DevISSues volume 6, number 2, September 2004

50th PhD defence at ISS

DevISSues DevelopmentISSues

Volume6/Number2/September 2004

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From the Editorial Board

New ISS Short Diploma Programme

Welcome to the second edition of Development ISSues for this year.

After our special issue on Children, Youth and Development, we return to our regular format, with articles and reports on a wide variety of topics.

Globalisation and Labour Rights Challenges for Trade Unions

There is, perhaps, a ‘mini-theme’ in this issue: ISS Dean Des Gasper describes

in a Changing World of Work the ‘lively field of thought called development ethics’ while Irene van Staveren talks about her combined chair in Economics and Christian Ethics at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Attention to new human rights programmes on offer at ISS in Teaching News rounds off our mini-focus on the role of ethics in development.

Other items include an interview with Professor Amina Mama, current holder of the Prince Claus Chair, an article by Professor Mohamed Salih on the continuing unrest in Sudan and edited versions of this year’s award-winning MA research papers. Among the regular features is a special Project News, with two reports, one from a ‘regular’ ISS project in Mozambique and the second describing a cooperative venture with Dutch multinational TPG, a step in a new direction for ISS.

Hopefully this wide variety of topics will set you thinking and inspire you to take part in the ISS online forum or write a letter to the editors.

The DevISSues Editorial Board

A 6-week Certificate (7 March-15 April, 2005) and an 8-week Diploma Programme (7 March-15 April, 2005) plus 2 weeks of work on the Project Report in home country to be submitted within 3 months of return. This course has been developed in close collaboration with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the Dutch Trade Union Federation.

Admission and application: a relevant Bachelor’s degree and working experience; oral and written command of the English language (TOEFL 500, IELTS 5,5).

Download the form from the ISS website www.iss.nl or request an application form by email. For further information contact: Rachel Kurian (Kurian@iss.nl).

Application deadline: 15 december 2004.

Fees: diploma €2,900; Certificate €2,600; plus registration fee of €115. Participants are advised to seek financial support from employers, governments, trade union organisations and international agencies (ILO, EU, UNDP etc). Estimated living costs for 6 weeks in The Hague: €1580.

The views expressed in DevISSues are those of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute.

The Institute of Social Studies ISS is an institute for advanced international education and research offering Diploma, Masters and PhD programmes. The Institute generates, accumulates and transfers knowledge and know-how on human aspects of economic and social change, with a focus on development and transition.

ISS is a leading centre in this field.

Development ISSues is also available on the ISS website at www.iss.nl

CONTENTS

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4 / Striving for gender equality interview: Amina Mama

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6 / MA prize-winners 2004

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8 / Alumni News

Page 10 / Peace and war in Sudan Mohamed Salih Page 12 / Research News Page 14 / Economics and Christian ethics interview: Irene van Staveren Page 16 / Project News Page 19 / International Food Day at ISS Page 20 / Development and ethics Des Gasper Page 22 / Teaching News

4 / INTERVIEW AMINA MAMA

Striving for Gender Equality

‘We have very good ideas but it is not enough just to know’ Amina Mama is Professor of Gender Studies and Director of the African Gender

Q: What is the focus of research at the African Gender Institute?

Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is also current holder of the

AM: If there is a core preoccupation at the Institute, it is about linking theory and activism. A second thread is the need to generate knowledges that are contemporary and emerging in African contexts. These two are linked: if you want to teach gender studies that are pertinent to the challenges of gender inequality and oppression, you need to generate local resources. We draw on a whole community of people working with gender in the African context and combine that with analysis of the international arena and its impact at local level.

Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity. The Prince Claus Chair is held by an eminent scholar from Africa, Asia or Latin America and rotates annually between Utrecht University and ISS. Professor Mama spoke to DevISSues about the challenges of striving for gender equality.

Q: In your inaugural speech as holder of the Prince Claus Chair, you were critical of Western approaches to development cooperation. Are there areas in which

Q: What contribution do you think African feminist theories make to improving the socioeconomic position of women and men in Africa?

Western interventions have been successful?

AM: The interventions of African feminist thinkers have informed and sometimes instigated changes in our understanding of development since the 1970s. And even before then, Western scholars and feminists went to Africa in search of alternative models of gender relations.

