Developments 43

KASHMIR QUAKE THREE YEARS ON

FLOOD-PROOF LIFE IN BANGLADESH

HOW TO FIX FAILED STATES

SEX WORKERS FIGHT AIDS IN ARGENTINA

ISSUE 43 2008 www.developments.org.uk

don’t look down!

Can a new Nepal bridge the gap between conflict and cooperation?

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contents NEPAL SPECIAL FOCUS

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Suspense story

In Nepal a bridge isn’t just a crossing place, it’s a lifeline.

Cash on delivery

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Why are maternity rates falling, and does giving mothers money have something to do with it?

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Handle with care

Why we must support vulnerable and post-conflict countries

by UK Development Minister Shahid Malik.

All-inclusive deal?

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Including those who have traditionally been left out is building a new Nepal.

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Rivers run through it

Water is known as ‘Nepal’s oil’, and could transform the economy.

The hills are alive…

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Hillside communities, guardians of Nepal’s forests, could model a unified and prosperous future.

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Global news »

Winners of sustainable awards announced.

Gillian Merron’s Nigeria diary.

New volunteering schemes launched.

Indian ringtone calls for safe sex.

» »

»

Kashmir on the mend

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Three years after the devastating earthquake heartening progress in Pakistan.

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Raised expectations

Tahmima Anam on a scheme to help flood-prone Bangladesh river island dwellers keep their heads above water.

“Working in Nepal has taught us that we must always make preventing violence a priority, and always invest in the long-term goal of state-building and peace-building.” Shahid Malik Front cover and this page photographs: © Chandra Shekhar Karki

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

The views expressed do not necessarily reflect official policies.

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editors

Subscribe free to Developments at www.developments.org.uk

Martin Wroe Malcolm Doney

contributors Tahmima Anam Brian Draper Ashram Ghani Kate Hardy Elena Immambocus

Chandra Shekhar Karki Clare Lockhart Shahid Malik Gillian Merron

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

23/9/08 17:13:36

Can we re-build? Yes we can

I

No quick fix

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The architects of the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan on how to fix a failed state.

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(Sex) workers unite

Featuring one of the finalists in The Guardian International Development Journalism Competition who champions a stand taken

by Argentine sex workers.

t was her proudest moment. Krishna Kumari Pariya arrived in Kathmandu earlier this year to take up her place as an elected member of the country’s new Constituent Assembly. A woman from the impoverished rural plains, an ‘untouchable’ Dalit, she was in the capital city to play a part in drafting a new constitution. Until reality bit. Hard.

Booking a room in the city, everything went fine until she gave her – Dalit – name. As if by magic the room became suddenly unavailable. “It happened,” she says, “about 20 times”.

In the new Nepal, where the monarchy has been abolished and democratic elections have vaulted young people, women and the traditionally unrepresented into political influence, reality is racing to catch up. “If I could pass two laws”, Krishna Kumari Pariya told us, “it would be to end untouchability and to introduce free education for all”.

It’s not a pipe-dream. Not so long ago women in Nepal stayed home and raised kids. As another dynamic woman, Bandana Risal told us: “Now we are seen as people with rights ourselves”.

Nepal is changing, as our focus in this edition of Developments shows. And the UK government, through DFID, is playing a key role in supporting this vulnerable country on the road to development. It can be risky providing support to countries where there is political instability or conflict. People ask if it wouldn’t it be better just to give the money to the people who need it. But as Shahid Malik explains on page 26, “Without stable and transparent government, development either won’t happen or can’t happen… look at Zimbabwe to see what happens when governance goes bad.”

If Nepal is bearing the fruits of a long struggle from conflict into what everyone hopes will be an inclusive, peaceful democracy, Kashmir, Pakistan has been hauling itself from devastation and despair in a short period of intense effort.

Just three years after the devastating earthquake, the people here are making rapid progress in rebuilding their lives.

Sometimes the adaptability and ingenuity among the world’s poorest and hardest hit communities is an inspiration. Witness Tahmima Anam’s report on the river island-dwellers of Bangladesh, for whom life in this flood-prone area is an object lesson in facing the reality of climate change.

Martin Wroe and Malcolm Doney Don’t forget that your friends can go online and subscribe free to receive Developments every quarter – and add your own thoughts to the stories we carry.

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Š Chandra Shekhar Karki

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In the hills of Nepal a bridge is not just a crossing place, it’s a lifeline which can mean the difference between poverty and prosperity.

“The bridge is like my wife,” laughs Ain Bahadur Thapa, a 60-year old farmer. “I have been with her for so long, I could not live without her.”

And he is not alone. All across this most mountainous country in the world, more and more suspension bridges are slung elegantly between previously distant rural communities – separated either by the dangers of torrential river flow or the impracticality of a day’s walk to a crossing place.

“Before we had the suspension bridge,” says Devendra Thakuri “several people were washed away when they tried to cross the river in flood. People had to take their clothes off and carry them on their head as they waded through. Children, on their way to school, would throw their bags over first. It was dangerous. But the bridge has connected us all up. It’s a lifeline.”

Ain Bahadur Thapa estimates that around 200 people a day cross the 150 metre chain span, hanging securely above the roaring river in the gorge below. But just 50 metres around the hillside, another, newer bridge connects a different stretch of mountain, across the same river. Several hundred more people

© Chandra Shekhar Karki

suspense story

use this one every day, including Gopal Pariyar, who is carrying his plough on his back. “I live on the other side but my farm is on this side,” he says. “If I had no bridge, then I wouldn’t be able to farm and I would be very poor.” “In fact,” he adds, “I would probably go hungry”.

Farmers carry their produce back and forth, children walk to and from schools they previously could not attend, mothers take children to clinics, and traders set up stalls to hawk their produce. DFID has contributed some $100 million to upgrade the infrastructure of Nepal in the past 10 years and together with new roads and better sanitation, the money has helped construct more than 120 suspension bridges. Each one represents a kind of miniature globalisation, the hyperlinking of village to village. It’s just as vital for the local economies as the linking by road and rail of the economies of European countries, or the linking by sea and air of global trading blocs.

“This is ideal for my shop,” explains Putali Nepali, 60, a seasonal labourer, about to open for business selling vegetables and sweets at the bridgehead. Expounding her plans, you realise she is describing the location in terms not unlike those of an airport or train station – a bustling centre of commerce and communication. “Many hundreds of people a day use this bridge as it connects us to six villages. Without the bridge it would take us a day’s walk to get there, now it takes a few minutes.”

And a bridge helps people become more prosperous says Sarita Pokhiel, 30, mother of four who also farms on one side of the river and lives on the other. “God knows what I would do without it,” she laughs. “I would earn so much less, have less produce, be less able to put my children in school. The bridge makes us less poor.” MW/MD

See our special Nepal focus on page 15.

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Turning the tide Ground breaking stoves win energy championship title.

A pioneering range of wood stoves and kilns in South India, which save at least 30% of fuel, have been crowned “2008 Energy Champion” at the annual Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy.

The green energy ground breakers, from Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE) in South India, have transformed small businesses by improving conditions for 110,000 workers and are saving around 43,000 tonnes of wood each year. The first prize of £40,000 was awarded by Nobel laureate Dr Wangari Maathai at a ceremony in London, along with awards of £20,000 each to six other international schemes – from Brazil China, Ethiopia, India, Tanzania and Uganda – to promote expansion of their sustainable energy projects.

Many of South India’s small businesses rely on wood as their main source of fuel, which causes pollution and deforestation as well as uncomfortable and dangerous working conditions when boilers and stoves are badly-designed. Building on the track record of stove design at the renowned Indian Institute of Science, TIDE commercialises their designs to provide efficient tailor-made wood stoves and kilns cutting fuel by at least a third.

“There is a serious energy crisis in rural India,” said Svati Bhogle, accepting the award, “but access to energy and its efficient use, accompanied by well-conceived and well-implemented enabling mechanisms, has the potential to transform rural areas.”

The Ashden Awards Outstanding Achievement gong went to Grameen Shakti of Bangladesh, an organisation which has made a big contribution to the spread of sustainable energy solutions. So far it has installed 160,000 solar home systems and is adding around 8,000 more each month. Since winning an Ashden Award in 2006 it has diversified into the provision of fuel-efficient stoves, which improve living conditions and save fuel. It also produces domestic biogas systems which bring clean, sustainable energy to thousands more.

Dr Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace laureate, described the winners as “wonderful energy pioneers, who are responding to the needs of their communities. They have decided to take action in the face of huge challenges, displaying not just patience and persistence, but a sense of urgency and determination. We salute these sustainability champions and the Ashden Awards, who help to make their work better known so that they can continue to inspire others.”

The Ashden Awards are a UK-based charity working to increase the use of local sustainable energy worldwide. Now in their eighth year, they find, reward and publicise the work of leading sustainable energy programmes, working across the developing world and in the UK. Expressions of interest for the international Awards should be received by 21 October 2008.

UGANDA

Fruits of the Nile Solar drying business links rural farmers with export markets

MORE INFORMATION www.ashdenawards.org

Fruits of the Nile, a local company in southern Uganda, is helping small farmers harness the power of the sun to dry and export fruit that is surplus to local demand. Each year, Fruits of the Nile produces and exports about 120 tonnes of high-quality dried banana and pineapple from its factory in Njeru. The fresh fruit is prepared and dried in simple solar driers by 120 producer groups in rural areas – groups who buy fruit from over 800 farmers and employ about 500 labourers.

Fruits of the Nile currently operates to fair trade standards and is converting the whole supply chain to organic production.

INDIA

Aryavart Gramin Bank Bank helps customers buy solar home systems The Aryavart Gramin Bank in Uttar Pradesh used solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to back-up the unreliable grid power for some of its branches, and recognised the potential of PV for its many off-grid customers. The bank set up a bulk supply and installation agreement with TATA-BP for PV solar-home systems, and provides loans for its customers with a good credit record to purchase the systems. To date 20,000 loans have been approved and 10,000 solar-home systems installed.

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CHINA

TANZANIA

Renewable Energy Development Project (REDP)

Kisangani Smith Group

Bringing affordable, high-quality solar lighting to rural China Since 2001, REDP has enabled sales of over 402,000 photovoltaic (PV) solar-home systems to yak and other herding communities in remote areas of western China. Most of these previously relied for light on kerosene, butter lamps and candles. Around 1.6 million people, many of whom live in tents for at least part of the year and previously had little access to electricity, now have an improved quality of life through better light, communications and entertainment.

BRAZIL

ETHIOPIA

Cooperativa Regional de Eletrificação Rural do Alto Uruguai Ltda (CRERAL)

Gaia Association

Mini hydro increases electricity supply on local grid Tired of regular power cuts, members of CRERAL, a regional electrification cooperative, decided to invest in two small, local hydro-electric plants instead of buying all their electricity from large hydro and fossil-fuelled plants elsewhere. CRERAL supplies electricity via the grid to 6,300 mainly rural customers in the south of Brazil.

Blacksmiths develop wood-saving stoves To complement its work in training blacksmiths and in reforestation, the Kisangani Smith Group, run by volunteers, has developed two types of efficient biomass stove which can be hand-made by local smiths.

One stove replaces the widespread use of charcoal in towns: it burns sawdust (readily available as waste in the Njombe region of Tanzania) or agricultural residues. The other stove is an improved wood-burner, targeted at rural areas. Over 3,500 stoves have been sold by the Kisangani Smith Group and its trainees.

Clean, safe stoves for refugee homes 17,000 people live in the Kebribeyah refugee camp, having fled conflict in bordering Somalia, and they rely on fuelwood for cooking. The Gaia Association has provided ethanolfuelled stoves to 1,780 refugee families, ensuring clean, comfortable cooking and preventing wood use. Women no longer have to spend long hours collecting fuelwood outside refugee camps, where they were frequently attacked, and where there is extensive deforestation. The ethanol is produced from locally-available molasses, a sugar by-product which previously caused pollution.

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© Getty Images

Return journey A new scheme encourages people from diaspora communities to share their skills with their countries of heritage. Brian Draperr reports.

