Developments 42

WHY OLDER PEOPLE COUNT

MOVIES IN THE DESERT

BOB GELDOF ON SONG

BUSINESS TO TACKLE MDGS?

ISSUE 42 2008 www.developments.org.uk

what’s stopping us building a global society? how to bring international organisations into the 21st century

contents Captive images

CAN WE REDESIGN THE INTERNATIONAL ‘ARCHITECTURE’?

Special Developments focus: Are international institutions – from the UN to the World Bank – up to the job in 2008?

4

16

Starring the world’s most remote film festival.

History in the making Gordon Brown says it’s time to build ‘the global society’.

System failure

5

Global institutions are undemocratic, unresponsive and unwieldy, argues Simon Maxwell.

10

It’s time to share global power more fairly, says Kumi Naidoo.

12

Only shared solutions will solve the problems we share, says Douglas Alexander.

8

Route one

25

»

Google Earth tracks climate change.

Agencies meet to combat the food crisis.

VSO reaches 50.

‘Drop the debt’ ten years on.

Jeffrey Sachs says the UN should deliver ‘as one’.

The greening of the World Bank

Global news

Developments interviews singerturned-statesman Bob Geldof.

What are all these international bodies – and what do they do?

11

Mind the gap

Time to change

The big picture

18

Strong language

»

»

14

Tackling climate change is fundamental to fighting poverty argues Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

»

30

Out of sight

Why don’t older people figure in global development programmes?

“There is no longer an ‘over there’ and ‘over here’ – so we must find shared solutions to our shared problems.”

Front cover: Child in the Democratic Republic of Congo © Sarah MacGregor/DFID. Meeting at the United Nations (background) © Chris Hondros/Getty Images.

This page: UN HQ, New York © svlumagraphica.

Developments magazine and website are produced by DFID to raise awareness of development issues.

The views expressed do not necessarily reflect official policies.

editors Martin Wroe Malcolm Doney

contributors Douglas Alexander Gordon Brown Jan Egeland Susan MacDonald

Simon Maxwell Kumi Naidoo Beatrice Newbery Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Jeffrey Sachs D Wesumperuma

Subscribe free to Developments at www.developments.org.uk This magazine is printed on 90gsm Royal Web Silk, from 100% FSC (Forestry Stewardship Counci) certified pulp. It is manufactured in the UK and has a low carbon footprint on transport.

Designed and printed by Engage Group www.engagegroup.co.uk

Leading the British Government’s fight against world poverty.

www.dfid.gov.uk Public Enquiry Point: 0845 300 4100 (UK only) or +44 1355 84 3132 (from outside the UK) enquiry@dfid.gov.uk

Lose the perceptions find the imagination Tell it like it is

32

UN veteran Jan Egeland speaking truth to power.

34

Down to business

Can big business fight poverty and turn a profit? Introducing the Business Call To Action.

Legacy of sorrow

38

The stark facts on maternal health in Malawi.

A

fter the Asian tsunami in 2004 doctors were concerned over a case of a little girl with measles. Until they made a sobering discovery. “The measles symptoms were a result of the girl receiving the same vaccine three times, from three different organisations.” This story, told by Douglas Alexander (page 13), illustrates the confusion and incoherence which can affect what is commonly referred to as ‘the international aid architecture’ – the organisations and systems that have evolved to promote development and fight poverty. But as this issue of Developments illustrates, the ‘system’ was created for a planet recovering from World War II – and it no longer fits a world entering the 21st century.

Ok, so “reform of the international architecture” doesn’t catch the imagination in the way that emergency relief, fairer trade, or cancelling poor-country debt has.

But there is a growing realisation that rethinking institutions like the World Bank, the UN and the IMF could transform global development. For example if the UN acted ‘as one’ in the myriad countries in which it operates – instead of acting as a hundred-and-one through its different incarnations – duplication and waste could be slashed and savings could be huge.

Developing countries would also benefit from such a rationalisation. After all, as Kumi Naidoo points out (page 10), “many can barely keep up with their membership dues to different institutions”.

Or if the World Bank went ‘green’, it might ensure that 21st century development doesn’t repeat the fossil-fuel burning history of industrialised development.

And if more people in more countries had a say in the global institutions, their credibility – and their effectiveness – could take off.

The apparent dullness of an issue like reform of the global aid architecture is a matter of perception. And perception was precisely the problem highlighted by Mo Ibrahim at the launch of an initiative to get business to help deliver the MDGs. “Hands up who knows the name of the President of Botswana?” he asked (it is Seretse Khama Ian Khama). “And the President of Zimbabwe?” No prizes for who got the most votes. Mo Ibrahim pointed out that we have to get past the headlines when we think of Africa because, in fact, “Africa is open for business”. And if business invests in Africa, added President John Kufuor of Ghana, “the Millennium Development Goals will be achieved”.

Martin Wroe and Malcolm Doney Don’t forget to join the debate on these and other development issues at www.developments.org.uk – and to tell your friends that they can get a free subscription to the magazine.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown says it is time to reimagine the international institutions and build a truly ‘global society’.

T

here have been four great moments in the modern age when statesmen have come together to reorder the world. In 1648 there was the Westphalia Treaty that followed Europe’s catastrophic Thirty Years War. Then 1815 saw the Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic wars.

And twice in the last century new global arrangements were made: disastrously in 1919 at Versailles and – most significantly – in the late 1940s, in a world wracked by war.

The Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 signalled a breathtaking leap forward into a new world order. American visionaries helped form the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Not only that, but they put in place a policy of unprecedented generosity – the Marshall Plan. This transferred 1% of America’s national income each year for four years to the war ravaged economies of Europe – and saved the free world.

Now is the time for a fifth ‘great moment’, for reordering the world with reforms that will enable our international and regional institutions to do what they failed to do in the Rwandan genocide 15 years ago, and are failing to achieve even now in Darfur. We need to prevent conflict, to stabilise and then to reconstruct failing and failed states.

Specifically we must be able to shield men, women and children threatened by genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes or crimes against

4 I Developments 42

humanity. The United Nations must become a consistent defender of the interests of all the world’s people.

If conflict is a threat to stability in specific areas of the world, climate change threatens the wellbeing of everyone. We must secure a new global climate change agreement with binding targets for all developed countries.

For the first time in history we have the opportunity to reframe the international architecture.

It must include an international carbon market – eventually generating up to $100 billion a year to fund ‘green’ development. I want to make the World Bank a ‘Green Bank’, focused on development and the environment, transferring billions in loans and grants to encourage the poorest countries to adopt alternative sources of energy. The Bank can provide an integrated approach to both poverty and global warming.

We require similar global co-ordination on food, where we face the worst shortages for decades. And on disease and global pandemics where, led by the World Health Organisation, the priority is to improve early warning, increase stocks of global vaccine supplies and develop a more co-ordinated global response.

Globalisation can work if it is inclusive.

Protectionism can be avoided only with open economies, free trade and flexibility accompanied by policies for fairness and justice. This requires policies that include investment in education and other social goods in the industrialised countries, and a new deal for the poorest countries.

We must set new rules for a 21st century global economic system.

We need a global trade deal that benefits rich and poor countries alike, and new international financial architecture and economic institutions that end the mismatch between global capital flows and only national supervision of them. I want to see the IMF acting as an early warning system for the global economy and we need a new deal as bold as the Marshall Plan between rich and poor.

As developing countries open up to trade, address corruption and pursue policies for economic development, so developed countries agree to make available new resources. In this way, the preventable diseases of TB, polio and malaria can be eradicated and for the first time in our history every child could enjoy education.

My vision is of a new World Bank and IMF, a reformed UN and strong regional organisations from European Union to African Union, able to bring the humanitarian aid, peacekeeping and support for stability and reconstruction that has been absent for too long. For the first time in history we have the opportunity to come together around a global covenant, to reframe the international architecture and build the truly global society.

This is an edited extract from the 2008 Kennedy Memorial lecture delivered by Gordon Brown on 18 April in Boston.

Institutions like the UN, the World Bank and the IMF – are undemocratic and unresponsive in today’s speedy globalised world. It’s time for reform, argues Simon Maxwell.

R

eform of the international system. Well, that sounds exciting – definitely something to get out of bed and onto the streets for. We’ve campaigned to double aid, drop the debt, unpick trade barriers.

We’ve worn white bands to Make Poverty History. We’ve turned the spotlight on slow progress in achieving key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), like cutting maternal mortality and putting more girls into school.

Can we persuade the rock stars to line up for system reform? Let’s be honest – can we persuade ourselves?

We should. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander (see opposite and page 12) are right to say, as they have recently, that we live in a complicated and interdependent world, and that we need to find better ways of working together. This agenda is about having a United Nations which works, a World Bank which is more accountable to its clients, an international community which acts quickly to prevent genocide, a world which avoids the worst effects of climate change.

If “we, the peoples”, as the UN Charter says, care about poverty reduction, the MDGs, the environment, then we

The international system is clunky, unrepresentative and out of date.

care – or should care – about how the international system works.

In lots of ways, of course, the infrastructure of internationalism ticks away successfully out of sight. If letters sent from one country arrive successfully at their destination in another, it’s because the Universal Postal Union has put protocols in place which make it happen. If pilots can communicate successfully with control towers around the world, then thank the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Look across the spectrum of 30 or so Specialised Agencies, Funds and Programmes of the UN, and there are many such examples: food safety standards, control of medicines, health and safety at work. The Law of the Sea, the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, all these are accepted building blocks of a functioning global society.

On top of all that, of course, the international system, with the UN at its core, is a very large provider of financial assistance and humanitarian aid – the UN alone provides around $15 billion a year in aid, equivalent to about 15% of the total. The UN is also a key forum for conflict resolution, and a vital resource for peacekeeping. There are more than 100,000 soldiers wearing blue berets in the world today, helping to keep the peace in hotspots like Kashmir and Liberia.

So, what’s the problem? It’s partly that challenges are becoming more complex and more urgent, partly that the system is clunky, unrepresentative and out of date. There have been many successes, but also too many failures – 3

“One is hungry,” complains a Senegalese protester.

Seyllou/AFP/ Getty Images

Soaring food costs are a challenge to international aid institutions.

Protesters march in Dakar, Senegal.

Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images

6 I Developments 42

3 preventing genocide in Rwanda springs to mind – and too many inefficiencies.

The international system was largely created during and after the Second World War. The Bretton Woods conference in 1944 led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the former concerned mainly with managing shortterm financial crises and the second with providing financial support for reconstruction and development. The United Nations was created in 1945, with its main bodies, like the Security Council, reflecting the power balance as it existed at the time. All this, of course, was before decolonisation, the current wave of globalisation, and the emergence of many new economic and political powers in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The world was probably not as simple back in 1945 as we sometimes think. After all, this was the period of reconstruction in Europe – with the cold war, the Korean war and many other conflicts. The world is certainly different, though. We have seen how important it is, and how difficult, to manage agreement on limiting CO2 emissions – not surprising when there are now 192 member countries involved.

There were only 51 in 1945. The world is struggling to deal with climate change, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, terrorism, and terrible intrastate conflicts like Darfur.

This year has been dominated by the fallout from the housing crisis and the credit crunch in the US, and by rising food prices. These are both problems which transcend national borders and which can only be dealt with collectively. For example, countries which are traditional food exporters suddenly find food prices rocketing, because surpluses are being sucked away from their own consumers into international markets. At the same time, subsidies to biofuels in rich countries like the US or in the EU run the risk of triggering hunger in poor countries.

Next year, we may be facing other crises, perhaps an epidemic of avian flu or another episode of financial instability, like the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. Every year, we face the challenge of tackling poverty and ill health, including in emergencies like the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China.

The system seems unable to act with the speed and the effectiveness the world needs.

Sometimes, actually usually, our international institutions manage a response – eventually. That’s not good enough, however. There are three main problems. the system is unrepresentative and, frankly, undemocratic. Why are the permanent members of the Security Council still the victors of World War II? Why is the President of the World Bank always an American, and not appointed through open competition? Why are the voting rights in the IMF still largely reflective of a country’s income? the system seems unable to act with the speed and effectiveness the world now needs.

The failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda was the classic case, but Darfur is shaping up to be a scandal on a similar scale: the UN has mandated a peacekeeping force, but seems unable to put sufficient numbers of soldiers and equipment on the ground. A Peacebuilding Commission was established in 2005, to try and deal more effectively with failing states and post-conflict recovery, but progress is painfully slow. Gordon Brown has observed as much, and called for radical improvement. the aid system in particular has spread like a surbuban sprawl, with no sense of overall structure or coherence. There were 11 separate UN agencies in Vietnam in the mid 2000s, accounting between them for less than 2% of aid to the country.

