of evolution. The results of Biology in fact support evolution and confirm its truth, but the Theory of Evolution itself contains no mathematics. There is no place for it there. There may even be no place for it in Economic growth on large scales and over long periods of time. A purely descriptive explanation may do perfectly well.

A Truly Frightening Concept

2008-03-03T17:54:00.000+01:00

Recently I came across this article published by the New York Times on 05 May 2005 (quite a while ago, admittedly, but still relevant). Its pious message of hope very subtly belies a subtle arrogance, supported by a combination of naivety and stupidity, which is truly frightening.

Here is the article:

A Better Way to Fight Poverty

Kenya has never seemed to be able to live up to the potential of its rich farmland and staggeringly beautiful valleys. Its government is corrupt. Its capital, Nairobi, has become a haven for street thieves and muggers. Some 56 percent of the population lives below the poverty level. Malaria, which could be as treatable as strep throat, kills one in five children every year because the government grossly shortchanges its public health system. All in all, it is a classic case of how African governments can squander foreign aid.
But far from the noise, pollution and public and private crooks of Nairobi, the village of Sauri, practically smack on the equator, is an example of a better way to do things. It is one of two test cases for the United Nations' ambitious program to cut poverty in half by 2015. Sauri's story shows how direct aid can largely bypass governments, getting money and help straight into the hands of the people who not only need it the most, but also know what to do with it.
Anne Omolo, the head teacher of Sauri's sole primary school, arrived six years ago to find a student population that was listless, miserable and performing poorly in national exams. Some 500 children were enrolled, but attendance was low. She soon realized the problem. "They were hungry," she said.
So on her own, she started a food program. She went to the village parents who could afford it and asked them to bring in corn and beans. But almost half of the school's students were orphans whose parents had died of AIDS, and they couldn't afford to contribute food. So Mrs. Omolo and the 10 other teachers dug into their own pockets.
Eventually, they scraped together enough to feed about 100 students. It was a terrible choice. "Not everybody could eat," Mrs. Omolo said. So she fed the top two grades - seventh and eighth graders - because they would soon be taking national exams to move on to high school. Students from the younger classes went to the windows to watch their older schoolmates eat.
The result was instantaneous. Attendance among the older children shot up to 100 percent, and their test scores followed suit. Sauri went from 68th out of 353 schools in the district in 2000 to 7th in 2004.
"This year," Mrs. Omolo says, "we will be No. 1."
Part of the reason for her confidence is that this year, every schoolchild will eat. Sauri was chosen last year to be one of the United Nations' test villages - Koraro, Ethiopia, is the other - to show how poverty in Africa can be ended through programs that help villages directly. For the next five years, Sauri will receive $250,000 a year for agricultural, educational and health programs.
Much of the money will go to help farmers improve their crop yields. Farms are already looking better, thanks to people like Patrick Mutuo, a Kenyan soil expert who travels there from Kisumu four days a week to teach the farmers how to get the most out of their land.
Because of Mr. Mutuo and his band of agricultural extension workers, Monica Okech's six acres of corn, ground nuts and beans are lush and green. Mrs. Okech, a fiercely independent 50-year-old whose husband left her in Sauri years ago, has planted leguminous trees and plants throughout her farm. These plants provide natural fertilizer for what was once depleted soil. Mrs. Okech now feeds 10 villagers, and is building a chicken coop.
The United Nations plan, spearheaded by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, seeks to expand the program to the entire district, and then all over Africa. But that will happen only if rich countries make good on their promise to ratchet up foreign aid to 0.7 percent of G.D.P. by 2015. Britain, France and Germany have all put out timetables for meeting the goal. The United States, the world's richest country, has yet to do so.
In the meantime, the people in Sauri work on their farms while trying to ward off killers like malaria, hunger and AIDS - some 25 percent of them are infected with H.I.V. But all it takes is for the villagers to look across the valley at the anemic farms and dismal test scores of their neighbors to know that they are still the lucky ones.”

Carefully hidden within an essentially constructive story of hope and a positive example of a community working themselves out of a difficult situation - with some outside help – are a few remarks indicative of the “Millennium Development Jokes” (MDG’s) mentality gone completely mad. The MDG’s is the anti-poverty plan that the article alludes to (and hidden amongst the propaganda regarding this plan there are a few sensible articles pointing out what rubbish it really is).

There are countless cases of African governments squandering foreign aid.
If both the givers of that aid and the ultimate intended recipients of that aid want aid to really make a difference in Africa, it is essential that something be done about this unacceptable state of affairs.

It would help if Africans can have more democratic and accountable governments. Recent events in Kenya has shown that Kenyans (and it is true for the bulk of all Africans) do take democracy seriously. They are even prepared to fight for it.
The events in Kenya demonstrate that the process is not easy - the process can be violent and the tactics used can be unacceptable – but there is a process. Optimists believe that this process will ultimately be successful, and that democracy will emerge triumphant.
The international community can play an important role. There are many, including myself, who firmly believe that they have a moral duty to play a strong and meaningful role. And that is exactly the role they should play: work with Africans and their governments to achieve responsible governance. No more, no less.

The one thing that Africa does not need is charity. It especially does not need the type of charity, described in the NYT article above, continent-wide and specifically designed to bypass African governments.
“The United Nations plan, spearheaded by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, seeks to expand the program to the entire district, and then all over Africa,” ostensibly “an example of a better way to do things” that “shows how direct aid can largely bypass governments.”
Jeffrey Sachs is an economist with whom I do not entirely agree, but whom I still expect should know better – much, much better.

One wonders if Mr. Sachs has given adequate thought as to exactly who would keep the tens of thousands of unelected and unaccountable UN officials required for a continent-wide act of charity in check.
This is an organisation famous, not for the quality of its work, but for the quantity and quality of the charlatans, criminals and freeloaders in its midst.

A strong and decisive African leadership is necessary at a time when the continent is facing tough tests, so that Africa does not become a charity case supported entirely by the fickle goodwill of powerful countries, or worse still, become a silent and submissive UN protectorate.

Mike Sidwell of Transparency International has the following to say:

“As part of the United Nation’s (UN) budget discussions at the end of 2007, the General Assembly agreed to extend the mandate of the UN Procurement Task Force (PTF) for a further twelve months.
The PTF hit the headlines in December when the WP published an article detailing a report by the task force, which identified “multiple instances of fraud, corruption, waste and mismanagement at U.N. headquarters and peacekeeping missions, including ten significant instances of fraud and corruption with aggregate value in excess of [US] $610 million.” In addition, the report notes a “collapse of ethical culture and extensive corruption in procurement in the [Congo] Mission which has existed for years,” according to Reuters. Inga-Britt Ahlenius, who, as head of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, is responsible for the PTF, told Reuters, “We can say that we found mismanagement and fraud and corruption to an extent we didn’t really expect.”
UN spokesperson Michele Montas is quoted in AFP acknowledging that: “We are well aware that there have been problems in procurement…This is why we are moving full steam ahead with procurement reform in order to have a system that is much tighter and transparent, leaving less room for abuse.” According to Reuters, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has told reporters that he wants the UN “to be as transparent as possible in its management and procurement activities.”

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been saying things such as these ever since he came into office in January 2007.
His confident promise of a “worldwide audit of all Programmes and Funds” quickly dissipated into nothing, apparently because he was told exactly how much muck such a thing would dredge up.
He has allowed the scandal driven agency responsible for the MDG’s, UNDP’s Administrator and deputy-Administrator - respectively Kemal Dervis and Ad Melkert - to lead him up the garden path, and subvert the scope and mandate of the Ethics Office created in 2005, presumably so that these two gentlemen can continue running their crime syndicate without undue outside interference.
Very little, if any, of what Secretary General Ban Ki-moon promises should be believed, and his organization, under no circumstances whatsoever, should be allowed to subvert and by-pass African governments, for any reason whatsoever.

Make Things As Simple As Possible, And No Simpler.

2007-09-19T14:07:00.000+02:00

Following on from the previous post, it may be useful to duplicate here some of the discussion around Aid that I have extracted from the internet.
Much of the simplicity that exists in the reporting regarding the effectiveness of development aid is in fact promoted by many of the Aid Agencies themselves. Very few of them want too much scrutiny of their activities and as the following letter in The Irish Times of 21 June 2007, “Aid and Corruption in Africa”, amply demonstrates, continue with the rather unhelpful attitude that NGO’s and Aid organisations are fundamentally superior to national governments and inherently capable of providing a better service:

“Madam,
I feel compelled to respond to Hans Zomer's claim (June 15th) that in respect of aid and corruption in Africa I am, in essence, advocating "running away from the problems, abandoning the poor, and leaving the problem of corruption untouched".
This is a gross misrepresentation of my position, as anyone who has taken the time to read or listen to what I have actually been saying will be only too aware.
Mr Zomer writes that the "vast majority of corruption cases [in Africa] arise not from development aid, but in the interaction between private businesses". Not in my experience.
Where private business in Africa is concerned, most corruption takes the form of having to pay kickbacks, not to other companies but to a myriad of local and central government officials.
From his initial false premise, Mr Zomer goes on to argue for "donor countries and developing countries to work together to address both 'supply' and 'demand' sides of corruption". This is about as hopelessly naïve as it is possible to get.
Does he not realise that many of the governments that he suggests as partners in a battle against corruption are themselves profoundly corrupt? If he doesn't then, given his position as Director of Dóchas, he should. Sending a thief to catch a thief makes for a handy cliché but it doesn't quite work as a strategy in real life, and certainly not in the real life of Africa.
Some of the most corrupt regimes on that continent are being entrusted with large amounts of aid and only a percentage of this is finding its way to those of their citizens who are most in need. This is a fact.
It is these governments that concern me - more precisely, I am concerned about donors filtering aid through them when it is clear that the bulk of them have no interest whatsoever in the lives of their own people. Government to government aid, when the governments involved are either institutionally corrupt or have been brutalising their people, is of absolutely no value to those who need our aid most.
What I have been advocating for over 25 years is that, instead of allowing aid to be misappropriated and used to prop up corrupt regimes, wherever possible it should be filtered directly through missionaries and effective NGO’s and UN agencies. We have also argued that Western governments should adopt an entrepreneurial approach, acting as project managers to deliver the aid themselves so that greedy despots will not get their hands on the billions of taxpayers' funds.
Contrary to Mr Zomer's outrageous claim, I am in fact lobbying for maximum accountability so that we can ensure that aid is of maximum benefit to those who most require it. This should be of at least some concern to all of us.
Yours, etc,
John O'Shea, Goal, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.”

This letter itself makes a number of “false premises” and is itself “about as hopelessly naïve as it is possible to get.”
Corruption exits everywhere where there are large amounts of money available and few, if any controls over how it is spent. In other words pretty much the sort of environment in which NGO’s function.
In reality there are very few realistic alternatives other than for "donor countries and developing countries to work together to address both 'supply' and 'demand' sides of corruption."
Giving money directly to NGO’s, even in the rare instances that these NGO’s then do something truly helpful with it, invariably end up with the situation where these organisations then do what local governments are supposed to do, thus leaving these governments even less accountable to their people and more inclined to be corrupt.
The author claims that he is “concerned about donors filtering aid through (governments) when it is clear that the bulk of them have no interest whatsoever in the lives of their own people.”
It is equally true that the bulk of NGO’s likewise, have no interest whatsoever in the lives of these people. NGO’s have amply demonstrated over the last decades their own obsession with donors and with where their funds come from. This letter gives the impression that the author, if anything, simply resents having to compete with governments for a share of donor funds.
He claims that “wherever possible (funds) should be filtered directly through missionaries and effective NGO’s and UN agencies.”
The job of missionaries, who already have an abysmal record in Africa over the last three centuries, is not development. It is ultimately about the promotion of their own view of the world and of creating new converts. There is no need for donors to fund this.
Goal, the organisation that the author represents, is emphatically not an effective NGO. It is impossible to find any independent, rigorous and effective evaluations of what this organisation does and how it spends its funds. This organisation is just as inclined as the most corrupt government to cover up its failures and to misrepresent itself. There are in fact very, very few truly effective NGO’s. The history of Aid over the last three decades is that of an unmitigated failure. Who perpetuated this failure?
There are even fewer effective UN agencies. The UN at best occasionally gets simple things more or less right, such as distributing food. In the much more complicated development challenges, protecting human rights and representing the concerns of the vulnerable, they have failed hopelessly. Not even the most corrupt government in the world has yet achieved the same levels of unaccountability, fraud, waste and mendacity as the average UN agency. The bulk of UN officials arrive at work every day with one overriding concern. This concern is “How much money can I steal today?”
Talk about sending a thief to catch a thief.
Is Mr. O’Shea truly trying to convince the world that his motley collection of volunteers are doing, or could potentially do, more than national governments can?
There are many reasons why national governments often do not provide the services that they are supposed to provide. It is important to discuss these failures, important also to include these governments in these discussions. There are no simplistic solutions.
The world could conceivable do without the presence of NGO’s, it may arguably be a better world in many respects without them.
It is inconceivable to imagine a world without national governments.
Taking taxpayer money and giving it to NGO’s to do in foreign lands what governments there are supposed to be doing - even if these NGO’s end up actually doing something - is but a subtle form of colonialism.
Aid can only achieve “maximum accountability” and be of the “maximum benefit to those who most require it” when those recipients have an effective say over when, how and where it is spent. The most effective way in which people can express these desires are through their own institutions and their own governments. It is not helpful when international organisations arrive, often uninvited, to overwhelm and even destroy these institutions. Governments can only become accountable to their citizens when these governments rely upon its people for their vote, their labour and their taxes in order to provide basic services. It is often when Aid, through NGO’s, remove this impetuous to demand and thus the government need to provide basic services, that governments become even more corrupt and even more unaccountable.

The most coherent response to Mr. O’Shea’s argument is in fact on the internet already in “The Business of Aid: Making sure aid is effective” by Paul Cullen in The Irish Times of 15 November 2005 (as copied from Partners Ireland eForum 2005):
“Making sure aid is effective not so simple. The business of aid - how they spend it: Between now and 2012 Ireland will give 8 billion to the developing world, writes Paul Cullen As part of the Government's commitment to increase aid to UN target levels, spending will grow by massive increments over the next decade - starting with an increase of over 150 million next year and a similar rise in 2007. Nothing like this increase in Government spending has been seen before in any area but, remarkably, the decision to reach the target of 0.7 per cent of GNP has the support of all political parties and the approval, albeit grudging, of the Department of Finance. Increases of this magnitude throw up all sorts of challenges for those spending the money. There is no doubt that developing countries, with their chronic problems of poverty are in massive need of assistance, but how can we be sure that Irish aid will be effective? Or that it will get to the people who need it most? We may need to make changes to other areas of Government and EU policy if we are to get the greatest "bang for our buck" from development aid. Is there much point, for example, in throwing millions of euros in support at African farmers if at the same time the EU is blocking the exports of these same farmers? And shouldn't we be making more efforts to see whether Irish aid actually works, by reducing poverty in the countries and districts on which it is focused. According to Hans Zomer of Dóchas, the umbrella body for development NGO’s, accounting for where the money goes in aid and finding out whether it has been well spent is "the next big thing". "All NGO’s have to ensure that they can show clearly the impact the work they support has had," says Trócaire's head of communications Eamon Meehan. "This is an area we want to work on." The main international body for assessing the quality of aid is the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD. In 1999, the committee gave Ireland's aid programme a positive write-up, though it suggested room for improvement in several areas. Its 2003 report was glowing; it said the programme "distinguished itself by its sharp focus on poverty reduction and its commitment to partnership principles". However, these reports are essentially peer reviews by other members of the aid donors' "club" rather than true external audits; they are also limited in their scope. Meanwhile, the work of the individual aid agencies is not generally subject to any external assessment by the OECD committee or any other body. The agencies aren't shy about telling us of their good works, but there is remarkably little scrutiny of their effectiveness. As in other areas, fashions come and go in the aid business. In the 1960s, when big infrastructural projects were all the rage, Western governments pumped billions of dollars into the construction of dams, roads and factories in some of the world's poorest countries. Much of the money was siphoned off by corrupt leaders and their bureaucracies, and much of what was actually built never worked. "In the past, aid was given as political handouts to friends and there wasn't much thought given to how it was used or where it went. Today, though, it's a more professional enterprise," says Meehan. These days, paternalistic models of aid rooted in colonial pasts have been replaced by more talk of partnership with developing countries. "It's true you need to build schools, but what use is a school without salaries for the teachers to work in them?" asks Zomer. The aid business went back to the drawing board, and came up with new ideas. Instead of supporting projects, the emphasis switched to funding for specific sectors, such as health or education. Development Co-operation Ireland, the State's aid programme, now provides a mix of these different types of supports, including budgetary support for governments, which has proved so controversial in Uganda. "We've learned that development is about people, helping them to lead productive lives," says Zomer. "By making sure they don't get sick, or that they get an education or can trade, we're making a real difference." There are almost as many ideas about how money should be spent as there are aid agencies. On the one hand, agencies like Goal argue for "nuts and bolts" expenditure targeted directly on the poorest sections of the community; they argue this is the best way of getting aid to those who need it without leakage along the way. Governments, responsible for much larger budgets, have to take a wider view and much of their support is channelled through local administrations in the developing world. Then there are organisations, for example Trócaire, which stress the need for consciousness-raising at home and in the developing world, and devote considerable resources to development education. Goal's founder John O'Shea has argued trenchantly that aid money should be given for disbursement to aid agencies and missionaries, which he characterises as lean and efficient compared to bureaucratic State funders. Even other agencies are loath to agree, however. Zomer describes this assertion as simplistic, arguing that states, with their larger budgets, can do things that small groups are unable to. The extra funding available has helped agencies plan further into the future. In the past, problems arose when funding was withdrawn suddenly, leaving the recipient high and dry and quite disillusioned. Now most of the larger agencies receive an annual block grant from Development Co-operation Ireland, payable for three years. A second such programme, which is expected to last five years, is being negotiated at present. New fundraising techniques, such as child sponsorship and face-to-face fundraising ("chugging") also provide the agencies with a more dependable stream of income than the annual or once-off appeal. Most of the aid agencies publish figures showing how much of their income goes on assistance to the poor, and how much is consumed by administration costs. Concern, for example, says it spends 1 per cent of income on management and administration (although another 12.4 per cent goes on fundraising). These figures need to be treated with caution, however. Staff and other significant costs incurred at home are frequently assigned to the field, thereby lowering the true cost of administration. Many agencies, for example, regularly pay for journalists to travel on assignment to developing countries, yet their costs are not listed separately in the annual accounts. In any case, Zomer says the issue of administration costs is a "red herring". "If you had 1 million to give, would you hand it to the person who would do the best work with it, or to someone claiming to have the lowest administration costs? If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Why do people assume NGO’s will work for free and still do a good job? "The days when people thought that anyone with a good heart would do a good job are surely over." He points to the recent tsunami as an example: "There we had loads of stupid ideas where people wanted to send stuff without asking what was needed. It might come from a good heart, but a good heart is not enough." Disasters pose a particular conundrum for the agencies. They might be good for raising money, but in reality there is often little the Government or medium-sized Irish agencies can do in an emergency situation beyond passing on money to those who are in a position to help. Earthquake survivors, for example, need sniffer dogs, helicopters and heavy moving equipment, and Ireland is unlikely ever to be able to supply these to far-flung places. Irish missionaries were providing assistance in Africa long before the Government started its aid programme or aid agencies came into being. Much of this help came from the initiatives of individual priests, brothers or nuns, funded by their home parishes or orders. Until recently, it was assumed that this tradition was dying out, due to the increasing age of missionaries and a lack of new vocations. Now, however, the thinking is that local communities will take up the baton from missionaries, helped by continuing support from Ireland. The Irish Missionary Resource Service, set up in 2004, now handles funding applications from 82 different religious congregations; last year it got a block grant of 12 million from Development Co-operation Ireland. "Up to now, there was funding for 'Sr Mary in Tanzania' or 'Fr Dan in Kenya'. Now we've brought all this work together and we're aiming to make a sustained impact over time," says Séamus O'Gorman of the service. This year, funding is being provided for over 630 missionaries. With dozens of donor countries and thousands of aid agencies, there is a lot of duplication in the business of helping the poor. Doubling up is especially problematic in emergencies, but it also arises in development. A few years ago, Tanzania, exhausted and tied up by the constant round of visitors from the West, imposed a six-month moratorium on aid visits. To alleviate this problem, Ireland often teams up with like-minded donors - the UK, Holland and some of the Scandinavian countries. Channelling all our aid centrally through the EU might seem desirable, but the EU's aid programme is seen as inefficient, wasteful and even corrupt.