Volunteering “good for the CV” says tycoon Young people keen to get a competitive edge in the job market should volunteer abroad, says tycoon Duncan Bannatyne, star of the hit British TV show Dragons’ Den. Bannatyne is backing Platform2 a free global volunteering scheme. Open to 18-25 year olds who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to volunteer abroad, Platform2 offers the chance to spend 10 weeks living and working in a poor community in countries like Ghana, South Africa, Peru or India.

The scheme is funded by DFID and run by Christian Aid, BUNAC and Islamic Relief. Volunteers get the chance to learn about development issues as part of a diverse team, experience new cultures and improve their practical, communication and organisational skills.

“When I employ someone I look for initiative and drive; someone who is a self-starter and can work well as part of a team,” said Bannatyne. “Volunteering for a programme like Platform2 demonstrates these young people have the desire to do something extra with their lives and help others in the process. These are qualities employers are looking for on a CV and show more about a person than their qualifications alone.”

On their return to the UK, participants attend a three-day workshop where they devise interesting and exciting ways of communicating what they have learnt about global issues.

They will continue to build on their life and employment skills by making videos, writing blogs and songs, organising talks, putting on exhibitions and getting local press coverage.

“It’s a life-changing experience,” said Zina Lewis, a Platform2 volunteer from London who has just returned from Ghana. “It will be very helpful when it comes to getting jobs because it’s quite character-building and shows a lot about you: that you’ve donated your time and gone to live with a group of people that you don’t know, Big Brother-style; that you’re a team player who can work with others and that you have social skills.”

MORE INFORMATION www.bunac.org www.christianaid.org.uk www.islamic-relief.com

Maurice Tshiniama is champing at the bit. The London resident has volunteered to work for two weeks in Cameroon, which borders his homeland, the Democratic Republic of Congo. But there’s been a slight delay with paperwork and now he’s keen to get cracking. “I’m very excited,” he said.

Maurice has volunteered as part of a new, £3 million scheme funded by DFID in partnership with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), which was kicked-off in July to encourage more people from ethnic and religious communities to get involved in volunteering.

He came to Britain in 1985. “I learned English, went to university, and secured a job. One thing led to another, and I stayed this long,” he reflects. “But I know the chairman of one of the diaspora organisations, who is also from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He asked if I’d be interested in sharing some of my skills in Cameroon, and I agreed to go.”

Maurice works for the management training

company CitySkills, and has “broad experience” in project management, fund raising, people management and finance. He also works for Widows and Orphans International, a training charity. Both organisations are sympathetic to his trip, and he is taking annual leave to make it.

When he gets to Cameroon, Maurice knows precisely what he’ll be doing. “They match your experience to the local needs, otherwise we wouldn’t be effective,” he says. “I will be working with three NGOs which have requested help in developing additional funding streams and resources. One of them works with young people, and they want to start a business to increase their revenue and become less dependent on the state. I have experience in start-ups so I’ll be looking at that.”

With the other two – which work with women and the disabled in Douala and Yaoundé – “I’ll be helping them from scratch to see what avenues they can explore to set up a business or increase their revenue,” he says.

The DFID Diaspora Volunteer Scheme managed by VSO will lead to over 600 new volunteering placements in the next three years.

The scheme supports diaspora organisations to plan and implement their own volunteering programmes.

“Lots of people would like to volunteer their professional skills in the developing world – and to experience a different way of life. But many don’t know where to start. And lots of diaspora organisations have very strong links with their countries of heritage – but would like to do more by offering them professional support from volunteers. This new scheme will help both.”

Shahid Malik, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Development “For the past three years, VSO has been working with African and Asian organisations to support people wanting to volunteer their skills in their countries of heritage. The project has shown the huge contribution the British-based diaspora can make in their countries of heritage and beyond.”

Mark Goldring, Chief Executive of VSO

And his help is much needed.

In Cameroon, most women, for example, operate in the ‘informal sector’ – organising themselves into cooperatives, common initiative groups and associations of entrepreneurs – but their integration into the formal sector is still hampered by limited access to education, poverty, lack of credit, technology and technical skills.

This is the second time he has volunteered for work in Cameroon, and he believes it helps to be a returning African. “I’m not trying to be xenophobic, but the people I help feel confident when they see a fellow African. They can open their hearts; they see that you can relate – you were born there, you know the difficulties. It’s heart warming to see that people trust you in that way. It’s a sort of homecoming.”

For Maurice, the real benefit he brings to people is selfconfidence. “They begin to realise they can do much more”.

He tells the story of a woman he met on his last trip. “I discovered that in the previous year, she’d managed to raise $50,000 from Coca Cola - yet she was still not confident to apply for other funding, despite having raised all this money. She told me she thought the Coke money was just luck. I said to her, ‘Do you think a company like that would just throw $50,000 out of the window?’ Of course not!”

The lessons, however, are not all one way. “Even though you are coming from an advanced country, you have to listen,” he advises. “In any part of the world, things change. I do not come thinking. ‘I know everything, listen to me!’ You have to learn to listen more than talk. That’s a real benefit you receive.”

MORE INFORMATION www.vso.org.uk/about/ diaspora_volunteering

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© Graham Carrington\DFID

Lights, cameras… call to action

Sanitation falls short Too many of the world’s poorest people are being exposed to dangerous sanitary conditions. That’s the conclusion of a report from UNICEF and the World Health Organisation which reveals that, despite excellent progress in widening availability of clean water in developing countries, basic sanitation for even half the planet is still far away from being achieved.

Published annually by a group set up to monitor the world’s drinking water and sanitation, this year’s report comes during the UN’s International Year of Sanitation, a timely reminder that nearly 1.2 billion people still practise open defecation – the riskiest of all sanitary practices.

provide 21 million trained birth attendants helping to prevent deaths in childbirth.

During the July G8 meetings leaders reaffirmed commitments made to the poorest countries at the 2005 Gleneagles G8 meeting and also agreed to provide $10 billion for investing in agriculture and food to help poor people cope with the food crisis which threatens to thrust millions more people into poverty. And the G8 agreed to meet the current $1 billion shortfall in funding country education programmes, paving the way for 10 million children to go to school.

The G8 also agreed to provide funds for 100 million bed nets, a decision which could save an estimated 600,000 lives.

Along with country governments that have been working to accelerate progress on the MDGs in 2008, key players from civil society have also been raising their voices. In the UK in July, the Archbishop of Canterbury joined leaders from other faiths and hundreds of bishops to walk the streets of London and call on international leaders to keep their promises to the world’s poor.

And in September, the MDGs were centre stage at the UN’s High Level Event in New York. Momentum is building, but is it fast enough?

MORE INFORMATION www.dfid.gov.uk/mdg /call-to-action.asp © Emma Judge\DFID

Key findings on the world’s water and sanitation are: • While the world is on track to reach the MDG water targets, sub-Saharan Africa remains off track.

• Trends suggest that 90% of the global population will use improved drinking water sources by 2015.

• Three of the 10 countries that have made the most rapid progress and are on track to meet the MDG drinking water targets are those with Public Service Agreements with DFID – Malawi, Ghana, and Uganda.

• The world is off track to meet the MDG sanitation targets, on current trends.

• Two and a half billion people remain without improved sanitation facilities, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

• Growth in sanitation provision is particularly slow in sub-Saharan Africa while nearly half of all people in Southern Asia practise open defecation, including around 667 million in India.

Halfway to the 2015 target for the Millennium Development Goals and progress is being made… but not yet fast enough to meet them all. This year has been called the year of ‘the bottom billion’ and UN Secretary General – Ban Ki-moon has labelled it ‘critical’ to make progress on the MDGs. At the Davos economic summit in January he joined Gordon Brown, President Yar’Aruda of Nigeria, Queen Rania of Jordan and a range of private sector leaders to urge the world to step up action. The Call to Action on the MDGs, launched last year by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is designed to support efforts on the Millennium Development Goals and so far close to 50 countries have signed up, along with more than 60 CEOs of major private companies.

During the European Council in the summer, EU Heads of State and Government backed an Agenda for Action on the MDGs – one of the first collective steps by global leaders to accelerate progress on reducing poverty. It reaffirms EU Member States’ commitment to deliver their 2005 aid pledges and sets out key milestones to be achieved by 2010: on education, for example, increased EU investment of €4.3 billion to recruit 6 million of the 10 million more teachers needed globally, and on health an extra €8 billion to

“More than 1 billion people have gained access to piped drinking water since 1990,” said Peregrine Swann, Senior Water Adviser at DFID, which supported the work of the joint group. “This means that 54% of the world’s population now have a piped water connection in or near their homes, which is fantastic. The health benefits that will flow from this will be very significant.”

MORE INFORMATION www.unicef.org

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© DFID

Day 1 8PM One of the men who had come to welcome me asked, “would the leaders in your country allow people to live as we do?” My answer was no – not any more, because people in the UK would not allow it. And because there is a contract between UK taxpayers and the state, based on payment, expectation, and delivery. It struck me that the need for the voice and influence of the people in Nigeria to be ever louder is crucial.

Living the life

Day 1 3PM I’ve asked Action Aid to arrange for me to spend some time living the traditional lifestyle in a small village called Angwan Doshe in northern Nigeria. There’s no electricity here, it’s a 5 km trek to the medical dispensary, and the nearest road is 3 km away – so you have to do a lot of walking. That might not sound like everyone’s idea of fun, but as an MP and a Minister at DFID, I wanted to see first hand the kind of challenges people are facing in their day-to-day lives.

So this afternoon I made the journey from Kano – the nearest city – to Angwan Doshe, where I was given a fantastic welcome, and I’ve been speaking to the women here about their lives and experiences, and helping them prepare an evening meal of Tuwo masera (maize porridge). I say helping – actually everyone fell about laughing when I had a go. To be fair, I’m not much of a cook even when I’m at home!

Day 2 12 NOON It’s nearly time for me to leave Nigeria, and I’ll be going with a heavy heart.

I’ve had one of the best and most valuable experiences of my life, and had a humbling look at the lives of some of the people the UK is supporting. The villagers in Angwan Doshe – who gave me so much – also gave me a very fond farewell, waving me off with a sai kun dawo, which means “until you come back”. I hope I do one day.

© DFID

DFID Minister Gillian Merron spent 24 hours immersed in the daily life of a remote village in northern Nigeria. She kept us a diary.

Day 2 10AM Last night I slept (as best I could) in a mud house on the floor and washed outside with water from a well behind a screen made of sticks. And today I’ve been introduced to the agricultural areas of the village and learnt how people here provide for themselves and their families.

It’s really struck me how strong the people are. They work hard every day to make a better life for themselves, and as I listened to them talk and laugh – with the help of my interpreter Halima – I could see that they aren’t downtrodden or waiting for handouts. They simply want what’s fair.

It’s only fair that you want your children to be educated and you want your wife to live through childbirth. These aren’t big things to ask for.

Day 2 11AM It’s really moved me to think that perhaps the greatest tragedy in Angwan Doshe is how little investment it would take for people’s lives to be transformed.

All people are asking for is a decent road, a health centre and a school that the children can reach. These are things their state government should be able to provide – but it doesn’t. I was glad that I’d seen the work of the DFID team supporting the federal and state governments of Nigeria to deliver basic services, and make the best use of the resources they have available for the good of the Nigerian people.

Day 1 6PM This evening I met Fatima. After giving birth 14 times Fatima has only nine surviving children. The horror of that tragedy is something few of us in Britain could understand. But there are many women like her in Angwan Doshe, because it’s a long and expensive trip to the nearest clinic, and the only way to get there if something goes wrong during labour is on the back of a motorbike. Both the women and the men have told me that if education was available their girls wouldn’t marry or have children so early, and would be better able to look after themselves. But the girls here don’t have any chance to go to school. One little girl called Jummai, who is seven years old, has never been taught in a classroom. Without investment to improve the local roads, which are impassable during the rainy season, and without more teachers being trained to provide appropriate schooling, she is never likely to have the opportunity of getting an education.