AM: In my area of work, of course, you tend to focus on achieving improvement, which makes you critical. But there have been some successes, mostly in the area of achieving entry into various public structures and institutions. In politics and in higher education, for example, women are still grossly underrepresented, but the situation is improving. There have also been impressive increases in the number of countries setting up national machineries to monitor the inclusion of women in development. Yet a critical evaluation of these structures shows that the majority are ineffective. In addition, there have been legal and constitutional gains.

No African countries formally allow discrimination against women, and many policy documents explicitly state the need to overcome gender inequality.

These are all significant and hard-foughtfor achievements, but the question is whether women are any closer to real equality and real power.

We are working in a different paradigm and the students come out very different from other students In this way African thinking inspired alternative views on development before African thinkers themselves became directly involved in the discourse.

In formal terms, the expression of these forms of thought has been more constrained because of the deficits of women academics in African universities.

By bringing people together from across the continent, we are able to generate live material that is very different from conventional scholarly material. We are working in a different paradigm, which requires a lot of justification in conventional academic institutions, but we are very committed to it and the students come out very different from other students.

Q: You have said that it is difficult for black women to penetrate academia in South Africa. But does discrimination also occur in Africa along other lines, ethnicity for example?

AM: People in Africa have internalised ethnographic categorisations of themselves into tribes and those differences are being re-enacted today in African institutions. This includes gender inequality: the colonial state essentially excluded women from jobs in government. Although this exclusion formally came to an end with independence, half a century later the numbers of women working

INTERVIEW AMINA MAMA / 5

towards creating and keeping open some of those free spaces. One way of doing that is to expand our networks nationally and internationally.

The digital divide remains a major problem. Africa produces only 1-1.5% of all international scientific publications.

We are attempting to circumvent the information gap by putting teaching resources on a dedicated website for people teaching in Africa. And we are working on curriculum resources, again to give teachers access to information that is more rooted in the culture and the very diverse contexts and challenges of the continent.

Q: What role can an institute like ISS play in helping to reduce the knowledge gap?

Does long-distance education offer a possible solution?

in government are still very small.

This shows the persistence of deeply gendered cultures. And it applies equally to ethnicity and religion. These dividing lines evolve and change and can even swap places. In Nigeria, for example, religion has replaced ethnicity as the primary source of division. In a number of countries with an essentially monolingual culture, such as Rwanda or Somalia, this has led to terrible conflicts.

Divisive identities are fabricated and perpetuated by the modern state, with disastrous consequences.

Q: As a social scientist and psychologist, what concrete solutions can you offer to the kinds of problems you have been talking about here?

AM: As researchers we can activate and unleash new perspectives. We have three or four decades of accumulated experience of modernisation and statecraft, struggles for democracy, gender justice and equality. But without proper institutions and structures for research, and for publication and dissemination of the results, all that experience turns to sand.

To combat that we need to develop

practical skill experiences: political lobbying, being involved in politics.

And then there are lived experiences that have existed outside today’s recipes for what it is to be proper, how to work and live. There are different ways of doing things and some of these are being taken up – the idea of microcredit and cooperative savings, for instance, comes from a traditional practice. I like to think there are a lot more of those untapped resources that we could make better use of if we only open our eyes.

Secondly, as Edward Said said, oppression in its various forms is maintained collectively, so it has to be challenged collectively. We have had very good ideas but it is not enough just to know. Knowledge must be activated and that requires strategies and new forms of organisation. This is a serious challenge. How are we to build collective spaces, not just for action, but also for imagining different futures?

Universities are supposed to be part of that free space, but the pressure to produce output, the focus on quantity rather than quality, works against that.

This is not state repression, it is selfcensorship. The challenge is to work

AM: The value of distance education is that it depends on who is providing it.

The African Virtual University project, for example, has been accompanied by a great deal of self-congratulation. But when you get down to local accounts, there are many difficulties and the risk of it being a vehicle for intellectual imperialism is very apparent. In many cases, especially if the projects are funded by the World Bank, they are US-led. It also means we tend to ignore our own capacities and resources, and they become marginalised in favour of grand projects from the international financial institutions. But if you have great faith in African intellectual capacity, you might feel that is endangered by such projects.

Smaller institutes like ISS can play a role in working in a truly collaborative way, and in a manner that works against the reproduction of old divisions which cast Western teachers as experts and Third World participants as students who come here to acquire Western wisdom, which they then take home and apply.

I believe that people at ISS know better than that, but funding structures and institutional cultures make it difficult.