Heads I win, Tails You Loose Part 1

2007-09-19T13:32:00.000+02:00

It is perhaps inevitable, with the change of leadership at the United Nations, that we will now be bombarded by a series of explanations, justifications and excuses from the previous management.
It may be up to academics and other researchers to completely analyze the full extent of UN dysfunction, lack of management accountability and corruption within this organization over the last decade and a half. I am convinced that it will not become “a footnote to history” as Kofi Annan so confidently asserted on BBC shortly before stepping down as Secretary General. It may well become the defining feature of the United Nations during this time that will be remembered by future generations.
Mark Malloch Brown, clearly complicit in the failure of the United Nations system, has already embarked on his own justifications in the following
"Holmes Lecture: Can the U.N. be Reformed?" to the annual meeting of ACUNS (Academic Council on the U.N. System) on 7 June 2007
It contains the usual mixture of valid argument, the confusion between real and imagined political problems and constraints, excuses for operational failures, avoiding responsibility for these failures and claims of successes where none exist.
The problems at the United Nations are varied and complex.
It may be useful to very briefly compare the United Nations today with the failure of its predecessor, the “League of Nations.”
The “League of Nations” failed politically for a number reasons, and only partially because the United States of America was not a member. Although not a member, this country was very active in the organization behind the scenes. The “League of Nations” was in many ways a good idea, perhaps before its time, and failed because its member states refused to make use of the platform it provided for the peaceful resolution of the challenges of the day.
Notwithstanding this failure, the “League of Nations” was nevertheless by all accounts administratively, bureaucratically and operationally a well-run and efficient organization that employed competent and professional staff.
The same cannot be said about the United Nations. In spite of many difficulties, its members largely seem to consider it a useful and relevant organization, as can be seen in the fact that no country has yet opted to relinquish its membership.
But, far from being a well-run and efficient organization, it is beset with management problems, unaccountability on a fantastic scale and a total disregard for the member states, its staff and its beneficiaries, burdened with unprofessional, incompetent and self-serving officials on many levels, an arena for waste and fraud on an unbelievable scale.
The starting point for UN reform is in fact a thorough housecleaning exercise to rid the organization of the charlatans, the crooks, the time servers and assorted hangers-on that dominate every aspect of the organization.
Only then can some headway be made to tackle the far more complex and intractable challenges that face the United Nations on a political level.
The name “United Nations” is in fact a bit of a misnomer. Its members are far from “united.” It is perhaps better described as a “loose and mainly acrimonious association of superpowers, ex-superpowers, wannabe-superpowers, run-of-the-mill countries, wannabe countries as well as a number of non-state actors, some alarmingly idealistic, some armed and rather nasty.”
It is nevertheless the only platform for resolving the challenges of today, challenges that are often somewhat complex and it is only an organization with a professional and competent management that can get this motley collection of countries to co-operate and to put into practice the issues on which they do occasionally agree.
Often it is UNDP that have to put these agreements into practice, and more often than not it is UNDP that fail to do so, frequently with devastating affects to those at the receiving end of these failures.
It is purely a management failure; there are no political excuses for employing crooks and criminals, no political excuses for the lack of oversight, no political excuses for the organization not following its own internal rules and regulations, no political excuses why criminals pointed out and named remain within the organization, no political excuses for the self-serving barrage of lies, propaganda and spin that issues from the organization.
Mark Malloch Brown’s speech do deserve some comment, the easiest way to do it is by copying it in its entirety, interjecting comments here and there as required.

Here it is:

UN Secretary-Generals are infamous for their reform initiatives. Each new Secretary-General has paraded plans to change the organization, and follow-on initiatives have continuously cascaded down from his 38th floor office, so that by the end of a term it seems a Secretary-General must be reforming his own reforms.
Kofi Annan was no exception. As a career UN manager he profoundly believed in the need. He introduced three major waves of reform: at the beginning of his term, when he was re-elected for a second term, and then again in his last two years. I was particularly involved in that last round.
In between, there was a steady trickle of lesser proposals. Across the road in the UN funds and programs, such as UNDP where I was Administrator for six years, or at the agencies in Geneva, Rome, and elsewhere, we, the different chiefs, also had reform-prolix. We were all at it.
Probably, the UN is the rare organization where the internal talk seemed to be more about reform than sex. And staff and delegates were largely fed up with it, reform, that is. Each new initiative led to greater levels of cynicism and reform-fatigue. It was often dismissed as being about politics, not real change.
The critics were half-right. UN reform is about politics in the sense that it is a response to the frustration of governments and the UN’s other stakeholders and partners that our capacity to get results seemed so impaired. People wanted more from us.
(Absolutely. Such as better and more accountable management in operational activities. This has nothing to do with politics. We were and still are disappointed in this.)
Unable to deliver, we kept on trying to fix the machine. It became an occupational obsession. And for nobody more than a Secretary-General, who, despite his elevated status, had less management power than many of his underlings. I had certainly much greater management authority at UNDP. There, a relatively harmonious board had demanded results but given me the space and the say over budgets, staffing, and priorities to achieve them. And at UNDP reform was better than sex! Staff had seen it work and were for the most part, themselves enthusiastic agents of change. By contrast, the UN was a political bog. Almost nothing moved.
The last Annan reforms at the UN came after the Oil-for-Food scandal. This sequence posed the reform issue particularly sharply, in that was this just about politics. Were the proposals we made, after Paul Volcker reported, an attempt to deflect the allegations of wrong-doing by changing the conversation and talking about reforms or were they a serious effort to fix something? The American right wing, who led the charge calling for the resignation of Kofi Annan and fundamental reform of a corrupt institution, were initially wrong-footed by our calls for reform starting in early 2005. How could they not support these calls.
To their chagrin Volcker did not find a particularly corrupt organization. Only a small handful of UN officials seemed to have been guilty of taking bribes or other unethical behavior.
(Even in the most corrupt business or government it is always only a small handful of officials who take bribes or indulge in unethical behaviour. That is the nature of corruption. Corruption cannot work if everybody does it. Corruption, however, do get out of hand when staff in general are pressured to remain quiet about it and when management make excuses for it. A very typical excuse, and perhaps the poorest excuse, is the claim that only a small handful of officials are guilty of taking bribes or other unethical behaviour.)
Even one case of corruption is too much but it was so much less than the UN’s fevered critics claimed. Billions of dollars of oil revenue appeared to have been directed honestly towards Iraq’s immediate needs, which was the purpose of the program.
(Yes, but the transaction costs were much higher than it should have been, by perhaps as much as 20%. That is the corruption. No business or government accused of corruption has yet made the excuse that it nevertheless also do honestly what it is supposed to do, and many corrupt businesses, such as for example, some oil companies, are also very efficient in what they are supposed to do. It is not an acceptable excuse and the United Nations should not use it.)
The real corruption to a fair-minded reader of the Volcker reports was not that of the UN. The corruption was between companies which were buying Iraq’s oil and selling the country goods and the Iraqi government which organized an elaborate kickback scheme with the companies that allowed monies to be skimmed off. And the principal blame for this probably should be laid at the door of the governments that either condoned or turned a blind eye to these corporate crimes. That was the big scandal.
(Although not as foolish as to put it into exactly those words, this perspective comes dangerously close to the argument put forth by Mr. Brown’s subordinate at UNDP, Erick de Mul, who when faced with the disappearance of funds from a project dismissed concerns with “(UNDP’s) responsibility is limited to the formulation and financing of the project.” The Oil-for-Food Programme was formulated and financed through the UN. The UN was accountable as to how the funds were spent. It was the responsibility of the UN to inform on countries and companies that allowed monies to be skimmed of. The UN did not do so. The UN either condoned or turned a blind eye to the governments that either condoned or turned a blind eye to these corporate crimes. That is the big scandal.)
The UN’s fault lay elsewhere. It was not corrupt but incompetent. (A form of corruption.) Its failures were supervisory and operational. (A form of corruption.) There was inadequate auditing and in many cases little-to-no attempt to rectify the faults that were found in audit. (A form of corruption.) The muddled lines of responsibility and accountability went all the way to the top.
(A form of corruption. Which top is referred to here? The top such as the Secretary General and the Heads of Agencies?)
Where I was, at UNDP, as disappointing was the way the Oil-for-Food Program had become a major income source for cash-strapped parts of the UN system that had no business being in Iraq in the first place. (A form of corruption.) I found that, because of arcane administrative rules requiring us to find another UN entity actually to implement operationally our program in Iraq, UNDP were using a UN Secretariat department whose traditional work was drafting reports and servicing conferences to rehabilitate the electricity system in the Kurdish parts of northern Iraq. Inevitably, little had happened. The lights and power were still off.
I put a stop to this and had UNDP take direct charge under a couple of our strongest field managers. We planted them on site and results quickly showed.
Another UN agency eager to grab a share of the action proposed to build a chalk factory to service the country’s schools, rather than allowing Iraq to import chalk. Years later having failed to manufacture chalk that could withstand contact with a blackboard, the factory was closed. How school children and their teachers got by in the meantime is not clear.
(These examples only work if one ignores UNDP’s own very long list of failures, a very small selection of which is reported on by Matthew Lee on www.innercitypress.com.)
For a manager confronted with such examples, reform becomes not politics or spin but, a necessity and a deeply-held conviction. You feel ready to throw yourself against a wall as many times as it takes and however bruising, in the hope of breaking through and moving reform forward. The world surely could not afford a dysfunctional United Nations and conscience did not allow any good manager to preside idly for long over such a poorly functioning system. Yet the honest judgment on accumulated decades of these efforts is that, while different bits of the UN system have been able to move ahead and improve performance, as a whole the gap between capacity and demand is increasing. The world wants more of the UN, and it is only able to deliver less. (or nothing at all.)
A second part of the judgment is that reform led by managers alone is a tall order.
(Therefore it may be useful to listen to concerned staff, close observers and beneficiaries instead of punishing them.)
Governments need to be on board, and powerful ones need to lead. The reforms of 2005 were based on proposals by Kofi Annan to governments that drew on several panels he had commissioned. These were screened and debated by UN diplomats and made the basis of the draft Summit Declaration in the run-up to the Heads of Government meeting at the UN in September 2005.
While a number of reforms covering peace-building, human rights, development, humanitarian relief, and management made it through the labored preparatory process of drafting committees by the eve of the Summit, the writing was on the wall. Frustrated diplomats still had more than a hundred brackets, as they call them, in the text. That is, language they had not agreed to. With impeccable timing the secretariat produced a compromise text the day before the summit. Key ambassadors were called during the morning in a carefully orchestrated sequence, which included me calling Condi Rice’s delegation, already ensconced at the Waldorf, to by-pass the irascible US ambassador John Bolton. This effort culminated in a lunchtime release of the text. Ambassadors, alarmed at the imminent arrival of their Presidents without a text to show them, fell into line. It was easy to defer to Kofi Annan’s compromise. So there was a summit and a declaration.
But as soon as the Presidents were gone, battle was joined again. Impassioned divisions between North and South reopened: the North wanted more on security, including an unambiguous definition of terrorism; the South wanted more on development, choosing to treat the huge aid pledges made at Gleneagles in preparation for the Summit as old news and less important than having a few extra officials to service UN meetings on development. On management reform, even more damagingly, developing countries chose to view a stronger
Secretary-General with greater authority but also greater accountability as a plot to increase American and Western control over the organization.
The series of reforms to fix the basics that I, my predecessor Louise Frechette and a dedicated group of UN officials had carefully crafted, with the help of McKinsey’s senior partner Rajat Gupta and his team, proposed personnel reforms to allow mobility and better quality of staff; a more rational budget process, together with flexibility so that every single post was not approved by a committee of 192 member states; topping up field salaries and contract terms to overcome high vacancy rates and rapid staff turnover in our peacekeeping operations; (Throwing money at a problem hardly ever manages to solve that problem. High vacancy rates have nothing to do with the already obscenely generous UN salaries. All it has done is attract parasites and freeloaders sitting around not doing much more than gloat on their fantastically unrealistic terms of employment.) a new outside audit committee to ensure real compliance in correcting financial control problems; and proper terms of reference for the Deputy Secretary-General to make him or her a real chief operating officer for this sprawling under-managed organization. Pretty much all of the management reforms, despite the summit leaders’ endorsement either went down in flames at once or through less dramatic, but no less lethal, attrition over time. What was let through was hollow and silly. Our proposals had been were blocked by diplomats who cared little about management but a lot about politics.
Despite the finding of Volcker that the Secretary-General and his Deputy did not know who was in charge of Oil-for-Food, I served my time as Deputy without a terms of reference because the Secretary-General and I concluded it would be too controversial to commit anything to paper. It would be opposed on principle as an attempted Western coup. More power for a British deputy would mean less power for an African Secretary-General. In truth, however, nothing disempowers a chief more than having no deputy with clearly delegated responsibilities.
The political stubbornness was management folly.
(This requires some clarification. The Secretary General employs, unilaterally and without transparency his old friend as a new deputy without any terms of reference, to resolve, amongst other things, the un-transparent, unilateral employment of friends as senior staff without terms of reference?)
There was, though, provocation. Paul Volcker himself, as an American chair of the Oil-for-Food investigation, was seen by many ambassadors to be adding fuel to trumped-up Washington charges. Therefore, much of the membership had already made its mind up about his report before it was received. It was dead on arrival. Few wanted to be seen as embracing reform as a consequence of an American neoconservative witch hunt against Kofi Annan and the UN.
This was to miss Paul Volcker’s own disquiet with the allegations and the political name-calling. His calm investigation into the facts took the air out of the five congressional investigations and the almost daily tirades of Fox News and the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. His investigations established the truth and arguably saved the UN. But his argument about thenecessity of major management reform was lost in the hubbub.
The greater provocation came, though, from America’s accidental ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. He had arrived in July 2005 banished from the State Department, but needing a prominent position, with a well-advertised anti-UN record. The Wall Street Journal, in trumpeting his credentials, several times in editorials referred to my imprudent partial endorsement.
Seeking a silver lining, I had told them that if he became a champion of reforms at the UN, he would be better placed than anyone else to sell them to Washington. No one would suspect him of going soft on the UN.
By July when he arrived, the drumbeat of reform was loud in both New York, as the delegates ploughed on with their negotiations of a summit reform text. Indeed, my main fear was that Bolton might try to trump our proposals with something even more far-reaching and therefore less likely to succeed. However, he adopted our proposals without ever quite saying so.
It was quickly evident he did not have the knowledge of management in general or the workings of the UN in particular to come up with anything of his own. Nor was it ever clear whether his real intent was to reform or wreck the UN.
With antagonism towards John Bolton running high, the consent of the world leaders was a hollow victory. As soon as they had left New York, the ambassadors fell on each other again, full of recrimination and score-settling. Dumisani Kumalo, who was South Africa’s ambassador and chairman of the G-77, led the developing countries in their growing opposition to any more talk of Western reforms. Bolton threatened to block the new two years’ budget, due to start in January 2006, to force agreement to the reforms. Developing country counterparts, who seemed almost as keen to provoke a shutdown, convinced themselves that closing down the UN would backfire on him in the same way Newt Gingrich’s similar budgetary action, closing down the American Federal Government, had boomeranged a decade earlier in Washington. Annan and I considered this a real conceit. Many, not just on the right, would have seen the UN’s shuttered headquarters on Manhattan’s First Avenue as a victory and the world was unlikely to launch into a crisis as a result. The field operations, which by contrast would have been quickly missed because they kept the peace and saved lives, would for an odd budgetary quirk have carried on much as before. So, instead we brokered a deal to put the budget on a six-month installment while negotiations on reform acrimoniously continued.
The mood just got worse. By the middle of 2006, the reformers essentially threw in the towel. The budget cap was lifted and face was saved with a few positive comments by all sides, including pious comments from Dumisani Kumalo about the G-77’s commitment to reform. Then, it was back to business as dysfunctional usual.
A couple of important new institutions had been squeezed through: the Human Rights Council and the Peacebuilding Commission. To have failed to follow through on the Leaders’ Summit commitment to those two institutions would have been too public an act of insubordination by ambassadors to their political masters. Other than that, though, reform was now reduced to what we could press through under our limited executive powers. Where later inter-governmental approval was necessary, we gambled on the inter-governmental mood improving. We focused on personnel reform. First, we tried to tackle a running sore of the UN, the backroom deals that that surrounded the top appointments. We began to publish short lists of candidates for the most senior jobs, along with job descriptions and criteria for the selection. We also reached out widely to governments but also NGOs for candidates, as well as conducting our own parallel search efforts. We began to use headhunters.
This was quickly noticed. At the same time as the World Bank Board was loyally rubberstamping the closed selection by the White House of Paul Wolfowitz, the Defense Department deputy and neo-conservative architect of the Iraq War a real development professional Kemal Dervis, a Turkish economist and governmental reformer with decades of developmental experience, emerged from one of the first of these processes as the new head of UNDP. The contrast (What contrast? Surely you mean the similarities?) could not have been more marked.
(A worthwhile sentiment but a bit pointless if UNDP then continues as wasteful, unaccountable, corrupt and inefficient as it had been under Mark Malloch Brown. The only real difference between Kemal Dervis and Mark Malloch Brown is the fact that Mr. Dervis, rather than making a fool of himself by himself, prefers to make use of his lapdog, the failed Dutch politician, Ad Melkert to make inappropriate and offensive public statements.)
Soon, we had similarly good outcomes for, among others, the selection of the new High Commissioner for Refugees, the Under Secretary-Generals for Oversight (but still no oversight) and children in armed conflict and the head of the UNEP, among others.
We also put senior people onto a much more accountable contract, as they had become almost impossible to remove. We added a clause reminding them that they served at the pleasure of the Secretary-General and that he reserved the right to remove them with three months’ notice.
Reflecting on our rocky path, I had concluded by the middle of 2006 that, while a Secretary-General could drive reform with smart proposals that countries could rally around in a way they never would if an individual country proposed them, there was no alternative to a real commitment by countries to a better UN. If they remained outside, lobbing grenades at reform, we could not progress.
By mid 2006, I had had enough. My frustration went much deeper than John Bolton. It seemed to me that the United States had to be the indispensable partner in UN reform. It was the architect of the institution and no major innovations had occurred without its sponsorship and, usually, leadership. Perversely, although its motives and positions often evoked the most suspicion and hostility, countries liked to be able to fall in with the United States. They deferred to American leadership and had done so repeatedly over sixty years. The speed with which the new US Ambassador Zal Khalilzad has been able to turn around the mood in New York indicates this. Diplomats want to get on with America.
The US, long before John Bolton or the Bush Administration, had treated its UN role as a casual seigniorial right, rather than as a unique diplomatic authority to be cultivated and invested in. The United States would use the UN when it suited it, but did little or nothing to speak up for it or support it in between. And when the UN was not convenient, it was equally casually discarded. I would grumble that we were like a menu from which the US ordered sparingly on a la carte basis. There was no recognition that, to make the UN function effectively, it was necessary to buy all the courses, we were a prix fix deal!
By the early summer of 2006, with reform failing, it seemed the time had come to try to appeal directly to the American people. A forum presented itself in a conference on US foreign policy by the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress. While the speakers were bi-partisan, the organizers had a distinct Democratic Party hue. But I chose not to wait for a more neutral forum. The speech, or at least the speaker, could not wait.
Carefully with no mention of Bolton and no direct criticism of President Bush, I laid out the complaint: the US took the UN for granted. Presidents and their administrations had lost the habit of standing up for the UN against its critics and of educating Americans in the UN’s usefulness to American foreign policy objectives.
(Maybe it would have been more constructive and useful to restrict this attack to the present US administration and specific representatives of the American government rather than the American people. To be anti-American these days is nothing original. Anybody with half a brain, including a very large percentage of the American population, even the Fox-news-watching-middle-Americans, have many serious concerns about the present American administration.)
The location, the speaker, and the theme were too much for Bolton, who was quickly at his microphone outside the Security Council. He demanded that the Secretary-General disown it and that I apologize. Neither happened, and indeed in his closing weeks in office Kofi Annan gave a similar speech from the Truman Library where he was able to gently compare American leadership then and now. What Bolton’s outburst did do, however, was allow my speech to become defining in terms of the US-UN relationship. In perhaps the best barometer of impact, the
Bolton-Malloch Brown spat it made it onto Jon Stewart Daily Show, where Bolton was portrayed as a walrus, and was debated in editorials and blogs across the country.
A lot of Americans and others around the world had clearly hankered for some kind of correction to the hectoring and bullying the United Nations had suffered at the hands of its US critics. White House behavior that had allowed the attacks to proceed largely unchallenged, even as it turned to the UN for vital strategic assistance in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, was too much for many fair-minded people to stomach.
(Any and all countries, and their citizens, that are members of the UN, have the right to be critical of the UN, even if they are then accused of hectoring and bullying, AND the right to simultaneously turn to it for vital strategic assistance. That is why the United Nations was created; for the benefit of its member states NOT for the benefit of the United Nations.)
In an unanticipated reaction, the professionals in the State Department and elsewhere in Washington, while irritated at having to navigate yet another small tsunami in a fraught relationship, were inclined to discount my words as an inevitable corrective in the light of the US right’s assault. What could a pro-American senior UN official do to preserve his perceived objectivity with other states, went their thinking. For them, the incident was further evidence that Bolton must be doing terrible damage to so provoke a friend of America!
The underlying point that my speech sought to confront, though, was that reform in the UN was impossible without the United States. Snarling from the sidelines was a deeply damaging substitute for honest engagement. The United States had to patiently build a widening coalition of the like-minded if it was to press through the changes the organization so badly needed. In 1945, when the US led, the UN was established, an astonishing diplomatic achievement by any standard.
The question for the future is, how reform will be again set up for real action? A new Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, is following the path of his predecessors and proposing to move bits and pieces of the structure around. Nothing yet indicates that he understands the scale of change required. It is easy to imagine reform slumping into a long period of tinkering with the UN machinery in a way that allows the gap to increase between performance and growing need.
Events are, however, likely to bring matters to a head. First, that growing gap between UN performance and the scale of global problems will prompt a renewal of calls to address UN weakness more systematically. When politicians reach for a solution for climate change or a war and cannot find it, this absence will build the case for a better UN. And if the direction of global events leads, as it inevitably must, to more such demands on the UN, the call for reform is likely to grow steadily. In that sense, a fresh try at reform remains inevitable and the question remains “when”, not “if”.
Real reforms will require major concessions from powerful and weak countries alike. The inter-governmental gridlock between the big contributors and the rest of the membership concerning governance and voting is the core dysfunction. To overcome it, both sides would have to rise above their own current sense of entrenched rights and privileges and find a grand bargain to allow a new more realistic governance model for the UN.
That may take a crisis. Indeed, if 1945 created a moment of malleability and vision because of war, there sadly may need to be some similar spur – environmental catastrophe, terrorist attack, global recession, a major breakdown of peace. One wishes for none of them, but it may be that we only see the necessary galvanization of reform when such a crisis is viewed as having been brought about in some major part by the absence of the international means to manage it.
So reform is likely to move, from a UN management worthily trying to keep up with what it is asked to do, to a real restructuring. This may occur, however, only in the aftermath of events that bring countries to the table ready finally to do business and cut a new deal on the UN.
That said, some kind of perfect storm where events drive reform seems likely sooner rather than later.
I had thought early in 2005 that we might at the September summit reach something significant, even if short of that. Kofi Annan and I both used the term “a San Francisco Moment” for what we hoped would be some kind of renewing of vows by member states to the organization. Yet what seemed the strong pillars for such a recommitment – fighting poverty, addressing security, and promoting human rights and democracy – were not enough to lift us above the fray between the US and its critics.
(The trajectory of the United Nations, rather than heading for some sort of “San Francisco Moment,” seem to be more consistent with the collapse of other abusive, corrupt and outmoded systems such as Soviet Union style Communism and Apartheid, both of which collapsed under the combined weight of their own internal contradictions and external circumstances out of their control. In these systems reform was likewise an ongoing obsession, until dynamics, driven by and large by ordinary people, forced them into the rubbish bin of history where they belong.)
Understanding what real reform entails may explain why it seems delegates will fall on almost any excuse not to discuss it. Scrapping in the committee rooms and not grasping the reform nettle can look like a good option for diplomats scared of being drawn into major concessions of rights and privileges that have been the bread and butter of member state representatives.
The bar is so high for UN reform because the most powerful and the weakest member states both need to give ground in order to make additional space for the emerging new powers. A Britain or France may need to move aside to make room for India or Brazil. But, equally, small countries will have to allow these same new regional powers a preferred status. The pretence of equality will recede further.
The veto rights of the US, China, Russia, Britain, and France have become the outward symbol of a system still skewed towards the victors of 1945. An irreverent Italian ambassador in New York, when challenging the notion that Germany and Japan might now get permanent seats on the Security Council but not Italy, wondered why, given that the privilege was now apparently being extended from those who won to those who lost in 1945.
In 2005 and 2006, two reform options were considered: the first was to add new permanent members but without, it was concluded, the veto. The candidates would be Japan, Germany, Brazil, India and two undetermined countries from Africa. The second option was to create an intermediate class of membership where countries would be elected to six-year renewable terms rather than being given permanent membership. It was hoped this would lead to greater accountability and be more democratic than permanent membership.
Both options fell short probably of the overall change required. This was largely because of a little-challenged assumption that the current P-5 would never give up the privileged terms of
their own membership. However, the same was said about the European Union, where similarly Britain and others clung onto the veto until it threatened to invalidate the institution as a whole.
There comes a moment in diplomatic calculation, when preserving power inside an organization is more than offset by the consequent loss of that organization’s own power. What is the privilege worth if it is power in an increasingly powerless organisation. Holding more of less needs to be weighed against holding less of more. That negotiator’s tipping-point will be arrived at in the UN, regrettably only perhaps when it is in the throes of crisis and its legitimacy and representativeness under assault.
(Mr. Brown seems to rely pretty heavily here on some premises of Game Theory. Although a powerful, and increasingly popular, tool for the analysis of decision making procedure, it often relies on simplifications that cannot be easily translated into the complexities of the real world. It may also be possible that some countries would rather be powerful members of a powerless institution than powerless members of a powerful institution. It is just conceivable that the United Nations may become a small, poorly funded organization based in the Balkans or Sudan, that concerns itself exclusively with mitigating the consequences of intractable conflicts and that the real work of conflict prevention, development, health, education and so on will be done by a range of newer, more streamlined dedicated institutions created for that purpose. These may perhaps be based at regional levels rather than as international institutions. It may be a mistake to assume the existence of the United Nations as a given.)
The reform that emerges will need, however, to have a built-in flexibility that will selfadjust representation arrangements as power shifts. The mistake of 1945 was to set a particular order and privileges in stone. As the last decades have shown, countries can rise or fall very fast.
The need is to be able to correct their representation in a low-key semi-mechanical, self adjusting way that avoids a political showdown.
My successor as administrator of UNDP, Kemal Dervis, has proposed a weighted voting system for the Security Council similar to that of the World Bank. Unlike the World Bank, countries would not formally vote on behalf of their region or constituency on security matters.
Nevertheless, one can imagine a country’s weighting being determined by GDP, population, UN financial contributions, and peacekeeping and aid levels. We slipped in the latter three conditions of global good citizenship to the election criteria for the new Peacebuilding Commission. There are early signs that it is creating a little bit of healthy competitive pressure between candidates as they seek to prove their eligibility.
Reform of the Security Council can easily lead one to sound like an institutional chiropractor. If only this critical piece of the organization’s spine is properly aligned around members that are thought to represent the world as it is today, goes the hope, then the alignment will fall down through the lower spine, arms, and legs as the whole UN body politic recalibrates itself.
The resuscitation of the developing countries’ opposition lobby, the G-77, certainly owes a lot to this fight for a more representative Security Council. The G-77 had become a club for hardliners like Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria until India, Brazil, South Africa, and others essentially revived it as a means of confronting the West on UN reform and thereby ultimately securing membership of the Security Council.
Perhaps even more than adjusting vertebrae, such a change could draw the poison from discussion. Each intergovernmental forum from the Human Rights Council, the management and budget committees, the Economic and Social Council, the Committee for the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians, and the rest of the alphabetic cacophony of committees, councils, and governing boards exhibit the same distorted behavior patterns. Each has become about politics and point-scoring. The proper work has too often been jettisoned.
Hopefully, therefore, one could envisage the fever receding; the Human Rights Council becoming a serious deliberative place where delegates of real stature debate countries’ performance and behavior against objective human rights criteria rather than crude political targets; the Fifth Committee, which covers budget and administrative matters, might recognize that a group of almost 200 generally-junior diplomats, one from each country, with little management experience, is not the best way to manage the affairs of the institution, and so begin by reforming themselves, either by creating small professional sub-committees or by promoting external control mechanisms like an audit and oversight committee whose membership would be of the highest professional standards; when the Economic and Social Council ends its interminable discussions of abstract development objectives and policies and becomes a very practical inter-ministerial committee for the Millennium Development Goals, tracking progress, identifying problems, building agreement between donors and poor countries for corrective solutions. In other words an inter-governmental system that works to make the world a better place.
The World Bank, which has struggled for years under the handicap of having its President chosen in the White House and its policies allegedly too much under the thumb of its Washington neighbor the US Treasury, has been struggling with the composition of its Board.
Too easily, vital issues like corruption, universal primary education, or economic reform become hopelessly politicized by both sides. Then, lending slows up, projects become ever more timid in their scope, and political support from donors and recipient countries alike starts to slip away. Paul Wolfowitz became engulfed in the kind of leadership crisis that this lack of legitimacy and acceptance engenders.
Getting a stable inter-governmental platform, where all have a voice but one weighted to power and contribution, is a vital foundation step to a more stable international system. Good can only flow from it, not least if empowered governments leads to empowered UN management.
As I said at the start, taking a demotion to come over from running UNDP to be Kofi Annan’s chief of staff was a much bigger step down than I had anticipated. Rather than a man in charge of my own show I was to be chief of staff, but to the man who was nominally the most powerful person in the UN system, the Secretary-General himself. Instead, I found when it came to management and budgetary matters, he was less influential than I had been. Whereas I had a cooperative Board that had not been infected by this bitter political confrontation, he was hostage to intergovernmental warfare much more committed to its own fight than to allowing a Secretary- General the authority to lead and manage the UN.
What we could do at UNDP on our longer leash was remarkable. UNDP had doubled its resources as a reward for reform.
(Largely by tapping into donations from private companies under the ill-conceived and grossly inappropriate “Global Compact”, an initiative that has consistently resisted seeking authorization of the General Assembly in spite of repeated auditors recommendations that this should be done. Surely inter-governmental institutions should rely for their funding on governments so that those governments can then have some control over what they do. UNDP is not, and should not be, a free agent raising operational funds from whomever they please.)
In several performance assessments by donors, it moved to the top of the league in terms of its client satisfaction ratings and business efficiency.
(Really? Where are these reports?
“A World of Development Experience,” the UNDP Annual report for 2003 claims: “Partners Say They Value UNDP” quoting “A survey across 118 countries” that “found high approval rates.” They then produce the following very encouraging results: All respondents 87%; Governments 92%; UN Agencies 82%; International Financial Institutions 78%; Bilaterals 74%; Civil Society 86% and Private Sector 90%. The opinion of Beneficiaries, the only people that really count, is not mentioned anywhere, but one can well believe that these could be what UNDP simply classify as Other 90% and Unknown 95%.
In the same year Research Conducted for the 2020 Fund by GlobeScan Inc for the Second Survey of the 2020 Global Stakeholder Panel, dated March 2004 and entitled “What NGO Leaders Want for the Year 2020 NGO, Leaders’ Views on Globalisation, Governance, and Sustainability” has the following to say:
“Respondents were asked a number of questions dealing specifically with the UN and its leadership capacity. Over nine in ten (94%) NGO leaders agree that the UN system needs to be significantly strengthened in both powers and effectiveness. Further, pluralities of NGO leaders think it is “very important” that the UN Security Council (55%), the UN General Assembly (42%), and the UN secretariat and its agencies (39%) are reformed to achieve their ideal vision of global governance. Fully six in ten (60%) say the same about multilateral agencies. In all cases, Southern NGO leaders are more strongly in favour of UN reform than their Northern peers. Less than one in two (45%) NGO leaders agree that the UN is capable of dealing with current world challenges. Despite this, only two in ten (19%) believe that the UN should be disbanded and replaced with new global institutions. The desire for UN reform is evident among Northern and Southern NGO leaders. However, Southern leaders (25%) are slightly more likely than those in the North (14%) to believe that the UN should be disbanded and replaced with new global institutions. This finding, which is consistent with global public opinion, is particularly important given that a large part of the UN’s work is directed toward the developing world. While NGO leaders are as sceptical as the global public regarding the UN’s capacity to manage world challenges (45% vs. 44%) in the wake of the Iraq conflict, they are much more likely than the global public to believe that the UN system needs to be strengthened in both powers and effectiveness (94% vs. 77%). As a whole, however, NGO leaders are less likely than the global public to believe that the UN should be disbanded (19% vs. 36%). This suggests that while leaders believe reforms are needed, the UN continues to have a relevant and necessary role in their ideal vision of global governance, more so than the general public.”
And UNDP tries to tell us that they, amongst all of the UN agencies, have almost universal credibility and that people value them. The word “value” is far too vague to have any statistical meaning.)
Annual internal staff surveys showed it to be a highly motivated place with a staff who felt they were making a difference, enjoyed their work, and for the most part respected their managers.
The personnel reforms that we made so little progress on at the UN because of continuous political interference had sailed through UNDP.
(Staff Council Chairman, Dimitri Samaras, gives tough answers to a no-holds barred interview with UNDP NEWS Editor, Nosh Nalavala (May 2001)
Unfortunately, despite the Resident Representative competency assessment, we still have Resident Representatives who are not familiar with human resources management and prefer to “govern by fear”. Abuses can occur very easily if staff do not speak out and know their rights. Unscrupulous managers with threats of non-renewal of contracts, etc., can easily intimidate staff in country offices.
But the results of the Global Staff Survey taken last year indicate that staff has a much better relationship with management. Staff morale seems to have improved.
Let’s be honest. The results of any survey can be interpreted to show the desired trend. If a certain soap powder is subjected to a survey and the results show that 50% think it is a good product and 50% do not, it is logical that the company will use only the good comments in their advertising. In the case of the 2000 Staff Survey, only about 40% of the staff responded and of that number, only about half indicated that things were better. Incidentally, the 1999 survey was answered by about 65% of the staff. I’m not sure what that indicates, but one could say either that those who did not respond would not respond to a survey anyway, no matter what the context. On the other hand, one could say that they did not respond because they are so fed up that they don’t believe replying would change anything. And that is unfortunate. The Administrator is very much aware of the issue and wants to change the present trend. Therefore, for the corporate and individual interest, we must remain proactive.
Do you really believe that UNDP staff has reached the nadir of cynicism or are you being pessimistic?
No. I always try to look on the bright side! But I do believe that UNDP staff does not realize the importance of such surveys. If they answer the questions and report when they are not satisfied, this will be reflected in the results and it will be reported to the Administrator by the consulting firm. If 50, 60 or 70% of the staff give a low rating on a particular question, this is important. If these unhappy people do not bother to answer, they will not be heard. If the consultants receive responses only from people who are satisfied, then these are the results that will be reported to the Administrator and by him to the Executive Board, and no one can argue or blame him because this will be the true result of the survey!)