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Actor takes lead A warehouse in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the central sorting venue for 20,000 bed nets and 30 million condoms – and it’s where Hollywood actress and YouthAIDS ambassador Ashley Judd spoke out against malaria on a recent visit to promote action to fight killer diseases.

Malaria is the number one killer of children under five in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) but more than two million bed nets from DFID are helping women and children to sleep safely at night protected from the mosquitoes carrying a disease that kills up to a million people in the country every year.

“If children slept safely under bed nets at night millions of Ashley Judd in Kinshasa, extols the virtues of bed nets.

lives would be saved every year,” said Judd. “DFID has already provided three million bed nets for families in the DRC, saving double the number of lives. Everyone in Africa should have the right to this simple, life-saving device.”

The actress was in Kinshasa with Population Services International (PSI), an NGO to whom DFID has provided £17 million in the last five years. DFID helps the organisation deliver mosquito nets to women and children under five in rural areas. So far two million have been distributed with another two million on their way. According to the country’s national malaria programme, 11 million bed nets are needed to satisfy current demands with seven million required annually thereafter.

Aral sea disaster reversed Apparently even the worst manmade ecological disasters can be reversed. The northern Aral Sea – once a shallow saline remnant of its former self, surrounded by dust bowls – is now growing again.

The Aral Sea had seemed doomed.

Between 1960 and 2004, the sea’s surface area shrank almost 70%.

The culprit: water being diverted for irrigation from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. In 1990, the sea fell so low, it split in two. The result was the devastation of the area’s fishing and agricultural sectors through increased sea and soil salinity, and a failure of rains. But a $150 million World Bank-Kazakh government project has prevented water leaching from the northern to the southern sea by building a dyke, and improved the flow of the feeder river, the Syr Darya, with a number of hydraulic investments. The sea’s area is now 50% more than its lowest level. Fish catches have risen from only 52 tons in 2004 to 2,000 tons in 2007. Two fish processing plants and three fish receiving centres have opened, and a new factory is building fibreglass fishing boats. Now, the climate is improving, benefiting air, soil and water qualities, biodiversity and flora and fauna. “Cleaner water is improving the health of the population”, said a bank report.

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Youth raise climate temperature rise more than two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, meaning that greenhouse gas emissions must be slashed.

Karimon from Bangladesh, which is hard hit by global warming, is angry because the phenomenon affects the world’s poorest the most. “Don’t we have the right to food, treatment, education, and financial security? Aren’t we human?” he asks.

Backed by both UNDP and the NGO Peace Child International, the report also points out everyday steps young people can take – from recycling and conserving electricity to lobbying governments to implement programmes which encourage

people to produce renewable energy for their homes through solar or wind power and sell the excess to the national electricity grid.

The report highlights the importance of engaging young people to promote “good governance in order to have good citizenship that is well-informed at a very young and early age,” according to Cecilia Ugaz, Acting Director of the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office.

Thailand has made a significant step forward towards helping the UN Environment Programme achieve its goal of planting one tree for every person on earth (around seven billion) by 2009, launching its own national “Plant for the Planet, Plant for the Future” campaign.

This took place at a new Sirindhorn International Environment Park (SIEP), in central Thailand, where nearly 300,000 tree species, including beech and mangrove as well as lowland, wetland and highland forest species are to be planted.

MORE INFORMATION MORE INFORMATION www.undp.org www.peacechild.org

© peacechild.org

“All the locals can do here is watch their homes being washed up by storm surges, rising seas and torrential rainfalls,” writes Casper Supaporo Village of the Solomon Islands. “They have no means to limit these effects which are a result of others’ actions.”

His words are captured in a report from the United Nations Development Programme in which young people talk about what they believe are the best ways of tackling climate change.

The title, Two Degrees of Separation Between Hope and Despair, refers to the UN warning that temperatures must not

Thailand plants ‘forest’

www.unep.org/ billiontreecampaign

Sahara seed aid mission launched

Back cover image from Two Degrees of Separation Between Hope and Despair.

Convoys of lorries carrying seeds have been sent by the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) into the interior of desert-dominated Mauritania, under the agency’s “Initiative on Soaring Food Prices”.

This focuses on a root of the current crisis – declines in food production capacity within developing countries, leaving them vulnerable to shortages caused by emerging market demand, poor weather and biofuel production. Mauritania produces less than 30% of its food needs, with just 0.5% of its land available for arable foodstuffs. In the medium term, the FAO wants to boost irrigation within the Senegal river valley in the south, where 140,000 hectares is irrigable, but only 15,000 has is actually irrigated.

The truck convoy is a short-term measure – 500 tonnes being sent from the capital Nouakchott to six regional capitals. Drought and flood wrecked Mauritania’s food production last year, forcing farmers to sell seed stocks to buy increasingly expensive food exports.

“Seed delivery will help farmers get back on their feet,” said an FAO spokesman.

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How development can fix the climate “Forget about making poverty history. Climate change will make poverty permanent.” These are the powerful words of Nazmul Chowdhury, of the NGO Practical Action, in a new booklet from DFID which tells the interlinking story of climate change and poverty.

Climate change, the biggest single issue affecting the world and its people today, is affecting the poorest people the most and Degrees of Separation illustrates how development is actually key to the answers the world needs on climate change.

Aimed at a general audience who may know only a little bit about climate change and development, the strikingly designed and illustrated booklet tells the story through the perspectives of three narrators – John, Yasmin and Sarah from Kenya, Bangladesh and the UK. Through their stories it becomes clear that their situations, the challenges they face and the opportunities they take are increasingly interconnected even though they live thousands of miles away from each other. And the message of ‘climate-smart development’ is a positive one – if we all act together the potential disaster of climate change can be averted and development in the poorest countries can be delivered.

MORE INFORMATION www.dfid.gov.uk

Biofuel blamed for food prices

Characters from the Condom Condom campaign. © BBC World Service Trust

India gets ‘condom’ ringtone You’re sitting in a crowded bus and your mobile goes off. The ringtone features a close harmony group singing “condom, condom, condom…” That could happen for mobile phone owners in India following a campaign by the BBC World Service Trust to promote the use of condoms in the sub-continent.

The Condom, Condom! ringtone is the latest in an ongoing HIV and AIDS awareness campaign that puts mobile technology – and humour – at the heart of its approach. India is the world’s fastest-growing mobile telephone market with 270 million users at the latest count, up 57% in just one year.

In the first two weeks of the campaign there were nearly 68,000 requests to download the ringtone backed by extensive coverage in the Indian press.

The production team are delighted with this since one of the campaign’s aims is to get people talking about sex and condoms. The ringtone can be downloaded at: www.condomcondom.org

“Ringtones have become such personal statements that a specially created condom ringtone seemed just the right way of combining a practical message with a fun approach,” said Creative Director, Radharani Mitra. “We have always had a strong interactive, responseled component in this campaign. This downloadable ringtone provides an opportunity for our audience to translate a message into an action. The idea is to tackle the inhibitions and taboos that can be associated with condoms.”

The campaign’s theme Jo Samjha Wohi Sikander – “the one who understands is a winner” – reinforces the message that those who use condoms are winners in life. It is part of a large-scale BBC World Service Trust public service campaign to help stem the rate of HIV infection. Around 2.5 million people in India are living with HIV, with the highest rates of infection in the south and west of the country.

MORE INFORMATION www.condomcondom.org

A leaked World Bank report has claimed that the biofuels boom is responsible for 75% of the increase in global food prices since 2006.

The European Commission has always maintained biofuels have only pushed up food prices by as little as 3%. Brussels and the US government have argued that increased demand for food from emerging country economies such as India and China, and bad weather in exporting countries such as Australia and Canada are more responsible. But the World Bank report said: “Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption…” It added that the recent Australian droughts have had a marginal impact: “Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate.”

Arsenic-proof rice developed Scandinavian researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have discovered how to develop genetically modified rice plants that can produce safe food, even when grown on land contaminated by arsenic, writes Monica Dobie.

Scientists from the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at Gothenburg were able to identify the proteins responsible for the absorption of arsenic in plants, enabling them to modify their cell structure so their rice did not become contaminated.

Researchers say they will be able to deactivate the proteins, so that the plant secretes the arsenic it absorbs rather than storing it. This could lead to rice varieties being developed that could safely grow on poisoned water. “Arsenic is a global problem; it contaminates water, soil and crops in a large number of countries, with both developing and industrialised countries being affected,” said a European Commission briefing note on the project.

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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.

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Learn more: www.idd.bham.ac.uk or contact: On-campus:

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14-20 nepal include.indd 14

voluntary sectors Knowledge management and information

dissemination Teaching and training of development leaders

and practitioners

22/9/08 19:34:02

Nepal has a new Prime Minister and President, and will soon have a new government and constitution. But will this make a new Nepal? Only if the nation rebuilds with the active participation of those who have been traditionally left out.

Report by Martin Wroe and Malcolm Doney.

Pro-democracy campaigners plant flags on a statue of Prithvi Narayan Shah, the first King of Nepal, in front of the parliament building in Kathmandu. Š Tomas van Houtryve/Panos

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© Martin Wroe

“In Nepal women have always had very strict and limited roles, we stayed at home, we raised the children, but now we are seen as people with rights ourselves.”

Bandana Risal, from NGO Enabling State which promotes reform of government in favour of the poor.

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A

t the centre of the main roundabout in the town of Baglung in the midhills of Nepal, the King has lost his head. Several weeks after Nepal’s multi-party elections took place on April 10, promising to usher in a new and inclusive government, the traffic now passes the decapitated statue without so much as a second glance.

The scene is a potent symbol of the seismic changes taking place in this country of 27 million people which remains the poorest in Asia and 12th poorest on the planet. Just 275 km east, in the capital of Kathmandu, the real king has not lost his head – but he has lost his throne, his palace and his place as the head of the country. Sparking widespread national celebrations, the first sitting of the newly elected Constituent Assembly declared Nepal a federal and democratic republic. On June 11 Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev officially became the last king of Nepal when he and his family left the palace for the final time.

But this is more than the absence of a king – more than the striking abolition of Nepal’s 240-year old model of feudal monarchy. It is about the liberation of millions of people who had been previously excluded from shaping the future of their country. Nepal’s deeply embedded caste and class system, propped up by the monarchy and an elite political class, had mired these people in abject poverty.

After years of bitter and bloody conflict between the Nepalese security forces and Maoist insurgents – whose victims were once again poor communities – most observers agree that the surest route from poverty for a new democratic Nepal and the best chance of becoming a strong and secure state is by including everyone into the political process.

The initial signs are promising.

Following a military stalemate, all parties bought into a peace process which is still continuing. Significantly, the Maoists agreed to engage in multiparty elections which the international community deemed to be largely free and fair. These elections brought an unprecedented range of people who have traditionally been marginalised from the political process into the Constituent Assembly, whose job it is to form a government and write a new constitution for the country. While the Maoists, with 37% of the vote, failed to gain a working majority, the longtime dominant parties – the Nepali Congress and the United Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Nepal (UML)

– only gained 18% each. But the real surprise in the political shakeup was the success of long excluded groups like the Dalits, the Janajati and Madhesis (see Left Out, right). The new Assembly is impressively diverse – nearly a third of members are women and those who have been traditionally marginalised are better represented than ever.

The average age of members has also changed dramatically, dropping by 20 years, to reflect a new generation of political leadership.

“Previously the elites – people so few you could count them on your fingers – claimed they would represent the excluded groups,” says C P Gajurel an influential Maoist ideologue. “Some were meant to represent the Dalits, others to represent Janajatis, but now the people from the grassroots have their own representation. Those previous elites won’t be able to influence the situation because it comes from the ground up.”

Nowhere is this clearer than for the women of Nepal. “I am so proud that Nepalese women are now getting rights,” adds Bandana Risal, Programme Manager at the Enabling State Programme (ESP), which promotes governance reform in favour of the poor. “In Nepal women have always had very strict and limited roles, we stayed at home, we raised the children, but now we are seen as people with rights ourselves.”