In 2005, there were 28 different UN agencies working on water; there were 90 global health funds. The cost of this proliferation is borne largely by developing countries, whose aid flows are diminished by the costs of administration, and who themselves bear the burden of donor overload: the average developing country receives 200 donor missions a year, all making demands on busy ministers and civil servants.

This is not to deny the good work being done, the lives saved, the aid workers’ lives being put at risk, by agencies like UNDP, UNICEF or the World Food Programme. Nor is it to overlook the improvements underway, such as the programme to roll out a more integrated ‘One-UN’ approach in eight pilot countries including Mozambique, Pakistan and Vietnam.

The aid system has spread like a suburban sprawl.

What more should be done? There are many proposals on the table. These range from reform of the Security Council,and open recruitment for senior UN and World Bank leaders to very specific ideas, like Gordon Brown’s suggestions that there should be a trained police force ready for quick deployment in post-conflict countries, or a special agency to provide education in difficult environments (a kind of Médecins Sans Frontières for primary age children). My own list starts with putting a more efficient and accountable UN system at the heart of development co-operation – with better governance of the institutions and more money.

More urgent, though, is to find a way to put this whole question up for debate.

There is too much mistrust, and too many divides between the rich countries and the so-called G-77 group of developing countries. Kofi Annan, when Secretary-General, set up a number of specialist panels on the future of the UN. Gordon Brown has performed a great service in reminding the world that this is unfinished business. Ban Ki-moon has this issue at the top of his agenda. It is significant that the Commonwealth has set up a task force of leaders to plot the way forward – building bridges between North and South and working for a new consensus.

We need a new slogan to support these initiatives. Not ‘Make Poverty History’, though that is unfinished business too, but perhaps ‘Let’s have a serious conversation about the future of the international system’. A wrist band anyone? A concert?

Simon Maxwell is Director of the Overseas Development Institute.

Express your views www.developments.org.uk

Developments 42

I7

United Nations

IMF

WTO

Founded in 1945 to replace the League of Nations, the UN has 192 member states and holds a unique legitimacy to lead on everything from climate change, HIV and AIDS and avian influenza to energy security and mass migration. Its mandate spans peace and security, development and human rights and plays a vital role in establishing global standards such as on human rights and international criminal law. Its position makes it the natural leader to broker peace, help fragile and conflict states recover from crises, and lead humanitarian assistance efforts.

Some 30 UN programmes and specialised agencies include the UNDP, UNICEF and WHO (see elsewhere on this page).

The International Monetary Fund is designed to ensure the stability of the international monetary system – the network of exchange rates and international payments that enables countries (and their citizens) to buy goods and services from each other.

This is essential for sustainable economic growth and rising living standards.

The World Trade Organisation deals with the rules of trade between nations at a global or near-global level, and makes rules by consensus among members. The current round of negotiations for new global trade rules aims to help poorer countries to trade more so their economies can grow. Critics claim it is biased to rich economies and is undemocratic. They claim it is biased to rich economies and is undemocratic.

UNICEF Advocates for the protection and promotion of the rights of the child, to meet children’s basic needs and expand opportunities for them to reach their full potential.

United Nations Development Programme The largest multilateral source of development assistance in the world – it works with governments and local communities to help them find solutions to development challenges. UNDP coordinates efforts to achieve national development priorities laid out by host countries. Publishes the annual Human Development Report based on the Human Development Index. Footballers Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane are among its global ambassadors.

the big picture More than 150 multilateral agencies, 40 bilateral agencies and a growing constellation of global funds and partnerships make up the expanding universe of international aid architecture.

GLOBAL FUNDS/ PARTNERSHIPS

WHO The World Health Organization is the UN’s specialised agency responsible for matters relating to health. It seeks the highest possible level of health for all peoples. Publishes the annual World Health Report, assessing health in all countries.

8 I Developments 42

These vary in make-up/objectives but usually involve new partnership around common objectives, creating dedicated organisations to deliver services or products with benefits stretching across more than one region. For example The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) was set up in response to a call from the UN Secretary-General and the belief that more funding was needed to fight the three diseases which attack the poor the most. Its mandate is to attract, manage and disburse additional resources to fight these diseases and to direct resources to areas of need.

World Bank A development bank which provides loans, policy advice, and technical assistance to developing countries. It aims to fight poverty for lasting results. Has huge resources and expertise, leads in many major development initiatives; works closely with DFID on poverty reduction programmes in poor countries and in developing policy. Critics say the US influence is too great, (eg the US President nominates its President).

Regional Development Banks The African (AfDB), Asian (AsDB), Caribbean (CDB) and Inter-American Development (IDB) Banks are loosely modelled on the World Bank. Their strengths lie in them being majority owned and staffed by the regional countries themselves so they provide a uniquely regional voice and perspective to development debate.

European Union A key multilateral partner working on international development, the European Commission (EC) represents 27 member states and a massive pooling of resources.

It delivers assistance to 150 countries and territories.

Foundations NGOs Non-governmental organisations are vital to development, channeling private and public funds to development projects and forming part of the civil society necessary for effective governance.

Wealthy private foundations like that of Bill and Melinda Gates, Rockefeller and Wellcome are becoming bigger players in development. They bring business expertise and innovative thinking to the process but are not always co-ordinated with other donors or developing country governments.

Bilaterals Wealthier donor countries provide most official development assistance but many have begun to shift from running their own projects in poor countries to supporting developing country governments in their poverty alleviation efforts. Many donors work in collaboration with each other and with multilateral organisations to increase efficiency.

Developments 42

I9

I

n the early 1980s the environmental slogan was ‘think globally, act locally’. It could just as well have applied to the discourse about our international institutions. One of the ironies of recent history is that just as many countries are delivering greater formal electoral power than ever to their people, so real power around a range of issues which affect ordinary people has been shifting from nations themselves to supranational levels.

At the same time many of the supranational institutions of global governance have now taken on decision-making powers which are far greater than those that were part of their original mandate.

This is partly to do with mission creep and partly to do with simply adjusting to new global realities. Today those institutions require urgent reform which recognises four critical deficits. there is a democratic deficit.

When the World Bank and IMF are informed by a ‘one-dollar, one-vote’ approach then you end up with institutions making policies that affect developing countries but don’t listen to them. From where we sit in civil society, our concern is that on the one hand these institutions can appear disrespectful of our developing country governments in terms of reflecting voting power, and on the other they say they make decisions by consensus not by vote. To us, it seems too often that the decisions that won’t be won in a vote are the ones that do not come to a vote.

there is a coherence deficit.

So you might have a situation where a country’s finance minister is going to the World Bank, the foreign minister to the UN, the health minister to the WHO and the trade minister to the WTO – and there is a deep territorialism in each of those institutions, even within the different levels of the UN itself.

decisions they have made? The feeling here is that there is a repeated culture of passing from the grandiose resolution made in public at global summits to the far more modest reality of execution. For example there were great promises of reform of the Bretton Woods institutions after the Asian financial crisis in 1997, when everyone understood we could not go back to business as usual. But so far these have remained only promises.

This, combined with the multiplicity of structure, leads to an incoherence at an international level which contributes to an incoherence at a national level.

Whether or not you argue for ‘One UN’, you still need massive rationalisation.

We are victims of history. These institutions have evolved over time but it seems that we have never been able to follow through on our questions about how we rationalise them. The increasingly complex management of all these levels of engagement brings special problems for developing countries, who find it a huge strain on relatively small budgets. Many countries in Africa can barely keep up with their membership dues to different institutions – I know several countries that struggle to meet their obligations. there is a compliance deficit. If the system is costing so much, then citizens have a right to ask what it is delivering and what is its effect. Over time, have these institutions complied with the

International institutions are falling short in four major areas, argues Kumi Naidoo.

10 I Developments 42

There is a risk of international institutions losing credibilty. © Michal Szota

there is a legitimacy and credibility deficit.

As these institutions become more powerful, as their influence stretches further into people’s lives, they must secure a broad legitimacy in the eyes of the global public. In fact the legitimacy of many of these institutions is in decline (with the exception of the UN which at different times is both very popular and very unpopular). Business folk at one end and development activists at the other are equally fed up with the WTO and its failure to deliver a successful trade deal. The risk of these institutions losing credibility is that it will encourage calls that they be shut down because they are beyond reforming.

If we recognise the deficits that exist in the global governance framework, we must agree that significant rationalisation and updating is central to reforming them. Only a fairer and more balanced distribution of power – which includes far more access to voices from civil society – will deal with the current deficits.

Dr Kumi Naidoo is Secretary General and Chief Executive Officer of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Civic Participation, an alliance of over 500 civil society organisations in 100 countries, dedicated to strengthening civil society action.

Express your views www.developments.org.uk

Professor Jeffrey Sachs says the UN should, and could, ‘deliver as one’.

T

he United Nations serves three vital roles: as a meeting ground for the world’s governments, as a kind of secretariat for global goals and treaties, and as a provider of urgent public goods when national governments cannot or do not provide them (such as emergency relief operations and peacekeeping when national governments have collapsed or are overwhelmed by conflicts or natural disasters). In the United States, the face of the UN is mainly in its first role, as a debating shop in the UN Security Council. In fact the UN’s most powerful contributions probably fall into the second and third categories. The UN remains the world’s repository of shared commitments on global objectives, whether in the environmental treaties, the Millennium Development Goals, or the protection against global pandemic diseases.

Its agencies are the indispensable providers of public services in the poorest and most vulnerable places on the planet, a role that is almost invisible in the rich countries but nearly omnipresent in the poorest.

Beyond the specific acts of peacekeeping and the countless individual development initiatives of UN agencies, the deepest measure of UN success will be whether the Millennium Promises are sustained over time as shared active global goals and whether these goals are achieved in practice. Given the centrality of the United Nations to this overarching challenge, the UN itself needs to be reformed to fulfil these leading tasks. For example, the Millennium Promises require action on the ground that cut across multiple UN agencies, connecting the work in agriculture of the World Food Programme and the Food and Agricultural Organisation with the public health work of the World Health Organisation and the poverty reduction work of the United National Development Programme, to name just a few of the relevant agencies.

The organisational challenge for the UN will be to press its diverse and often loosely managed institutions into a cohesive forces, thereby giving strong and creative

backing to global goals. On paper, this has recently been described as the UN ‘delivering as one’. Such an outcome will sound unlikely to many, almost the opposite of what they expect from a global bureaucracy. Yet it is not impossible. If the Secretary-General charges the UN agencies, above all else, with supporting member governments to implement the global goals, UN teams operating within each of the member countries will become much more actively engaged in real problem solving.

Form will then follow function with the UN itself. UN agencies would find themselves working together despite the odds, and working against the calendar and against the sceptics.

This is an edited extract from Common Wealth: Economics for a crowded planet

by Jeffrey Sachs, published by Allen Lane and reproduced by permission.

There is a deeper measure of success beyond peacekeeping. © UN

We have the knowledge and the skills to make our world more equal, more safe and more sustainable.

Children in the Bilel camp, South Darfur. Š David Rose/Panos

We need global reform in order to tackle global poverty, argues International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander.

A

t the start of the 21st century it is not the distance between us that defines the world and our place in it. We are defined today by the connections that bind us together.

Places that once seemed far away can now be reached by many of us within a few hours, or emailed within seconds.

Global technology and global flows of capital, goods and services have brought us closer to rapidly emerging economies such as China and India.

Yet at the same time, the world remains too unequal, too unsafe and too unsustainable. Nearly a billion people still live in extreme poverty, unable to benefit from the new global connections – while those very same connections have made this inequality more visible, both to people in the developed and developing worlds.

By 2010, half of the world’s poorest people will be in countries at risk of, or recovering from conflict. The early years of this century have shown us, in the most stark way, that developed countries cannot pull up the drawbridge from conflict within and between such fragile states.

Climate change, which threatens all of our futures, is a reality right now for many in the developing world. Last autumn I met with people forced from their homes by flash floods in northern Kenya. “Climate change”, one of the local leaders told me, “hits us hardest”.

The world has shown before that it can come together to form a shared vision for ending world poverty. The Millennium Development Goals – agreed at the United Nations Summit in September 2000 – show what is possible when nation states co-operate out of mutual interest and a shared sense of moral responsibility.