They have a certain persistence which requires constant vigilance. It is vital to be alert to the legacies of history and the dynamics of today’s global market, which has a remarkable tendency to reiterate, echo and reinstate some of those inequalities.

Amina Mama can be contacted at amama@humanities.uct.ac.za

6 / MA PRIZE WINNERS

2004 MA Prize Winners Each year ISS awards a Research Paper Prize to two or three MA students. The prize committee, made up of one external examiner and two ISS members of staff, review the nominated papers and draw up a shortlist of five candidates. They then choose the papers which they feel stand out above the >

Conditional Cash Transfers: why have they become so prominent in recent poverty reduction strategies in Latin America?

Tatiana Feitosa de Britto This research paper analyses a new policy trend that came to occupy quite a central place in the poverty reduction agenda of Latin America in the late 1990s: the provision of cash transfers to poor families conditioned on investments in human capital by the recipients.

Through a comparative approach with the previous practice of establishing social investment funds in the region, the paper discusses particular characteristics, selected implementation aspects and contextual factors that help explain the reasons behind the popularity and visibility of this policy option among governments and multilateral donors.

The discussion is based on a policy analysis framework comprising two interrelated sets of tools: a criteria framework with five elements (political feasibility, administrative operability, adequacy, collateral effects and targeting) and a political economy framework with four central aspects related to the policy process (technical advice, bureaucratic implications, political stability and

support, and international pressure and leverage). Additionally, three case studies are used: the social investment fund experience implemented in Bolivia since 1986, and the conditional cash transfer programmes of Mexico (Progresa) and Brazil (Bolsa Escola).

The assessment of social investment funds and conditional cash transfers through the criteria framework produced mixed findings, since both types of intervention had a number of positive and negative aspects. Despite these mixed results, the paper points out that conditional cash transfers indeed exceeded social investment funds in some aspects and could be considered their logical and complementary followup. While the latter had a crucial role in the provision of social services and infrastructure to the poor, they only addressed supply-side constraints. The presence of a health post or a school in a poor community is not automatically translated into greater investments in human capital. Demand-side incentives might be necessary to make sure that these services effectively reach the poor.

some variations in degree. International leverage was identified as the main drive behind the popularity of both social investment funds and conditional cash transfers across the Latin American region. But this finding did not lead to a clear cut conclusion that governments had no choices or room for manoeuvre in their poverty reduction agenda. In fact, the conditional cash transfers of Mexico and Brazil were examples of quite the opposite: both were homegrown pioneer experiences, which ended up being ‘bought’ by donors and ‘sold’ as innovative solutions elsewhere.

The paper concludes with a cautionary note regarding the increasing prominence of conditional cash transfers in the development agenda. As much as these programmes might have an important role in structural poverty reduction, there are limits to what they can achieve.

Unless this is taken into account, these interventions risk remaining only a fashionable set of programmes with laudable objectives.

Tatiana Feitosa de Britto currently works at the Brazilian Ministry of Social Development.

In terms of the political economy and policy process, the four factors analysed seem to have played an important role in the cases studied, although with

She can be contacted at tatib@brturbo.com and britto_tatiana@hotmail.com.

MA PRIZE WINNERS

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others. This year’s winners were Emily Wilkinson, who was a participant in the Local and Regional Development programme, and Tatiana Feitosa de Britto, who studied in the Public Policy and Management programme. You can read edited versions of the winning papers here below.

Legalising Informal Settlements: some unexpected benefits Emily Wilkinson Is legalisation of informal property key to local economic development (LED), or does it destroy the autonomous efforts of the communities it is meant to benefit? This is not a new debate but it is still a pertinent one, as legalisation is much favoured by the World Bank and governments looking for low-cost ways to promote development and win support.

LED is based on the premise that economic development within a defined economic zone can be generated by using local resources and through improved relations between different local actors. There are three broad categories of local economic development: community economic development, enterprise development and locality development. The paper focused on community economic development (CED) as this framework is most adaptable to the socioeconomic context of urban settlements. The idea behind CED is to facilitate household diversification of economic activity to improve livelihood and reduce poverty and vulnerability.

Assisted by existing literature arguing for and against land titling as key component of a settlement upgrading strategy, as well as the highly controversial theory of Peruvian academic Hernando de Soto that legalisation of property allows the poor to use it as a productive asset, I put forward a new theory: that land titling stimulates local economic development in squatter settlements.