There are 191 women members in the Constituent Assembly, rocketing Nepal into the world’s top 20 in terms of women’s representation in national elected assemblies. Yet only a few years ago, recalls Risal, it was rare to see a woman driving a car in Kathmandu. and girls were routinely married off by their mid-teens. The cultural mindset has changed. “Even in remote rural areas mothers are (increasingly) saying they want their girls to go to school, not to stay at home and look after siblings. They see that education brings independence and some control over one’s destiny.”

This note is echoed by Mobina Bano Ansari, 24, an activist for Muslim women “who are gradually becoming aware about their rights”, who hopes the new constitution will help stop discrimination against her community.

The bottom line, says Risal, is that in a patriarchal society, where governance has always been a male domain, “the idea of social inclusion is gathering momentum, even among the poorest groups”.

Resolving conflict is essential to reduce poverty but this will only be achieved by ending discrimination. In short, if you are excluded, it means you stay poor – a fact that helps explain why 3

Sushmana Nepali, a Dalit, lives in rural Nepal. © Martin Wroe

Left out • Women • Dalits • Janajatis • Madheshis • Muslims The five main disadvantaged social groups in Nepal.

Discrimination, based on gender, together with social and cultural practices and beliefs, have left women excluded from education, employment opportunities and positions of influence. Many women face a double discrimination of gender and caste or ethnic identities. Dalit women are the most excluded amongst all Nepali citizens.

Formerly known as the ‘untouchables’, the lowest grouping of Hindu castes now refer to themselves as ‘Dalits’ (meaning ‘oppressed’ or ‘broken’). They still suffer from social and religious exclusion and economic exploitation by upper castes.

Janajatis include over 60 indigenous ethnic groups within Nepal, each of whom has its own language, customs and culture. Janajati have been traditionally marginalised, poor and under-represented in state bodies like the civil service or police.

The Madhesh is also known as the Tarai – the southern plains of Nepal. Its inhabitants, of non-hill origin, are known as Madheshis.

They are a diverse group of caste and ethnicities with cultural and linguistic ties that are common to communities close by in India. For long treated as not entirely Nepali, they have been alienated from mainstream political life, and from jobs in state bodies.

Muslims are a religious minority in Nepal, who live mostly in the Madhesh, close to the Indian border. Muslims suffer similar disadvantages as other excluded groups.

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3 Nepal has the second largest rich-poor divide in Asia, after China. It is no coincidence that among the poorest of Nepalis the Dalits and the Janajati predominate. Dalits, for example, make up some 12% – or over three million – of Nepal’s population but they face huge obstacles to access health and education, particularly Dalit women.

‘Untouchability’ for Dalit communities means not being able to fetch water from the same place as other castes,

not being able to send their children to the same schools as other castes, not having access to health service.

It is all the more extraordinary then that Krishna Kumari Pariya, both Dalit and female, is now a member of the Constituent Assembly. And yet, her first experiences as an elected politician illustrate the gap between the aspirations of the political classes and everyday reality.

“When I come to Kathmandu for meetings of the Assembly, I try to book a room to stay in.” she says.

“People show me the room and offer to rent it out to me, but when I give them my name, they realise that I am a Dalit and tell me, ‘My husband wouldn’t allow me to do this,’ or ‘actually, I have rented it to someone else.’” She says this has been repeated 20 times in two months.

Exclusion, she says, runs deep.

She has known it since she was in primary school. “We were having breaktime and one guy from a Brahmin family asked me to go away because he wanted to eat. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because you are a Dalit.’

I refused to go away so he beat me, and it is my first memory of being discriminated against.”

This sense of injustice has fired her passion for political change and she has been campaigning for Dalit rights for 15 years. “Gradually over the years my voice became recognised amongst the community and so then I was elected to the Assembly.” But it has been an expensive commitment – her marriage has been one of the costs. “Husbands in our country don’t like their wives involved in

“Previously the elites claimed they would represent the excluded groups, but now the people from the grassroots have their own representation.”

C P Gajurel, leading Maoist ideologue.

NEPAL TIMELINE King Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah, the grandfather of the deposed king Gyanendra leaves for India along with his family following popular uprising against autocratic Rana regime which had ruled Nepal for over 100 years. The Ranas crown baby Gyanendra (who was mistakenly left behind) as king.

1950

King Tribhuvan returns to Nepal after three-party agreement between Nepali Congress, Rana rulers and King, negotiated by India.

He declares Nepal a democracy, ending hereditary Rana rule. King pledges Nepal will be governed according to Constitution made by elected Constituent Assembly.

1951

King Tribhuvan dies without fulfilling pledge of Constituent Assembly elections.

His son Mahendra succeeds him.

1955

the political process, they make us feel bad about going to meetings, they say we should be with the children or at home.”

Untouchability, she says, is being tackled in Nepali society – if it is still rife in the country at large, it is now legally outlawed. “If any politician discriminated against me in the Assembly they would be punished.”

But she has a clear view about her mission. “I am there on behalf of all Dalits and of all women,” she says.

“If I could pass two laws, one would be to end untouchability properly – it’s been abolished on paper many times – and the other would be to introduce free education of all.”

Pasang Sherpa, another new member of the Constituent Assembly, is, as his name suggests, a Sherpa – an ethnic group whose most famous son, Tensing, accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary on his ascent of Everest. To this day Sherpas act as mountain guides and are one of Nepal’s many diverse indigenous cultural and linguistic minorities collectively known as Janajatis.

Sherpa is the Chairman of the Janajati Federation which aims to give a voice to these multiple groups which together make up around 38% of the population.

None of their distinct religions, languages and culture are recognised by the state, he says. They are underrepresented in government jobs like the police and the civil service, their remote communities remain unconnected by road and even government povertyreduction initiatives fail to reach them.

“The Sherpas are a good example,” he says. “The governments makes million in revenues from people who come to our country to climb Mount Everest, but the Sherpas, the people who spend their lives with the baggage of tourists on their backs, are not benefiting in the development of their communities.”

Like his Dalit Constituent Assembly counterpart, he also remembers realising as a young boy what it meant to be excluded.

“My grandfather had a close friend in a local Brahmin family and we went to his house for tea one day.

But while my grandfather’s friend had his food in a metal plate, my grandfather and I had to eat from a plate

Mahendra bans political parties and introduces autocratic partyless Panchayat rule.

1961

1971

King Mahendra dies. His son Birendra succeeds him.

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made from leaves – and then we had to burn the leaves on the fire afterwards, because they were contaminated. I couldn’t understand why there was such a division between such good friends…”

It was such painful encounters that turned Pasang Sherpa to the Communist Party. And he was not alone. Though he is not a Maoist, in recent years it was their agitation and the Maoists’ avowed claim that they were fighting for justice for the excluded and the marginalised that drew support from aggrieved sections of the population.

They could be said to have ridden a wave caused in part by the Jana Andolan (People’s Movement), a 1990 multi-party movement that brought the end of absolute monarchy and the beginning of constitutional democracy. Nevertheless – despite the bloodshed, the banditry and the arbitrary ‘disappearances’ of the years of conflict – many commentators credit them with setting the agenda which brought such widespread representation of the excluded groups in the Constituent Assembly, and gave the Maoists themselves such a large slice of the vote in April’s elections.

However, they have no overall majority and Nepal’s new Prime Minister, Maoist leader kamal Dahal, known as ‘Prachanda’, heads a coalition cabinet.

At the time of writing, the government is barely formed, and unable to establish a strategy for the new Nepal.

Nonetheless, Pasang Sherpa remains optimistic that things are changing, but is frustrated. “We have made good progress since the elections but Nepal will not become inclusive as quickly as we want it to.”

One of the key tasks of Bandana Risal, at the ESP is to provide training and support for new politicians – some of whom have had little formal education and no previous

exposure to institutional politics.

Some have yet to learn to read or write.

If they are to draft the country’s new constitution they will need to build the capacity and the confidence to make their voices heard, both at home and abroad.

Risal’s particular focus is on the women in the Assembly. “It is important that we give them as much help as possible, because these 191 women members will set the tone for what happens for all the other women in Nepal. We don’t want people looking back to this time thinking that, while the women were there, they were not listened to, they could not influence the process, they could not achieve equal rights for women.”

3

People celebrate in the streets of Kathmandu following the election of the Constituent Assembly. © Tomas van Houtryve/Panos

“If I could pass two laws, one would be to end untouchability properly, and the other would be to introduce free education of all.”

Krishna Kumari Pariya, newly elected Dalit member of the Constituent Assembly.

1990

King Birendra bows to the Jana Andolan (People’s Movement) which militates against the partyless Panchayat system. Parliamentary system of governance introduced through new constitution saying sovereignty lies in the people.

1996

CPN (Maoists) start ‘People’s War’ with aim of establishing people’s republic.

2001

King Birendra, along with entire family, is killed in palace shooting, allegedly by his drunken son Dipendra.

Gyanendra becomes King.

2005

King Gyanendra sacks popularly elected prime minister and heads Cabinet himself. Political parties and the rebel Maoists sign an understanding to end Gyanendra’s rule, start peace process and hold elections to constituent elections.

2006

King Gyanendra bows to people’s movement against his rule and reinstates the parliament.

2007

Parliament announces Nepal will be a republic after the first sitting of the Constituent Assembly.

Maoists take part in the interim government and an interim parliament.

2008

Constituent Assembly elections held. Maoists emerge as largest political party, though short of a majority. The first sitting of the parliament declares Nepal a republic and asks King to vacate the Royal palace. He does. Prime Minister resigns. New Prime Minister and President elected.

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The Nepal equation PLUS… + Following 10 years of internal conflict in which 13,000 people were killed, a ceasefire was established and has held.

+ An 240-year old autocratic monarchy was abolished.

+ Within two years of the ceasefire Nepal had held elections which brought large numbers of excluded and marginalised groups into the Constituent Assembly whose job is to rewrite Nepal’s constitution and establish a fair and equitable society.

+ There is now a Constituent Assembly (CA), and newly elected President and a Prime Minister. The new Government will present the budget to the CA.

+ This is something that Nepal has largely achieved by itself, not as a result of international pressure.

+ Globally and historically, this is almost unique. + Despite the conflict, over this decade: • the deaths of children under five years of age has been halved; • the deaths of mothers in pregnancy and childbirth have been reduced by over a fifth; • there was an increase in school enrolment; • three million people are now within four hour’s walk of a road;

3 “Having women from previously excluded groups in the Assembly will bring change to the way we think in Nepal,” she believes. “A Dalit woman or a Muslim woman can talk about her experiences and her aspirations in a way that a Brahmin man could never do, because he would never have known just what it is like. Women are going to make the difference.”

But will they be heard? “The men in the Constituent Assembly seem to be happy that women are now sharing power with them,” says Krishna Kumari, “but we don’t know what they think in their hearts, whether they are really trying to be inclusive.

“Including all of us who have been left out cannot solve poverty alone but economic and political equality is important, and unless people are self-reliant we won’t end the poverty.”

Pasang Sherpa believes that if Nepal is to build itself into a healthy, prosperous country, change needs to take place both at the top and the bottom. “Both the powerful and the powerless need a change of mentality.” He argues that the habits of political elites are hard to break, and genuine inclusion will not be granted easily, but if they want to

remain in power they will have to learn.

“The leaders of the political parties need to learn that they must serve, rather than rule – there’s no point getting rid of one king and replacing him with another.”

And the would-be kingmakers need pressure from below. “The excluded need to know that they have rights and to use them. We’ll have to make sure we get our voices heard. And we’ll have to do that on our own.”

And this is possible. “We can’t get 180 degrees change overnight, but we hope that change will come.”

Express your views www.developments.org.uk

• the number of people living below the poverty line has been reduced by 11%.

MINUS… –

The peace process is not complete and is still fragile. Around 50% of the provisions set out in the 2006 peace agreement – such as bringing together the Nepalese and Maoist armies into one, and providing reparations for the thousands of people displaced by the conflict – are yet to be implemented.

–

High levels of intimidation, corruption and strikes – and the beginnings of armed intracommunal violence in the Tarai (southern belt of Nepal) – have yet to be addressed.

–

The next phase is recovery – Nepal is still hugely dependent on foreign aid. 80% of its development funding comes from the international community. Given the significant role aid plays in Nepal, this needs to be translated into tangible development.