Yet the aims set out by world leaders in 2000 – to tackle hunger, illiteracy and sickness – are now at risk from global threats such as climate change, conflict and economic instability.

These threats are global in their nature and their impact – so our solutions must be global too. Yet the pillars of our

Douglas Alexander at the Thai/Burma border. © Vickie Sheriff/DFID

present international system, formed some 60 years ago, no longer reflect the world as it is today. They were not built to deal with challenges such as climate change, nor do they reflect the importance of emerging powers such as India and China.

That is why the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown (see page 4), has called for reform of our international institutions – to ensure that they are fit for the 21st century and equipped to deliver for the world’s poorest people. Such reform is needed in the areas of trade, conflict, climate change and the way international institutions themselves do business.

We need a global trade deal that benefits all countries. Trade is the engine of economic growth, and economic growth is the surest route out of poverty for countries and individuals alike. We must both consider and agree new global trade rules and create new global institutions so that not some but all can benefit from change.

Too often the international community’s response in countries emerging from conflict is too little, too late and too fragmented. Those failures are measured in the genocide in Rwanda, and the ongoing tragedy in Darfur. We need a package of measures to better respond to conflict, including greater leadership by the UN, faster deployment of skilled civilians to help

rebuild shattered institutions, and more rapid and flexible funding.

We must also work internationally to tackle climate change and environmental degradation. For if we do not take the necessary action, we risk condemning the world’s poorest people to generations of further poverty. Above all, we must direct our international efforts towards creating a post-Kyoto agreement that sets a global limit for greenhouse gases, and a credible way of reaching it.

We also need a reformed World Bank for both the development and the environment, to provide the incentives and funding for developing countries to safeguard their natural resources, protect their vulnerable communities and grow in a low-carbon way. The UK’s £800 million environmental transformation fund will form one cornerstone of this work.

International institutions should become more representative of the world we live in – the IMF and World Bank should change their boards and voting rights to reflect the world’s changing economic balance.

And international institutions must also reform to ensure better coordination and less duplication. This seemingly technical agenda was made real for me through one girl’s story.

After the Asian tsunami in 2004, doctors became concerned over a case of a little girl with measles – fearing an outbreak of the disease. Yet her quick recovery led the doctors to a peculiar discovery.

The measles symptoms were in fact a result of the girl receiving the same vaccine three times, from three different organisations.

We are closer to our global neighbours than ever before. Whether facing conflict, the spread of disease or the impact of climate change, there is no longer an ‘over there’ and ‘over here’.

So we must find shared solutions to our shared problems. I believe that we have the knowledge and the skills to make our world more equal, more safe and more sustainable. We must now show the commitment needed to make that change.

Developments 42

I 13

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Managing Director at the World Bank, on why tackling climate change is fundamental to development and fighting poverty.

E

veryone in the world is affected by climate change, but we are not all affected equally. It is the billions of the world’s poor who will suffer the most. It is this simple fact that is driving much of the work of the World Bank Group as we work with the international community to fashion responses to this complex global challenge.

With increasing climate fluctuations, the poorest countries of the world will suffer the earliest and most because of their geographical location, low incomes, and their heavy reliance on climatesensitive sectors such as agriculture.

The impacts and socio-political consequences could also be devastating in water-scarce economies (such as those in the Middle East), and regions where we expect dramatic changes in water availability due to glacial melting (such as the Himalayas or the Andes).

In short, climate change has the potential to reverse much of the hard-earned progress made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, including the goals of eradicating poverty, combating communicable diseases, and achieving environmental sustainability.

We can rise to the double challenge of fighting poverty and climate change.

14 I Developments 42

We at the World Bank Group believe that tackling climate change is fundamental to development and the poverty reduction agenda. That is why we are actively pursuing greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation efforts, embracing various technologies and resources, while at the same time promoting increased energy access as a cornerstone of poverty alleviation.

The figures are indisputable: hundreds of millions of poor people in developing countries have no access to electricity, or to cooking and heating fuels – a challenge that severely hinders economic growth and poverty reduction. In sub-Saharan Africa, some 550 million people – or nearly 75% of the population – cannot turn on an electric light in their homes – there is no electricity for them. In South Asia, that number is 700 million, or half the population. Meanwhile, nearly 2.5 billion people worldwide use traditional biomass fuels for cooking and heating.

Simply getting electricity and heating services to those, and other, deprived

people in developing countries would require an estimated annual investment of $165 billion, increasing at about 3% per year from 2010 through to 2030.

For that energy to be as clean or green as possible, the annual investment would be $40 billion more. Today, less than half of that amount is readily identifiable.

The international community realizes the need to scale up work on climate change, while at the same time ensuring increased energy access in poor countries. The World Bank Group is doing its share. With a mandate from the G-8 Summit at Gleneagles in 2005, we worked with other multilateral development banks to formulate the Clean Energy Investment Framework (CEIF), together with an Action Plan.

The CEIF focuses on: (a) meeting the electricity needs of developing countries and widening access to electricity services in an environmentally responsible way; (b) reducing greenhouse gas emissions and speeding the transition to a low-carbon economy; and (c) helping developing countries adapt to climate change risks. In Africa alone, the CEIF led to a remarkable increase in our own energy lending, from $1.4 billion for fiscal years 2003-05 to $2.4 billion for 2006-08.

In terms of investments and lending for low-carbon energy, the Bank Group has consistently surpassed commitments made at the Bonn International Renewable Energies Conference of June 2004. From June 2004 to December 2007, we committed about $2.5 billion for new renewable energy (including solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and hydro up to 10MW).

We also manage a global carbon finance portfolio of about $2 billion,

in partnership with several governments and the private sector, while support for socially and environmentally responsible hydropower has also risen.

With the help of the Global Environment Facility, and other donor financing, the Bank Group is supporting projects to commercialise a new generation of less expensive clean energy technologies. These will respond to the needs of developing countries, for instance by concentrating solar power plants in Morocco and Egypt and grid-connected solar photovoltaic in the Philippines. In total, 40% of all Bank energy investments are now low-carbon – an all-time high.

Building on the analyses and directions of the CEIF, we are now developing a Strategic Framework for Climate Change and Development. It aims to outline how we can support developing countries in their efforts to adapt to climate change and achieve low-carbon energy growth while, at the same time, maintaining a focus on the core mission of eliminating poverty. We have also engaged in a ‘Bali Process’ with ministers of finance and development, using the BankIMF meetings twice a year to continue a dialogue on climate action in the context of economic and development policy.

Analytical tools and increased information sharing are critical to achieve low-cost mitigation initiatives.

At the moment, we are working with six countries (China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia) on low-carbon case studies. The aim is to identify cost-effective growth paths for major emerging economies which reconcile rapid growth and rising energy consumption with the need for climate change mitigation. These case studies will inform the lending programme and policy dialogue with our clients.

This is a lot, but is it enough? Faced with an enormous and complex challenge, one never before seen by humans, there is never ‘enough’ being done. We are convinced, however, that combating poverty, contributing to economic growth, and mitigating climate change are not mutually exclusive. With collective action, with all partners in the international community co-operating to improve financing, share knowledge better, and adopt advanced technologies faster, we can rise to this double challenge – fighting poverty and fighting climate change for the poor of the world.

We owe them no less.

From 2004-07 the World Bank committed around $2.5 billion to renewable energy. © Qilai Shen/Panos

MORE INFORMATION www.worldbank.org Express your views www.developments.org.uk

Developments 42

I 15

film festival

Culture and art are important to refugees – they are the food of the soul.

16 I Developments 42

Beatrice Ne wb in a refugee c ery reports from the worl d’s most rem amp in Weste ote film festiv rn Sahara. al,

captive images R

“

Film production workshops proved the most successful (above). © Nacho Para The festival parade (left). © Omar Dih

ight, that’s your hours, that’s your total,” shouts the woman on the screen. “If you don’t like it, there’s the gate, go.” It’s Ken Loach’s latest film about illegal immigrants in the UK, with his usual mix of working class poverty and anger. But this time there are Spanish and Arabic subtitles, and after the film, the audience filters out not into a city street, but into Saharan sand.

Some of the audience may ponder which is worse, to be an illegal immigrant in Britain or a refugee in the Sahara.

This is the world’s remotest film festival, in Dajla refugee camp, near Tindouf in Western Algeria. It’s a far cry from Cannes, with sandstorms and tents in place of red carpets and designer clothes. Fifty thousand Saharawi people live in Dajla, one of four camps which were set up 32 years ago when Morocco began an occupation of Western Sahara.

“We don’t want to live here,” says Zrug Lula, who works for the campbased exiled government. “It is a very inhospitable place. But the film festival alleviates the boredom and hardship of being here. It is a kind of escape.”

Now in its fifth year, the festival runs relatively smoothly, despite the lack of communications and facilities, rotating around the four camps. Called Fisahara, it is co-ordinated by the government’s Ministry of Culture, where Lula works, and a group of Spanish NGOs. But it’s certainly a challenging event for the organisers, who must house and transport the 300 people attending from Spain, Belgium, France, Britain

and the Americas. This year, they included Oscar-winning Javier Bardem and international musician Manu Chao.

“The visitors fly into a military airport, then we drive them for five hours into the desert,” says Lula. “And all our visitors sleep in tents like us, even the celebrities. It’s not ideal, but at least they are witnesses to the real situation.

And we hope it inspires them to go home and tell people about us.” Sarah Pujalte, the Spanish production coordinator, adds: “When a famous actor agrees to join the festival, he brings with him that publicity. He is agreeing to raise the profile of the Saharawi cause. That is the festival’s main aim.”

Of course, the festival is more than a lavish publicity stunt, with a tight programme including 30 film screenings over three days. Adult films are shown in mud-brick warehouses, while family films are projected onto the sides of trucks and watched under the stars.

Most are Spanish films – Spanish is second language in the camps, since Western Sahara was a Spanish colony until the 70s. But there are also films from Britain, Kenya, Mexico, even Mongolia. “Some Saharawis have never seen a film on 35mm,” says Pujalte.

“We want to normalise life here, show them what they would be doing if they lived in their own country now. We choose a mixture of films which will both provoke debate and educate people who have never travelled.” As Abdulahi, a Saharawi journalist says: “The Mongolian film was about some nomads, 3

Developments 42

I 17

film festival 3 and we all loved it. There was a feeling in the audience of recognition, as we are traditionally a nomadic community. The film reinforced our common humanity.”

Clearly the films provide more than just entertainment, and this is key. Film is increasingly viewed as a development tool, not just for Saharawis, but for displaced people everywhere. In fact, refugees in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Macedonia, Kenya and Tanzania, are also enjoying a new relationship with film, thanks to an NGO called FilmAid International which has organised screenings in their camps. As James Brooke at FilmAid, puts it: “Refugees often remain isolated in contained settlements with little connection to the outside world for years on end – the average stay in a refugee camp is now 17 years. Film brings hope and information to fill the void.”

In some camps, film is used to put across messages – to promote health, peace and human rights, or to warn against HIV and AIDS or gender violence. But Fisahara’s main focus is cultural exchange and exploration. Over the three days, debates and workshops run in tandem with exhibitions, parades, concerts and camel races.

“The objective is cultural diffusion,” says Pujalte, “framed by the cinematic realm. So all the artistic events are filmed and played to an audience at the end.” A dance workshop in which the Saharawi women explore modern dance forms out in the dunes, is greeted by rapturous applause at the festival’s closing ceremony. And the animation, produced in the children’s workshop, is another crowd puller. But the most popular classes are in basic film production, where adults learn to make documentaries on Saharawi life. “I have driven three hours from another camp, because I want to learn camera, editing and producing,” says Omar. “One day, maybe I can record

Camel races are also a feature of the festival. © Danielle Smith

what is my life, what is our suffering, what is happening to Saharawi people.”

While the workshops are brief, the Spanish festival organisers are trying to bring longer-term audiovisual opportunities to the camp, says Pujalte: “We are developing a video library in each camp. So far we have equipped three camps with video projectors, sound equipment, screens and DVD recorders, and over 300 videos, and we have trained a video tech to look after each library.” He adds, “We are also setting up a cinema school, and the festival workshops are a way for Saharawis to establish whether they are keen to join that school in the future.”

Sandblast, a London-based NGO, is also working to provide longer-term cultural and artistic opportunities for the Saharawis, including month-long film and theatre workshops, and artist exchange visits to Europe. “I have been visiting the camps for 20 years, and was always struck by the Saharawis’ need to express their plight through the arts,” Danielle Smith, who runs Sandblast, © Danielle Smith

It is an inhospitable place, the film festival is a kind of escape.