We had put in tough rules of mobility, forcing people to go to the field to win further promotions. We were able to establish schemes to recruit and develop bright diverse younger staff and to retain and support our women colleagues as they balanced careers, difficult travel, and hardship assignments with families.
Early on we had reduced the headquarters staff by 20%, dramatically simplified our focus, and then required all of our field offices to take out functions and activities that no longer fitted with the new priorities. The savings allowed us to staff up around our new key areas such as democracy-building and post-conflict. We were able to re-fit the organization for what our developing countries wanted from us. In the process, we got faster and better at what we did.
Clearly when I left there was still a lot to be done. Although much stronger than in the UN, proper audit and controls for example needed further strengthening.
(Finally, Mr. Brown slips in the crux of the matter as an aside. This shows that any reform at UNDP, if indeed there was any reform, was at best done upside down. UNDP needed, and still desperately need, to strengthen its audit and internal controls, as a matter of urgent priority. It needs to rid itself of incompetent and corrupt staff and managers, prosecute wrongdoers, correct past mistakes, publicly acknowledge and take responsibility for those mistakes and only then consolidate its activities with the assistance of capable and motivated staff. It is irresponsible, at best, not to do so, and without doing so there cannot be any reform, no matter how much Mr. Brown want to claim that there was such a thing. The present staff are more concerned with working for an organization that has $4 billion available annually; few internal controls and no audits. That is all that is relevant to them. How long can an organization function in such an environment without attracting a criminal element?)
Like later in the UN, I had help from McKinsey. In this instance we all were anxious to learn from them to weigh what worked in the private sector and whether it was transferable to the public sector. At the UN, before McKinsey had given any advice, the company was, predictably, already tagged as an American Trojan horse. It was the enemy, not the consultant.
The contrast was remarkable, and the lesson perhaps obvious. Until the sense of crisis at the UN is strong enough to make governments let go of their own agendas, there cannot be the kind of cathartic recommitment and renewal of the UN proper that is required. Until then, satellites like UNDP or WFP will continue to do well, and at the center the tinkering will go on but it will be no substitute for real reform.
The roadblock to reform is inter-governmental gridlock. A good Secretary-General, like Kofi Annan and a dedicated committed UN staff alone cannot overcome this. Nor, however is it right to single out the US, the G-77 or for that matter Europe or others to blame. And it is certainly not right to take an individual ambassador and lay the blame at his door.
All are symptoms of a system imprisoned in a 1945 structure that set everyone at each others’ throats in a 2007 world. Until statesmen are willing to step forward and negotiate a new government which gives everybody significant confidence of ownership to stop acting like dissident shareholders using any means or device to stop the show; and rather be willing to allow an empowered accountable management to lead a modern UN under the strategic direction of governments, the UN will continue to disappoint.
The world has never in human history been more integrated but less governed. Problems from terrorism to climate change, crime and poverty, migration or public health, security and trade, have escaped national control and the UN is in no state to catch them.
(From personal experience, the UN, specifically UNDP, is in no state to catch the criminals in its own midst. Being abused by UNDP, in one of many letters to them, my African colleagues stated “those who suffer are always us, since it is foreigners who drive the train of deceit.” When these letters finally, after a number of years, solicited a response, UNDP acknowledged the difficulties that they were causing but excused themselves from having to resolve them by stating simply “our responsibility is limited to the formulation and financing of the project.”)
How long can we allow such a global dysfunction to endure? Thank you.

". . . a land of facilities, where nothing had to be striven for, and success was indistinguishable from failure." (E.M. Forster "Maurice")

2007-09-19T13:29:00.000+02:00

Edward Girardet - a writer and journalist specializing in media, humanitarian aid, and conflict - provides some interesting insights into the Aid Industry in the following article “Aid Projects Need More Critical Media Coverage”
The article contains the usual list of wrongdoings and abuses committed by Aid and UN officials but also some very useful suggestions and observations (listed below).
1. Wrongdoing is nothing new to the international aid industry. But in most cases there is no dogged media reporting or public will to bring the culprits to task.
International aid is in desperate need of more critical reporting. This is crucial if committed aid professionals are to do their jobs properly. Many feel frustrated by their inability to thwart the inherent nepotism, corruption, and power abuses that pervade much of the system.
2. Aid organizations regularly cover up managerial dysfunction, including sexual harassment, by ignoring the actions of those responsible. This has led to an environment of impunity with few employees daring to speak out.
3. Many organizations are burdened by incompetent individuals who stifle the initiatives of others, sometimes with resounding consequences for the victims of war, HIV/AIDS, or drought.
4. Every year, the UN and NGO’s, and also the military, spend (up to) billions of dollars on humanitarian, reconstruction, or peacekeeping programs of dubious impact. (Although) NGO’s, which rely heavily on donor funding, can cite innumerable examples of aid that makes little sense, they are (nevertheless) cautious about criticizing their benefactors.
5. Many NGO’s, including highly respectable organizations, have become obsessed by image as a means of promoting fundraising (and) seek to focus on initiatives that make them look good but do not necessarily respond to on-the-ground needs.
6. Humanitarianism should not "belong" to any one group. What the international aid industry urgently needs is more hard-nosed and independent reporting.
7. The best solution would be the creation of a viable media watchdog capable of reporting the real causes behind humanitarian predicaments, including how the international community responds.

In his review of “The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid International Charity” by Michael Maren, Steven Hansch makes the observation that:
“Curiously, Maren concludes that NGO’s cannot be trusted to monitor themselves, and are best evaluated by journalists. Since few journalists have any of the technical expertise necessary to interpret project data, epidemiologic trends, or economic effects, Maren is encouraging more of the simplification that already exists.”
It has to be understood that none of the suggestions by Edward Girardet - useful and necessary as they are - will lead to any meaningful change in the Aid Industry unless they are applied within a functioning legal framework where wrongdoers are ultimately held liable for their actions and punished when necessary. (Like, for example, Kenneth Lay, et. al.)
That is yet to happen.

One Small Voice

2007-09-19T13:27:00.000+02:00

Oxfam, Towards Global Equity, Oxfam International’s Strategic Plan, Promises to Keep, UN Reform, United Nations, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Save the Children

It is encouraging to note that at least one organisation appears to be taking note of increasing concern and criticism on the effect and impact of International Organisations in the work that they claim to be doing by producing a report on the evaluation of the implementation of "Towards Global Equity," Oxfam International’s Strategic Plan, 2001 – 2006” (http://www.oxfam.org/en/files/promises_to_keep.pdf). It is the first comprehensive, independent evaluation of the joint work done by Oxfam International and Oxfam affiliates over the last five years. The report assesses the impact that this organization has and includes a report of their response to the conclusions and recommendations of both the internal and external evaluation at http://www.oxfam.org/en/files/promises_to_keep_oi_response.pdf

Oxfam makes two very important claims “We are committed to openness and transparency because this is important to public accountability. This evaluation has been a major input into our new six-year plan that builds on our strengths and corrects our shortcomings. It is right that it be available for scrutiny.”
“We are aligning and developing collective systems and standards across our very diverse confederation – but this is a gradual process that will take a bit of time to get right. That said, this is not an excuse for poor performance and in "Demanding justice" we will explicitly address this issue by building in a much stronger emphasis on evaluation and learning.”

Furthermore they also encourage stakeholders, particularly partners, to read and engage with Oxfam International around the issues raised in this evaluation and invite anybody who would like to be part of the feedback process, to please email us to register your interest.
(I would, for example, criticize Oxfam for their continued apparent reliance on such nonsense as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) and PRSP’s. It would be far more useful to concentrate on concrete challenges as defined by beneficiaries and affiliates rather than vague truisms conjured up by bureaucrats in New York, Washington and Brussels.)

This is certainly a very encouraging development, disturbing only because, amongst the hundreds of organizations of this type, only one has thus far made the decision to take such a step and has done so voluntarily.
One can only hope that in the near future, reports such as these would be found sector-wide and that they would be found because there are enforceable guidelines and rules that make this sort of reporting obligatory. As constructive as this initiative by Oxfam is, it also serves forcefully as a reminder as to how lacking, in general, the Humanitarian and Development sector is in even the most basic minimum standards for accountability and meaningful reporting.

Organizations such as Save the Children, an organization that by all accounts has reasonably strict internal controls and effective evaluation, should now also follow this example by making their findings public and inviting stakeholders (and Africans should take up this invitation) to participate in the feedback.

For organizations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) to rise to this standard they would first need to employ better quality staff (much, much better), become more aware of the social and political environments into which they interfere, and then become substantially more critical of the impact of this interference. (The huge proliferation of this sort of Emergency Health Organization, a related but essentially separate problem, would also need to be addressed. Demanding greater effective public transparency could only contribute to the solution of this issue.)

The United Nations, an institution that one would expect to take the lead in accountability and transparency, as embodied by Oxfam, remains to date obsessed with the production of glossy reports, that in no way ever reflect what they are in fact doing; as well as the ever obsessive concern with hiding the criminals within their ranks from any type of scrutiny and accountability.

On a personal note, it is interesting to note that at the end of 2004, when I made very similar recommendations as those contained in the Oxfam report to the Danish Refugee Council, their management response was swift, vindictive and severe. They were not interested in anything other than the fact that they could comfortably demand and then receive money from their donors.

It is worth reading through the full Oxfam reports. For those disinclined to do so, I copy here some of the key points. Some of them are very specific to Oxfam but most are of general interest:

Perceptions of some key actors
In addition to looking at Oxfam’s work in the Trade, Education, Humanitarian and Gender sectors, we also considered some of the wider issues facing the confederation. We did this on the basis of interviews with a number of Executive Directors and Lead Regional Managers. The responses summarised below provide a snapshot of the perceptions of some of the confederation’s senior managers about the state of, Oxfam’s challenges, successes and failures; organisational issues and how Oxfam should develop.

Positive external developments at global and regional levels
The most frequently-mentioned positive external developments and trends included:
• The increasing power of G20 members vis-à-vis Europe and the US; coupled with the rise of India and China in particular. (There was also recognition that this could also have a negative impact by shifting attention away from the Least Developed Countries.) At a regional level the position of four West African countries on cotton negotiations was also cited as a positive development.
• The public’s response to the Tsunami;
• The establishment of the Millennium Development Goals was seen as an important opportunity for NGOs to exercise leverage;
• The opening up of political space for civil society in some countries of East Asia and the stabilisation of East Asian economies;
• The European-Mediterranean Agreement;
• Increasing awareness of international humanitarian law (though not increasing observance)
• Some indirect consequences of 9/11in the USA were cited, including increases in foreign assistance and support for debt relief.
• The security agenda was seen as presenting Oxfam with an opportunity to take on a more challenging role.

2. Negative external developments
• Almost unanimous mention of 9/11 and other terrorist atrocities; the “War on Terror” and the Iraq War; linked with Western emphasis on military solutions and the shifting of the international community’s agenda away from human security and the corrosive impact on official aid programmes, including increasing attempts to co-opt the humanitarian community into military strategies; the closing down of space for civil society in some South Asian countries; the tensions some of the post-9/11 developments have created within the confederation.
• The “mercantilisation”, or commercialisation of public goods, with states retreating from their duties to provide basic social services pushes Oxfam and other NGOs into gap-filling and away from the true meaning of a rights-based approach.
• The multiple impacts of HIV/AIDS, particularly in Southern Africa, including the changing nature of the region’s food security problems.
• The failure of the UN to address atrocities like Darfur;
• In the Middle East and Maghreb: failure to recognise downward trends in human development and the fact that 25% of the region’s people live in poverty;
• In Southern Africa, the increasingly dominant economic role of South Africa;
• In East Asia, the failure of ASEAN to play a constructive role in social development.
• Militarization and privatization of humanitarian response – should lead Oxfam and NGOs to play a stronger advocacy role and avoid co-option.

3. Oxfam’s significant achievements…
• Almost unanimous mention of Oxfam’s response to the Tsunami; including how Oxfam facilitated local voices in Acheh and Sri Lanka;
• Oxfam’s work in Darfur – helping ¾ million people (after a late start);
• The Make Trade Fair Campaign, changing the terms of the debate and campaigning on the MDGs and MDGs/GCAP;
• The Responsibility to Protect decision at the (otherwise dismal) UN 2005 Summit;
• Regionally, Oxfam’s work on HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa; cooperation on the Gaza Withdrawal response; progress on Zimbabwe (but see below); Oxfam’s preparations for Iraq; Labour Rights and NAMA work in South Asia; and the joint Malawi programme were cited as examples of success.
• In MEMAG: Oxfam is now on record as accepting that international humanitarian law applies to the Israel-Palestine conflict, has spoken out about abuses and has contributed to the demand for change;
• In West Africa, the education programme and Oxfam’s responses to drought and the food crisis were seen as successful;
• The work of the Campaigns Sub-Group;
• The impact of MTF on East Asian governments was mentioned: Oxfam’s reports are read “and used” in China.

4. …and failures
• In Southern Africa: lack of serious programming on the MDGs – while life expectancy is actually declining; lack of engagement by the RST in the MTF (and vice versa); and failure to continue the joint Zambia programme;
• In MEMAG also: failure to engage with MTF;
• In East Asia: lack of a common agenda in Indonesia; lack of progress on gender mainstreaming and violence against women;
• Among EDs: Oxfam’s inability to manage different (affiliate) views of risk (in relation to Israel-
Palestine);
• Failure to fulfil the potential of the Humanitarian Consortium in the country-level Tsunami response, with weak leadership in India;
• Failure of GCT and RST to resolve the Zimbabwe problem (but see above);
• Other specific failures cited included Bam (48 hours to respond); Angola, Gujarat; and the failure to get agreement on the Olympics campaign document;
• Labour (Olympics campaign) was “dilettantish”;
• The Trade campaign showed a lack of foresight (Oxfam could have anticipated the Hong Kong
outcomes several years earlier); short-termism and poor alliance work. The agenda was dominated by a few affiliates and this was a leadership failure by EDs. Some of the “failures” that were mentioned are reported below under “Organisational factors blocking progress”.

5. Positive organisational developments in the confederation
• Not surprisingly the LRMs all cited the fact that RSTs are now taken more seriously by Oxfam’s senior management, coupled with the strengthening and support of the LRM position;
• The “one programme” architecture (the GCT); the development of the Humanitarian Consortium,
the Humanitarian Dossier and Contingency Planning; the establishment and strengthening of the advocacy offices in Washington DC, Geneva and Brussels and the growth of joint advocacy;
• The emergence of a new approach on “adding value to social change” – though this needs more work;
• Investments in France, the USA and Germany.

6. Organisational factors blocking Oxfam’s progress
This section attracted the most responses from both LRMs and EDs. Regional concerns included:
• Lack of alignment between affiliate and OI agendas; tension between “activist” and “reformist” affiliates;
• High staff turnover in some affiliates;
• Ambiguity and lack of clear leadership from EDs on country-level programming;
• Opportunism and lack of horizontal accountability: RST members (and GCT members and EDs) preach the importance of agreed (Oxfam-wide) strategies and policies when attending joint OI meetings, but back down and pursue narrow affiliate agendas when they are back at their own desks
• Another angle on this was the observation that “EDs want space for affiliate differences at ED level – but not for the RSTs”.
• A concern that Aims, SCOs and the related methodology (and jargon) obscure the human needs and dimensions of Oxfam’s work;
• Despite LRMs’ appreciation of the strengthening of their role, “OI work is still viewed (by affiliates) as additional, not core” work;
• Constraints on OI Secretariat due to “competitive” attitude of OGB;
• Oxfam’s inward-looking perspective;
• Failure to develop and exploit our main advantage – the partner basis of our work.

EDs cited the following concerns:
• Failure to address strategic issues including the financing of the confederation – lack of investment is holding back LAG, livelihoods, research and brand work; lack of clarity about role and financing of the Secretariat; equivocal attitude to “making the confederation happen”;
• Too many campaigns simultaneously (MPH was added but not resourced);
• Under-investment in Washington DC office;
• Strategic collaboration “still blurry”;
• The new architecture has not delivered: GCT still lapses into functional divisions; it depends on quality of membership (which is uneven);
• Persistence of ideological/political debates impeded action on agreements; lack of skills and
resources in some affiliates has “seriously compromised” some humanitarian responses;
• Persistence of ideological quarrels between affiliates (OGB and Novib Oxfam were specifically mentioned);
• Need to respond more coherently to RSTs and LRMs: “we set people up to fail”;
• Need to study the interaction between campaigning and impact on the ground;
• Oxfam still is – and is seen as – a Northern network (compare with Action Aid);
• Affiliates use structural/co-funding as an excuse for deviating from agreed OI priorities;
• Livelihoods work was seen as a weak area by several respondents; poor quality; too many microprojects not amounting to anything significant; need for stronger leadership at centre.

The report also provides a useful and open:
Summary of main recommendations
The following are summaries of the main recommendations, simply intended to provide a checklist. In most cases readers should refer to the full text for the context (the “conclusions and lessons”) on which the recommendations are based. In order to ensure capturing all the main recommendations, we have included the recommendations set out Executive Summary as well as the Main Report. This results in some unavoidable repetition.

1. Recommendations from the Executive Summary
Recommendations from the sector evaluations
• There is a need to consider focus and priority-setting in the Trade and Humanitarian sectors. Questions about the legitimacy, purpose and positioning of Oxfam’s work in the Basic Social Services sector need to be addressed.

Trade, markets and assets
• There is a clear need to set realistic and measurable objectives and to ensure that campaigns are sustained after Oxfam’s direct intervention.
• Oxfam should address the challenge of raising the quality, scale and significance of its field-level livelihoods programming and synchronizing it with the policy advocacy and campaigning wing of a truly integrated sustainable livelihoods strategy.
• Oxfam would benefit from institutionalizing and deepening the learning practices of the Hemispheric Reference Group and the Labour Rights Team. They would add more value if they documented and disseminated their experiences.
• In the next cycle, more balanced attention should be paid to components (other than campaigning) of integrating programming for the right to a sustainable livelihood.

Education
• Continuity and sustained pressure are essential to success
• Oxfam should think through the implications when a campaign is in a “low-key” phase.
• The education programme should focus on areas that are key factors in success in contributing to gender parity and deepening democracy.
• A defined level of strategic collaboration for participating affiliates should be obligatory, not optional.

Humanitarian response
• Understanding the political context and establishing diplomatic relations at all levels needs further development.
• In countries with strong emergency response capacities (such as India) Oxfam should establish strong links with local authorities and agencies.
• Special action needed to ensure effective dissemination and application of the Code of Conduct and Sphere Standards among affiliates.
• The next strategic plan should translate rhetoric about gender, generation (i.e. age) and protection into action.
• The immediate challenge for the Humanitarian Consortium is to help affiliates put agreed standards and systems into practice consistently.

Gender equality
• Consider building a confederation-wide gender equality programme integrated in an area in which Oxfam has solid experience.
• Spending targets for gender should be established and honoured.
• Gender equality criteria for grant-making should be established by all affiliates.
• Use external resources to develop staff and partner capacities in integrating gender in all sectors.
• Confederation-wide monitoring and evaluation should take gender as a pilot for an enhanced LAG strategy.
• Report progress and setbacks at ED and Board levels.

Oxfam-wide issues
• Oxfam should face up to the challenge of managing relative affiliate size and balance within the confederation; recognize that the advantages of the confederation model outweigh the disadvantages and better manage the tensions that arise from the model.
• Oxfam should correct the tendency to ignore the views of other actors in alliances and avoid an “Oxfam-centred” viewpoint.
• Oxfam’s predominantly Euro-centric and Anglophone character should be corrected. Identity needs to be managed as well as brand.
• Leadership and support is needed to help staff with different professional backgrounds and responsibilities to achieve coherence in programme design and implementation.
• While Oxfam’s definition of “impact” should remain the ultimate goal, Oxfam should develop and define meaningful intermediate outcomes.
• Oxfam should decide on the level at which planning and programming should be focused for strategic collaboration: region or country.
• Oxfam’s policy-makers and planners should pay more attention to regions which do not conform to conventional patterns (MEMAG, the Pacific and EEFSU).

Recommendations regarding monitoring and evaluation
• Oxfam should study and agree on those areas of M&E which can best be done collectively and those which need to be done at affiliate level.
• Having defined the scope of collective M&E work, Oxfam should establish the necessary architecture, toolkit and resources.
• M&E needs to become and be seen as an integral component of management and as an essential (though not the only) foundation of learning and accountability.
• Oxfam should adopt a more robust attitude to quantitative, statistical and financial information as key ingredients in credible M&E work.