–

At present Nepal subsidises fuel which, with the current prices of oil, is something it cannot afford – if it is also to support health and education.

–

Nepal has been hit hard by the food crisis in remote areas that often face food shortages, and it currently has the highest child malnutrition rate in the world.

–

Youth unemployment is a major problem.

At present Nepal exports young people to India and the Middle East. This brings in remittances (15% of Nepal’s GDP comes in this form) but the country cannot develop on remittances alone.

“We have made good progress since the elections but Nepal will not become inclusive as quickly as we want it to.”

Pasang Sherpa, Chairman of the Janajati Federation which speaks for traditionally excluded ethnic groups comprising over a third of people in Nepal.

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cash on delivery Why are maternity rates falling in Nepal, and does giving mothers money have something to do with it? Martin Wroe and Malcolm Doney investigate.

I

t is nine in the morning at Baglung District Hospital and already pregnant women are queuing up for one of their regular check-ups.

In the labour room, Mina Jishi, is in the final hours of her fourth pregnancy.

She has travelled into the town from a remote hill village in the district of Sigana. A long and ardous journey, for some of the way she walked, and for some she was carried on a stretcher by family members. It took her five hours and, in the final days of pregnancy, it would have been easier to stay at home and rest. But it could also have been fatal.

“I know I will be safe here,” she says, as the senior staff nurse Debi Bhattarai takes her blood pressure. “I suppose I could have gone to one of the health posts which would have been less of a journey but I felt getting to Baglung and

the hospital was going to be the best for me and my baby.”

Across the corridor, in a ward of four beds, three new mothers all back up Mina’s instinct. Within the last 24 hours they have given birth to healthy babies and are now safely recuperating under the watchful eye of the team of nurses.

Sarasitu Bhatta, 26, gave birth to twin boys yesterday, after making the one-hour walk from her home in the hills outside the town. “It was a tough journey to get here,” she says.

“But I knew my babies would be born safely here.

“If I had had these twins at home I really don’t think I would have survived,” she adds. “The doctor had already told me I would be taking a big risk but I wasn’t going to take any chances and I was right – when I was giving birth I had confidence in the team.”

3

Sister Debi Bhattarai tends to Mini Jushi shortly before the safe delivery of a baby boy. © Chandra Shekhar Karki

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These twin boys were delivered safely in Baglung District Hospital to Sarasitu Bhatta (right). “If I had had these twins at home, I don’t think I would have survived,” she says. © Chandra Shekhar Karki

The Nepal Safer Motherhood Project DFID has been supporting maternal health programming in Nepal since 1997, when the Government of Nepal first launched its national Safe Motherhood Programme.

The DFID Nepal Safer Motherhood Project (NSMP) ran from 1997 to 2003, followed by the current Support to Safe Motherhood Programme (SSMP). This is one of DFID’s largest maternal health programmes anywhere, with a budget of £20 million, of which half is financial aid managed by the Nepal government and half is for technical assistance. The SSMP financial aid accounted for 37% of Nepal’s national safe motherhood (including family planning) budget for the year 2007/08.

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3 More and more women in Nepal, whatever the remoteness of their homes, are choosing to get professional medical advice during their pregnancy and then – when it comes time to give birth – to make the journey to hospital, however gruelling. It is a cultural sea-change which has gathered pace in the last decade and helps explain the dramatically declining rate of maternal mortality in the country.

Rising levels of female education and of maternal health awareness have been vital – as signalled by the poster on the wall of the ward (right) with its three-fold advice: Take help from a competent health worker for your delivery. Save the lives of the newborn and the mother. Take mothers to hospital for safe delivery.

But one other innovation is also playing a critical part – women are now being paid to have their babies in hospital. “That is such a big help for us Nepalese women,” says Mina. “Many of us are very poor and the money is very important.” Any mother who agrees to give birth accompanied by a trained birth attendant, is paid 1,000 rupees (after the baby is delivered) – money which can help her buy good food for her new child. One important factor is that the money is paid direct to her, not to her husband or some other relative. She gets to decide, and often a part of the money goes on transport – a vital requirement with precipitous hills and long distances.

“There is definitely a change since the money started being provided,” says Dr Sagar Rajbhandari, 46, Senior Medical Officer at the hospital. “Previously we had up to 50 deliveries a month, now I estimate we have up to 90. And of course if someone comes here for their baby’s delivery then there is a good chance they will survive.” For example, he says, at home, if the placenta is retained –

the mother will die. Or, during a home delivery, if a newborn baby doesn’t cry, he will often not be resuscitated: “People don’t have the knowledge or the facilities, and that baby will die, but if he is born here, we can go to work and he will be fine.”

Nepal has seen an extraordinary fall in the numbers of women dying in childbirth. In 1996 the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) for the country was estimated at 539 deaths per 100,000 live births – the equivalent of a woman dying every two hours. Ten years later, in 2006, the same survey indicated a drop to 281 deaths per 100,000 live births. If these estimates are accurate, the country is on track to meet the target of the fifth Millennium Development Goal of 134 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births by 2015.

And while the surveys do not provide cast iron evidence (precise assessments remain difficult in countries like Nepal), a recent DFID-funded review confirmed strong support for a dramatic decline in maternal mortality, supporting a substantial decline of at least 20%, or a reduction of one in five deaths.

Many factors have contributed to this fall, including the increased use of doctors, nurses and auxiliary nurse midwives in attending deliveries – doubling to nearly 19% in the decade to 2006. Emergency obstetric care has improved considerably, while far more women now benefit from legal and safe abortion services. Beyond the health sector, there have been improvements in water and sanitation, transport and communication. But perhaps most significantly, female education levels have increased – in 1996, only 11% had primary education, 6% secondary and 3% School Leaving Certificate. In 2006, the equivalent figures had more or less doubled.

All of these factors help to explain why more women than ever now come to

hospital to have their babies, confirms Baglung’s Dr Rajbhandari.

“The consciousness of the people has changed, people now want quality of service and they know that they will get that if they come here.”

And as education and awareness among women rises, so they are able to challenge the patriarchal nature of Nepali society. Debi Bhattarai, says that in the past the husband would not always allow his wife to come to a hospital to give birth. But she cites a recent example when one woman insisted on bringing another woman to the hospital, who would have died but for the successful caesarean section they carried out. “Sometimes the husband is reluctant to spend the money on the woman going to hospital,” says Sister Bhattarai, “but increasingly the women are deciding to go anyway – they know it is important both for them and for their baby.”

The money can sometimes be a bone of contention within families “Now and again there is a big scene, when someone’s mother-in-law starts crying because she believes she should have the money!” says Dr Rajbhandari. But the staff abide by the rules, “The mother has to sign for it,” says Sister Bhattarai.

“If you give it to some other relative, then it may not be spent on the baby or on getting home safely.” She adds “This money is incredibly important for the mother. Women from the villages have no money for food or transport but now that they know they will get this money, it encourages them to make the journey and come here to have their baby.”

Three hours after we first visited Mina Jishi, she is resting happily in the recovery ward, the proud mother of a little boy. “I’m very happy,” she beams, as proud as any other new mum. “And with the 1,000 rupees I receive when I am discharged I will get us both some good food.”

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All photographs © Chandra Shekhar Karki

extended hydro caption

rivers run through it Water is known as Nepal’s oil, but this bountiful green energy source remains largely untapped. The country’s potential for hydro power is a massive 100 times its existing energy use – underused through lack of investment. But the possibility is evident everywhere – you don’t have to walk far here to find water rushing by, especially in the monsoon season – the sheer volume of water and the speed at which it races down mountain and hillside could hold the key to the country’s economic problems. From hydro power alone, Nepal could generate more than enough electricity to power the whole of the UK. If Nepal could properly harness its 83,000 megawatts of hydropower potential not only would it could meet all domestic needs but also export electricity to neighbours like China and India. The availability of power for Nepal alone would be a boost. Powercuts are a daily reality in Kathmandu and other urban centres, while only 10% of people in rural areas have any access to electricity at all – all in all, a critical obstacle to growth and poverty reduction.

The modest plant pictured here on the Modi River is capable of producing 14,000 kilowatts – enough to power a small city.

Local communities receive 20% of the revenue received.

This is a ‘run of river’ operation which simply ‘borrows’ the water to drive the turbines and then returns it to the river further downstream.

Many international investors are keen to take advantage of the potential of hydro power in Nepal – but for the sums they need to invest, and the 20-50 year return they are looking for, they want to be sure of long-term stability and transparency in government. If Nepal can build itself a secure future, then there are additional benefits from hydro-power, not least the potential benefit from carbon trading from this clear energy source. MW/MD

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handle with care Working with the leaders of Nepal to reduce poverty illustrates why it is important to support countries in fragile situations, says UK Development Minister Shahid Malik.

N

epal is at an historic crossroads. A decade-long conflict ended in 2006; largely free and fair elections in April have created the most representative and youngest parliament in the country’s history, and seen the 240-year-old monarchy peacefully abolished. But the emerging Maoist-led government faces major challenges to deliver lasting peace and development.

In my visits I have met Nepal’s political leaders, the new generation of politicians, government officials, civil society, private sector leaders and Nepal’s donor community and I am convinced that success is possible, as the country works to create an inclusive, democratic and prosperous society.

Already we have seen signs of how development has progressed in a period of conflict and instability, something which has eluded many countries in similar situations. Support to health care is a good example: over the period of the conflict, the death rates of children under five years of age halved, and that of mothers in pregnancy and childbirth substantially reduced. Or take rural infrastructure: from 2001 onwards, during the conflict, DFID supported the construction of rural roads which helped to connect a million isolated people to the road network.

This has helped raise incomes and improve access to health and education.

And inclusion has also been central to progress – since 2001, DFID has supported programmes demanding greater inclusion of women, of Dalits, and Janajatis in state bodies and in politics, and we’ve seen commitments to do the same in the civil service, the police, and in the electoral law.

The recent progress of Nepal highlights vital lessons for development in fragile contexts across the world. It’s true that only about 9% of the population

of developing countries live in such countries, but extreme poverty, child and maternal deaths are three to four times more common in such places, while, the instability in these countries contributes to regional and international security concerns. That’s why half of the countries in which DFID works are fragile.

There are risks involved in working in situations of conflict and political instability, but developmental progress is as essential here as anywhere and the benefits of success are great. People often ask me why we work to support national government in situations like these. “Why don’t we give money direct to the people who need it?” The answer is that without stable and transparent government, development either won’t happen, or won’t last. We only have to look at Zimbabwe to see what happens when governance goes bad. We don’t want to see that happen in Nepal, which is why we are working with government ministries and institutions (and also with NGOs and civil society) to help deliver a future where poor communities can flourish.

And we are working very carefully.

In Nepal, the UK has followed agreed OECD principles for working in fragile situations. These tenets form an agreed framework for working in such circumstances. First, we take context as the starting point. DFID undertook detailed analysis at the outset and aid instruments were aligned with local priorities. Sometimes, as in rural infrastructure, we have worked parallel to government, other times, as in health and education, we have worked through government.

Second, we have made a focus on state-building the central objective, building accountability: through support to the elections; through improved local governance and community development; supporting improved

After meeting leaders and citizens on recent visits to Nepal, Shahid Malik is convinced that a successful future is possible. © Chandra Shekhar Karki

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service delivery in health and education; support to government ministries such as Finance and the Prime Minister’s Office. At the same time we have also supported civil society organisations in their demands for improved governance, representation and accountability.

Nepal has been a society where a small elite has monopolised control over the state for decades, and so we have also emphasised “promoting nondiscrimination as a basis for inclusive and stable societies”. The Community Support Programme targeted two thirds of its spending on basic services for excluded groups, while in our roads programmes, which employ labour only from the poorest and most disadvantaged groups, half of those employed must be women.