18 I Developments 42

explains. “When their experiences of exile are expressed through song, dance, theatre and art, it is more powerful than speech.” She concludes, “this form of expression really is a need for them, not just a luxury”.

Cultural events like the film festival may focus on the one medium, but it also invigorates the other Saharawi art forms. Lula says: “It inspires us to experiment. OK, we don’t have big cameras here, but we can try acting and theatre instead. And in a way, the lack of resources, like musical instruments, forces the artists in the camps to be creative. Saharawis are a very artistic people, and the Ministry of Culture encourages them to think around the lack of resources. Culture is about identity, and as the Moroccans try to erase our identity, this is vital to us.”

Of course, the arts are surplus to survival, far from the list of essentials supplied by humanitarian aid in refugee camps. However, as Brooke puts it: “Intellectual, visual and aural stimulation needs are often overlooked in humanitarian responses, where the first priority is naturally given to legal and physical protection, subsistance and healthcare.” Pujalte adds: “Culture and art are important to happiness. They are the food of the soul, and refugees need them just as other people do.”

Smith goes a step further: “Survival needs may be seen as priority, but without the spirit which is tied to identity and culture, people have less will to survive. This is how they affirm their existence, affirm who they want to be. And this is how they retain a sense of their nationality too, their origins and their history, through the years in exile.”

MORE INFORMATION www.festivalsahara.com www.sandblast-arts.org www.filmaid.org

© Stefan Boness\Panos

“There’s something weird and essential happening in Africa…”

Africa is always on the point of some sort of lift off, or it’s going to step further back into something. All we know is that the figures seem set fair for some sort of resurgence. We’re all worried about South Africa at the current point in time and South Africa must succeed. It must succeed. We look at what Nigeria is going through and we see great strength emerging from there.

We look at the growth of infrastructure, and the banking systems and at the Chinese and what they are doing with regard to infrastructure… I welcome the Chinese interventions all over Africa. I don’t think they have a political agenda – I think its mercantilism.

I’m not an Afro-optimist, I’m not an Afro-pessimist, I’m not an Afrorealist, I’m a pragmatist. And some part of me, 25 years down the road, thinks there’s something weird and essential happening in Africa which is very different to any previous period.

The arguments are changing. There’s possibility. I was in a room in Hong Kong five months ago with these equity fund, 3

strong language When Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof organised Live Aid in 1985 it catapulted him into a second, high profile career in global activism – marked by straight talking and a fierce anger at global poverty. He talks to Developments about Africa, China and the journey from charity to justice.

Developments 42

I 19

Geldof 3 these hedge fund guys, and 500 Chinese companies. In that room, of about a thousand people, was $10 trillion, more or less the GDP of the Euro-zone, and they were looking to invest in Africa.

This has never happened before, but the truth is, it’s the last continent to be built. What we have to ensure, is that it’s built properly, and that it’s built in the name of the people who inhabit that gorgeous, gorgeous place.

“In 20 years, the news will be full of stories from Africa…”

© Daniel Berehulak/ Getty Images News

What I find is that the media agenda is rooted in an argument from 12 years ago. They are not up to speed on the conditions on the continent of Africa and they really need to be. (This is) simply because, conceivably, in this asymmetric century, where a guy with a bomb strapped to himself can destroy armies, economies in an unexpected part of the world now hold the power over the supposedly developed part.

I guarantee you in 20 years, the news will be full of stories from Africa and they’ll all be to do with economic giants, politicking and positioning – and the ones most affected by all of that are in Europe. Eight miles from Africa.

Whatever the Chinese and Americans and Africans are playing at, we’ll feel the impact first. If we are not to be dependent on Putin’s Russia – and it’s still Putin’s Russia – for our energy sources, we’re going to have to go to Libya, Algeria, Angola, Nigeria and the rest to ensure our supplies. This is serious resource politics and big power stuff, and I think that’s a really interesting story, and I just wish that the media would engage in that.

20 I Developments 42

“The number massively as a For development to take place, you need stability. In the last 15 years, you’ve seen more-or-less democracy south of the Sahara in 23 states. You’ve seen consistent growth of 6%. You’ve seen even the non-extractive African countries – 17 or 18 of them – enjoying growth of 5 or 6%. You’ve seen 10 to 12% in the more stable democratic states: Mozambique, Botswana. So clearly this stuff somehow or somewhere works. And I personally think it will come about through normal means and that is investment in a country because it has something you want.

That country gets rich and starts using its own mechanisms and solutions for its own internal problems. That finally is beginning to happen.

“I’m v the Co

r of wars and conflicts has decreased a result of development…”

The number of wars and conflicts has decreased massively. That’s as a result of development. The politics are proper – they’re understandable.

They’re not nonsense. If you just take what’s happening in the South, which we’re worried about, if you look at the politics, they’re proper. If you look at Darfur which seems incomprehensible, it’s perfectly comprehensible in a 21st century way of viewing things…

Now that the ethnic groups are split into political parties with names like CDU and SDP and you think, oh, that’s proper politics. They become factionalised, so it’s into warlordism and it spills over into other states.

You can see it. You can unpick it.

You can begin to start negotiating this.

I think that’s very much of our time.

Before, you just had a thug who beat up his own people and we paid for it.

very glad that I did Commission for Africa…”

Gleneagles agreed to implement something like 50 of the 93 proposals from the Commission. A lot of those have been agreed to and a lot implemented. In order to try and keep the toes to the fire. Tony Blair set up the Africa Progress Panel. I’m on that because I tend to see things through to the end… and Kofi Annan is the chair and he’s a brilliantly effective man and we are very, very serious people.

We have access, but do we use that enough? The answer is no. Essentially, ‘diplomatese’ wins the day and they think I’m a bit of a hot head. “Bob, great, he’s a great guy. His passion, you know, drives us on...”. It’s absolute shite – they just want me off the thing, you know! So, it could do more and I think it’s the instrument whereby we get the Commission, and therefore Gleneagles, which is the politicisation of the Commission, forward.

And now there’s the DATA Report.

DATA is the group that I work with – which is empirical, it is essentially the third party audit of Gleneagles and its commitments. So, that comes out every year and it’s ruthlessly honest, but it’s not as bad as you would imagine, and I think it’s becoming like, to the developmental world, what the Amnesty

Report is to the human rights world.

I think people are embarrassed by it… it’s very clear what’s in it and we do a big, whizzbang sort of launch every year. This year it’ll probably be in Tokyo, and we bring all the local stars and politicos along to it, so it gets a big-up.

So, we’re trying to implement the Commission for Africa. I spent a year of my life on this thing. I really did not want it disappearing onto a dusty Whitehall shelf and that was why Live8 happened. And the deal with Tony Blair was, and this is a literal conversation: “Will you achieve this at Gleneagles?”

And he said, “Can you do the public thing?”, and I said, “I don’t know”.

He said, “I can’t do the politics if you don’t do the public”. That’s what he said.

And so Live8. And we brought out the paperback edition (of the Commission Report), which was sold at Safeways and ASDA. We brought out the schools edition. It’s looked at as a benchmark around the world. In my life, I’m proud of very, very, very few things, in fact I never use the word, but I’m very glad that I did the Commission for Africa.

It sought for the first time to analyse, coherently and properly, the empirical condition of poverty and why it should pertain in one singular continent.

“Africa won’t reach the MDGs – that’s a Gleneagles failure…”

I think Africa will not get to the MDGs. I think Asia will probably meet them because nobody anticipated the massive economic growth but I think we’re going to miss them in Africa, and that would be a Gleneagles failure.

Nevertheless Gleneagles was great. I well remember (Nigerian President) Obasanjo at the UN at the last Millennium Development Emergency, saying that it was the rubicon moment, and it was. And I think people try and live up to it and we have to not let them forget it.

3

Developments 42

I 21

Geldof

“We have to encourage China, they’re a major player…”

China is new to the world. Famously, whenever the world has intruded upon them, they’ve shut the curtain.

And they’ve suddenly found, with this enormous wealth, that they have responsibilities, which they hadn’t taken on board. They are entirely internally focused. How do they manage this vast growth? How do they push it out to the at least 800 million extremely poor people in their provinces? How do they bring them in to the loop so there isn’t revolution? There was something like 1800 major riots in China last year. They are so remote that it doesn’t get outside, but there is an incredible domestic strain. So, when they go and get their resources outside of their country, they’re simply getting stuff to try and keep a level playing field for

what’s happening in their own country.

Maybe I’m naive here, but they didn’t understand what the consequence of this vast investment would be on vulnerable countries, weak countries, in Africa. But, having said that, they’re learning rapidly, because they have to.

I’ll give you a case of Zambia, where they wouldn’t have unionisation.

Instead they fly in their own labourers, put them in their own compounds, fly in their own nails to make the compounds, have no relationships with the Africans, and so there were riots and the Chinese shot two Zambians. A week later, there was trade union recognition. Suddenly the things they’d been told made sense.

If you just go along with accepted international norms and practices, it is better for you.

They understand that if they’re overt, and clumsy, then political parties take an anti-China stand, which gets votes.

They’re beginning to understand that through Zambia. They are beginning to understand that economic power also has responsibilities, vis Darfur.

They don’t quite understand this thing called civil society. For all their sophistication they are incredibly naive on the international stage. But I think it’s all there to be negotiated.

Remember that there are 800 Chinese companies in Africa and behind them are tens of thousands of entrepreneurs.

And they don’t mind the conditions of Africa, they think they’re great, far better than North East China. We have to negotiate with them, we have to encourage them, they’re a major player.

“Charity won’t work until you get the economics and politics right…”

© David Rose\Panos

I think it’s a journey all of us went on.

Tony Blair was six months in Parliament when he sat and watched Live Aid, and don’t forget that Tony was a sort of bad Mick Jagger impersonator around this stage, so of course he liked the rock’n’roll. Gordon watched it… Clinton watched it. Schroeder watched it. So this generation that came to power are Live Aid babies. I think it’s been a long curve of understanding that’s gone into this.

My response to the news, which you saw as well, was that this is absolutely unacceptable in the modern world.

This impulse to help another is to reach out over and above the often impenetrable roar of political discourse

and just help the other human on the other side. And when you put your quid in the Oxfam box, it is a political act. In many ways, it’s the political equivalent of the butterfly theory; you know the chaos effect – a butterfly flaps its wings in a Malaysian jungle and six months later, Wall Street collapses. You put your quid into the Oxfam box and, if enough of us do it, policy changes in Whitehall. So it is that equivalent, but I rapidly learned, because I was beaten over the head by the NGOs, that it’s nothing to do with emergency aid, which it is, and which is not threatened by commodity prices, but it’s also to do with long term development. But, at that time, we were constrained by global politics, which was the Cold War. There was this ideological stasis, this political deadlock which didn’t allow for political fluidity. They had their tyrants in Ethiopia, we had ours in Zaire, and that wasn’t going to change.

Suddenly the Cold War ends, and a new political flux came into the whole thing, so we could deal finally with the politics and economics of the situation, which I understood was at the bottom of this; that we could keep giving charity, but that eventually would end, because people would become cynical and say it’s not working. It couldn’t work until you got the economics and politics right.

So, when there was a new flux in the world, we could sit down and analyse precisely what was going on – that was the Commission for Africa – and finally agree together we could maybe do something about it. And that’s when you had that change. So, I went from the impulse to help, to $200 million later with Band Aid and Live Aid, etc.

Live Aid – give me your money. Live8 – it’s not about money, it’s about change and your voice demanding change.

“The long walk to justice”, we called it, echoing Mandela, and that was a long walk – it was 20 years of understanding and waiting, and waiting for the political moment to change – understanding that you had to have a coherent, agreedupon policy. Basically, I just set up with Tony Blair a political Band Aid. That’s what I called it. It was called the Commission for Africa, but it was to get the stars who could actually have the hits together and implement a policy for change – just like we did with the little Christmas song. That’s what happened.

“I’m for nuclear energy… and solar power…”

Growth is what it’s about. I hope it happens in the 21st century because it was supposed to happen in the 20th century. That’s what everyone was going on about. It’s a very simple thing. You sell me something and I sell you something and everyone gets rich. Thanks very much. It’s what happened to us.

I don’t think we’re conscious of our dependence on producers in poor countries. That’s the first thing.

I think if we want geegaws from China, that’s fine, we will become increasingly dependent on them. What we’re dependent on is international trade in all its manifestations.

I think that we will be dependent on resources from emerging markets.