2. Recommendations from the Main Report
Chapter 2: Trade, markets and assets
(“Lessons for the future”)
• Be more explicit about goals regarding changing attitudes and beliefs. Use better metrics (including these used in the corporate sector) and be more rigorous.
• Oxfam needs to develop its own and partners’ capacity for more sophisticated power
analysis, including understanding the corporate/government interface.
• The support for women’s leadership evident in the Labour Rights and RTA campaigning
needs to be taken further in other areas of MTF.
• Oxfam should act on an apparent shift towards seeing the Regional Teams as allies rather than supporting players.
• The Labour and Coffee campaigns show that achieving changes in people’s lives require work at country and community levels to position partners to take advantage of policy improvements.
• Oxfam needs to ensure that the right competencies are in place and that staff are effectively supported. Oxfam should be more rigorous in selecting campaign leads and provide them with adequate support.

From the external evaluation of the Cotton Dumping Campaign
• Oxfam should (better) manage expectations by focusing on intermediate outcomes that are more reasonable and measurable.
• Enough has been achieved on the cotton file at the WTO to allow Oxfam to focus on the complex issues of poverty and rural dynamics in cotton-producing regions of WCA countries.

From the external evaluations of the Labour Rights Campaign
• On the issue of measuring impacts: Oxfam should make use of studies by (e.g.) UNRISD and ILO.
• Quantitative metrics need to be employed (for measuring changes in attitudes and beliefs).
These are relatively simple to develop and the technology exists that would allow their delivery to a representative group of stakeholders at a relatively low cost.
• Labour rights work needs a loner-term view and the identification of medium-term outcomes.
• Oxfam should review the positioning of its labour rights work: it might be appropriate to reposition it within the sustainable livelihoods area.
• Social Compass poses the following specific questions about Oxfam’s campaigning objectives that should be addressed:
o What is Oxfam’s commitment in time, financial and human resources?
o How does Oxfam measure “success”
o When should this measurement happen?
o What are Oxfam’s exit strategies when “impact” is achieved (or not achieved)?
o How should Oxfam ensure consensus among allies and partners about impact?
o What is the potential effect of being “hard-nosed” on partners and allies, and what is the cost-benefit?

Chapter 3: Girls’ access to education
From the Internal Evaluation Report
1) Oxfam should be explicit that it sees education as a cornerstone for sustainable livelihoods, peace, security, the right to be heard, regardless of gender and identity.
2) Strategic acupuncture on education: create a country-specific strategy in selected countries with a longer-term agenda and commitment.
3) Insist on strategic collaboration between (participating) affiliates.
4) Continue development of and investment in the Global Campaign for Education.
5) Consider having one joint M&E system with education as a pilot. Include education in
action to ensure Oxfam’s financial accountability.

From the External Evaluation Report
1) If Oxfam support for education is to continue:
o It should be sustainable, through multi-faceted interventions aiming to create a critical mass of participating citizens.
o It should continue to endorse humanistic philosophies as the basis of its practice, simpler than those currently applied, and find new ways to enrich technical interventions
o Consider the implication of consolidating parastatal education systems able to bypass rather than support government programmes.
o Improve quality: Oxfam’s interventions are good but not innovative. Address problems caused by high staff turnover and develop staff skills in working with partners.
o Review its rights-based approach and consider implications of uncritically accepting IFI and MLO thinking.

Chapter 4: Humanitarian response
From: Synthesis of lessons learned (from Internal Evaluation Report)
• Develop more explicit and integrated project frameworks to improve coordination and timing.
• Involve local staff in discussing advocacy and security strategies.
• Improve timely recruitment of experienced staff.
• Continue the investment in developing contingency plans.

Recommendations
• Reduce the gap between humanitarian vision and actual practice.
• Establish stronger links with competent (emergency response) authorities in countries such as India
• Improve timeliness of response through improving management capacities, the availability of trained staff and better analysis of field realities and government policies.
• Oxfam GB should review the logistical and human resource difficulties that appear to have affected the reviewed interventions.
• Building local staff preparedness is lagging behind in Africa.
• Affiliates and partners should strengthen their use of information and communication technology.
• Oxfam should develop an evaluation model for humanitarian response (taking the OI Ethiopian drought report of 2001-202 as a model).
• Take action to ensure dissemination and application of agreed standards. Transform rhetoric about gender, generation and protection into action.

Recommendations from the External Evaluation of the Humanitarian Consortium
• Consider making the HC more permeable – able to expand membership in particular situations.
• Consider workload of HCMG members and if necessary investment in the OI Secretariat.
• Make the Dossier and the Dashboard more user-friendly.
• Reduce (initially) the number of lead agency affiliates to 2 or 3 in conjunction with reviewing affiliate investment plans (for humanitarian response).
• Resource OI Secretariat to be able to support HC membership more effectively
• Study feasibility and cost of establishing an OI-wide humanitarian response information system.
• Agree on the basic parameters for monitoring, measuring and evaluating its humanitarian response work.
• Research on how best to work through local partners could add great value to Oxfam’s work
• Conduct an open and informed debate about neutrality and develop an OI-wide practice.

Chapter 5: Gender equality
Recommendations
1) Take forward one area of gender equality as a key local-to-global focus in the next strategic plan. Potential issues include:
• Women and violence
• Women’s labour rights
• Women as leaders in conflict resolution
• Stronger gender focus in primary education
• Women and PRSP’s
• Women and HIV/AIDS
2) Set increasing percentage allocations for stand-alone gender equality work.
3) Main Aim 5 programming the first integrated Oxfam programme on the model of CAMEXCA’s “Women and Rights” programme.
4) Make a process like the Novib Oxfam “traffic lights” system/Oxfam GB’s gender reporting or OxAus M&E framework) Oxfam-wide.
5) Invest in continuous training and capacity-building for staff and partners.
6) Use gender equality as a pilot for sector-led programming and a confederation-wide M&E system.
7) Report progress on gender equality programming to a senior Oxfam body on a regular basis.

The Impossibility of Getting it Right

2007-09-19T13:20:00.000+02:00

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful concerned individuals can precipitate change in the world ... indeed, it is the only thing that ever has" Margaret Mead

With his usual regularity Rafael Marques, an Angolan, sent me a copy of his paper “Angola: The New Blood Diamonds.” It is a paper based on a Public Seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies – SOAS University of London - Economics and Development Studies.
This is really a continuation of his ongoing investigations and reporting on diamond mining in Cuango in Angola that can be found in more detail at www.cuango.net, www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=12804 and www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=13414
He recounts how diamond mining in these areas is simply an “unchecked feeding centre for generals, members of the ruling class and, in particular, foreign interests whose provisions of services cannot be rewarded and paid via more conventional and transparent means.”
“One of the consequences of the collapse of State authority, in the area, is that the threat to national sovereignty stems from the privatization of the State itself.”
“People are, once again, left out in the cold. The government is concerned with the legislation and other political mechanisms to ensure the growth of the diamond sector, but has said nothing regarding the respect for human rights. It simply does not care.”
Rafael continues to investigate and explain his courageous witness for the human rights of his fellow Angolans, but also finds the time to regularly send me messages of support in my own struggle, investigating and reporting on the appropriateness and efficiency of development aid and humanitarian assistance concentrating very much, but not exclusively, on corruption within the United Nations.
I still remember my first encounter, very brief, with Rafael. I also vividly remember a Sunday afternoon spent on the beach, discussing Angolan literature. He had his family, his wife and young son, with him that day, and it made me feel a bit sad since my circumstances were such that I was separated from my own family and my own young daughter.
Our last meeting happened in the early hours of the morning, in a vibrant and noisy pub in Luanda, a chance encounter, a brief hug and a short conversation before he left leaving me with a persistent sense of unease as to what would happen to him. For a while we were each drawn into our own concerns and our own struggles for survival and lost contact. The only obvious overlap in our respective interests occurred when he made a very brief statement on RTP, the Portuguese Television station, that people who work for the United Nations only come to Angola to have a good time.
My concerns are based on my experience, also in Angola, with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and which I eventually recount in a book[1], whose back cover summarizes it so:
“War in Angola lasted intermittently for more than forty years. After a failed attempt at peace from 1994 to 1998 a full scale conventional war broke out again at the end of 1998. This marked the end of a United Nations attempt, lasting more than twelve years, to make peace in this country. It was one of the first big UN missions after the Cold War and turned into a spectacular and expensive failure. Throughout this last "War for Peace" from 1998-2002 the author lived and worked in Huambo, at the epi-centre of the war, implementing a United Nations project. This project, poorly planned initially, was restructured locally and achieved considerable successes before finally succumbing to UN incompetence that saw two thirds of its funding disappear and degenerated into a web of lies, excuses and accusations as the UN refused to provide an explanation to donors, the Angolan government and people, project staff and the press of what went wrong and why.”
In this book I state that I do not fully agree with the above statement by Rafael. People in the UN also come to Angola to make money; lots of it.
It is something that occupied me for a number of years, and from which there are still elements in which I am seeking closure. I was the subject of threats and intimidation by UN officials, yet throughout this saga I received substantial support, in a great many ways, from many Angolans, especially senior civil servants who spoke to me, gave me access to documents and wrote many letters on my behalf to the United Nations.
In his report Rafael Marques starts of on a disturbing note:
“First of all, I would like to share with you a dilemma that has been of great concern to me. Recently, an influential member of the Angolan ruling class gave me a message: that the regime hates me for speaking ill of it abroad.”
He continues:
“In the meantime, on October 16 2006, the Angolan government, through its embassy in Washington, sent a letter to the Northcote Parkinson Fund, which awarded me the 2006 Civil Courage Prize, demanding transparency. It denounced me as a nobody. I should add, they did, however, acknowledge my status as an Angolan citizen.”
In order to make a point here, I need to set aside, only for a moment, the deep-seated misgivings that I have regarding the tendency to call somebody – anybody - a nobody.
The point that I would like to make is this; by default nobody can be such as thing if a national government, especially the government of a struggling but emerging regional superpower, has to take the time and make the effort to pronounce that this is so.
A copy that I receive of this report from www.africafiles.org makes the request that “We need to be ready to defend (Rafael Marques) at any time as we are able.”
This leaves me with an awful dilemma. It is the very same people that had always been so nice to me that now also threaten one of their own citizens. How do I provide the support that this brave and courageous person deserves, not only to reciprocate the support that he always offers me, but also in possible specific circumstances, when it may be required or requested - and especially when it is not requested - without compromising the good and fruitful relations that I had built up with many Angolans of authority over many years and on whom I may have to rely again in the future?
“All Angolans are good people.” I am told by Rosa Gaspar, a dynamic and outspoken woman who lives in a small village in the northern part of the Angolan province of Malanje. Having spent a large part of my adult life in Angola I am inclined to agree with her.
“Not even the government is bad,” she continues, “no Angolan do bad things because they are bad people, they are not corrupt or greedy or violent by nature, only when they are forced to be so. Sometimes they just don’t know.”
Rosa Gaspar had survived many waves of displacement, long separations from her five children, all younger than fifteen, and had left for dead or buried another three children. Her husband, a stocky, muscular and stoic man, had spent many years “hiding in the bush,” the current euphemism for having fought with UNITA, the rebel movement that had waged war, with only brief intervals, from 1975-2002.
She is not the only person that says these sorts of things.
Her experiences are also not unique. Many senior Angolan officials have suffered through similar things.
“The UN hates all Angolans.” She also tells me emphatically. She is also not the only person who says these sorts of things. On 29 November 2006, the BBC transmitted a report on Haiti that included a young girl saying: “The UN hates Haitians,” as part of recounting the abuse that she had suffered at the hands of UN peacekeepers. In spite of this she is one of the lucky ones. The vast majority of abuse meted out to people in the third world by UN officials at all levels (and to some extent by NGO’s) go unreported and unresolved even in the very few instances when they are reported.
Over a period of a few months I had had many conversations with Rosa Gaspar and we had built up a close bond, and I was determined to demonstrate to her that this is not so, although I was there not under the auspices of the UN, but of the Danish Refugee Council.
Unfortunately the Country Director of this Danish Refugee Council, an ex-domestic servant from Sweden, called Yvonne Cappi, soon discovers where my sympathies lie, and I soon find myself treated with the same abuse and disregard she had up to this point reserved for the local people.
“We never trust the local people, that is how humanitarian assistance works!” I hear her shout only shortly after my arrival.
“Is that not so, Mr. Kukkuk?” She tries to solicit my support, the only other foreigner in the room.
A staff member politely and tentatively suggests how something can be improved and made more appropriate. It is a simple matter, yet one that the organisation had gotten consistently wrong for three years.
“When the ship has a captain, the sailor has no say.” This staff member is told, before being dramatically and arbitrarily demoted and sacrificing by far the largest part of her salary.
Exasperated by this and much more I solicit the support of the Desk Officer, Anders Engberg, based in Denmark.
Upon his arrival I point to the large number of documented complaints that had built up over the years, complaints that this same person had in fact ignored in the past, and how they are mostly framed in the language of racism. From past experience I know that concerns framed like this are often dismissed and glossed over.
“It is not really a question of racism, but rather of a complete disregard for human beings.” I say by way of starting my argument.
“(Yvonne Cappi) does not have any regard for human beings, I agree with you, but over and above that she is also a racist.” I am told.
That is the last thing that we agree on before I myself become the subject of accusations.
“I cannot be expected to do that.” I say in my defence, “to do that would require me to break the law.”
“We don’t care. We have our rules and you shall do what you are ordered to do.” I am told.
It is not the validity of the law that is in question – it is not that kind of law - simply the requirement of me having to comply with it.
Several times I point out that demands made upon me would require me to misrepresent what the organisation is doing or to break the law or both. Each time I receive the same response.
Anders Engberg’s priorities are purely and exclusively devoted to receiving money from the donors so that he can then receive his salary.
In a last attempt to divert attention from an unprovoked attack on me and return to the relevant issues I claim that staff at the organisation had been abused to the point where many of them have no personalities left.
“I have spoken to her many times about that, she is not going to change.” I am told.
Another expatriate, recruited on a short-term contract to resolve the serious problems on one project, where most of the donor funds had been wasted by the serial recruitment and subsequent dismissal of staff, without ever doing what it was designed to do, in exasperation at not being able to do anything himself writes:
“I’m sorry to say that if it wasn’t for the (Danish Refugee Council) stickers on the cars & buildings; I can easily at times mistake this organisation with some mismanaged private run family-business from the colonial times.”
Over the following weeks as I then realise the need to get away from this spurious organisation and trying to figure out what the least confrontational and damaging way would be to do this, I am contacted again.
Receiving an apology for being ignored for so long, I am then told, on 4 December, that if I leave immediately it may still be possible for me to arrange an alternative income for myself for the month of December.
“I have an income for December, I do not need to go and look for one.” I respond and then become the focus of a vicious and vindictive campaign to get rid of me without providing any justification or compensation.
Documents that allow me to remain and work in Angola, and which is in the possession of the organisation, disappear mysteriously.
I receive a signed notice: “We remind you that you shall observe secrecy with regard to any situation and any information that you have become aware of in the course of your employment and which, due to the nature of the issue, must be considered confidential.”
I am required to agree to this by signing the document.
Yet again I can rely on the support of a number of Angolans, ordinary citizens and civil servants alike. A young woman from the office of the deputy prime-minister, Aguinaldo Jaime, rushes about tirelessly on my behalf. I am summoned to the office of another civil servant.
“We value your contribution to Angolans and are available for any assistance you may require.” He tells me.
Every day, sometimes twice a day, he phones, inquiring after my welfare and if there is anything that I need from him.
Even the notorious Immigration Department do all they can for me by bending their inflexible laws and regulations to breaking point.
Fortunately the campaign against me proves to be as amateurish and inept as the projects of this organisation and I am soon, with generous compensation, and without having to have signed myself to any secrecy, able to pursue my own interests.
During the following months I would many times question whether I should not have followed up on the abuses that I had witnessed, and the waste of public money, with more vigour. Sometimes I felt that more could be achieved by challenging the system as a whole and encouraging it to change rather than concentrating on specific instances.
The option and opportunity to resolve the issues through constructive dialogue was not left open to me. It is not left open to anybody.
The correct course of action, of course, is to always do a little bit of both. Point to specifics and then link that to weaknesses in the system. Many times serious issues cannot be resolved because people concentrate on things and events rather than the links between them.
What took me a long time to realise was that I was dealing with people who are desperate to be seen as the good guys. I have no problem with this; it is the absolutism of this pursuit that is of such concern. There is also an attitude based on the notion that we intend to do good, therefore everything that we do must be good. The problem with this notion once again lies within the fact that it is not based on any notion of self criticism and, more disturbingly, is not tempered in the slightest by any outside pressure or processes that can define, quantify and evaluate the extent and nature of this so-called good.
Stumbling out of a confrontation with the United Nations and into another with an international humanitarian organisation made me realise, for the first time, what the core of the problem is. Following, with intense interest, the work of Rafael Marques to protect the rights of his countrymen drives the issues further towards the core of things.
We – like everybody else – are the most important people around. It is an important principle, can only be important, even vital, if it applies, and apply equally to all of us. It is important to realise that people are more important than their institutions, people are always people, institutions are only valid for as long as it realises this.
The problem is also that people are people that can often do things that are stupid, or bad and even evil. People can do this for many reasons, sometimes because they had not been told the whole story; sometimes because they had taken hold of some idea or set of ideas that has given them the excuse to regard other people as expendable, or bad or even evil.
It is not always possible to know that you are right and they are wrong. The important thing is to keep on trying to find out. It is truth that matters – not the sort of truth that is simply an image of ourselves; thinking the way we think, doing the way we do, turning policies into megalomania and reasoned certainties into dogma.
The first step in being wrong is not allowing the free exchange of ideas, attempting to turn of the lights of knowledge and to demand that our particular certainties are the only possible certainties.
The only way to react when seeing something wrong is to shine a spotlight on it, and to point it out to others.
When dealing with people and institutions that are generally more good than they are bad this frequently has the desired, positive, effect. It is when dealing with people and institutions that are generally more bad than they are good that one could quite easily find oneself in trouble, the target of all sorts of threats, insults and insinuation.
I am certainly not, and I think I can confidently say that neither is Rafael Marques, against anything or anybody. We are both for democracy and justice. We are for it, not only for ourselves - which would make it meaningless - but for everybody. We both make that clear in almost everything that we write and say. There should not be any confusion about this.
In our respective quests we do not claim to speak on behalf of anybody or for the people. We speak on behalf of ourselves and what we believe is right.
It is those that are the main subjects of our concern that make these claims, and this claim is in itself a matter of concern.
This claim – the claim to speak for the people – is implicit even in the names of the major players in Angola; The MPLA, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola and UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, ostensibly the major opposition party, in reality simply the flipside of the same coin.
The United Nations and International Humanitarian and Development Organisations habitually clothe everything they say in their concern for and representation of the poor, the vulnerable, the excluded and the incapable.
The only way that I can put this in context is to recount here an anecdote that I am very fond of:
In the early nineteen-nineties, as South Africa was embarking on the difficult process to democracy, a politician published a report that stated that 66% of the population of one of the provinces, the Free State, are absolutely opposed to these changes. In a television interview he confidently defended this report: it was done by a very reputable company, the very same one that the government uses in fact; a very large sample was taken, ten times larger than required to be representative of the entire population; only one unambiguous question was asked “Are you in favour of the current changes or not?” There was no doubt whatsoever in his mind; two-thirds of all people, by common consent a very large majority, did not want South Africa to change. He insisted that this needed to be taken seriously.
“What percentage of the people surveyed were black?” He was then asked.
This politician looked surprised for a moment at this strange question, then confused, even offended.
“None.” He said, stating the obvious.
In the subsequent elections the ANC, the party that had fought for democracy, won in that province with a 76% majority. The truth of the matter is that there are not all that many white people in South Africa. The fact that they were in charge for such a long time did not make them the people.
Not once, in spite of their protests over many decades - more than a century - did this politician even think of considering that a black person may have a voice and that perhaps it should be listened to.
There is a tendency, and it exists in all countries, democratic or otherwise, for those in power to simply exclude their critics from their definition of the people.
As criticism mounts this tendency continues until all these politicians really represent are themselves and that all that is left is a pretence, a pretence to represent the people and a pretence that everything that they do is for the people. As this pretence becomes more glaringly obvious so too does the demand that everybody must participate in this pretence and this demand becomes increasingly vicious and violent.
Communists were quite good at it. Capitalists are proving to be equally adept at it.
The purpose of Communism is to protect communism. The purpose of Capitalism is to protect capitalism. The purpose of power and influence is to get it, then to keep it at all costs.
Every single one of us, Rafael Marques and I included – and perhaps especially the two of us – should be aware of listening only to our own voices and pretending that we are listening to others.
Rafael Marques does not pretend to speak for anybody but himself, he is a nobody, even, it seems, by his own admission, and I happen to agree that he is a nobody.
Why then does he attract such a violent reaction from the Angolan Government?
This is a question that I had thought of every since I first heard of him and the first time that the Angolan authorities took excessive measures against him.
The answer is in fact frightfully simple and obvious.
He is one of them.
Rafael Marques worked for a long time as a journalist on the National paper, Jornal de Angola.
Instead of showing the appropriate gratitude for having received this influential position and enjoying the prestige and financial rewards that this would bring he decided to start questioning the very system that offered him so much.
In following his conscience, he reminded every single other Angolan in a position of authority and privilege that some day they too may have to examine their own consciences and make difficult decisions.
It is not an easy decision to make, I know, I have made it a few times myself, not very many people do, and very, very few understand why people would want to do it.
I have my own experience in trying to explain this through a long discussion with James Lee, the UNDP Ombudsman, and in my opinion a somewhat weak and cowardly man, whose only self-esteem seem to come from his employment within the UN system.
“Why are you doing this?” He asks me over and over again.
“Surely it cannot be for altruistic reasons?”
I explain to him my need to find justice, even, if all else fails, a sort of narrative justice, an acknowledgement that things had gone wrong and need to be fixed. He seems to like this explanation yet still seem unsatisfied.
“If you are doing this for money UNDP will not talk to you.” He ventures.
He then tries to threaten me. He warns that severe measures can be taken against me. What he is especially concerned about is an article that had appeared in a newspaper under the headline “UNDP is at Fault.”
“All those Dollar signs!” He exclaims.
I was not responsible for the layout of this article. In fact all I had done was to provide the information upon which the journalist had drawn his own conclusions. The journalist even concludes that he had tried to contact UNDP to verify the facts but was ignored.
James Lee does not show any dismay at these people; his mirth is directed purely at me. This may perhaps be because they are not available but more probably because, in his mind, I am supposed to be one of them. He simply cannot understand why I refuse to be.
When I dismiss his threats out of hand he comes to the only conclusion that he is capable of: That I am simply looking for a nice UN job. He seems satisfied with this, and although making promises to the contrary, he never again gets in contact with me.
I am sure that Rafael can recount similar experiences and similar difficulties to be understood.
I myself had done some very stupid things in my life, things that had put me in excruciatingly embarrassing positions. I myself am the beneficiary of terrible wrongs; I am, after all, a white South African. It would be stupid of me to try and deny this, and give long justifications or to try and confuse the issue by piling all sorts of irrelevant and unrelated arguments over the obvious facts.
I could easily have been part of the problem; my life would certainly have been easier. It is my choice not to be. It is a choice that has to be made constantly.
I see many similarities between myself and Rafael Marques, although he, in my opinion, is already speaking quite eloquently, whilst I am still trying to find my voice.
We are both people that make as much noise as we can, we say things that people would rather not hear; we name names and embarrass individuals. We both proudly and unrepentantly attach our names to all we say, write and do. We both struggle with the fact that by and large we only manage to preach to the converted and that many of the names that we mention are only because those are the names that crop up in our investigations and that these individuals may also have many redeeming features. We both know that there are real evil bastards out there who need to be exposed but who never sign documents or make public statements. We are both confronted with a great many complexities, a huge amount of information that need to be digested, the knowledge that terrible crimes may lurk not in the documents, laws and public statements but in the cracks between them, and that this need to be presented concisely and coherently in such a way that the deaf can hear and the blind can see. Both our approaches are mostly journalistic in nature. We do not claim to be able to solve the problems. We are simply pointing to the problems and making an appeal to those that are qualified and responsible to do so find these solutions. There are people that are qualified and responsible to do this, or, at least, there should be.
In our own respective spheres we are practically alone in our campaigns.
There are also many differences between us.
Rafael Marques does not struggle with legitimacy.
There is no process that can make him become unborn in Angola. There is no doubt whatsoever about the existence of an Angolan identity and nationalism. Angolans have fought many wars over many generations to define and protect that identity. It is supported by a very rich culture, literature and music. There is an internationally recognised system of governance in place. The institutions to support this governance, the Presidency, ministers, governors and administrators are all legitimised by Angolan laws, according to international standards, and are all filled by Angolans.
A great many Angolans, nobodies, each and every one of them, contribute to many aspects of this governance: Civil servants who arrive at work every day on time and do the best job they can; police stations manned by nobodies who diligently serve the people with the little resources at their disposal, large numbers of young Angolans, men as well as women, joined the military, and a great many of them died to protect their identity.
Granted, many aspects of the Angolan identity still need to be defined, only Angolans can do this, and, amongst other things, they are still in the process of determining who exactly has the right to govern them, how this governance will function and what the exact responsibilities and roles of Angolan institutions could be and should be. Most of all, Angolans want to know how officials in high office are using the power of their office to benefit all Angolans.
This is of great concern to almost all Angolans, I know. It is discussed around dinner tables, in restaurants, pubs and coffee shops. It is the subject of street corner conversations. It is discussed in buses and taxis. Poorly dressed husbands and fathers discuss this whilst working in the fields. Overworked, underfed and barefoot wives and mothers discuss this whist taking their day’s pickings to the market. It is discussed in ministries and embassies abroad. The fact that it is happening quietly does not mean that it is not there.
These are all nobodies; they are nevertheless the only thing that Angola has who can create a credible notion of what it is, or should be, to be Angolan.
It is not an easy process. Many people, Angolans and foreigners alike, take advantage of many weaknesses and loopholes of the current Angolan circumstances for their own benefit.
This is normal in some ways, it happens to all countries in similar circumstances.
This threat to the Angolan identity is very serious but in spite of this there is only one Angolan making a concerted and serious public effort to highlight this threat. There are many reasons why not more Angolans have the confidence to join him in this, and only one of the reasons is because of their deep, and justified, distrust of the international institutions that have been set up to support them in this - institutions that promise to assist them in this and which Angolans expect to be available to represent their interests in instances where their own systems fail or where there are international implications and causes for their plight.
It is the legitimacy of these institutions that is of concern to me and which I am pursuing vigorously. The notion of a global democracy is still in a very embryonic state and there are still a great many loopholes and weaknesses in both the system and the institutions that had been set up to support it. Many people take advantage of these many weaknesses and loopholes for their own benefit. The system is also full of inherent contradictions.
It depends for its existence and survival on the notion of an International Community.
There is absolutely nobody, nor will there ever be anybody, that was born in the International Community.
The International Community includes everybody, but for the purpose of some arguments and certain circumstances, many individuals are routinely excluded. This is the only way to avoid intolerable, inherent contradictions and in some instances the International Community may for all practical purposes only consist of a few individuals.
Much of the formal International Community is simply a motley collection of organisations, a few individuals that had conferred upon themselves a series of mandates of their own choosing, and now function as a mutual backslapping society, giving one another high office and all the power, influence and prestige that go with it.
There are no elected officials representing the International Community, and it is very unlikely that there will ever be.
There is no, nor can there ever be any, inherent legitimacy in the International Community. The institutions set up under this umbrella can only ever depend, for their legitimacy, on the quality of the work that they do and the quality of the people that they employ to do this.
This is a legitimacy that these people had comprehensively squandered.