The theory was based on a number of hypotheses: that de jure ownership would stimulate investment in housing consolidation, facilitate access to formal credit, and lead to improvement in basic services. Other questions were the effect formalisation would have on social cohesion, crime levels and dealing with anti-social behaviour.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of survey data led to the conclusion that legalisation does in fact stimulate the local economy through improved access to formal (state) credit, and better job prospects as residents feel secure enough to leave their homes and go out to look for work. However, contrary to de Soto’s theory, evidence suggests that a formal title is not a sufficient guarantee for granting private sector loans. Stability and level of income are also important determinants. This finding should come as no surprise to anyone who understands the operating logic of financial institutions, even those focused on micro finance. What is more surprising – and hard line critics of formalisation should note – is that legalisation not only alters social relations within squatter settlements and between settlement dwellers and exogenous actors (state

and private utility companies), but that these changes, overall, help stimulate community economic development processes and hence local economic development. It seems that communities with legally recognised rights to their property are able to better organise and vocalise their demands for service delivery through residents’ associations, and have been more effective in getting services installed in their settlement than those without legal titles. Instead of having to bargain in a clientelistic manner to get access to public resources, which invariably produces particularistic, inequitable gains, settlement legalisation puts communities on a more equal footing vis-à-vis the state. Thus, legalisation not only enters poor and formerly ‘excluded’ people into a closer relationship with the state – offering them a ‘right to the city’ in the legal sense – but it actually alters the nature of that relationship.

Emily Wilkinson is currently working as a researcher at the Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. She can be contacted at wilkinsonemily@hotmail.com

8 / ALUMNI NEWS

Alumni News Profile

Orlando Lara Orlando Lara from Honduras describes his career development after graduating from the Agriculture and Rural Development Programme, the predecessor to the Rural Livelihoods and Global Change Programme at ISS

I attended ISS in 1997-98, one of a group of 17 participants from around the world. ‘The pesantria’ we used to call ourselves in Spanglish. ISS brought me new insights and perspectives as a professional. Participation in the ISS students’ association SCHOLAS and long discussions with classmates helped me to understand and compare realities in Asia, Latin America and Africa. We discovered that as citizens of the Third World we have a lot to share, as well as an important opportunity to serve our countries. I made some great friends, who I keep close to my heart, and I met my wife, Ana, from Argentina. My family is now bringing the dream of an integrated Latin America a little closer, with two beautiful children.

After graduating from ISS in 1998 I worked for a short time as consultant for a Dutch NGO which had projects in Central America. After that I worked for the Tropical Agriculture International Centre (CIAT) based in Colombia, preparing a database of fair-trade organisations in Europe for CIAT’s web page. I then moved to Argentina, to work for the University of San Juan as part of an interdisciplinary group analysing the effects of trade liberalisation on fruit and vegetable growers in the Cuyo Region. The courses I attended at ISS on market trends and trade policies were very helpful for this post.

I returned to Honduras in 2000 to work with the national coalition of civil-society organisations INTERFOROS on a pilot project to improve the local, regional and national coordination of civil-society groups. I also worked as a freelance consultant analysing the maize agro-food chain in Honduras, and facilitating workshops and training for a network promoting gender perspectives in rural development projects and for a Women Credit Cooperative.

From 2001 to 2002, I coordinated a UNDP watershed local development project which covered micro-watersheds in three of the main rivers in Honduras. I was in charge of regional stakeholder analysis, facilitation of Participatory Rural Analysis and development of regional spaces to define a natural resources watershed plan, including

capacity building of grassroots organisations. In the last phase the project developed a field strategy and provided a project portfolio (as an outcome of the communal PRAs) as input for a larger National Watershed Project financed by the IDB. Again the knowledge I acquired at ISS on local development programmes and projects was crucial for my work.

I was then appointed temporary coordinator to start an IDB Natural Resource Management Project on Upper Watersheds.

The first activities included establishing the preconditions to receive funds, preparing annual operative plans, revising execution guidelines and supporting recruitment of staff appointed by the Ministries of Agriculture, Forestry, Natural Resources and Emergency-Risk Management and the National Association of Municipalities.

I am currently working as Food Security Program Officer in Honduras for a Danish NGO, Dan Church Aid (DCA). My duties includes project appraisal, monitoring the project portfolio, working on alliances and networks that connect field experiences with advocacy, and processes for policies and operational strategies conducted by national ethnic and producers organisations.