In partnership with Germany’s GTZ, we set up a Risk Management Office in 2002

through which we encourage greater transparency, and public hearings and audits on aid programmes in order to build community understanding and support. Another significant development was in agreeing practical coordination mechanisms between international actors, helping clarify the role of agencies operating in conflict-affected areas. This helped maintain access to these zones to make sure humanitarian relief could be delivered, and development activities were continued. More recently DFID has led on the creation of the Nepal Peace Trust Fund, one of the first governmentled multi-donor peace funds, with donors providing budget support to government.

Above all, our approach in Nepal is about using all the means at our disposal that will enable development to continue in this fragile situation. The lessons we have learnt through our work with

our partners in Nepal is helping shape our global developmental response in other fragile contexts – and it is boosting our ability to influence our multilateral partners to improve their own work.

It is a huge challenge to deliver effective development in vulnerable and post-conflict countries – ‘business as usual’ is just not possible in these situations. We have to adapt, to be flexible, and to coordinate closely with our partners whether they be the donor community or the diplomatic service.

What working in Nepal has taught us is that we must always make preventing violence a priority, and invest in the long-term goal of state-building and peace-building. Otherwise, the poor go to the wall.

Express your views www.developments.org.uk

We must always make preventing violence a priority, and invest in the long-term goal of state-building and peace-building.

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Maya Aryal and her family have learned to live in tune with the forest. Š Chandra Shekhar Karki

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the hills are alive…

Could the hillside communities, guardians of Nepal’s forests, be a model for a unified and more prosperous future?

Malcolm Doney and Martin Wroe report.

t is s mo on nsoon so oon o sea easo s n in so i the h to owe weri ring ri ng Dha ng haul ullag ag iri irr i hi hill lls. ll s. The here r re is s no ra ain n to od day ay, bu butt v va ast amo oun nts t of wat ater err ssti t lll hur ti urtl tlle of o f th he prrecip ec ciip pittou us sllop opes iint nto nt o th the e ri rive v rs ve belo be lo low ow. w. Ter e ra race ce ed po p ol o s sttri r pe tthe he hil ills ls, rimm ri mmed mm ed w wit itth the th he ac acid id g re id reen en of rriice e pa pa add ddie dd ies, ie s, her ere e an a d th her ere e te tend en nd ded by wome wo wome m n in n sar a iis s of viivid viid pi pink ko orr sc car arle let. le t t.

High Hi gh as thes gh th hes e e hi h llls ar are, e, the h y ar a e d ar dw arfe f d by fe y the h Him mal alay ay yas s whi hich ich h s im sh mme m r in n the h dis ista ta anc ce e.. T The he e fo orest re est s -c cov ver ere ed hig ed ighe he er re ea ac che h s ar are e in nte ers rspe p rs pe rsed ed w it ith h sm mall alll se s tttle l me ment ns nt whic wh ic ch sp pra r wl wl among mong the ttre re ees s and d iin n one on e of the the hese se,, in tthe se he h ev vil illa lage ge g e of Jh Jhau a ri 5 -y 50 yea earr ol old d Kh Khag ag gan anat atth Ar a A ya yall sq squa squa u ts on h on his is v ver erra an nda dah h le lean a in an ng ag agai aiins st th he w ll – a p wa pic ictu ic t re of c tu co onc ncen entrattio entr on. n He is ma He aki k ng g a bro oom ffro rom ta rom ro tall ll ll grrasss.. Opp g ppos o itte hi him, m his w m, wif ife if e Ma M ya is

grr in i di ding ng g dri r ed pla l nt ntss in into t po to ow wde derr fo f r t ad tr dit itio io ona nal al ay ayur urve ur vedi vedi d c me medi medi dici c ne ci ne.. In Inssiide the th e ho h us use e th thei thei eirr da aug ught h er ht er,, Dura Dura Du ra,, 17 7, ge gets gets s t e st th stov ove ov e go goin ing, in g, whi h le the heir irr sson n San ntos, 13 1 3, sh hov vel elss co ow du dung ng g int n o a co conc n re ete te cy yli lind nd der er.. Su unt nta, a 14, 4, a ano n th no her er son on,, is is tend te ndin nd in ng to tth he g he goa oa atts s.

Th his i iis no idyll dyll, it dy it’s it’s s har ard d wo work ork but it’s it ’s s als lso pr p od oduc ucttive uc tive ea and nd p pro ro ofi fita tabl ta ablle, e just ju st.. Wi st With th the heir ir v veg eg get e ab able le g gar arde ar d n an de and d an nim mals als th hey ya are re mor o e or o lles es ss se self lf-su uffi ffi fic cie ient nt. T Th hey ey ssel elll th he br b oo ooms ms a and n nd me ed diici c ne and nd g goa oats oa ts to ne eig ighb hb bou ours rs or v is or isit itin ing in g trad trad de errs. s T The he ey ha have e ev ve en op pen ened ed a ssm malll sho ma hop se selllin ing g tte ea,, suga su ga g ar an a dc co onf nfec ec cti tio oner on er y. The you ung ger e c ildren ch ren nn no ow g ow go o to o ssch choo ch oo oll... “W “We e ar are re defini defi de nite tely ly y bet ettte er of offf than th ha an n we us used ed to be,” be ,” say ayss Maya May Ma ya a, wi w ith sat atis isfa fa acttio ion. n. n.

S wha So hatt ha happ app pen e e ed d? Th The e Ar Ar ya y l fa amiily y illu il llu lusttrate ra ate the h ste ead dy, y u uns nssp pe ect ctac acul ullar ar but u

m te ma teri rial ri all cha a ang ge ta taki king ki ng gp pla la ac ce e amo mong f re fo r st st c com mmu muni niitiies niti e acros ss Ne Nepa p l– a chan ch hange g which h is b bo oth h iim mp m provi ving ng g lliv ives es and an d tr tran a sf an sfor orr mi m ng the he en nv v ir i onme on nme m nt n.

Th The he ke key to t the tra rans nssfo form r matio rm att on is a DF FID I -ffun unde d d in de nit itia i tiive ia e calle led le d th the he Liive veli liho liho hood o s & Fo ore est s ry y Program grram mme e (L LFP FP)) wh which is wor orrki king g w it ith al alm mo ost s h lf a m ha mil illi il lion li on h hou ouseh seho holld ds ((1 11% 1% of th the e co oun untr trr y’ y s pe peop eop ople le) in n rem mot ote a an nd di d rt rt poor po or for ores es st co om mm mun u ittiie es. s Ass fo fore rest re s st co c ove ers r a aro ro oun und 40 40% of o th he e count ntry ry y, almo al mo m ostt 60% % of N Ne epal’ epa l’ss ru ural po p pu p la l ti t on on de epe pend o on n th the e fore fore fo est sts a an nd na natu tura rall reso re s urrce so cess fo for or th hei eir li live v liiho h od dss.. LFP P op per erat a es in 15 hil at illy ly y dis istr trr ic icts t , cr cris isssscrros cros sse s d by d dee eep go ee g rges rg ges and d fas ast st riive vers rrs s, whe wh ere pa er pav ved ro ved road adss ar ad are a ra are ari r ity rity ty..

Fiift ftee ee e en ye earrs ag ago mu much ch of N Ne epa p l’ ls fore fo rest re stt wa as se exp xplo xp loit lo i ed it ed o orr w wa ast sted ed ed. d. Th Thou ough ou gh h te ech chni n call ni lly ow owne ned ne d by by the gov o er er nm nment, nmen en nt, t 3

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1

Cow dung and water are ‘churned’ into the chamber, waste materials ferment, gas forms.

The family collect cow dung.

All photographs © Chandra Shekhar Karki

3

Biogas production means free, green power on the Aryal’s smallholding

Human waste is flushed into a chamber below ground.

4

Pressure of gas build up, forcing residual ‘slurry’ through a pipe, enriching compost heap.

2

6

… to the cooker in the kitchen…

… providing clean, green fuel for free.

Gas is piped off below ground…

7

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All photographs © Chandra Shekhar Karki

3 rich elites plundered them with illegal logging, while poor communities raided woodland for fuel, or cut it down for grazing or crops. It left vast stretches of barren, deforested land where young trees had been removed because they were easier to fell.

But when the 1993 Nepal Forest Act opened tracts of forest for community use, forest user groups emerged to take advantage of the resource. This was not uncontested, and the group in Jhauri, not unusually, had to fight off the claims of rich and organised business who had their own industrial-scale plans for the area. It took three years of court appearances before they secured the use of the land.

To date 21% of government controlled forest has been handed over as community forest, with a further 60% ripe to be placed into community hands.

And community is the key word. In remote hamlets like Jhauri, it is not possible to survive as an individual – everyone needs everybody else. This understanding is at the heart of the LFP philosophy. Households are encouraged to join together in community forest user groups (inelegantly known as C-FUGs). Many of these groupings have flowered into vibrant community organisms – clearing houses for local concerns, the loci of social cohesion.

Looking up from his broom making Khaganath says, “The benefits of the forest users group are shared with everyone here.”

When the 81 households who form the C-FUG first joined together, the steep bank down to the river was barren and eroding. Now it is thickly wooded. Villagers have collectively benefited from forest management training – learning how to grow and coppice woodland. All this has not only made the forest more abundant, it has also brought it closer to home.

Maya Aryal recalls how she had to rise extra early to gather fuel and fodder.

“I had to climb miles up into the forest every day, always carrying a heavy

load on my head, and not return home till very late.” This meant she had little time to spend with the children and round the house tending the garden and cooking. “Now I only have to do that a few days a year to collect firewood, and only ten days a month to collect fodder.”

Even this is a communal activity.

“The whole group decides which day we go, so that reduces the time we all spend walking back.”

The community agree together who needs most help, from ‘very poor’ to ‘rich’ (the latter is something of a comparative term). According to their needs, each has access to certain resources. The Aryals, for instance, were classified as very poor and had no land of their own, and they have been able to take over a tract of community land and a section of forest, together with loans from a revolving fund – which is how they managed to develop their goat rearing business.

The family’s energy and imagination has meant this year they are due to become merely ‘poor’. But while this itself carries a risk – because the more you have the less help you get – nevertheless Khaganath is pleased to be making “a step higher” because it means his family economy is on a firmer footing and he believes it is right that others should now receive help. “Many other people are poorer than me.”

Social mobility and ‘inclusion’ is integral to these forestry user groups.

Dalits, women, Janajatis, Madhesis and Muslims – the groups normally deemed second class or worse in Nepali society (see box on page 17) – are positively encouraged to play a full part in decision making. Women, for instance make up a quarter of group leadership nationwide, and in Jhauri fill over 60% of committee positions.

Including people who for centuries have been ignored does not come easily and the C-FUG here has formed smaller sub-groups to give them confidence to make their voices heard and help shape community policy. The signs that this is working are clear when Bishnu Regmi

The Aryal family at work on the verandah. © Chandra Shekhar Karki

Paddy fields are a feature of Nepal’s water fed hills. © Chandra Shekhar Karki

stands up to speak confidently about the importance of sustainability to a meeting in the village hall – not so long ago she and others like her would not even have dreamed of making their voices heard.

Bishnu, 30, has two children and wants to make sure they and their children have a livelihood too. “We need the forest,” she says, “So we plant it. The forest is for all of us – we look after it so it will look after us.” The community has recently reached parity in its use of fuel wood, and is now growing more than it is using. This is not theoretical greenliving, it is practical correspondence with the land. As a result the people of Jhauri are eating better, growing healthier and even (unheard of for many years) learning to live with the raids from the occasional leopard as biodiversity increases.

The hard-working Aryal family and their community are an emblem of what the new Nepal could look like.

C-FUG organisations like these were robust enough to survive the ten years of conflict, a time when most NGOs left the rural areas for security reasons. And when many rural organisations were forced to disband as the Maoists accused them of oppressing the poor or acting as tools of government, forest user groups stood up to the most rigorous scrutiny, because they were democratic, transparent and dedicated to helping the poorest of the community. In fact, as much of local government disintegrated they often became the de facto local authority, helping rural people who needed anything from citizenship to a birth certificate.

They are now a deeply embedded part of the anthropology and culture of many hillside communities. Like the forest, they are helping to bind the soil and prevent erosion. If the new Nepal is going to flourish it will grow in places like Jhauri.