In my book I attempt to show up the consequences of this fraud, based largely on my experiences in Angola, but do not shy away from criticising the Angolan government either. I take great care to ensure that this criticism is appropriate, and within the rather narrow sphere that I had established for myself as legitimate and already within the public domain. In a few cases there are criticisms that I had raised directly with Angolans. In these cases they accepted this for what it is and responded to it positively. It has to be remembered though, although some Angolans may say otherwise when it suits them, that I am not one of them.
Many of those Angolan civil servants that I know and that speak English had asked for, received and read copies of my manuscript or parts thereof.
I received only one negative comment and this was that I should revise the section on Rafael Marques and remove the inclusion of his article “The Lipstick of Dictatorship.”
“I don’t like it.” Was the only justification that I received for this comment. When I mentioned that such a justification is not good enough, this person thought for a few minutes then offered that all he can think of are reasons why it should be included.
This article is eloquent, confrontational and highly indignant, much more so in the original Portuguese than in English, and it frightened me the first time I read it.
At a very general level it was a direct, frontal attack upon the deep identification with and admiration for the Southern African Liberation Movements that I had had all my life.
By implication its accusations included everybody that I dealt with in the Angolan Government as a result of my work, many of them that I liked very much and some that were, and still are, some of my closest friends.
In some very important ways it also attacked the very justification for me being in Angola and the type of work that I was doing, or wanted to do, there.
The reason that it is included in the book is that this was the first time since the brutal suppression of the Nito Alves Revolt in 1977 that any Angolan had dared to confront the Angolan system head on. To date this person is virtually the only one to do so.
To this day there are Angolan government officials, some of them in very high office, who must wake up every morning, grateful for the extreme stroke of luck that allowed them to survive the aftermath of this revolt.
Because of the nature of my book, I also happen to mention many of the same officials that are now targeted by Rafael Marques.
The deputy prime-minister, Aguinaldo Jaime, was dismissed in the early nineteen-nineties as Minister of Finance, largely as a result of his concern about burgeoning corruption and a lack of clarity regarding the expenditure of state finances.
Although I stand corrected in this, his considerable talents were then lost to Angola as he worked at the African Development Bank.
By the end of the decade he was invited back as Director of the National Bank. He accepted this position only on condition of a great deal of autonomy to set policy and push through difficult reforms. At the bank he was instrumental in stabilising the Angolan economy as well as for a substantial increase in the transparency of government transactions once the funds had reached the central bank.
Aguinaldo Jaime is a highly qualified, extremely intelligent and by all accounts a very decent man, and many Angolans, with their implicit - not always justified - faith in their leadership expect much from him in his position as deputy prime-minister.
There are many moments in the history of Angola when the country had been saved from calamities even greater than that which besets it now. In almost every instance Kundy Paihama, the Minister of Defence, was in some capacity or another, instrumental in that rescue. He is held in very high regard by a great number of Angolans on all sides of the various political and social divides. Kundy Paihama is himself a member of a group of people who are trying to maintain a distinct identity in the face of tremendous odds. He is one of very few senior Angolan officials to speak several African languages and to do so proudly. Many times that I had seen him with ordinary people he seemed much happier and at ease than when he is surrounded by important men dressed in impeccable suits. I believe him when he says “We are also human.”
Both these men are influential and powerful politicians who deserve to hold high office. If they had not been born as Angolans they would have been powerful men in other countries.
Both these men have the capacity and opportunity to do many positive things at a difficult time in their history, yet not nearly as difficult as previous times, when these men had shown what they are capable of, and did so with dignity. These men are as easily part of the solution as they can be part of the problem.
I ask them not to squander the opportunities that they have, and had worked for, but to use it judicially in the interest of all Angolans. I am also asking them to acknowledge that every single Angolan has a voice and an opinion, and that they should be allowed to use that voice without fear and that, at the very least, it would be listened to. There are many Angolans that can, and would gladly, assist them in finding solutions to the multitude of challenges that they face.
I am asking this as a nobody, not even an Angolan citizen, but as a human being. I am also asking on behalf of my daughter, who was born and lives in Angola, and who I am determined shall not inherit, as an adult, the same Angola into which she was born.

Those of us that are concerned often resort to all the myriad policies, laws, academic papers and formal investigations for the arguments on which to base our concern.
Yet it is often the small things and chance encounters that provide the clues as to how disturbing things are and how urgent it is to find a solution.
In a coffee shop a stranger sits down next to me and introduces himself as a UN official. He laments how his agency is receiving so little support from donors that there is almost nothing for him to steal. He remarks on how some months he is even obliged to live entirely off his own salary.
After a public talk on Angola I am approached by a man who claims to be involved in diamond mining in Angola. He tells me:
“We have a legal agreement with the government. We cannot mine if there are people living there. The police were reluctant to remove them so we contracted a legally registered security company to do it. They had a legal contract to do this, they were not thugs. If people got hurt it is because they resist. If they just move off our land by themselves there would be no trouble. The corrupt Angolan authorities are trying to complicate my life with social responsibility and development. All I want is my diamonds. There is nothing wrong with that.”
I try to explain to him that the diamonds are not his and can never be, no matter how many pieces of paper say so, especially if these pieces of paper are based on the letter and not the spirit of the law. I try to explain that the legitimate use of force is limited to duly mandated authorities linked to national governments to be used sparingly and in rare instances. I try to explain that he is not an Angolan citizen, that he does not reside in Angola, that he has no intention of spending his wealth anywhere near Angola.
Unrepentant he maintains that all he wants are his diamonds; nevertheless he refuses to tell me who he is and what company he represents.
Every time I fly into Angola I end up sitting next to some charlatan – businessman, UN official, Aid worker – who proudly informs me on how they are going to Angola to make a quick buck and then to bugger off. It is a feeding frenzy and every vulture wants a part of it.
Only once do I sit next to the daughter of a well-known and influential member of the Angolan ruling class. She shares with me her frustrations in being unable to find, in Angola, a job commensurate with her intelligence and qualifications.

Rafael Marques summarises this with chilling conciseness: “one has to understand the word “confusão” in the Angolan mindset. Its literal translation means confusion. But, it also means a window of opportunity in which one can play without rules and the winner gets to set the rules.”
If this is true then by definition one can never rely on the winner to change the system. We are expected to believe that these days the United Nations are so very busy reforming themselves. The Angolan government is in the midst of a very active campaign to demonstrate how much they are doing for the benefit of Angolans.
The best that both these institutions can do, by definition, is to make new rules that are more convenient to them. It is only by listening to the voices around them, and pressure from the outside to make them listen, that will lead to meaningful change, and get rid of this mentality that there must always be winners and always be losers. In the real world either everybody wins or nobody wins.

[1] Letters to Gabriella, Florida Literary Foundation, 01 June 2005. ISBN 1891855670

Stumbling About in Blissful Arrogance

2007-09-19T13:18:00.000+02:00

"You cannot run away from a weakness. You must sometimes fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?" Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish author, 1850-1894)