I consider the education provided by ISS on agricultural policies and tools, as well as on population, food security and environmental issues, to have been key resources in my current job. I still keep my ISS coffee card, hoping that one day I will return for a cup of coffee and a good talk.

Orlando Lara can be contacted at bekius@iss.nl

ALUMNI NEWS

Alumni News Kenya On 22 May and 29 May respectively, The Kenya chapter of the ISS alumni Association and the Netherlands Alumni Association of Kenya were officially launched.

The Kenya chapter of the ISS Alumni Association was launched at the United Kenya Club. About 50 alumni gathered to celebrate the launch, bringing with them some 20 guests. Speakers included the ISS alumni Okero Isaack Otieno and Hannington Odame, and ISS Alumni Officer René Bekius The ISS Kenya Alumni Association can be contacted at iotieno@yahoo.com

It is open to all Filipinos who have completed a degree, diploma and/or training course in any university or training institution and were funded by a Netherlands fellowship, scholarship or other form of grant. It currently has a membership of 2,500 alumni. It provides training activities, workshops, seminars, educational campaigns, conferences and symposia, and prepares fellows leaving to study in the Netherlands.

Former president of the NFFPI and ISS alumnus (1976-1978) Professor Jose Gatchalian recently visited ISS where he met with ISS Alumni Officer René Bekius and others.

Tanya van Gool, Dutch Ambassador to Kenya Professor Jose Gatchalian (left) enjoying lunch at ISS

The launching ceremony for the NAAK took place in the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi and was attended by 570 alumni and special guests, including a number of government ministers. The keynote address was delivered by the Dutch Ambassador to Kenya, mrs. Tanya van Gool. The NAAK is only the third country-wide alumni association in Kenya.

Israel and the US also have alumi associations in the country.

ISS would like to thank all those involved in the launch of both alumni associaitons, especially Isaack Otieno (Lecturer Political Science), Hannington Odame (ISS PhD student), Agnew Mbwavi (MA LRD 2001/2), Dorine Lugendo (MA, University Twente) and Grace Vuhya, fellowship officer at the Dutch Embassy. The NAAK can be contacted via: grace.vuhyaobeda@minbuza.nl or via Dorine Lugendo (email: delugz@yahoo.com) ISS Alumna Matilda Sakwa (PADS 98/99), Office of the President, Nairobi

Philippines Last year, the Netherlands Fellows Foundation of the Philippines, Inc. (NFFPI) celebrated its 25th anniversary.

The NFFPI was set up in 1978 to foster camaraderie among its members and develop their potential and capabilities.

Nepal The Netherlands Alumni Association of Nepal (NAAN) has organized an "Orientation and Interaction Program" on the 14th of August to provide general information about the Metherlands , Dutch academic institutes and higher educational institutes where new students soon will arrive for their studies. ISS hopes that ISS alumni associations as well as other Netherlands Alumni Associations copy this wonderful service developed by the NAAN.

Contact a classmate You can look for fellow alumni on the ISS website by following the path Alumni, Stay in touch, Contact a classmate.

It is, however, important that you fill in all the fields in the electronic form. If you don’t we can’t help you to trace your former classmates.

Announce a meeting We would like to draw your attention once again to the facility on the ISS alumni website to provide information on conferences, workshops or seminars in your country or region. The editors would very much appreciate your active input in filling in the conference form regularly.

We will then publish the information – perhaps in a summarised form – in DevISSues or on the electronic discussion platform linked to DevISSues.

Please keep us informed about your career developments or send us news of other alumni you are in touch with by mailing is at alumni@iss.nl

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10 / SUDAN

Eastern Sudan, displaced women and children from the Masaliet tribe are waiting for food that is handed out by MSF in the feeding centre that is set up by MSF and other aid agencies. The people did flee the civil war in the Darfur area.

Sudan The Reward of Peace is War Mohamed Salih Sudan is experiencing two contradictory events of momentous proportions.

The first is the conclusion of successful peace agreements with the South, cove-

have been displaced and more than 110,000 are at risk of death through starvation. Why should the reward of peace in one region be war in another?