That’s for sure. In fact, not “we will be”, we are. And that will come home to roost at some point, big time, unless we develop alternative means rapidly, which is why I’m for nuclear development in this country.

But what I’m mainly for is concentrated solar power plants around Africa and Europe. They are highly efficient.

They are already, with existing technology, powering Seville and parts of California. We could build them now. I’ve already seen the proposed map for Europe. One kilometre of desert, one kilometer, provides the equivalent of 1.5 million barrels of oil.

So an area of 170 kilometres by 170 kilometres of desert will provide all of Europe with its energy. And that’s just concentrated solar power, heating water which turns the turbines. Absolutely zero carbon emissions. So we should be looking very seriously at that. And Africa could get rich from that.

I think we should look at GM crops.

I just find hunger the worst, most anomalous, unnecessary death. AIDS is a misery but not being able to give your children something to eat on a daily basis... and most children will go to bed tonight – like they did last night, like they will tomorrow night – hungry in Africa. It’s extraordinary, and yet we sit on vast surpluses still. So I’m a big GM guy and part of that is the notion that we can’t allow Africans to have genetically modified foods, despite the fact that the science has come on a lot, that there are safeguards. Is it the answer to everything? No, of course not, but it’s partially an answer when crops can grow in arid conditions.

I also believe that we’ve got to develop industries where people can buy their food from other sources outside of their immediate area. But, if Africa is to grow at all, it will be through agriculture, so I believe it to be the primary aspect that we should look at.

Crops that grow in arid or semi-arid conditions that are fairly resistant to pests, to insects and disease. Africa is peculiar. Man developed in Africa.

Therefore, all the diseases that prey on man developed in Africa and are particularly persistent there due to geography, climate and lack of resistance, because of lousy economies, etc. So if you develop something that’s a net boon to vulnerable people, give it to them. Give it to them.

This interview is an edited version of Bob Geldof’s address to DFID staff and a conversation with Developments’ editors.

“Is GM the answer to everything? No, but it is part of one…”

It’s going to happen. We’ve just got to limit it. We’ve got to try and watch it.

Indeed we need it because in our search for energy, biofuels have made food crops into a huge and vast commodity.

So the whole notion of subsidies in the WTO now becomes kind of redundant, but whole new other areas come in.

Express your views www.developments.org.uk

Developments 42

I 23

International Development Department

Helping to make poverty history The International Development Department (IDD) is dedicated to poverty reduction through the development of effective governance systems. We are a leading UK centre for postgraduate study of international development, and we also do practical, hands-on development work with governments and organisations around the world.

Taught Masters International Development

Public Administration and Development

Poverty Reduction and Development

Poverty Reduction and Development

Management

Distance Learning

Management

Aid Management Conflict, Security and Development Governance and Development

Management Decentralised Governance and

More distance learning programmes are planned and will be announced shortly on our website.

Degrees by Research MPhil, PhD and PhD with integrated study

Development Urban Governance for Development Public Economic Management and

Finance International Health Management and

Development International Political Economy and

Development Leadership for Governance Public Administration and Development Public Service MBA (International)

Learn more: www.idd.bham.ac.uk or contact: On-campus: Jo Eagles +44 (0)121 414 5010, j.eagles@bham.ac.uk or Distance learning: Linda Curry +44 (0)121 414 4969, distancelearning@contacts.bham.ac.uk quoting reference “DFID”

Our activities In addition to teaching, IDD academics are involved in international research, evaluation, consultancy and training for agencies such as DFID, Danida, African Development Bank, European Commission and United Nations.

Our activities encompass Policy advice to donors and to developing and

transitional countries Academic research into cutting-edge

development issues Consultancy and evaluation work Tailored training for the public, donor and

voluntary sectors Knowledge management and information

dissemination Teaching and training of development leaders

and practitioners

IDD hosts two information services: Governance and Social Development Resource Centre www.gsdrc.org Providing access to the best thinking and research on governance, conflict and social development.

Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform www.ssrnetwork.net Facilitating the exchange of theory, research and best practice on security sector reform.

Click for climate How will climate change affect the planet and its people over the next century? Or chart the way the Antarctic ice shelves have been lost over the last 50 years. Just click on Google Earth and the information is now at your fingertips.

‘Climate Change in Our World’ a collaboration between Google, the UK Government, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey, provides two new ‘layers’, or animations, to all users of Google Earth.

One animation uses world leading climate science from the Met Office Hadley Centre to show world temperatures throughout the next hundred years, under medium projections of greenhouse gas emissions. And alongside are stories of how people in the UK and in some of the world’s poorest countries are already being affected by changing weather patterns. Users can also get information on action that can be taken by individuals, communities, businesses and governments to tackle climate change, and see the good work they are already doing.

Another animation, developed by the British Antarctic Survey, shows the retreat of Antarctic ice caps since the 1950s, and features facts about climate change science and effects in the Antarctic.

“Climate change is happening and it is the world’s poorest who are facing the greatest threat,” explained

International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander.

“Google Earth maps now allow us to see first hand accounts of poor people coming to terms with everything from floods and droughts to melting glaciers. Amidst the massive impact on the world’s environment, the initiative highlights the personal costs to people least able to withstand the changes.”

The project currently provides a snapshot of some of the recent scientific information about climate change and its effects. It shows users the reality of climate change using estimates of both the change in the average temperature where they live, and the impact it will have on people’s lives all over the world.

The aim is that by helping people understand what climate change means for them and for the rest of the world now, more and more people will commit to taking action themselves in order to avoid the worst effects in the future. “Google Earth brings stories to life and opens up their reach to a limitless number of potential users,” said Ed Parsons, geospatial technologist at Google. “We’re really excited about the work of the UK Government and its partners to raise the profile of climate change impacts on a global scale.”

The partners behind the project say that climate change is already redrawing the map of the world and unless action is taken now its effects will be felt everywhere, as sea levels rise, crops fail, extreme weather increases and more areas are at risk of drought and flooding. “Global action is needed to cut emissions and help communities adapt to changing weather patterns,” added Douglas Alexander. “It can be done – and the lives of those in poverty depend upon the world taking bold action.”

MORE INFORMATION earth.google.com

Developments 42

I 25

© David Levene / Oxfam

Agencies meet to combat hunger threat

Big changes are needed in the international aid system, in order to tackle the challenge of food price hikes and the risk of food crises in East and West Africa.

That’s the view of aid agencies CARE and Oxfam following a meeting of 30 leading aid organisations, including UN agencies, in Rome on how to address the global hunger threat in Rome “Food riots have pushed global hunger onto the political agenda but the aid business will not be able to tackle global hunger while it remains stuck in the past, seeing food crises as one-off events and not tackling the underlining problem – chronic poverty,” said Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s Chief Executive. “The world has become much better at sending in teams to save lives but it seems incapable of doing what is needed to prevent crises happening in the first place.”

The two agencies warned that, besides the impact of food price hikes, there are also early signs of impending food shortages in East and West Africa. These potential disasters could be averted if the world takes immediate action. Acting earlier not only saves more lives, they argue, but makes economic sense.

“When governments fail to act early enough,” said Dr Robert Glasser, CARE International’s Secretary General, “The costs of dealing with a crisis increase enormously, both in economic terms and in loss of life. Television pictures of aid being flown out to the latest food crisis is not a triumph of compassion but a sign of failure to act soon enough.”

In 2004 and 2005 early warnings alerted world donors that in West Africa, Niger needed aid to avert a famine. There was no immediate response. The UN estimated that acting earlier would have cost $1 a day to prevent a child suffering from malnutrition, instead of the $80 it cost following the delay.

Another area of concern, they say, are inefficiencies and high costs in delivering aid. Shipping surplus food aid thousands

26 I Developments 42

of miles provides a boon to shipping companies, but also increases the delivery cost by between 50% and 100%. “Food aid can and does save lives. But due to powerful interest groups and outdated policies, food aid generally arrives too late, is too expensive and, when it floods weak, local markets, puts local farmers out of business,” said Barbara Stocking.

The two agencies highlighted a series of alternatives to emergency relief, like food aid, when appropriate, and cash for work and other cash transfer schemes.

They say more support is necessary for the development of national governments’ capacity to respond to chronic crises – and that those governments need to invest the implementation of ‘safety net’ programmes for populations at risk of hunger, and intervene before livelihoods collapse.

They also argue for increased donor and national government investment in small-scale agriculture in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. They point out that countries such as Malawi and Zambia have shown the way, moving from dependence on food aid to become cereal exporters in recent years. Finally they argue that eliminating agricultural subsidies, export restrictions and price controls will correct distortions in world markets and pave the way towards a long-term solution to unstable food prices.

“There is a lot that governments and aid agencies must do to tackle hunger,” said Jonathan Mitchell, CARE’s emergency response director. “What emerged from this conference is that humanitarian and relief agencies are committed to new solutions. We now need aid agencies to be held accountable and for donor governments to get behind these changes.”

Oxfam goes chic Clothes from the Oxfam shop have never looked so good. The development agency has launched the first of three new London fashion boutiques, with one-off pieces created by seven young UK designers from Oxfam’s secondhand clothing and fabrics.

The boutiques, the first of which has opened in Westbourne Grove, London, have been created by Oxfam with the help of fashion guru Jane Shepherdson. The intention is to create a new benchmark for sustainable fashion. Oxfam says they will provide shoppers with “unique style, beautiful one-off clothes, and the assurance that every item will raise money to fight poverty around the world”.

The seven reworked pieces unveiled at the launch were created by Giles Deacon, Henry Holland, Christopher Kane, Jonathan Saunders, Richard Sorger, Jens Laugesen and Stephen Jones from an array of Oxfam donated items ranging from evening gowns to duvet covers.

Oxfam is opening two more new boutiques in West London this summer – in Shawfield Street, Chelsea and the Chiswick High Road – with more planned to open across the UK in 2009.

“These boutiques are all about creating a great shopping experience,” said Jane Shepherdson, creative consultant on the project. “Oxfam has always been a place where stylish people hunt for interesting items to create their look; the boutiques are set to make that even easier.”

Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive of Oxfam, said: “Our customers have told us they want a more contemporary shopping experience, and these new shops are set to turn the traditional concept of an Oxfam shop on its head”.

MORE INFORMATION www.oxfam.org.uk www.care.org

MORE INFORMATION www.oxfam.org

Ethiopia commodity exchange opens Ethiopia has opened a commodity exchange, designed to bring order to the country’s often chaotic food markets. ‘Informal’ practices effectively force farmers to sell locally to traders they know and trust. This prevents commodities moving from regions where there is abundance to those where there are shortages, intensifying the risk of famine and for prices to plummet in districts experiencing a production glut.

The Addis Ababa exchange – called the ECX – will trade in six commodities: coffee, sesame, haricot beans, teff (the basis of Ethiopia’s staple injura), wheat and maize.

At a launch ceremony, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi predicted the system will “revolutionalise the country’s backward and inefficient marketing system”.

The exchange includes a trading floor in the capital, Addis Ababa, six warehouse delivery locations, and 20 electronic price tickers in major market towns.

It has been welcomed by the International Food Policy Research Institute, which said: “The ECX is designed to provide a reliable system for handling, grading, and storing agricultural products.”

Prison sewage system cleans up Growing vegetables on wastewater in Mombasa

A Kenyan prison aims to prove that where there is muck, there is indeed brass, using an eco-friendly sewage system to promote fish farming and energy efficiency. Working with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Shimo la Tewa jail in coastal Mombasa is developing wetland algae pools to cleanse prison sewage. Project advisers believe the resulting waste water will be so pure it could establish fish farms.

And gas given off during the decomposition of the ponds’ sewage could be collected as biogas, fuelling prison appliances and heating. UNEP said: “The sewerage collection and wetland purification system, plus labour and construction costs and including upgrading of sanitary facilities inside the prison amount to $110,000 or $25 per person served: something of a bargain.” There were also “diminished economic costs to the wider environment – reductions of solids that can choke coral reefs”. Bacterial pollution would be reduced too, lowering shellfish contamination causing food poisoning to tourists, who are “important to the local economy.”

Debt cancellation task “not over” In 1998, 70,000 people surrounded the G8 Summit in Birmingham with a ‘human chain’, demanding cancellation of the debts of the poorest countries. Ten years later they were back for ‘Journey to Justice’, celebrating one of the most successful campaigns in recent years – and demanding that the job is finished.