MORE INFORMATION www.lfp.org.np

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Getting back to business Pakistani style – on the DFID-built Kahouri bridge. © DFID Pakistan

Three years after the devastating earthquake which killed thousands and left millions homeless Elena Immambocus reports on heartening progress in the region.

Kashmir on the mend I

t is startling to travel in Kashmir today, three years after the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history.

The awe-inspiring valleys at whose feet snake the Neelum and Jhelum rivers are set against cloud-skimming peaks. Brightly-painted trucks throttle the hill-top bends, ramshackle market stalls clamour for attention and boys play impromptu cricket on dusty stretches of road. Only the relentless construction betrays the past: mounds of rubble, concrete, steel wires, mixers, diggers and the thud of the trucks skimming potholes as clods of earth are thrown up into the air.

On 8 October 2005 an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale struck 100 kilometres north of

Islamabad, in nine districts in the region and in neighbouring North West Frontier Province. The world saw TV images of hospitals flattened, homes razed to their foundations, families cleaved apart, roads, bridges, power, and hope lost. The city of Balakot clung to survival by a thread.

A seven-year-old girl was found wandering, dazed, in the aftermath, gripping a bag in each hand. “This one’s mine,” she said. “And this is my brother’s. I’m keeping it for him. He’s over there.” She motioned to the scene of a flattened school some 50 metres away.

Three years on, Matwali Khan, a retired teacher with a sober manner and a carefully-trimmed white beard, is proud of the new earthquake-resistant

house his family have moved into.

Like others, Matwali completed his dwelling using the cash grant scheme, receiving a total of 75,000 rupees in land compensation, a further 150,000 rupees for reconstruction, plus DFID-funded technical advice in how to build quakeproof structures. “Our house before was on a slope, higher up the mountain, but this new place is more stable,” he points out, “our future is more stable”.

Nageena, whose daughter and other close family members were among the 70,000 who lost their lives in the earthquake, smiles warmly for the camera while her son, Asad, pulls at her dupatta. “Things are getting better now inshallah. We have to think about the future.”

3

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Pakistan earthquake 3

Nageena was visiting a Merlin healthcare centre to collect her prescriptions in one of the last remaining IDP (internally displaced people) camps set atop Muzaffarabad, the sprawling capital city of Pakistan Administered Kashmir. She had received the compensation she needed to rebuild her house, while her husband was working in the reconstruction business. She spoke of the food package of flour and lentils that helped to make the transition back home.

The scale of the challenge, in addition to the death toll, over 120,000 injured and three million homeless, generated a remarkable international response.

Relief efforts were immense, including search and rescue teams and emergency supplies. The UK government gave £53 million in emergency relief, the Pakistani community in the UK and numerous organisations and individuals in Britain gave millions more. And the difference it made was vital. After the initial hit, and the aftershocks which triggered 2,000 landslides, there were no additional epidemics or cases of starvation as people camped out on the hilltops facing freezing temperatures.

Local communities were profoundly affected by the level of solidarity they witnessed from people across Pakistan, the UK and worldwide. As Pir Syed Gillani, Mayor of Muzaffarabad, states with conviction “good nations never forget the good deeds done to them.”

If the scale of the disaster was unprecedented – with damage estimated at $4.5 billion – so too was the coordination challenge faced by the government-appointed body, ERRA (Earthquake Reconstruction and

Rehabilitation Authority), in steering the 85 donor agencies who pledged aid.

Along with ERRA and the UN, DFID’s reconstruction funds of £49 million helped to rebuild 250,000 houses that could survive earthquakes in the future.

And the transfer of land – which used to cost thousands of rupees and months of procedural delays – now takes a few days and a couple of hundred rupees. Government offices are now housed in functional and modern prefabs – storing, for example, valuable land ownership records – allowing them to get on with delivering vital services to a shaken population.

Fifty new bridges are being constructed, reconnecting vital links to regional trade routes. The new DFID-funded Kahouri bridge alone brings in services and communications from the capital.

Local midwife, Mehrunnisa, at the renovated Basic Healthcare Unit, a mother of six, is quick to point to the benefits. “The rest of us here at Neelum Valley (a population of 125,000) are no longer cut off.” No small feat when you add into the mix the hazardous terrain, short building seasons in the mountains and harsh climatic conditions.

And life has got better for local traders too. In the past, a businessman had to divide up his goods to transport them across the bridge by hand – a process that could take hours, even days depending on the flow of the river.

Now, as local truck-drivers explain, the reinforced bridge is a life-line, boosting livelihoods by cutting down transaction times and costs. The region isn’t just being rebuilt – it’s being rebuilt stronger.

Much more remains to be done. The deadline for full reconstruction has

PAKISTAN FACT FILE • Of 160 million people living in Pakistan – 36 million are below the Poverty Line.

• People here die 14 years earlier than in the UK. • Two in five children are malnourished – one in ten of them die before their 5th birthday.

• Just half of all children go to school – and half the country’s adults are illiterate.

• From this year, the UK, through DFID, is doubling financial assistance to Pakistan to £480 million a year.

• The UK provided £53 million in relief after the 2005 earthquake and £49 million for reconstruction.

• DFID has helped 1.1 million people in the north-west access clean drinking water.

• DFID supported the 2008 elections – and increased participation of socially excluded groups.

been extended to a more realistic fiveyear timeframe. Houses are in need of completion – and with construction prices rocketing with the hike in global prices, some families are struggling.

“Price inflation is so high, how will we keep up?” asks Zeenat, whose husband is trying to set up business as a shopkeeper.

“We’re so vulnerable,” she adds looking at her daughter, Samiah, born in the IDP camp – a symbol of a still fragile future.

Water and sanitation facilities need to be improved. And, critically, schools are in desperate need of attention, with only 3% of 5,000 institutions rebuilt to date – something which DFID is looking to support in the next phase.

Earthquakes have powerful, apocalyptic associations in this part of the world. Parts 17 and 30 in the Qur’an link these natural disasters to the end of the world, magnifying the terror experienced by local communities. Yet scars heal. The dense green mountainsides slashed with grey streaks are now peppered with hundreds of white stones marking the replanting of trees. But the area still remains quake-prone, with a second fault line active in the region.

So what happens now really matters.

It’s vital that skills and practical knowledge are shared, as children start to learn about how to be prepared for earthquakes in their school curriculum.

Because, alongside these new quakeproof structures, the communities’ best safeguard against future shocks is the know-how that empowers local people.

MORE INFORMATION To order a copy of the DFID Country Plan for Pakistan fill in the attached reply card or to download a PDF go to ww.dfid.gov.uk/ countries/asia/pakistan.asp Express your views www.developments.org.uk

Clockwise from top Children learn maths without books from a volunteer teacher. © UNICEF /Asad Zaidi Matwali Khan with grandson, Obed, on the stairwell of his new quakeproof house. © DFID Pakistan Construction industry is booming. © Asad Zaidi Zeenat and Samiah are having to face up to rising global prices. © DFID Pakistan

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The region isn’t just being rebuilt – it’s being rebuilt stronger.

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Climate change threatens already precarious life on the river-islands of Bangladesh. Novelist Tahmima Anam, born in the country, reports on a scheme to help the ‘char dwellers’ keep their heads above water.

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T

he most recent projections about the effects of man-made climate change tell us that Bangladesh is sure to be among its first victims.

This past July, I travelled to Chouhali, a river-island on the banks of the Jamuna river in Bangladesh, to learn how local people are adapting to their difficult, sometimes treacherous environment.

Bangladesh is part of a low-lying delta, meaning any slight shift in sea levels will cause the land to slowly be swallowed by the waters of the Bay of Bengal. In the next 50 years, 17% of Bangladesh’s landmass will go underwater, causing over 30 million people to become homeless. Those that live further inland will be only slightly better off: the cyclones and floods that are already a feature of the weather will occur more frequently and with greater ferocity. If the sea level rises by five metres, the capital will go under.

But while we can look to Bangladesh with concern, it is equally crucial to see what the people here can teach us about adapting to and coping with

the challenges of climate change.

Bangladeshis have, for generations, adapted to their environment, and the residents of Bangladesh’s riverislands are a special example of their tenacity. The small islands on which they live – forced there because, in a country of 180 million people, every inch of available space has to be used – have an average lifespan of nine years before they are made uninhabitable.

The Jamuna River is often called the Jamuna braid, because the river – 22 kilometres across at its widest point – splits into estuaries and channels, diverging and reconnecting to create a shifting landscape that is part land, part water. It is in the Jamuna braid that most of Bangladesh’s chars are located. A char is an island made of river silt. Every year in Bangladesh, new chars emerge out of the river’s changing course, and as these new chars appear, old ones are returned to the water. Here, the Chars Livelihood Project (CLP), a collaboration between the Bangladesh Government and

DFID, has been helping islanders cope with their uncertain terrain.

Char-dwellers have always built their homesteads on the highest possible ground, knowing that their proximity to the water means that their land will be the first to go under in the event of a flood. The CLP project has taken this model and raised the homesteads of the poorest islanders, creating plinths on which they can build houses, grow small gardens, and tend their livestock.

Flooding is endemic in Bangladesh.

3

All photographs © Hassan Bipul

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“They tell me in loud voices how grateful they are for their raised land.”

3 They have also given them access to clean water, latrines, and a small cash advance. Once the monsoon is in full sway, each of these homes will be surrounded by water, tiny islands of their own, but thanks to the raised ground, the homesteads will withstand the harshest of storms.

After a three-hour drive from Dhaka, we take a 45-minute speedboat ride up the Jamuna river and arrive at Chouhali char. Chouhali has no electricity, no running water, no hospitals, roads, or government offices. It has a school, a long, rectangular building that’s been divided in two for the upper and lower grades. When the floods arrived last year, it was this building that sheltered the villagers whose homes were submerged. With such little state infrastructure, the officers of the CLP project have stepped in, setting up a health clinic, organising community

meetings, and generally keeping track of the islanders’ well-being.

We visit Joneka, who has recently come under the CLP project. Of all the poor residents of Chouhali, Joneka is considered one of the poorest. Before I meet her I am told that she is a widow.

Having no land of her own to till, and no man to provide a weekly wage, she and her two young sons rely for food on her small patch of garden. Recently, the CLP have been giving her a small stipend, to tide her over until she can sell her cow in the market. I am amazed at Joneka’s strength. She appears undefeated by the hardships of her life, and tells me instead of the joys of finally having a home she knows will survive the floods.

She is busy fattening her cow, which she will sell for a profit at the Eid market in a few months. This sale will put Joneka on the path to self-sufficiency.

I see the same fighting spirit in the

The houses are raised on plinths which should withstand storms.

eyes of other char dwellers, each of whom makes an impression: Rabeya, who lives on a nearby plinth and grows sesame trees; the young boy in a sequined shirt who sings to us, the midwife who has seen generations pass through her textured hands.

The following day, Joneka hosts a community meeting, led by Malek Bhai, a young, energetic community organiser.

As well as giving financial support to the islanders, the CLP project provides a forum for a wide range of topics, from the controversial – this week they are discussing the perils of the dowry system – to the practical, such as how best to care for their livestock. The women are curious to speak with me, and as I play with their children, I ask them how many times the river has taken their homes. Eleven, one says.

Seventeen, says another. Each time they have barely escaped with their lives, every one of their possessions gone in a flash. They tell me, in loud voices, how grateful they are for their raised ground. They want to thank me, and I have to explain that it has nothing to do with me, that I have just come to meet them and write about them I ask them what they want more than anything in the world. The women insist that, having now been given the chance to live in homes that are no longer under threat of being flooded, they wish for little else. When I press them again, they ask me to please tell the government to reduce the price of rice – it has trebled in the past six months. “And we wish we had tin roofs for our homes,” they say. Ultimately, the islanders are occupied with the same challenges that face millions – the reality of living in a world where the rising cost of food means they will skip meals or face malnutrition. And who knows what horrors the future, with its promise of new environmental challenges, will bring. But the people of Chouhali char face each of these with tenacity and forebearance, and, with a little help, find their feet on uncertain ground.