Many have mistaken the current opposition to the peace process presided over by the government of the National Islamic Front and the SPLA/SPLM as

opposition to peace itself. But critics of the process consider it faulty because it is not inclusive, and is founded on the wrong premise: that the war in Sudan is between South and North. This ignores the fact that the current civil war is being fought not only in the South, but in the Nuba Mountains, and in Eastern

ring wealth-sharing, power-sharing and the security framework. The other is

Major players in the Darfur conflict

the ferocious civil war which has been

• Government of the Sudan: dominated by National Islamic Front; enacted the Popular Defence Forces law in October 1989, with the stated aim of instilling professionalism and discipline into the militias.

• Janjaweed Arab militias: part of the Popular Defence Forces.

• Darfur resistance movement: consists of the Justice and Equality Movement, Darfur Liberation Movement, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance.

• United Nations Security Council: passed Resolution 1505 on July 30 calling on Sudan to disarm the Janjaweed militias within 30 days.

• European Union, the United States and the African Union: sponsors of UN Resolution 1505.

• SPLA/SPLM: Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement; no longer part of the Darfur conflict after signing the security framework as part of the peace agreements.

raging in the western region of Darfur since 2002.

The people of Sudan and the outside world are divided between optimism about the potential return of peace to the South, where about two million people have lost their lives and an equal number have been displaced, and the carnage of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, where over a million people

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and Western Sudan. Solving the SouthNorth conflict without comprehensively engaging the other forces serves only to transfer the war to parts of the country that feel aggrieved by the terms of the peace agreement.

VIEWS ON THE PEACE AGREEMENT The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), an alliance of opposition groups based in Asmara, Eritrea, has voiced concerns about the peace process. Its SecretaryGeneral, Pagan Amum, has said that the NDA will continue its armed struggle as long as it is excluded from the peace negotiations. NDA spokesman Hatim Ali claims that the peace process is incomprehensive and does not have a solid basis, because it does not include the democratic forces. He has described it as an agreement between leaders (Sudan’s President al-Bashir and SPLM leader John Garang) who seized power through the gun.

Although Pagan Amum and Hatim Ali have since mellowed their rhetoric and the NDA has recently pledged to support the peace agreement, these views are still shared by many in the alliance.

The peace agreements have heralded the re-emergence of the ‘new forces’ as the voice of ‘marginalised Sudan’. These forces are made up of the opposition groups which formed the Sudan Civic Forum in Kampala, marginalised minorities in Sudan, the South Sudan Defence Forces, the Democratic Forum in London, the Nuba Mountain Conference, the South Blue Nile Conference, the Ngok Dinka Conference and the armed resistance in Darfur.1 The new forces claim that the SPLA/SPLM’s concept of ‘new Sudan’ became obsolete when the SPLA/SPLM agreed to the terms of the peace agreement with the government and thereby joined one of the most conservative elements of ‘old Sudan’.

On 20 June 2003, Suleiman Musa Rahhal, director of the Nuba Survival Foundation, sent an open letter to General Lazaro Sumbeiywo, the Kenyan official presiding over the peace negotiations. In the letter he stated that the Nuba Mountains Region should not be part of a Northern or Southern entity, but independent and administered by a Broad National Government. He added: ‘When the people of Southern Sudan, at the end of the transition period, decide in the

referendum to opt for independent Southern state, the people of Nuba Mountains should immediately exercise freely their right to self-determination and use the options open to them. The options shall be as follows: a) unity with the Northern entity; b) unity with the Southern entity, and independent statehood’.

The South Sudan church leaders’ communiqué at the 2002 Entebbe conference emphasised that: ‘It is misleading to assume that all the peoples of Sudan share a common heritage and aspirations. In fact the lack of commonality is apparent in the underlying root causes of the current conflict, which itself is a manifestation of the absence of consensus and shared values for the people of Sudan. In reality, there is an extensive and painful history of oppression, exploitation, slavery and aggression experienced by Southern and other marginalised Sudanese peoples which is extremely different from that experienced by other peoples in the country’.

Even in South Sudan, which should benefit from the peace agreements, there were critical voices. On 2 February 2003, the Zande of Equatoria State submitted a petition, entitled ‘Disgraced SPLM’ and signed by 33 prominent personalities and church leaders. They were worried about handing the South over to the SPLA/ SPLM, which they see as dominated by the Dinka ethnic group. The petition demanded that ‘all Dinka and excess soldiers who roam about the liberated areas terrorising local people should be moved to the various fronts and, for

security reasons, each liberated area be left under the control of police and few security personnel originally from the area.’