To date the UK Government estimates that more than $100 billion in annual debt payments has now been cancelled. Cancellation can only occur when beneficiary countries have shown that they will put revenues instead into building schools, training teachers or improving healthcare. Burundi and Uganda used the money to abolish school fees, providing millions more children with school places. Tanzania doubled teacher numbers, Zambia scrapped health fees. In Mozambique no women could obtain free anti-malaria treatment – now more than a third can.

‘Journey to Justice’ saw over a thousand debt campaigners in Birmingham mark the tenth anniversary of the ‘Drop the Debt’ human chain.

In the city’s Centenary Square, 20% of them knelt down to create ‘a human pie chart’ to illustrate that since 1998 20% of the debt of the world’s poorest countries has been cancelled.

“We have long called for the cancellation of crippling debt,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu addressing the event via video. “Ten years ago in Birmingham you forged a powerful link in the chain of action for change. It was a significant step on the journey to justice. But it is a journey that we must continue together.”

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown agreed that the job was not yet complete. “We know there is still more to do before we can see the full benefits of debt relief, and for that we need campaigners like you to keep up pressure on governments around the world.

I want to thank you for all you have done to bring us to this point today, and I urge you to continue with your efforts… you are a truly global force for change.”

vulture club The benefits of debt relief can be reduced by the actions of ‘vulture funds’ – companies which buy up the debt of poor countries and then sue for the full value of the debt plus interest. The UK is working to secure international agreement to tackle this – working with the World Bank to help poor countries buy back their commercial debts at a ‘deep’ discount through the Debt Reduction Facility (DRF). Last year the UK provided £1.8 million to assist with Nicaragua’s $1.3 billion commercial debt buy-back operation.

MORE INFORMATION www.dfid.gov.uk

South Africa’s keynote speaker Archbishop Ndungane said “Together we are heading in the right direction – donor and recipient governments, civil society of north and south in partnership. Together we must find a lasting solution to the question of debt.

It is the only answer.”

There was also a message from the rock star Bono, who has since become a dedicated campaigner arguing for an end to poverty. He thanked the “70,000 inspiring souls” who formed the original chain, “for reintroducing the likes of me to positive activism,” adding, “No one can say that activism and aid, along with good African governance doesn’t work.”

To mark the anniversary, Jubilee Debt Campaign published a new report ‘Unfinished Business’ arguing that another $400 billion of debt cancellation is needed if the world’s poorest countries are to combat the challenge of global poverty.

debt free ● 33 countries have seen $100 billion of unpayable debt written off. ● In Tanzania $3.5 billion of debt relief has put 50% more children in primary schools, built 2,500 new schools and recruited 28,000 teachers. ● In Uganda $2 billion of debt relief has helped eliminate user fees for healthcare and doubled the use of health services in five years.

Archbishop Ndungane

MORE INFORMATION www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk

Developments 42

I 27

Somalia wipes out polio, again

Safe syringe celebrates ‘Billennium’ The billionth syringe has come off the production line, signalling the remarkable success of a revolutionary product which, at first, no-one would buy. The Star ‘K-1 autodisable syringe’, which includes a mechanism that prevents its re-use, has been estimated to have saved over five million lives, many of them in the developing world.

Marc Kosa founded his company Star Syringe in 1996, but he conceived the idea for a non reusable syringe in the mid 80s. It took him more than a decade of hard slog to convince sceptical manufacturers and health bodies that he had a viable product. “It’s been a long road to success, but I never thought about giving up”, he said. “It all started in 1984 when I read an article about the transmission of HIV via reused needles and syringes.”

He did his homework – studying how addicts used syringes, visiting syringe factories and researching plastic moulding techniques. Other auto-disable (AD) designs existed, but were too expensive and difficult to make. “My design addressed these problems,” said Kosa, “but when I first approached big potential producers I got shown the door pretty quickly.”

Nevertheless, he persevered, and the K1 syringe is now being made under licence by manufacturers all over the world, especially in developing countries.

An estimated 50 billion injections are given annually worldwide. In the developing world, more than half of these are made with unsterile syringes, often with

28 I Developments 42

supposedly ‘disposable’ models which are used many times. This cross-infects patients with serious blood-borne diseases like HIV and hepatitis. The World Health Organisation estimates that syringes are used on average seven times in developing countries, creating tens of millions of preventable infections every year. One child dies every 24 seconds from unsafe injections.

The Star K1 has small ring etched on the inside of the barrel, which allows the specially-adapted plunger to move in one direction and not the other.

After one complete injection is given the plunger will automatically lock in place, and break if forced, rendering the syringe useless.

Marc Koska is also the founder of SafePoint, a charitable trust dedicated to educating children and healthcare workers in the developing world about how they can protect themselves when receiving and giving injections. The charity’s principal objective is to outlaw the reuse of needles and promote awareness of its dangers. “I don’t care whether people are using my AD design or a competitor’s” said Kosa, “SafePoint is all about spreading the word to endusers and health policy makers about how to use syringes safely.”

MORE INFORMATION www.starsyringe.com www.safepointtrust.org

Well-informed local volunteer groups targeting communities with vaccines and sound medical advice can wipe out deadly disease, even in countries racked by civil war. That is the message being proclaimed by the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which says that Somalia is now free of the disease, with no cases since March 2007.

The WHO had managed to help wipe out polio in Somalia once before (by 2002), despite the country’s near constant anarchy since 1991. However, the disease was reintroduced in 2005 by travellers from Nigeria. But now it has been wiped out again, thanks to 10,000 Somali volunteers and health workers repeatedly vaccinating more than 1.8 million under-fives, visiting every household in all settlements many times. A key agent, said the WHO, was “increased community involvement” and the “effective use of monovalent vaccines… with several doses within a short period of time”. The remaining four countries where polio is endemic are Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Return of the inca potato The world should follow the diet of the long-destroyed Inca Empire and reduce famine, international food experts have claimed. They think we should elevate the humble potato. The Incas and their forerunners in the Peruvian, Chilean and Bolivian Andes first cultivated potatoes for food, and the vegetable was spread to Europe and thence other continents by the Spanish Conquistadors who destroyed the Incas’ civilisation.

Some of this ancient heritage is now being rejuvenated at a 12,000 hectare ‘Potato Park’, near the old Incan capital Cusco, where farmer-researchers have restored to production more than 600 traditional Andean potato varieties. This – said a UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report – is “providing plant breeders with the genetic building blocks of future varieties.”

The value of potatoes in global diets was highlighted by a Cusco conference recently staged by the FAO and the International Potato Centre. There, experts stressed the “crop produces more food on less land than maize, wheat or rice”.

HIV debate gets animated An album of songs combined with animated music videos is tackling the issue of stigma and HIV awareness, and proving a radio hit across Sierra Leone.

The album HIV e-dae-o (HIV is Real) is written and performed by local musicians and young peer educators in Bo, Sierra Leone. It features 12 songs in a mixture of English and local dialects with infectious rhythms and uplifting lyrics. The videos were produced on computer equipment at the Bo Methodist youth centre using skills taught to by a visiting animation expert.

Safer practices Available medications Voluntary counselling & testing Empowerment Sierra Leone has 48,000 people living with HIV, and Christian Aid, the agency backing the initiative, is supporting 10 projects in the country working on issues such as stigma, discrimination, health education, behaviour counselling, support and care, voluntary testing, income generation and mother-to-baby transmission.

Christian Aid is pioneering the ‘SAVE’ approach (see box) with nearly 300 local HIV partners in 40 countries. “We’ve produced 800 CDs which have been distributed to radio stations, local NGOs, schools, churches and the National AIDS Secretariat of Sierra Leone,” explained project manager Mark Nunn. “We’re hoping that we will be able to get enough funding to repeat it in other countries where we work on HIV education, such as Zambia.”

MORE INFORMATION www.hivsierraleone.co.uk

Still volunteering at 50 The world’s largest independent volunteer sending organisation, VSO, celebrates its 50th birthday this year. It was launched in 1958 and on 19 May that year, the first Voluntary Service Overseas volunteers (thirteen 18-year-old men) left the UK to give a year’s voluntary service in Ghana, Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Sarawak.

Since then, VSO has sent over 30,000 volunteers to work in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Pacific and Eastern Europe in response to requests from governments and community organisations. ‘Celebrity’ volunteers include the BBC’s Brian Hanrahan, Channel Four’s Jon Snow, Gillian Merron, Parliamentary UnderSecretary of State for International Development, and Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer. At any one time VSO have around 1,500 people working in placements in up to 34 countries.

The original ‘gap year’ students have disappeared – today’s volunteers often have tangible, transferable professional skills and a deal of experience, with an average age of 41. Most placements are for two years, but can be as short as two weeks. Volunteers can be aged between 18 and 75 years old, and must have a formal qualification and some work experience. Though founded in

Britain, VSO now takes volunteers from an increasing range of countries and backgrounds, with partner agencies in Canada, Kenya, the Netherlands, the Philippines, India and Ireland.

“What is essential, and what I’ve seen time and time again, is the on-the-ground partnership and genuine sharing of skills,” said VSO President, broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby. “Relationships are forged that endure. Relationships that are extremely useful in both countries.”

“There is no question that people who do VSO find it a life changing experience, added Dimbleby, “it changes their world perspective... They become ambassadors

for internationalism and this could not be more important than now, amongst the backdrop of global challenges we face.”

Speaking at London’s Royal Festival Hall at an event held to celebrate VSO’s 50th anniversary, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander took the opportunity to announce that DFID (who provide more than 70% of VSO’s income) would be providing £3 million to support a VSO initiative to encourage more people from diaspora communities in the UK to volunteer in developing countries. He said, “In the last 50 years (VSO) has grown to become quite literally a great British institution, and a source of national pride.”

Disasters in Burma and China Cyclone Nargis developed in the Bay of Bengal during the last week of April. It made landfall on 2 May as a Category 3 cyclone in the Irrawaddy delta region, approximately 250 km southwest of Rangoon. The storm hit the capital that night with devastating consequences. At the time of going to press, estimates of dead and missing are over 200,000, with more than 1.5 million people in need of emergency assistance.

An earthquake, measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale hit Sichuan province in south west China at 14:45 local time on 12 May. It is China’s worst earthquake since 1976. At the time of going to press there were over 50,000 dead, almost 30,000 missing and nearly 300,000 injured.The affected area is the size of Belgium. Approximately 4 million homes have been destroyed or badly damaged in Sichuan and seven other affected provinces.

MORE INFORMATION For the latest on how the UK government is partnering the international community following both of these disasters visit www.dfid.gov.uk

Sustainable award entries sought The Ashden Awards – a UK-based charity that works to increase the use of local sustainable energy worldwide is inviting entries for its 2009 competition.

Ashden Awards reward and publicise the work of sustainable energy programmes across the developing world and in the UK. Expressions of interest for the international Awards should be received by 21 October 2008.

MORE INFORMATION www.ashdenawards.org

Developments 42

I 29

S

ometimes, something is so obvious that we fail to see it. Such as the role of older people in global development. They are like the cement in between the bricks of so many societies and cultures. They hold things together but are practically invisible.

Older people are essential contributors in developing countries. They help care for children, they rebuild after disasters, they feed their extended families, and much more. They are crucial participants in the chain that leads to a better life for families and communities.

All too often, however, this vital link is missed in aid and development plans, where those over 60 get overlooked.

A quick glance at most major development programmes shows the emphasis they place on particular groups and issues. The Millennium Development Goals have a particular focus on reducing poverty of women and children. UN agencies highlight specific issues: food, healthcare, emergency relief, and the needs of children. Among international NGOs, again, one group is notably missing.

Policy makers and development organisations worldwide are failing to recognise that older people also have basic rights and can be a vulnerable group in society. They also fail to recognise the significant contributions that older people can make.

Perhaps more importantly, they are failing to wake up to the global demographic shift currently taking place. Today, people over 60 make up approximately 10% of the world’s population, but by 2050 this will have more than doubled. This change will be greatest and most rapid in developing countries, where the population of older people is expected to quadruple during the next 50 years, despite the impact of HIV and AIDS. Currently 64% of older people live in less developed regions, and by 2050 this figure will rise to 80%.

Only the 2002 Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing recognises the increasing impact older people will have, and their potential to

A universal non-contributory pension is the single most effective initiative to alleviate poverty among older people.

30 I Developments 42

contribute to development. It commits governments to include ageing in all social and economic development policies, including poverty reduction strategies. However, there has been limited follow-up by governmental and non-governmental institutions.

Nevertheless, there are some of the ways things can be moved forward.

Pensions for example, are essential in combating poverty among old people.