Humanitarian assistance and development was subjected to yet another bout of introspection and criticism with the publication in March 2005 of “Our Common Interest” the report of the Commission for Africa. The report was commissioned by Tony Blair, ably, one presumes, assisted by a number of influential people, mostly political leaders, public servants and private sector representatives from Africa. It was their job to define the challenges facing Africa, and to provide clear recommendations on how to support the changes needed to reduce poverty. Sounds familiar?
Reports such as these, all with good intentions, appear about twice or thrice a decade. They all say more or less the same things, all have a similar logic and all recognise the same weaknesses and suggest comparable solutions. They are well thought out and often have powerful supporters and support.
Why then do these noble intentions invariably come to nothing?
Why does Development not work?
Thousands, perhaps millions of hours, had been spent by many people, intelligent people, discussing this. Pressure on official development assistance funds and greater demand for public accountability over the last few years have placed greater focus on ensuring that Development achieves results, yet these pressures never seem to reach down to the implementation level where they are the most needed.
Why not?
Perhaps the roots of a solution do not lie so much in what is discussed publicly, as it lies in that which is alluded to constantly in private conversations, yet for some or other reason prohibited from being mentioned in the public domain.
Considering the extent of UN corruption that is now, with the Oil-for-Food scam, amongst others, reluctantly, becoming public, perhaps it is time for this type of discussion to become more open and direct. And to realise that even this cannot not do much more than touch briefly upon the tip of the iceberg of an industry characterised by incompetence, arrogance, paranoia and racism beyond belief.
How did Development, with all its incurable romantic allusions, its sense of moral superiority, its utopian faith blended with undimmed eighteenth century idealism regarding the perfectibility of man, become such an unmitigated embarrassment, the domain of all sorts of freeloaders, fraudsters and outright criminals?
And why is nobody even allowed to talk about it? Partly it must be because one cannot reduce issues of international importance to the level of juvenile truths. Nevertheless the first question vexed me for quite a while, until I started thinking, for no particular reason, about that other great failed human experiment: Communism. It was in the failure of this system that I saw the similarities with Development assistance as a human endeavour.
The Commission for Africa report suggests that; “When you are stuck with a really tough problem, Albert Einstein once said, you have to change your mental approach entirely. More of the same will not get you anywhere. You have to move your thinking to a different level. The same is true when it comes to Africa, and the question of how the world is to finance the changes that are required. The problems we are addressing are huge. They are the result of three decades of stagnation. To agree a few more incremental steps along the road already travelled will get us nowhere. Change requires a quantum leap.”
It then promptly refuses to make this quantum leap.
Let’s try and make it now.
Three main entities are mentioned by this report; National Governments, Donors and some vague thing called the International Community. Weaknesses and shortcomings in the first two are identified. Donors come in for special criticism when they are told to “change their behaviour and support the national priorities of African governments rather than allowing their own procedures and special enthusiasms to undermine the building of a country’s own capacity.” African Governments are chastised for not being transparent enough, not accountable and not responsive to the needs of its people, in other words that they are not democratic or that their democracies are too weak.
By the way, and this is a bit of an aside, it is ordinary people that make democracies work and not governments or even institutions.
What the International Community could be is not specifically defined (it will be somewhat arbitrarily defined as United Nations Agencies (UNA´s) and International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGO´s) for the purpose of this argument. Bob Geldof, Bono and Angelina Jolie may well be dismayed to find themselves excluded but they form part of a rather separate argument.), neither is it subject to much criticism apart from the very brief “and the UN must increase accountability for its performance at the country level” stuck in as an afterthought near the end of the report.
And it is exactly at the level of the UN - not much more than a hornet’s nest of ignorance, sloth and infighting - and INGO´s - individually and collectively an impenetrable bureaucratic labyrinth accountable to no one - where one finds the bottleneck that is the cause of much of the stagnation in Development Assistance.
What is of importance is also not so much these entities - National Governments, Donors and the International Community - and their respective weaknesses by themselves, but the way that they interact with one another. And it is here that the closest analogy can be found with Communism. Communism in its purest form is characterised by its level of central planning and the major difference with a free-market system is the extent to which the economy functions as a competition for resources instead of for market share. The most important priority for industry then becomes access to the central planners, those who can provide them with access to the resources they require. The customer in effect becomes an afterthought, often irrelevant and even a nuisance. It is the customer, ostensibly the rhyme and reason for economic activity, which pays the price in poor quality consumer goods, shortages and a reduced standard of living. The prime example of this topsy-turvy world is probably the ubiquitous “Five Year Plan.” These famous five year plans were introduced by Stalin in 1928 to force the pace of industrialization and build the backbone of the Soviet economy. This enshrinement of a centralised plan was probably quite well suited to the rapid transformation of a backward but emerging state into a superpower. Although it ensured rapid growth, exacting heavy sacrifices from Soviet citizens in the process, it hardly led to the clockwork functioning of the economy. In the long run it spawned rigidity, waste and lopsided development and proved hopelessly inadequate for resolving the more sophisticated problems of modernisation which caused the eventual downfall of the Soviet empire.
By the same token, and twenty years after central planning has been discredited, the Development world is constantly presented with “Plans” - “Jubilee 2000,” “Millennium Development Goals,” “Vision 2020” to mention but a few - faultless blueprints that would invariably solve all problems.[1]
All programmes and projects are always based on a Plan, a plan invariably created by INGO´s or UNA´s; sometimes, but rarely, in collaboration with a government, and always in line with priorities and deadlines defined by a donor. The Plan is then proffered as the key to scientific management of manpower and resources, the unerring lever for achieving maximum results, the Utopian device for the co-ordinated function of a system ostensibly to solve some of the world’s most intractable challenges. The Plan becomes the fundamental law, one of the most incessant incantations of the Development world. Publicly, the Plan is treated with almost mystical veneration, as if endowed with some superhuman faculty for raising mortal endeavour to a higher plane, freed from human weakness. And with the Plan comes all the weaknesses associated with Communism; their Central Planning and “Five Year Plans.”
A co-ordinated plan, and a central financing procedure, is perhaps not such a bad idea for responding to emergencies, man-made and natural, but as a mechanism for responding to the far more complex, long term demands for sustainable development it is hopelessly inadequate, spawning, as in the case with Communism, rigidity, waste and lopsided development. With variations and embellishments programmes and projects follow the same trajectory with monotonous, and disturbing, regularity. Arbitrarily defined goals and outputs are followed religiously, pursuing equally arbitrarily defined deadlines, in spite of the reality, often in the face of changing circumstances and more often than not bulldozing over any comments, and even complaints, that beneficiaries and local staff may have.
In a village of fewer than three hundred people, only periodically accessible by road, three schools are being built by three different organisations, each complying uncritically with the demands of their respective Plans, to build twenty-five or fifty schools (these are always nice round numbers). The fact that, in addition to the lack of possible pupils, there would also be no desks, books or even teachers is not considered; it is not in the Plan. The representative of one organisation, upon hearing that a non-descript building in the same village had once been used a school, becomes ecstatic with the possibility that this can also now be rehabilitated. In addition to having to build schools, his Plan also requires him to rehabilitate a number (always a nice round number) of schools. Where they should be and how all of this must fit into the educational policy and priorities of a government is not stipulated in the Plan, therefore irrelevant. His only priority is to meet his targets.
These targets develop an iron logic all its own, totally divorced from any sort of reality. In addition, the chronic problems that bedevil all projects in spite of planning is staggering, protracted bickering over priorities within and between different organisations, on all levels, means that even if work do proceed swiftly, and has at least some relevance, the price is paid in quality. Projects can be self-defeating in ironic little ways. An eighteen month Water and Sanitation Project worth €1.8 million has no expenses for nine months but the recruitment and subsequent dismissal of a series of engineers. They are being dismissed because their recommendations run counter to the irrational demands of the Project Director, a fully qualified Graphic Artist, to save money for the donor. With no scientific training, and negligible relevant experience, combined with a total disregard for local people, her recommendations fall well within the realms of the absurd. Criticism and suggestions for improvement are countered by intimidation, humiliation and serial dismissals. Towards the end of the project this farce reaches its climax in an orgy of hasty, ill-conceived, “money saving” construction that succeeds only in depriving communities from access to water.
Everything is done for the benefit of the donor, thousands of kilometres away and ignorant and disinterested in what is done in their name.
The only thing donors know from all of this, are their brief visits to elaborately staged “Opening Ceremonies,” to water systems that deprive people from water; hospitals without equipment, beds or doctors; clinics with no nurses or medicine; schools without teachers; micro-credit funds that function as pyramid schemes and loan-sharking operations; all hidden behind glossy reports that wax eloquent about successes but fail to stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. This fanfare is often only a way of whipping up fervour and projecting prestige in order to be able to get even more money. Behind all of it lies a level of deceit that is obscene. From the distance at which donors view things everything can appear fine and nobody of any importance or relevance are ever allowed up close to where all this frantic activity reveals itself to be but window dressing. Projects belong to no-one, not to donors, or governments, or beneficiaries, and certainly not to the organisations implementing them, so no-one cares about it. Constant haggling and hassling over targets and objectives, short-changing, phoney figures and systematic deception exist on all levels. Cover-ups are the order of the day.
At the Danish Refugee Council in Angola, from whose amateurish and inept fiascos the above examples are taken, the most persistent mantra happened to be that “We do not lie to the donor.” What they meant by this in fact, was that under no circumstances whatsoever would they report anything other than outstanding success in any of their endeavours, even if this required them to systematically lie and misrepresent themselves and what they are doing. Likewise, persistent claims that they had excellent relations with their main donor, DANIDA, did not mean that these relations were based on open and honest discussions on their activities, discussions to adapt programmes and projects to changing realities, creating mechanisms to mitigate, often unintended, negative consequences or any other signs of the give and take normally associated with good relations between any two entities. What it meant was simply that they could get away with any degree of deceit without any sanction whatsoever from the donor. For the Danish Refugee Council, any notion of accountability and answerability began and ended with the donor.
This organisation is singled out simply because I have some experience of them, and thus the documentation to substantiate these claims, not because they are in any way fundamentally different or worse than any other organisation of this type. To the hypersensitive management any open admission of failure is unprecedented. Everybody has to pretend that all is well. And then the money keeps on flowing. It is all a pose but true to this intellectual environment everybody seems oblivious to the disquieting reality or the implications of their inability as they spout catechisms of optimism from every culture.
“The government hears only its own voice while all the time deceiving itself, affecting to hear the voice of the people while also demanding that they support the pretence,” said Karl Marx in 1842. In his time there were no NGO´s and no UN, but undoubtedly he would have been able to recognise this not only in the largely undemocratic governments of his time, but also the prevalence of this attitude in these organisations in this age.
Many of these organisations, quite properly, have taken it upon themselves to chastise us for being wasteful of consumer items with built-in obsolescence and for squandering natural resources, the environment and energy. But even the most wasteful society is not as bad as the Development industry of people and ideas; which stifle not only critics but anybody with an urge to improve the system, able managers, researchers and technicians, whose ideas are regularly aborted or stillborn because the system so rigidly resists originality. The deep suspicion, the overreaction and narrow escapes from drastic actions to things trivial, quietens any possible dissenting voices; it is just too dangerous to speak out. Thousands of ordinary, dedicated people that do work hard, often with no outside funding, to make meaningful differences in their communities - people who experiment, evaluate, learn and improve - are frequently ignored, their efforts sidelined and often destroyed to make space for an International Organisation.
The top-down structure is essentially to blame, but not all bottlenecks can be blamed on the system.
The Commission for Africa is not far wrong in its assessment that “African voices often fail to be heard within the development sector, including in international processes. This is partly due to an arrogance that expert outsiders or domestic elites ‘know best’ and partly due to institutional pressures for quick, consensual and anticipated results,” but fails to delve deeply enough into the problem. The Plan is certainly the brake on its own growth and the donor driven agenda may explain why allocating aid to African countries remains “haphazard, uncoordinated and unfocused, why donors continue to commit errors that, at best, reduce the effectiveness of aid, and at worst, undermine the long-term development prospects of those they are supposed to be helping. It may explain why rich countries pursue their own fixations and fads, often ignoring the needs prioritised by African governments and why the amounts they give are so unpredictable. It may explain why they are insufficiently flexible when it comes to reallocating aid to new priorities in the face of a national emergency, or why they don’t respond quickly, or appropriately, when natural or economic disasters strike, such as droughts or floods, unexpected hikes in oil prices or falling commodity prices.”
What it cannot explain is the growth of a huge parasitic, criminal enterprise that has demonstrated its willingness to misrepresent political, social and cultural facts for financial gain, ignores charges of sexual abuse and harassment, even paedophilia within its ranks, turns a blind eye to its own obvious and at times devastating failures and to participate in inexcusable fraud and corruption.

The problem with this Development Enterprise is the fact that any organisation can mandate itself to participate in it absolutely without merit and without any risk. (UN Agencies like to claim that they are mandated by the General Assembly and accountable to this body, but that is simply a roundabout way to say that they are accountable to nobody.) And not only can they participate, almost entirely on their own terms, but they can compete against governments for funds with a comparative advantage, not based on any real results from their past performance, or representing anybody, but based purely on the perception of their integrity; a perception based on and perpetuated entirely by their own reports and their own propaganda about themselves. They operate almost entirely in an ethical vacuum of their own making, being legally and morally accountable to absolutely nobody and functionally immune to any possibility of prosecution.
Bizarrely there are now a huge number of public servants, none of whom are democratically elected, making decisions and affecting policy for countries of which they themselves are not even citizens. Within the UN a widespread sense of impunity and the confidence of not having to face the consequences of one’s actions, knowing that one can run from however much trouble one causes in one country simply by being promoted to a position in another country, is so pervasive that an entire generation of UN officials considers this sort of behaviour to be the most effective avenue to promotion within the system.
A Dane working for a French organisation funded by American money, based in Kenya and running projects in Somalia or Sudan is effectively as outside of the law a Libyan, planting, in Germany, a bomb on an American plane that explodes over Scotland.
Although the need for reform is recognised, it assumes that the International Community will reform and regulate itself, and to perpetuate the pretence a whole plethora of self-regulating organisations and coalitions have sprung up such as the “Humanitarian Accountability Project,” “Sphere Project,” and the “One World Trust.” All of them make a lot of noise about accountability, but none of them has ever pointed a finger at any of their members, nor do they have any executive powers with which to oblige their members to follow their guidelines. All of them are based in European capitals and run by Europeans. Since the 1950´s, the UN, for example, has faced a constant barrage of management studies, policy reviews, reform proposals and even actual reforms every now and then.
True African voices, truly African investigations, local solutions based on local knowledge are not countenanced or tolerated. This mentality does not invite an adequate response to the challenges facing these organisations. Furthermore, the very language used throughout their texts tends to be imposing, demanding and intimidating in many ways. It often suggests there are consequences associated with a failure to deliver the ideal outcomes as sought by donors. The language speaks for itself: “performance review,” “consistency,” “goals,” “objectives,” “results and ‘performance indicators’ that meet standards,” “effective,” “performance reporting,” “meets management’s expectations.” The result of being confronted with a rapid succession of such words is to create a language suggestive of a parental relationship. The pressures to perform (as opposed to learn and grow) – real or perceived – are considerable. It is not difficult to understand why – given this kind of language – project staff might bend over backward to tell a donor what it wants to hear.
The result, I maintain, is to create a culture, not of mutual learning (and there is a lot to be learnt from Africans), but rather to establish a relationship that is less than helpful to the improvement of institutions and practices relevant to development assistance. In the real world of development work, criteria and expectations that have currency in a donor’s context can be problematic amid the structural and cultural realities of Africa.
Development should be for people as much as about them and the institutions that are supposed to serve them.
Yet nothing will be meaningfully reformed as long as those who are responsible for creating these needs, whose mismanagement has resulted in the abuses so endemic within the system, are also responsible for driving the reform process. They certainly do not support a thoughtful and constructive reform process aimed at creating stronger and more effective institutions. Throughout the Commission for Africa report the weaknesses of the International Community is glossed over, ignored or it is assumed they will magnanimously sort themselves out. The report assumes that the forces that create poverty, exclusion and injustice exist only in governments, public policies and market institutions. They lie within the so-called International Community as well. The large number of common deficiencies with the services provided by this sector include: limited coverage; variable quality; amateurish approach; high staff turnover; lack of effective management systems; poor cost effectiveness; lack of co-ordination; and poor sustainability due to dependence on external assistance and no connection to or representation of the people that they are supposed to assist.
INGO´s and UNA´s have had a choice in the way they respond: they could acknowledge that it is precisely in times like this that it is important for them to reset standards, that the only way to force governments to be accountable is by demonstrating accountability themselves, yet they have largely been ignoring calls to clean up their act; choosing instead to perpetuate the rather unhelpful attitude that they are “superior.” They encourage us to think that their organisations behave in ways that are inherently different from other kind of organisations, such as donors, government departments or businesses.
Yet all accountability mechanisms presume that the integrity of organisations is not protected by good intention or by a heavenly gift, but are acquired by hard work, vigilance and respect for good practices. Both governments and business function in an environment of risk; the risk of a backlash by the population for failed policies, the risk of periodic elections, the risk of prosecution and imprisonment for bad business practise and deceit, and especially the very immediate risks of losing market share and legitimacy. Within the International Community no realistic and applicable risk mechanism exists. INGO´s and UNA´s may be different from other organisations in some respects, but in many others they operate in the same way, and are subject to the same universal human weaknesses and temptations. Because the Development Industry is now more powerful - certainly the sector considered as a whole, but often as individual organisations in their own right - they should apply this reasoning to their own behaviour. They should stop seeing themselves as fundamentally different from other kinds of organisations, somehow cleaner and more immune to the diseases of power and privilege. They should accept that they have similar responsibilities to report on their activities, follow agreed principles of behaviour, and be accountable when they fall short. Even if their motives are more idealistic, they are no less subject to human imperfection. These values may, in certain instances help them to perform well; this does not mean that precautions against short-sightedness, self-interest, temptation, even incompetence and irrelevance, are not necessary. On the contrary, respect for the values that this sector represent requires, if anything, a higher sense of vigilance and a higher degree of risk.
Although the analogy with Communism may well explain many of the weaknesses in the Development Community, it falls dramatically short when trying to find solutions. The weaknesses of Communism can be overcome by moving to a lesser or greater extent into free-market systems. Nevertheless the strengths of the free-market system do not readily translate itself into solutions in the development context. A free-market system in theory responds to the demands of the market, in other words the consumer. One must also realise that economic endeavour is perhaps the most important activity for the development of societies and for individual fulfilment and that it is this very importance that provides the impetuous to make it work. Also it generates much of its own resources with which to regulate and police itself. In the areas where it fails to look after itself, the government is usually sufficiently motivated by the importance of the economy for its own survival, to regulate - and finance the enforcement of these regulations - from its own resources. A plethora of gatekeepers and regulators keep watch – lawyers, auditors, commissioners; a wide range of international agreements and arrangements, many of which are enforceable.
Conceded, things still go wrong; Multinational companies indulge in slave labour practices in China and Indonesia; there is Enron, WorldCom and ImClone. Yet high level officers of the economy loose their jobs, they do get prosecuted and sometimes even go to prison.
Even in Africa, where formal justice systems can be weak, the economy is based to a large extent on cultural and social networks that are founded on reciprocity, trust, dependability and above all, some degree of honesty.
None of this can be usefully applied to the concept of Development assistance.
In a sector that diligently strives towards mediocrity and avoiding responsibility; pointed questions are rarely asked of its leadership, no one has ever been prosecuted and a number of individuals that should be in prison hide behind immunities they do not deserve and should not have. The economy is complex, multifaceted and multi-layered; consisting of many mutually supporting, reciprocal arrangements and benefits, where one person’s raw materials are another’s end-product, where the line between consumers and producers is blurred, a complex self-regulatory and self-perpetuating system.
By contrast Development assistance is a simple linear continuum, an almost entirely unnecessary activity, except insofar as it is an acknowledgement that things had gone wrong, and often had gone wrong dramatically; with donors, and their priorities, at the one extreme, and beneficiaries, and their demands, at the other.
The Commission for Africa echoes many other voices in its constant repetition that “It is also about delivery and results. These are powerfully strengthened when local communities are involved in decisions that affect them.” It is a noble idea, one that would require the International Community and donors to respond to the demands of their beneficiaries, in theory; “the People,” in practice; hundreds of thousands or even millions of clamouring and disparate voices, largely the poor and disenfranchised, by definition unable to “put their money where their mouth is.” In line with our economic analogy it would also need to assume that beneficiaries of Aid, like consumers who can choose whether or not to buy a product, can choose whether they accept Aid or not, or from whom they are prepared to accept it. That would mean that different organisations would need to compete with one another for a share of the beneficiary market, in the same way that commercial enterprises do for customers. It is not certain that such a model would be either practical or desirable. It is also important to look at people as communities, societies and individuals and not simply as consumers.
Yet another significant difference with the economy is that the customer is also the one with the money. The beneficiary of any product or service in essence has absolute control over that product or service through the very simple expedient of having the financial power to purchase it or not.
Throughout the Commission for Africa report we are told “for accountability to be effective, a government’s policies, actions and systems need to be open to scrutiny by its people. This openness is not just a question of attitude; it has to be woven into the very systems through which the state operates.”
Yet scrutiny by itself is meaningless, and without a significant change of the system, ordinary people will remain helpless and only able to express its outrage at the situation.
The report states further that “Clearly, the responsibility for managing resources lies with the state. But the international community also has a role to play in maintaining high standards of governance. If it does so in its own activities – and demands it in the activities of private sector agents, like the multinational companies active in developing countries – then it will be better positioned to encourage similar high standards in the way African countries manage the cash from their natural resources.”
But in order for the International Community to play a role in running world affairs it must also be able to run itself.
It has emphatically shown that it is not able to do that.
Giving voice to people - and assuming that those that need assistance most are able to articulate their needs and thus receives assistance instead of the International Community simply assisting only those most able to articulate themselves - consistently run into the difficulty of who these people can complain to.
A government may be unresponsive but there always exist the possibility of complaining in the international press and embarrassing the government; government officials are known by their names; there are also demonstrations, strikes, passive resistance, even revolutions and armed uprisings if necessary. Governments have nowhere to run to, dictators may in some cases disappear to become ordinary citizens or fugitives in other countries, but as a rule they tend to hang around and try to reach a compromise with their people. Unreasonable civil servants can be replaced with more reasonable ones. Even dictatorial governments know that power through fear is inherently unstable and strive to gain power by consent. (Exceptions of course only serve to prove the rule.)
Unfortunately much Development for all intents and purposes these days rests with a plethora of NGO’s and United Nations Agencies over which weak and struggling governments in Africa often have very little, if any, control. They are completely removed from ordinary people. They can have a lot of power, but it is a strange sort of power based not on fear or consent or legitimacy, but a power based on agreements made entirely amongst themselves and a power that they can exercise on any number of different stages; invariably the most convenient stage at any moment in time being the one where they cannot be held accountable. They have no connection to people, no constituency but themselves, and an uncanny tendency to disappear when funds dry up or when they had caused so much resentment through consistent failure and arrogance as to make their further presence untenable (to then reappear somewhere else).