DARFUR AND WHY WAR IS A REWARD FOR PEACE The eruption of the conflict in Darfur is logical outcome of the peace agreements, which are founded on the assumption that the war in Sudan is a South-North affair. This assumption has long been overtaken by events as the war has engulfed the other marginalised regions of the country.

In the wake of the signing of the agreements between the SPLA/SPLM and the Government of Sudan, the opposition forces in Darfur were the first to intensify the war effort. Four Darfur groups (the Justice and Equality Movement, the Darfur Liberation Movement, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance) battled it out with Arab tribal militias (Janjaweed) sponsored by the Sudan government.

The only remaining hope is if the SPLA/ SPLM and the Sudan Government were to use the current peace agreements as precursors to a more inclusive peace and not an end in themselves. If they do not, any long-term peace agreement they enter into will transform the discourse of peace into a discourse of war. The unsavoury conclusion that war could become the reward of peace is a sad one.

Mohamed Salih is Professor of Politics of Development at ISS and the Department of Political Science University of Leiden. He can be contacted at salih@iss.nl.

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For more details on this issue, see Institute of

Strategic Studies document, 1 May

Pronk appointed as UN Special Envoy to Sudan On 18 June, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan announced that he had appointed Jan Pronk as the UN’s Special Envoy to Sudan. Pronk is a former Dutch development and environment minister and was Annan's envoy at the sustainable development summit in Johannesburg in 2002. He is currently Professor of Theory and Practice of International Development at ISS.

12 / RESEARCH NEWS

Research News ISS PhD Programme

Looking Forward, Looking Back On 8 April, the 50th PhD Public Defence was held at ISS.1 To mark the occasion, Professor Ben White, Chair of the ISS PhD Committee, looked back on the history of the Institute’s PhD programme, and took a glimpse into the future. Here is an edited version of his speech.

When the first PhD candidates registered at ISS in the early 1980s – nearly all of them supported by internal ISS funds, and the first two before our PhD was even recognised by the Dutch government – it could scarcely be said that we had a firm foundation for a successful and sustainable PhD programme.

Since that time, a number of milestones have contributed to shaping the ISS PhD programme into what it is today.

Recognition by the Minister of Education came in 1986, just in time for our first public defence, by K.P. Kannan. Key milestones in the years that followed include the Ministry of Development Cooperation’s decision to grant us two ‘trial’ PhD fellowships in 1989 and 1991, and from 1992 onwards five new fellowships each year; the development of a coursework component in the first year of the PhD programme, starting in 1992 and evolving into the present three-course offering in 1994; the inclusion in the new Law on Higher Education (1993) of article 16.8 on the ‘Doctorate of the International Institute of Social Studies’, and later in the same year our decision to join the CERES Research School (as one of its biggest members in terms of numbers of PhD candidates).

For a long period, more than 10 years, we had the luxury – one which we used well, in my view – of five new PhD fellowship awards each year from the Netherlands Fellowship Programme. We could allocate these according to our own assessment of the relative qualities of the candidates and their research proposals. This was the core of our programme, to which we added about five more candidates each year with sponsorship from other sources (such as NWO/WOTRO, various collaborative projects in

Professor Marc Wuyts and Le Thi van Hue

Ethiopia, Vietnam and Namibia, and a small number of self-paying candidates).

In recent years we have seen between 8 and 12 new entrants to the PhD programme each year (selected from about 100 applicants); this means, theoretically, in a four-year programme there would be about 30 PhD candidates in residence at any time and another 10 engaged in field research. In reality, things being what they are, the numbers actually registered are somewhat larger than this. Some take longer than four years – often for very good reasons, having obtained good positions before completing the PhD, or having made a conscious choice to do some part-time work in teaching or research along the way to consolidate their CVs. The number of candidates currently registered is in fact slightly more than the total number of completed PhDs to date, suggesting that we will reach the 100th PhD defence much faster than it took us to reach the 50th.

On the whole I think we have been able to offer good workspace and other facilities to our PhD candidates.

Their presence and activities also have been very important for the intellectual atmosphere here at ISS, as well as in larger groupings such as the CERES research school.

When I look at the theses that have emerged from ISS, and at the research topics chosen by the new candidates, I feel confident that we can compete well with any institute or department, in the Netherlands or internationally, in terms of both the quality and the development relevance of our Continue on next page

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PhDs. The gender balance among our PhD candidates, not very good in the early years (with only 13 women among the first 50 completed PhDs) has now improved markedly: among the 38 candidates in residence at ISS at the end of 2003, there were exactly 19 women and 19 men.