The single most effective long-term initiative to alleviate poverty among older people around the world – and to make sure they contribute to global development – is the adoption of a universal non-contributory pension.

As little as $1 or $2 per day in many countries would fundamentally change living conditions, both for the older person who receives the pension and for the family they often support.

An estimated 80% of the world’s population currently has no social security. In discussions around the world, older people say that this is the single greatest factor inhibiting their access to what most of us consider basic rights – food, shelter, healthcare and other essential services.

Pensions can deliver food on the table, access to healthcare, the ability to generate further income, and education for grandchildren. They infuse cash into rural communities and poor areas of cities, providing a boost to struggling local economies. Pensions are essential to eradicate extreme poverty – not just among older persons, but among all in the developing world.

Because the majority of people in developing countries work in the informal sector, it is essential that pensions and other income security programmes are universal and non-contributory.

But can already poor countries afford to provide a social pension?

The evidence is that they can. At least 50 low or middle income countries as diverse as Uruguay, Lesotho and Nepal provide social pensions today.

A recent study of 18 of these showed that two-thirds of them provided pensions for less than 1% of GDP. This is the cost to Brazil, for example, which provides pensions for 5.1 million poor people. Here they have discovered that having a pensioner in the family reduces a household’s likelihood of suffering poverty by 18%. Reaching this most basic of development goals is not a matter of economics, it is a matter of political will.

It is also critical that older people are recognised in their role as carers. All too often it is assumed that – in the multi-generational households that are the norm in much of the developing

Mary Nyambura is from Thika, north of Nairobi.

She lives with her two sons, daughter and 13 grandchildren, six of whom are orphans. © Kate Holt/ Helpage International

world – older people are dependent upon their children. Research and anecdotal experience now makes clear that – for as long as they are able – many older people contribute to their households, both financially and in terms of material goods. For instance, recent data shows that 67% of older parents in the Philippines help their children with money, as do 55% in Thailand.

Older people also find themselves taking on heavy responsibilities as a result of HIV and AIDS. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa they have become carers of their adult children who are infected and also their grandchildren – both while the parents are alive and after their death.

However, often these grandparents scarcely have the resources to feed and clothe themselves. Average income in homes headed by older people is likely to meet barely a fraction of

Older people have gone missing from the global development programmes, argues, Dr D. Wesumperuma of HelpAge International.

out

daily needs, compounding an already daunting challenge. Meagre savings and resources disappear quickly to cover the costs of food, clothing, medicines and education for the children.

It is essential that development programmes take an intergenerational approach which provides direct resources and support to older carers.

One way of doing this is to provide direct cash assistance for older carers, such as pensions and childcare grants, and direct-help programmes that allow older people to earn more themselves through the provision of farm animals, micro-loans for businesses, and business training.

Furthermore, older people often need advice and support on how to care for people with AIDS-related illnesses and minimise their own risk of infection.

It is also essential that international organisations and governments collect

data on HIV infection rates among people aged over 50, disaggregated by age and sex, in order to have a better understanding of the situation.

Older people’s needs are often missed in the initial response to emergencies, and in planning for recovery and rehabilitation. Older people made up about 10% of the population affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

However, they were not specifically targeted for assistance and were unable to gain access to food, healthcare or cash, due to discrimination and lack of information or support.

While older people also contributed significantly to their communities before the disaster struck, little effort was made to consult them in the rehabilitation process, because their role was so little understood.

In the vast displacement camps of Darfur, older people are rarely given

specific help, and are often physically unable to reach places where food is being distributed. When clothing and medicine is available, it is often inappropriate for the needs of older people. Almost a third of the older people living in the camps are caring for orphaned children. Yet, they are seldom catered for in humanitarian food and health programmes.

Older people have the wisdom and the will to contribute to their own wellbeing and that of their families. They can be a catalyst for lifting the world’s poorest to a better life and building a better future. They are the missing link.

Dr D. Wesumperuma is Head of Programmes Asia Pacific, for HelpAge International MORE INFORMATION helpage.org

of sight?

Jan Egeland is the former UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator. In this extract from his book, A Billion Lives, he tells what it’s like when you come face to face with the forces of lawlessness.

tell it like it is

G

uiglo is a small town in the lush western province of Ivory Coast, which in 2006 was engulfed in crippling fear. For many years it had been among the most prosperous areas of West Africa, with profitable cocoa plantations and a booming forestry industry. But behind the façade, this was a nation torn by ethnic discrimination, war, violent youth gangs, and spectacularly bad government. In 2002 and 2003 the country had been split in two, with the rebel New Forces movement in control of the northern half of the country and continuing strife in the south and west.

I came to this remote region in February 2006. It was my job, as head of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to mobilise attention, gather resources,

and promote positive change when disasters occurred. Our humanitarian operations had been attacked and our buildings in Guiglo had been burned down four weeks earlier.

The pattern of the violence and the atrocities in Ivory Coast was all too familiar to me from previous travels to many places where fighting takes place amid the civilian population and is often waged directly against them. The anger builds when I see, time and again, how it is more dangerous to be a woman or a child than an armed, adult male soldier.

With the help of hate radio, the Jeune Patriots, the ‘young patriots’ of President Laurent Gbagbo’s dominant political party, had specialised in beating, raping and killing defenceless people, primarily those from the Burkinabe ethnic minority, and the political

The only promise I can make is that I will speak the uncensored truth about their plight to the UN Security Council.

32 I Developments 42

opposition. The UN was provided with peacekeepers from its member states to go to Ivory Coast and Guiglo to try to prevent further ethnic violence, but it was too late. When a young man was killed in a confrontation between the gangs and the UN force, hate radio immediately called upon “all patriots” to “avenge the death” by attacking the minorities, the opposition groups, and “all foreigners,” especially peacekeepers and humanitarian workers. In the violent chaos the peacekeepers, who were there to protect civilians and humanitarian operations, fled.

We walk amid the charred ruins of our local OCHA office and the destroyed offices, vehicles, and warehouses of the other UN agencies and NGOs. The Save the Children compound and many other centres of relief have been looted,

Meeting displaced Burkinabe victims of the governmentsupported violence outside Guiglo.

Ky Chung/UNICO

burned, and destroyed. The relief groups here have done effective humanitarian work for tens of thousands of vulnerable civilians for years. Now all international staff have been evacuated. The terrorized minorities who have fled to overcrowded camps receive no supplies and no protection.

I end the sad tour with an open-air meeting under a straw roof erected next to town hall. All the local dignitaries are there, sitting at a long table with a white cloth. They have come to meet me and my UN delegation, reluctantly.

They know that I represent SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan and that I will report back to the powerful Security Council, which has decided to impose sanctions on the head of the Jeune Patriots, on another leading politician working for President Gbagbo, and on a commander in the New Forces in the north. These men cannot leave the country without being arrested and will have their foreign assets frozen.

I get straight to the point: “I am the envoy of your fellow West African, the United Nations secretary-general, and I have come from the other end of the world to speak the truth and to seek justice… We came here in good faith and as your guests. The attacks, the burning, and the pillaging I have witnessed today is criminal behaviour of the worst kind. I know that you know who did this, as I know you know the voices of Radio Guiglo who spoke hate and started the violence. They have to be severely punished and you are accountable for making that happen.

I have a letter to President Gbagbo from Kofi Annan asking for $3 million in compensation for the losses we sustained. If there is continued impunity I will ask for more sanctions against your leaders from the Security Council.”

My French isn’t perfect, but a simple, straightforward, and angry message is not difficult to get across even with errors in grammar. Looking at the embarrassed mayor, prefect, police chief, and military commander, I can see that I have been understood. So why are the 20 or so young men who marched in as I was speaking apparently having trouble getting the message? A number of them stand and start shouting at me.

I prepare to respond, but a colleague whispers in my ear: “This is definitely when we take our leave. Those guys are the rank and file of the local Jeune Patriots”. As we go to our cars I notice the tribal chief engaging some of the young men in a shouting match. The policeman from Benin who is assigned as my only bodyguard, bravely takes a position in front of the car, his revolver in hand. Another large group of young patriots has arrived and

now surrounds our four vehicles.

After a long 20 minutes inside our locked cars, the chief pushes himself through the mob and shouts some orders and a narrow opening is provided. Our local Ivorian colleagues later confirm that the paramount chief had single-handedly managed to convince the young thugs not to attack us. He says he will control the ‘patriots’ in the future and urges me to get the humanitarian organisations to return to the area.

We drive to the nearby camp where seven thousand displaced Burkinabe victims of the violence have taken refuge. Their greetings are formal and cordial, but the questions posed by their grey-haired leaders are honest and heartbreaking: “We have no protection nor supplies if we do not get it from the international community. So why did you all flee with your peacekeepers and aid workers and leave us behind to our fate?” A mother of three raises her hand: “The president, his tribe, and his Jeune Patriots have forced us away from the plantations that have been our homes for generations. If we cannot stay where our fathers and grandfathers lived, where can we go to live in safety and dignity?”

As we prepare to leave the camp, one of the camp spokesmen, who has a baby girl on his shoulder, will not let go of my hand: “You say you will not forget us.

Will you remember? Do you realize that our destiny is in your hands?

That tonight we will again be alone with no one to protect and to help us?”

The only promise I can make is that I will speak the uncensored truth about their plight to the powerful members of the UN Security Council next week. Four days later I do exactly that. The council condemns the indiscriminate violence, pledges increased humanitarian support, and promises to study my appeal for protection of the civilians through immediate deployment of a well-resourced peacekeeping force, more sanctions against the abusers, and more intensive mediation efforts.

They know I will walk a few paces from their chambers to where the leading international news media are staked out. In a few hours, hundreds of millions all over the world will receive the message of the refugees in western Ivory Coast and hear who are accountable and why the member states must take action.

We who witness the unmasked realities have a responsibility as never before to shake up and embarrass the powerful. This generation has more economic, technological, and security potential than any in human history. Our only option is to speak the truth, always.

Inspecting the ruins of the OCHA office in Guigo, destroyed by the Jeune Patriots.

Ky Chung/UNICO

This is an edited extract from A Billion Lives: an eyewitness report from the frontlines of humanity by Jan Egeland, published by Simon & Schuster.

It is reprinted by kind permission.

Developments 42

I 33

Centre for Development, Environment and Policy (CeDEP) On course for success... Postgraduate Distance Learning

Internationally recognised Masters Degrees in: • • • • •

Agribusiness for Development Agricultural Economics Applied Environmental Economics Biodiversity Conservation & Management Environmental Management

• Managing Rural Development • Public Policy & Management • Sustainable Development New for 2009: Poverty Reduction: Policy and Practice

For more information, visit our website at: www.soas.ac.uk/cedep Centre for Development, Environment and Policy (CeDEP) SOAS, University of London, High Street, Wye, Ashford, Kent TN25 5AH

Why Gordon Brown gathered business leaders together in a bid to fight poverty and boost commerce. Report by Martin Wroe.

down to business I

t’s already launched in Kenya, Afghanistan and Tanzania. And now a mobile money-transfer service from Vodafone is to reach 40 million customers in India. Meanwhile, Microsoft Innovation Centres in Rwanda, Nigeria, Uganda and Morocco are set to provide aspiring business people with the technology to launch new products. And in India, personalised commercial information is being texted to the mobile phones of thousands

of farmers in their own language.

These three groundbreaking initiatives were among those revealed at the Business Call To Action conference in May, when CEOs from some of the world’s biggest companies unveiled plans designed to both fight poverty and boost business. Hosted by DFID and UNDP, the event also featured President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President John Kufuor of Ghana. It is the start of a co-ordinated initiative designed to

engage the business community with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by enabling poor people to access up-to-the-minute information, money and business expertise, as well as creating new commercial and employment opportunities. Big name companies who have already signed up to the Call for Action include Citi Group, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters and Sumitomo Chemical.

Within five years it is estimated that 3

Developments 42

I 35

business

“It will be much easier to make your next million dollars in Africa than in the United States or Britain.”

President Kufuor of Ghana 3 initiatives from these and other companies will save almost half a million lives, create thousands of jobs, and benefit millions of poor people across Africa and Asia.

“In the race to achieve the MDGs, one of the greatest untapped resources is the private sector,” says Kemal Dervi, UNDP Administrator. “Businesses are engines of growth and ustainable development.

Innovative business leaders are changing the way that many businesses operate. They are expanding beyond traditional business practices to also focus on the needs of those locked out of the global market, bringing them in as partners in growth and wealth creation.”