Tahmima Anam, pictured below right, is the author of A Golden Age.

Cash advances from the CLP are helping char dwellers on the path to self-sufficiency.

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How many times has the river taken their homes?

Eleven, says one. Seventeen, says another.

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Ashram Ghani and Clare Lockhart were the architects of the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan. In an extract from their new book, they outline ten essential functions to transform failed states and bridge ‘the sovereignty gap’.

no quick fix W

e have a collective problem: 40 to 60 states, home to nearly two billion people, are either sliding backwards and teetering on the brink of implosion or have already collapsed. While half of the globe has created an almost seamless web of political, financial and technological connections that underpin democratic states and market-based economies, the other half is blocked from political stability and participation in global wealth.

Within these countries, vicious networks of criminality, violence and drugs feed on disenfranchised populations and uncontrolled territory. In a period of unprecedented wealth and invention, people throughout Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East are locked into lives of misery, without a stake in their countries or any certainty about or control over their own futures.

A glaring gap – what we call the sovereignty gap – exists between the sovereignty that the international system affords such dysfunctional states and their capabilities to serve their populations and act as responsible members of the international community. The ground reality is that many states have collapsed and are unable to provide even the most basic services for the citizens. This problem – the failed state – is at the heart of a worldwide systemic crisis that constitutes the most serious challenge to global stability in the new Millennium.

Based on our reading of history, our engagement with international development, and our first hand experience with the challenge of state building in one of its most difficult contexts – Afghanistan – we have concluded that states in the world today should perform ten key functions.

This is an edited extract from Fixing Failed States: A framework for rebuilding a fractured world by Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, Oxford University Press, and is reprinted by kind permission.

1

Rule of law

Perhaps the most crucial function performed by the state is law-making (establishing the rules by which society operates). Laws define both the powers and the limits of the state and the people within that state.

In any particular territory, one can judge the degree of the rule of law by the extent to which the state is constituted by formal rules to which people actually adhere. The rule of law is a ‘glue’ that binds all aspects of the state, the economy and society.

As a result of the rule of law, citizens understand a distinct set of rights and duties that guides their behaviour toward other citizens, as well as toward the larger community of citizens represented by the state.

2

A monopoly on the legitimate means of violence

Max Weber – one of the founders of modern sociology – singled out a monopoly on the legitimate means of violence as the very definition of the state. Control over the use of violence brings three distinctive processes together. The first is the establishment of a monopoly over the means of destruction and the use of force. The second is the establishment of the legitimacy needed to subordinate violence to decision-making.

The third is the use of force, according to certain rules, against those citizens of the state who challenge its legitimacy.

3

Administrative control

Administrative control should be managed by government professionals who are accountable to the citizenry and recruited through an open process.

Several processes are central to this dimension of sovereignty. First, a hierarchy of divisions marks the state’s territory into administrative units. Each of these divisions performs specialised functions, has continuity over time, and is overseen at a higher level.

Government failure to establish uniform and trusted practices across state territory allows large swathes of the country to fall into the hands of local militias

and warlords or global commercial interests that function with impunity.

4

Sound management of public finances

5

Investments in human capital

6

Creation of citizenship rights through social policy

Sound management of public finances is the vehicle through which states can realise public goals. Efficient collection and allocation of resources among contending priorities turn ideas and aspirations into concrete outcomes. The record of state activities lies most clearly in its budget, which is both the medium and the message. The budget brings the rights and duties of citizenship into balance.

Investment in human capital has been the key to the formation of a middle class in the developed world. It was the mechanism used to overcome the conflicts of the 19th century and provide a ground for stable democratic politics. As professions emerged, spurred on in part by the expansion of universities, they became critical to social mobility. Economic productivity and growth now depend on an educated and healthy population.

In the United Kingdom today 50% of the citizens have some form of higher education, and in the United States there is now remarkable consensus on the centrality of educational opportunities as the vehicle of social mobility and affluence.

Experience has shown that the creation of citizenship rights – through social policies that cut across gender, ethnicity, race, class, spatial location, and religion – is critical to stability and prosperity. When the state uses social policy as an instrument for the establishment of equal opportunities, the social fabric created can lead to a sense of national unity and a shared belief in common destiny. This belief overcomes fragmented identities that oppose the status quo. Social policy turns the state from an organisation into a community of common sentiment and practice: a nation-state. Subjects thereby become ‘citizens’. At the core of this crucial transformation has been the right to vote.

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The negative effects that result from the absence of inclusive social policies are quite clear. In weak states, tensions and cleavages along ethnic, religious, race and class lines are exacerbated. At times the consequences can be tragic, leading in the most extreme cases to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Relations between rulers and ruled are tense, poverty becomes entrenched, and a distinctive category of ultra-poor people emerges.

7

Provision of infrastructure services

Adequate transportation, power, water, communications and pipelines all underlie the state’s ability to provide security, administration, investment in human capital and the necessary conditions for a strong market economy.

A substantial number of countries lack adequate infrastructure services. In 2001 the World Travel and Tourism Council constructed a global infrastructure index that focused on access to roads, sanitation and drinking water. Of the 117 countries it measured, only Australia scored 100; 51 countries (44% of the total) scored less than 50; and four countries scored less than 20 (Afghanistan scored 0.00). As long as those countries toward the bottom of this scale remain dysfunctional and fail to plan and implement new infrastructure projects, they will fall farther and farther behind.

8

Formation of a market

9

Management of public assets

allocation of rights to land and water, the sustainable use of natural capital, including extractive industries, the management and protection of the environment, including forests, and the licensing of industrial and commercial activities.

10

Effective public borrowing

Public borrowing, which is a basic foundation of the banking system, is critical to the operation of the financial sector. The state has always played a central role in the emergence of public lending institutions and the creation of instruments of public lending and borrowing, which initially grew out of the need to pay for wars. The Netherlands and Great Britain were the first countries to create central banks, which enabled their governments to finance relatively large military forces.

This ability to raise money in turn enabled these states to acquire large colonial empires and create the publicly chartered companies that managed them.

With weak institutions, the negative consequences of public borrowing are clear.

The most significant impact of bad decisions on public borrowing has been the world debt crisis. In too many countries, resources devoted to servicing debt charges far exceed those allocated for human capital or infrastructure.

Finally…

The sovereignty dividend and the sovereignty gap The performance of these ten functions produces a clustering effect. When a state performs all ten simultaneously, the synergy creates a virtuous circle in which decisions in the different domains reinforce enfranchisement and opportunity for the citizenry. This supports the legitimacy of the decision-makers and their decisions, builds trust in the overall system, and thereby produces a ‘sovereignty dividend’.

Conversely, when one or several of the functions are not performed effectively, a vicious circle begins. Various centres of power vie for control, multiple decisionmaking processes confuse priorities, citizens lose trust in the government, institutions lose their legitimacy, and the populace is disenfranchised. In the most extreme cases, violence results. This negative cycle creates the sovereignty gap.

Express your views www.developments.org.uk

The state supports the creation and expansion of the market through three major measures: setting and enforcing rules for commercial activity, supporting the operation and continued development of private enterprise, and intervening at times of market failure.

When weak states cannot enable the market to function or when they actually subvert its functioning, they block development and prosperity and fail to generate institutional linkages. This freezes capital, which cannot flow through the economy. Inadequate regulation leads to the informalisation of transactions, and if property security is precarious and arbitration unpredictable, then capital is not attracted to a state but flees it instead.

The state’s capital is not just made up of money but also a huge array of assets ranging from fixed assets – land, equipment, buildings, cultural heritage – to natural capital – forests, rivers, seas, minerals – to intangible assets such as licenses to operate services and manage the radio spectrum or to import and export goods. Even the image or brand of the country is an asset.

The way these assets are put to work for the collective good is a marker of the state’s effectiveness. Four clusters of activities are particularly significant: the management and

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new writing

A journalism competition to raise awareness of global poverty, launched by The Guardian, Marie Stopes and other NGOs, is being sponsored by DFID. Attracting 400 entries, 16 finalists have now visited a different country to investigate issues at first hand. Kate Hardy, one of the finalists, reported from Argentina on how, despite violence and marginalisation, sex workers are leading the way on HIV and Aids prevention.

(Sex) workers unite

O

n 12 April 2008, Carlos Garcia was convicted of the murder of Andrea Rosa Machado in Córdoba, Argentina. The case was a landmark, the first time that anyone had been convicted for the murder of a sex worker in the Latin American country. Garcia was cleared in 2005 in a first trial due to lack of evidence, despite Rosa’s body being found buried beneath the patio of his home.

Corruption throughout the legal system and sex work stigma mean violence against sex workers is rarely taken seriously and often initiated by the police, who elicit bribes and detain women for up to 21 days. When Mirta, Rosa’s sister, reported her missing and told police she suspected she had been killed, no-one listened. It was not until AMMAR took up the case that people began taking notice.

AMMAR is the Argentinian Union of Female Sex Workers, with over 3,800 members across Argentina. AMMAR offer empowerment classes, re-training, gender awareness workshops, microenterprise and healthcare. Elena Reynaga, the General Secretary, says these activities are all important “to remove all the guilt they have put in our heads: that you are bad, a sinner, dirty, drug addicted… it is important to work with our co-workers, to elevate them and to tell them that (sex work) is dignified, as dignified as a gynaecologist, as a sociologist”. Alongside social, education and political programmes, these women are revolutionising approaches to HIV/Aids prevention.

Sex workers are better placed than most for understanding the importance of safe sex. They can access hard-toreach populations with language that is in touch with real sexual practice.

Zulema from AMMAR-Rio Negro described the experience of talking to a group of striking construction workers.

She said, “We took the opportunity to talk to them about HIV prevention and give them condoms and leaflets. At first we were a bit nervous, but afterwards, the men asked us questions and told us they’d never spoken about HIV and they

didn’t know there were STIs, we stayed there talking for three hours.”

Direct and uncomplicated approaches such as these are creating more open dialogue for talking about sensitive issues of sex, even in a context with a strong Catholic church, promoting abstention as the only form of protection. Sex workers have practical working knowledge that can develop needs models and articulate pragmatic ways in which condom-use can best be negotiated.

AMMAR is one of a growing number of sex worker organisations across the world that are transforming HIV/ Aids prevention alongside their daily realities as a stigmatised and excluded group. Officials in Brazil have cited a working partnership with sex worker organisations a key to the country’s falling Aids mortality figures. Similar organisations from Costa Rica, Colombia and Peru to Cambodia, India and South Africa as well as many in the United States and Western Europe are organising around issues surrounding

Image from a AMMAR poster, “I do not feel worthy. Starting to value your profession is starting to value yourself.”

sex work and becoming primary agents in HIV/Aids prevention.

As well as services to the general public, AMMAR provide specialised services to sex workers. With contributions of condoms from the state and municipal authorities, volunteers from AMMAR pass through areas of sex work, talking to women about rights, health and distributing condoms and information.

In La Plata, AMMAR have founded the Sandra Cabrera Health Centre.

This is a joint initiative with the CTA (the umbrella trade union group to which AMMAR belongs) and the Buenos Aires Province Ministry for Health. It has created a space for sex workers in which all their healthcare requirements can be addressed directly alongside other personal needs. Supported by money from The Global Fund Against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the centre attends to a thousand sex workers a month and is also open to members of the public.

Federal and municipal governments now rely on AMMAR’s activists to design, implement and deliver HIV/Aids prevention policies and other sexual health services. But this is dangerous work. Women are still detained for working on the street in most provinces in Argentina. In the state of Jujuy, the police are specifically targeting sex workers known to be activists. Cases of murdered sex workers rarely make it to court and the police have been implicated in the deaths of sex workers, including that of Sandra Cabrera, General Secretary for Rosario on the January 27 2004. Despite, the risks, their work is making a real difference in the fight against HIV/Aids and for creating more open and creative dialogues.

With a sense of pride, Elena shows that participation in the organisation also changes personal experiences, as she tells me, “sometimes I walk in the street and people say to me ‘hey, I saw you on TV, how brave you are, how brave’.”

MORE INFORMATION www.guardian.co.uk/ developmentcompetition

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