Many of the Commission for Africa recommendations sound excellent but have no possibility of success under current practice. For example: “(I)mpact has been greatest where they integrate with public health systems. African governments should enable community involvement to improve health outcomes as well as increase accountability.” Perhaps because the health sector provides such excellent opportunities for pretending to do any work, and because it is a relatively simple activity that so obviously appears to be doing good, there exist today several hundred so-called Emergency Health Organisations. The overwhelming majority of them have absolutely no capacity to respond to any emergency and usually appear in droves after an emergency[2] (or even in places where there has never been an emergency) to provide a haphazard, inconsistent, very expensive and very basic service just when a country needs sustained, co-ordinated and cost effective effort to improve their health services.[3] They invariably stay for as long as they have funds; usually three to six months, sometimes up to a few years. Usually overwhelmed by unfamiliar surroundings, foreign cultures and completely uneducated as to the needs of the people that they are supposed to serve it is inconceivable to imagine any of them listening to the voices of anybody but themselves. The last thing that they want is for their actions and systems to be open to scrutiny by people.
These are the quintessential vultures of the Humanitarian Aid world, arriving in that window of opportunity after every emergency, when it is safe enough to operate and travel but before the emergency funds have dried up or had been redirected to development (sometimes they manage to attract some of these funds to only then work totally outside of their emergency mandates, and cause even more harm).
Invariably these organisations, as well as a number of disaster tourists, have their eyes firmly fixed on the donor and are ardent followers of the “Plan,” the plan in this case often being a project proposal written and submitted for funding months before they had even arrived in a country. Whatever people may have to say would be very unlikely to be included in the “Plan,” in other words irrelevant to them.
Even in the unlikely event that people could have the resources to identify and track down the managers and leaders who make the decisions that affect their lives, these individuals would in all likelihood be surprised and probably offended that “People” would be so arrogant as to want to speak to them and ask them pointed questions.
For all the Commission for Africa’s urgent lamentations that the voices of people should be heard, and as noble as this may appear, the sad fact is that the majority of decisions made on behalf of people in the developing world are made, not by elected officials, but by the self-appointed and self-mandated managers of organisations headquartered in far away countries. A disturbingly large segment of this management tends to be arrogant, contemptuous and racist. Even a short visit to any African country by any concerned individual, quickly and amply demonstrates the extent to which many international organisations are managed through fear, humiliation and intimidation of local authorities, staff and beneficiaries.
Drawing once again from my experience with the Danish Refugee Council whose staff had for a number of years raised a series of concerns over the way in which the organisation was mismanaged by the fully qualified graphic artist and the abuse they suffered from her. Their concerns were supported and echoed by the authorities, by beneficiaries and even by other NGO’s, local and international.
This organisation dealt with these complaints by heavy-handedly, and often brutally, threatening staff, prompt (and illegal) dismissals sending a clear message that no criticism will be tolerated.
In the words of one local staff member: “We are barely considered as human beings, much less as individuals who can think for ourselves and express an opinion. Whenever we do express ourselves, this mere fact causes such offence within the management that any notion of redress or response becomes out of the question. Their only reaction is immediate and severe punishment.”
The last thing that managers and staff of many of these do-good organisations want is for the “victims” in question to really end up making a contribution to whatever gets done in their name - and, God forbid! - to cease to be victims.
All that is really expected of them is to merely stand around whilst foreigners erect meaningless structures all around them and screw up their water supplies.
Even the new jargon of ‘rights-based programming’ simply lead to labelling poor and vulnerable communities as essentially powerless victims or potential victims of crisis rather than as actors. More and more studies are exposing organisations that are supposedly in charge of looking after the poor and excluded but instead guilty of extensive violations of the rights of those dependent upon them.

For far too long too many donors and leaders of both the developed and developing world were content to allow this foolishness to continue, and to continue funding it. And it will only stop when a sufficient number of concerned people, and organisations that do in fact represent the aspirations of ordinary people, point to this collective ineptitude and insist to put an end to this abuse and the horrible waste caused by it.
For all the emphasis that the report place on Democracy - an emphasis based no doubt on the general regard and prestige that democracy enjoys (and in most instances deserve) – and the consistent harping on accountability – a word threatened to loose any meaning unless it can become associated with consequences – it should recognise that Democracy has its limitations. Assistance in Development is inherently an un-democratic affair where people with money offer to assist people that do not have any money. In such a scenario there will always be a stronger partner and a weaker, often silent or fearful, partner. It is our inability to move away from the notion of “charity” - and the arrogance that comes with it - and closer to a notion of assistance and co-operation that lies to a very large extent at the root of the problem. Little good ever comes from charity.
Historically, it is hard work that rescues the poor and unfortunate from their plight, not charity. If the poor, the marginalised and the incapable ever do have much success at looking after themselves, it will be largely to be through their own efforts, and through the fact that they are fortunate enough to live in societies where they are entitled to sell the results of their own efforts, however small the effort and however miserable the price. The only important contribution made by the benevolence of richer people is that these have very, very occasionally had the good sense and the decency to understand this elementary truth about poverty and how to relieve it, instead of merely salving their unthinking consciences by throwing a few coins out of their gilded carriages.
If Development is the moral imperative of the developed world to assist the undeveloped world it is the moral responsibility of the Development world to hold the agents that act on their behalf legally responsible for their actions and to punish them if they do not act in morally responsible way; in other words they should be held accountable.
It is a management and leadership issue, not a democratic one, and the structures required should be enforcement (investigating and arresting wrongdoers), judicial (putting them on trail) and punitive (sending them to prison).
If African governments are to become more democratic and more accountable to their people as the report urges, it is imperative that they be allowed the tools and the authority to monitor and, when necessary, take steps against foreigners and International organisations spending other peoples’ money on behalf of their citizens. A report that can suggest how this can be done would be far more useful than the current one with its emphasis on truism and hyperbole.

This brings us to three specific aspects of the Commission for Africa report that should be clarified within the context of this argument. Under the heading “Delivering existing commitments, better international leadership and co-ordination of aid” one hopes to start reading about many of the arguments elaborated above, alas, only to discover that the authors of this report is simply using it as a ruse for asking for more money and accusing “the international community (for) not coming up with the money to match its promises.”
The report appears to be a bit vague, and contradictory, when talking about money.
The authors do not mention how much money they think is being spent currently on Development aid. Either they do not know, as I do not myself know, or they are not saying, but they remain persistent, if somewhat contradictory, in their demand that it should be increased: “we call for an additional US$25 billion per year in aid, to be implemented by 2010. Donor countries should commit immediately to provide their fair share of this. Subject to a review of progress then, there would be a second stage, with a further US$25 billion a year to be implemented by 2015.”
“That is why we are suggesting a doubling of aid to Africa within the next three to five years.” “The major programme of reform we have outlined – in governance, public investment and social expenditure – will cost, we estimate, an additional US$75 billion a year.”
“Aid to sub-Saharan Africa should increase by US$25 billion per annum over the next three to five years.”
“Aid to sub-Saharan Africa should be doubled, that is, increased by US$25 billion per annum, over the next three to five years to complement rising levels of domestic revenue arising from growth and from better governance. Following a review of progress towards the end of this period, a further US$25 billion per annum should be provided, building on changes in the quality of aid and improvements in governance”
“Within these aid budgets, particularly in the context of a potential global increase in aid of US$50 billion. . .”

Whatever one wants to make of all these statements, it is clear that the amount of money currently being spent is not small - it should be in the order of US$30-40 billion per annum - and the issue probably more appropriately discussed under the heading “Delivering existing commitments, better international leadership and co-ordination of aid” should perhaps be why such an amount of money is having so little effect.
More importantly it should be asked first how much money can be untied by making the system more effective, instead - and definitely before - asking for yet more money.
It is not unrealistic to believe that up to 80% of current funds are lost because of unaccountable budgetary processes that prevent the people of Africa to see how money is raised and where it is going, the lack of the kind of transparency that can help combat corruption; money and assets stolen from the people of Africa by corrupt leaders and managers that must be repatriated. It is widely known, although one is not allowed to admit it, that money given to any United Nations administered Trust Fund is invariably money lost to Development. A suspiciously large percentage could probably be found in the bank accounts of UN officials should the Commission for Africa’s recommendation of “Foreign banks must be obliged by law to inform on suspicious accounts” be followed up.
Simply releasing the funds currently lost or misspent in misguided effort would provide more than sufficient funds to kick-start the development of Africa.
For an industry that has failed so spectacularly, in spite of receiving such large amounts of money, it is remarkably naïve, not to say arrogant, to ask for even more money. And if development aid is to start providing results, as the report promises, the amount of aid needed over time should become less and less and not more and more as the report is requesting. In spite of the inconsistencies in the report’s lament that more money should be given; it is when this report starts to offer suggestions as to where this money should come from that they seem to throw reason and justification out of the window.
Granted it does suggest that to “provide the critical mass of aid . . ., the aid should be front-loaded through the immediate implementation of the International Finance Facility,” perhaps not such a bad idea in principle and one that could be discussed further. Yet the report does not elaborate on this idea, harping rather on the notion that “Rich nations should commit to a timetable for giving 0.7 per cent of their annual income in aid.”
It then goes further to say that “Several nations have recently committed themselves to reaching the UN target of giving 0.7 per cent of their national income in aid. Other G8 and EU nations should now follow this example and announce timetables for reaching the 0.7 percent target.”
It is important to note that the United States, perhaps by far the largest provider in absolute terms of Official Development Assistance to developing countries, nevertheless apparently provides only about 0.1 percent of their Gross National Income, the G8 on average only 0.3 percent with only five countries, Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden having reached the target by 2003. Recently, Finland, Spain, the UK, France and Belgium had announced timetables to reach this target. America refuses to try and reach this target; preferring to concentrate rather, with high level support from Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, on the improvement in the quality of aid.
Unfortunately, even in this instance, improvement in the Quality of aid is intimately linked to American Foreign Policy and almost totally divorced from the needs and desires of ordinary people.
This magic number of 0.7 percent is something recommended by the Pearson Commission in 1970. I must admit that I had never read the report of this commission, at the time my reading was limited to Noddy books, and do not know the reasoning behind this particular percentage. But just to put this into context; the report was written before the 1973 oil crisis, before the Nixon-Brezhnev ‘Détente’; a decade before Gorbachov’s ‘Glasnost’ and the Ethiopian famine; almost two decades before the collapse of Communism, three decades before 9/11.
It is remarkable that the only justification that the Commission for Africa, in spite of their supposed influence, can come up with is a recommendation made by a report written thirty-five years ago.
That is clearly not good enough but not nearly as frightening as an alternative suggestion hidden in a few afterthoughts and asides scattered throughout the report.
The report suggests legitimately that “A number of other innovative proposals have been suggested to help address the funding gap. Further work should be undertaken to come up with specific practical proposals,” but then goes further with “Practical proposals should be developed for innovative financing methods such as international levies on aviation, which can help secure funding for the medium and longer term” and “An additional and complementary approach is to raise finance through international taxes, levies or lotteries. One example would be a voluntary levy on airline tickets to reflect the costs inflicted by carbon emissions.”

This is a continuation of a notion from Boutros Boutros-Ghali in the early 1990’s to give the UN taxing powers that, alarmingly, simply does not want to die. The idea then was to raise taxies by charging for shipping lanes or a small percentage of speculative transactions that would raise the UN income to potentially hundreds of billions of Dollars.
Other ways of raising additional funds for the UN that have come up in the past include levies on arms sales, transnational currency transactions, international trade (or sectors of it, such as polluting materials, mineral raw commodities), and international air or sea travel, an annual “United Nations Communications Day” with levies on all postage charges and telephone calls accruing to the UN, and an annual UN lottery. Zealous and misguided supporters of the United Nations are simply trying to give the organization powers it does not need and should not have. They assert that imposing a global tax on “speculative” currency transactions is an idea that deserves consideration. Such “speculative” transactions, a term that is not defined, could easily net some $150 billion a year for the United Nations’ coffers.
This is sold as a means to give the United Nations an independent source of revenue so that the organization would not be dependent on payments by member states. Advocates of the tax assure sceptics that it would be imposed at a rate of only 0.1 percent, a minuscule burden on wealthy international currency speculators.
One shudders to think what is likely to happen if the United Nations ever gains the power to tax. Merely redefining what constitutes a “speculative” transaction could net the United Nations additional hundreds of billions of dollars. Leaving aside the danger of escalating taxation, the United Nations should not have an independent taxing authority on general principle. The member states already have precious little say over what the corrupt, unaccountable and ill-managed UN bureaucracy does. They would have no input whatsoever if the United Nations had its own source of funds.
Whilst the injection of hundreds of billions of Dollars into humanitarian assistance may seem to be a good idea, it would be frightening to put this sort of money into the grubby little paws of such an incompetent, unaccountable and un-transparent organisation as the United Nations. Nevertheless, the arguments presented here may be seen by some as a radical, perhaps vindictive, attack on conventional development practice.

As such, they will inevitably be treated with a certain degree of scepticism, given our fear of the unknown, our resistance to change, and the sense of the impossibility of adapting and modifying a vast and complicated system which has been dedicated to pursuing a particular approach.
The daunting challenge is that of shifting the paradigm of both the approach and the system - organisational, procedural, and methodological.
Yet if the challenge is rejected on these grounds - and there are no other grounds on which to base a rejection of at least the possibility of the validity of these arguments - then there is little option for anything other than an increasing cynicism with respect to this development endeavour. We know already that the development sector is struggling to achieve its supposed goals; it is difficult to escape this conclusion when looking at the achievements, or rather the shocking lack thereof, to date.
Cynicism, manifested as an increasing dependence on confirmations generated by adherence to, and so-called “successful” applications of, current organisational realities rather than on developmental impact itself, is already rampant within the development sector.
If we are truly honest with ourselves, we cannot deny this creeping paralysis.
Alternatives are called for.
It will require enormous effort of will for individuals to begin to challenge the conventional.
And there can be no doubt that change will depend on individual initiative - the system will not change all at once, and it will not change unless individuals begin to make that change happen.

Prof. William Easterly, an economist that used to work for the World Bank, warns that: “This is bad news for the world’s poor, as historically poverty has never been ended by central planners. It is only ended by “searchers”, both economic and political, who explore solutions by trial and error, have a way to get feedback on the ones that work, and then expand the ones that work, all of this in an unplanned, spontaneous way.”

Perhaps a few pre-conclusion comments may be in order here and worth adding in the form of a personal note.
I am uncomfortably aware that many of my lamentations are not very well received in the world of humanitarian aid and development assistance.
All I can say in my defence is that I have given a lot of thought during recent years to the issues I have elaborated. I have pondered how I and my associates can contribute effectively and ethically to the development of our continent, who wants it, why, and why it makes sense for people to accept and appreciate our efforts, and how, and how I can find satisfaction, perhaps even fame and riches, through being and having been involved in this endeavour.
In other words the advice I give to others is advice I am trying to follow myself. One of the most serious criticisms I face, and face routinely, is my insistence on associating the essential goodwill of others with crime.
In general, many of my remarks about the criminality of aid are based upon critical introspection and not merely an attempt to offend or stir controversy.
Of course aid, development assistance and crime are not the same thing. Morally they are absolutely distinct.
But what they all have in common is that they are both something-for-nothing sorts of activities, that the receivers on the one hand of aid and on the other hand of ill-gotten gains are in neither case giving much, if any, thought to what they might give to the world in exchange for what the world is giving them.
Criminals after easy pickings naturally gravitate towards an industry in which there are the combination of large amounts of money and very little, if any, controls, over where that money is going. Aid, just like crime, feeds on the non-productive; it empowers the criminals in their battles against their most typical victims, the productive poor.
It is acted out on a tragic scale in the Third World where entire countries have become the possessions of criminal gangs, who live off aid from richer countries.
Potentially profitable societies are wrecked without a second thought, either by direct thieving, or else by follies paid for by foreign donors, which derange local markets and divert scarce local resources into ill-conceived fantasy projects.
Of course, I consider that whenever one claims to be doing one thing when actually, intentionally or unintentionally, doing something very different also constitutes a crime.
I know all about the temptation to describe moral failures as evidence of moral excellence. Perhaps one of the reasons you read so little about the idiocy of aid, and why the blame for rampant fraud and corruption is routinely shifted onto governments and recipients of aid, rather than on the givers and administrators of that aid, is that the kind of organisations that should publish pieces like this one tend to be organisations themselves depended upon the current system functioning the way that it does.
Even so, I maintain that helping people is difficult.
To help even a very small number of people - really to help them and not just throw money at them - demands huge commitments of time and intelligence.
Also, given the complexities of human society, it requires a great deal of learning in the characteristics of that society merely to avoid making matters far worse, with projects which only seem helpful on the surface but which are in fact enormously harmful. If, despite all of our best efforts, huge human problems remain, this should not prove that we are wicked. It should merely prove how hard human problems are to solve.
Why then does aid persist?
The simplest answer is that aid is not all stupidity. It is, however, something difficult to restrain, and for that reason much more harmful, a sensible way of behaving that has gotten out of hand. Just as aid and goodwill have a way of merging into each other, so, in a morally opposite setting, do crime and aid.

The world needs no more big reports by important people telling us what the problems and challenges are and how to solve them. It has become time for the poor and marginalised to define their own problems and to embark on the journey to have these solved and for us to discard the patronizing confidence that the Planners, those who had put themselves in charge of our collective destiny, know how to solve other peoples’ problems better than the people themselves do.
Everybody, especially the poor, understand the need for democracy and accountability.
There should not be any more demands for more money, by people who have amply demonstrated that they are unable to spend it where it is most needed.
Reduced poverty and human suffering comes from the self-reliant efforts of the poor themselves in free societies.
Make sure somebody is actually held accountable for making THIS intervention work in THIS place at THIS time.
Concerned individuals should demand a system of accountability whereby people and institutions that make grand promises and then fail to deliver are held to account; and if they cannot explain themselves, prosecute them and put them in prison if necessary.

[1] Yet this does not prevent the Commission for Africa report to predict that “the Millennium Development Goals will perish as yet another pious aspiration.”
[2] Emergency – A sudden condition or state of affairs calling for immediate action. In other words a war, a flood or a tsunami, amongst others. AIDS, in spite of constant claims to the contrary, is not an emergency; it is not a sudden condition and it does not call for immediate action but for sustained effort.
[3] There can be up to a hundred such organisations in a single country.