While big business has a history of supporting international development through the charitable sector, the Business Call to Action is not about philanthropy, nor is it about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Instead, it challenges companies to recognise that business done well is inevitably good for development, and that developing country markets are primed for business success – from manufacturing and finance to telecommunications. The argument is, that by helping to build a safer and more prosperous world, businesses are also securing future commercial success.

Michael Klein, Chairman of the Institutional Clients Group at Citi, showcased Remit As You Earn, a remittance service providing a secure and cost-effective means for employees in corporate and public sector organisations to send money to developing countries. “Remittances, worth about £122 billion to developing countries each year, are a crucial source of money to poor communities,” he explained. “Once the remittance is received, the money can provide income for families or start-up investment for small businesses – that all help to create the next steps towards a better life.”

Coca-Cola Africa announced a big expansion of its “manual distribution centre” network across the continent.

It’s a business model which allows independent local entrepreneurs to set up distribution centres on behalf of the company, and many are owned by women. “It’s created new small businesses, jobs and increased skills,”

36 I Developments 42

Africa has the raw materials and the human resources for investment (right). © Giacomo Pirozzi/Panos Mobile phone magnate Mo Ibrahim (far right) says high returns are available in the continent. © Mo Ibrahim Foundation

said Nathan Kalumbu, Coca-Cola Africa Business Unit president for East and Central Africa. “And it provides a platform from which we offer entrepreneurial opportunities that open the door to job and wealth creation.”

The company aims to create up to 2,000 more of these independent distribution businesses and 8,000 jobs within three years. Neville Isdell, CEO of Coca Cola, said harnessing business would prove a boost in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown,who launched the Call to Action to ignite progress on the MDGs last year, told delegates that for too long development has been talked about without reference to its “starting point in wealth creation – the dignity of individuals empowered to trade and to be economically selfsufficient.” Growth and prosperity is the objective, not aid, he said, “The purpose of aid is to no longer require it. Not only do you as businesses have the technology, the skills and the expertise that will generate wealth and jobs throughout the developing world. It is also in your best interests as businesses

“Growth and prosperity is the objective, not aid – the purpose of aid is to no longer require it.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown

to bring the poorest countries into the global economy and to create a globalisation that is inclusive for all.”

Contrary to the view that the presence of big international corporations “is the cause of the problems in developing countries”, the reverse is often true, he maintained. “It is the absence of business – and not the presence of business – that blights the lives of poor people, leaving them dependent on aid and denying them the opportunity to work, denying them the chance to support their families and denying them the means to ensure their children get the chance to succeed.”

The Sundanese-born entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim invited the audience to raise their hands if they knew the name of the President of Botswana. Five hands went up. Then he asked who knew the name of the President of Zimbabwe.

No problems there. But there is a problem in the popular perception of Africa, he explained – a problem of “ignorance” which news organisations needed to think about. Nor were popular ideas about corruption true. His own company had transparent procedures and rigorous financial mechanisms which meant “We built up a great business without paying a dollar”.

Therefore, he said, “if any businessman comes to me and says that he cannot do business in Africa because of corruption, I tell him that he should not be in business anyway.”

People in business have to stop thinking of Africa in terms of charity

everybody’s business MAKING MARKETS WORK FOR THE POOR The Business Call for Action is part of DFID’s new strategy to support private sector development. It focuses on making markets work better – and in a way that involves and benefits the poor. This type of market development helps to make growth an inclusive process. Vibrant, broad-based markets encourage the private sector to invest more, create more jobs, and increase poor people’s access to affordable goods and services.

By improving the operation of markets, DFID’s private sector development work will have a positive impact on the overall economic performance and growth of its partner countries.

The strategy focuses on three themes – Access, Competition, and Engagement: ACCESS to increased market participation by the poor.

COMPETITION creating incentives for innovation and improved productivity, as well as providing more affordable goods and services to the poor.

ENGAGEMENT with the private sector to increase their capacity to invest in ways that benefit the poor.

Within five years companies could save half a million lives and create thousands of jobs in Africa and Asia. and start thinking about in terms of investment. “The highest returns on investment last year and the year before and the year before that came from Africa. I have built up mobile phone companies in 16 African countries and my shareholders made an average of 8.5 times their investment over an average period of three years. People who invested for seven years made 25 times their investment. These are the kinds of profit margins that we managed in Africa. Can you do that in your business here in Europe and America? You cannot, otherwise I would have invested in your businesses. Think about that.”

And Africa, said President Kufuor of Ghana, is open for business.

“We have the raw materials and I believe that we also have the human resources in Africa, and it is high time that the world of business really shed some of its doubts about Africa and moved in. I believe that it is much easier to make your next million dollars in

Africa than in the United States or Britain. We are waiting for you – come.

Our governments are opening up.”

Africa has freely accepted the African peer review mechanism which “ensures good and democratic governance and respect for private property and private enterprise.” And countries like his own Ghana, he added, are “beacons to show people how to develop in the current world.”

He told his audience of CEOs. “If you come, the Millennium Development Goals will truly be achieved. However, if you stay away, we will continue to depend on the ODAs, which are inelastic and cannot help us enough to generate the resources for us to be able to take our people out of the binds of poverty and general handicaps.”

The Business Call to Action is part of a major campaign which seeks to accelerate progress towards meeting the MDGs by 2015. During 2008 the campaign and its supporters aim to build momentum and galvanise initiatives from businesses, governments, NGOs, faith groups and civil society. A pivotal moment will be the UN Secretary General’s high-level event on the MDGs in New York on 25 September bringing together world leaders, civil society and the private sector to help translate existing commitments into action, and bolster the global partnership for development.

MORE INFORMATION www.business-call-to-action.com

By building markets and harnessing the resources of the private sector, it is possible to reduce poverty more effectively – on a larger scale and more sustainably. In practical terms, the market development approach consists of two main stages. First, analysis to identify obstacles to growth and market failures, especially in the economic sectors that are important to poor people.

Second, the design and implementation of short-term actions that will act as catalysts for growth and sustained large-scale change, beyond the scope of a single firm or entity.

it’s already working…

STREAMLINING THE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT In Ghana the number of days for registering a business has been reduced from 81 to 42. In Mozambique the reform of customs procedures allowed goods to clear customs 40 times faster and customs revenues increased from 2.9% of GDP in 1996 to 5.8% in 2005.

BUILDING INCLUSIVE MARKETS In South Africa, the development of the ‘Mzansi’ Basic Bank Account led to an increase in the number of people with bank accounts from 11.8 million to 19 million. In Bangladesh, the Katalyst programme built improved agriculture extension services through a retailer network that reaches over 1 million farmers.

Developments 42

I 37

court system maternal health

Malawi has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. So what are the solutions?

Rosemary MacDonald, of Women and Children First, reports.

legacy of sorrow W

hen 75-year-old Tipilire lost her daughter, Naphiri, in September last year, it was much more than a family bereavement.

Naphiri, five months pregnant, was dead at just 42... She had been the main source of income for the household, and was responsible for growing vegetables for the family. She also looked after her epileptic mother when she was sick.

And she left four children.

What would have been in any circumstances a tragedy, was in this case a catastrophe.

The nearest health centre was 12 miles away, so when Naphiri had become pregnant she did not attend antenatal classes – visiting a traditional healer instead. Five months into the pregnancy she started to get lower abdominal pains and began bleeding. A few days later she died.

Sadly, this is not an unusual story in Malawi. Sometimes

High mortality rates continue even though most deaths are preventable.

known as ‘the Warm Heart of Africa’, this small country nevertheless is one of the world’s poorest, with an average annual income of $160. It has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. Here, for every 100 successful births, one mother dies.

As with Naphiri and her family,the consequences of a mother dying in Malawi are huge and all-encompassing – emotional, psychological, practical and financial, involving children, families and communities.

Naphiri was Tipilire’s only daughter, who now feels utterly bereft. “Naphiri was my soul mate,” she says. “We used to chat, and she would look after me when I was sick. She was the breadwinner and was responsible for producing our food. I now have to bear these responsibilities and look after Naphiri’s children. But with epilepsy I find it hard to cope.”

A mother’s death leaves another less-known, but nonetheless chilling legacy.

A child is not only affected psychologically and emotionally by the loss of its mother but is also 3-10 times more likely itself

to die before its second birthday.

And the education of surviving children also often suffers, if they have to work to replace the mother’s income, or stay at home to look after younger siblings.

High mortality rates continue despite the fact that most of these deaths are preventable.

Women simply need access to healthcare in order to detect and manage complications early, before, during and after pregnancy, both within their community and in hospitals.

Gillian Merron, the UK’s Under-Secretary of State for International Development, agrees. “The UK Government’s spending on maternal health is increasing year on year,” she said at a recent workshop held by Women and Children First. “But much more needs to be done by governments, the UN and NGOs.” At the ‘Countdown to 2015’ conference in Cape Town in April, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health launched a Call to Action for an additional $10.2 billion annually. Securing this sum would ensure the universal coverage of maternal, newborn and child health interventions needed to meet Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5: to reduce child and maternal mortality by 2015.

In response to this need, Women and Children First works to improve the health of mothers and babies in Asia and Africa, including Malawi. Its programmes engage at both community and health services levels. A key component of its work in communities is the establishment of women’s groups. Bringing together women with similar needs empowers them to realise they have a right to a safe birth, have a voice in their communities and demand high quality health services.

Cecilia is 29 years old and a mother of three. She joined a women’s group when she was two months pregnant with her fourth child. During the group meetings she became aware of danger signs and learnt good maternal and newborn healthcare practices. Cecilia started to attend antenatal care, and in preparation, waited at the health centre for her delivery because she knew she could not reach it once her contractions started. She delivered healthy twin girls. Since returning home Cecilia has twice attended the under-fives clinic and her daughters have received their vaccinations. Cecilia now advises other women to attend the women’s group so they too can have a safe pregnancy.

Tipiliri will continue to struggle to bring up her daughter’s children, but the hope is that her granddaughters, when they grow up, will not have to suffer the same fate as their mother.

MORE INFORMATION www.wcf-uk.org

Pregnant women at ante-natal clinic in Malawi. © DFID

38 I Developments 42 41

IMA International Building Your Capacity

Knowledge Sharing in Development Issues in International Development Brighton, 8-19 September. Held at the Institute of Development Studies. 10 days £2750

3 for2

on all 200 8 courses

The many aspects of international development are complex and interconnected. Do you fully understand the effects of climate change, globalisation or poverty? How is good governance changing the social landscape? How can development work continue in areas of conflict and instability? How can organisations assess their impact and find out how to operate better? t Investigate key topics, challenge your assumptions and find new perspectives with world-class facilitators and trainers; t Understand the issues in development, with direct application to your workplace; t Plan, manage and evaluate your organisation’s work with consideration to different influences and impacts OUTPUT You’ll work more responsibly and efficiently, with a more informed perspective.

Bangkok Training Programme

10-28 November. Please see website for full details and course fact sheets

Project Planning 5 days £1350 Development practitioners need strong planning skills to carry out projects that have the desired impacts. r Project objectives for competent design; r Stakeholder analysis; project implementation and finances OUTPUT Your projects will succeed on time, within budget, cutting out inefficiencies.

Effective Management Skills 5 days £1350 Build your management competence with this interactive course for professionals in development organisations r Skills for meetings, time management and change r Communication, delegation and decision making OUTPUT You’ll be able to manage your workload and improve performance.

Monitoring & Evaluation 10 days £2550 The key elements needed to develop, maintain and implement an M&E system, to really prove the value and impact of your project or programme. r Indicators, data collection, analysis and communication r Key stages of an M&E system r Participatory M&E for stakeholder commitment OUTPUT You’ll monitor and evaluate your projects better, using appropriate frameworks, tools and techniques.

Effective Leadership 5 days £1350 Leadership is all about inspiring your team to realise their full potential, through motivating team members for high performance. r Individual strengths and getting the most out of people r Motivation and coaching for improved teamwork r Change management and influencing OUTPUT Your team will be inspired to work more closely, sharing the same goals.

Advanced M&E Workshop 5 days £1350 A step-by-step results-based process for designing or improving sustainable M&E systems for organisations or longterm programmes. r Six steps of setting up a results-based M&E system r Key success areas and performance indicators OUTPUT Your organisational M&E will be consolidated and easier to roll out.

IMA International Ltd, Drummond House, High Street, Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex, BN6 9RE, UK Tel +44 (0)1273 833030 Fax +44 (0)1273 833230

www.imainternational.com