The admissions round for the 2004 programme saw the start of a new system in which there is no longer a block of NFP fellowships reserved for ISS, or for any other institution.

Our candidates, once having secured admission through our academic selection process, now compete with candi-

dates of all other Dutch universities and institutes, from all the NFP countries. In this new selection process we were very successful, obtaining about half of all the fellowships awarded.

Besides fellowships sponsors, the PhD programme relies on the inputs and commitment of promotors and copromotors both within and outside ISS, the coursework staff, and the support of many departments (particularly Information and Library Services) and many individual staff. The key figures on the front line are of course Dita Dirks and Maureen Koster in the PhD Secretariat.

As my colleague at the Amsterdam School once noted, good PhD programmes have to tread a careful path between over-structuring on the one hand and laissez-faire on the other.2 At ISS we will continue to aim for the right balance, encouraging the greatest possible intellectual independence and creativity, within a structure of clear operating agreements between candidates, supervisors and the various bodies that support the academic work of the ISS. Ben White can be contacted at white@iss.nl

1

The 50th PhD defence was Vijay Gudavarthy for his thesis The New Pattern of Industrial Relations in India; Restructuring and Social Insecurity.

2

Hans Sonneveld, A well-organised intellectual liberalism: 100 PhD theses at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research. Amsterdam, 2002.

Research News

New doctors at ISS The following participants have

Nicholas Awortwi,

Vijay Gudavarthy,

Getting the Fundamentals Wrong:

Maastricht: Shaker, 2003,

The New Pattern of Industrial Relations in India; Restructuring and Social Insecurity: A case-study of Kothur, a new township in Andhra Pradesh.

351 p., Promotors:

Maastricht, Shaker, 2004,

Prof. A.H.J. Helmsing and

223 p. Promotors:

Dr Erhard Berner,

Prof. J.C. Breman

Promotion date:

and Prof. Henk Thomas,

10 February 2004

Promotion date: 8 April 2004

Email: Aworti@iss.nl

Email: gudavarthyvijay@

Governance of multiple modalities of basic services delivery in three Ghanaian cities.

recently been awarded PhDs at ISS. Please contact the participants themselves for further details of their theses.

Nguyen Manh Cuong,

hotmail.com

Does Ownership Matter to Enterprise Performance?

A Comparative Study of Private and State Enterprises in Vietnam’s Textile-Garment Industry.

Le Thi Van Hue,

260 p. ISBN 90-423-0244-5

Common Pool Resource Management: the case of the Eastern Communal Rangelands in semi-arid Namibia.

Maastricht: Shaker, 2004.

Promotors: Prof. Ben White

Maastricht: Shaker, 2002,

isbn 90-423-0246-1

and Dr John Kleinen,

326 p., Promotors:

Promotors: Prof. Henk

Promotion date:

Prof. J.B. Opschoor and

Thomas and dr. Karel

5 July 2004

Dr A.J.M. van de Laar,

Jansen, Promotion date:

Email:

Promotion date:

24 May 2004

huele2002@yahoo.com

24 March 2003

Coastal Resource Use and Management in a Village of Northern Vietnam.

Maastricht: Shaker, 2004,

Omu KakujahaMatundu,

Email:

Email:

manhcuongiss@yahoo.com

Okumbazu@yahoo.com

1 4 / I N T E R V I E W I R E N E V A N S TA V E R E N

Ethics and Human Relationships are still a Blind Spot for Economists Interview: Irene van Staveren

Irene van Staveren, Senior Lecturer in Employment and Human Resource Development at ISS, was recently appointed Professor of Economics and Christian Ethics at Radboud University, Nijmegen, one of only three such chairs in the Netherlands. In this interview, she explains her views on the role of ethics in economics and development.

Q: Economics and ethics seem a strange combination at first sight. How did you come to combine the two?

IvS: I was already interested in ethical issues when I was doing my economics degree and I was disappointed that they were not covered in my courses.

Economists often start out as idealists wanting to eliminate unemployment and poverty. But the more they learn, the more they focus on models and statistics. When I started to work, I did research on the arms trade. I was horrified to discover that the Netherlands is one of the world’s top ten arms exporters. Even as an economist, you can look at this from a different

perspective than simply calculating how much it earns for us. Developing countries spend money on arms at the expense of education and health and this has a negative impact on their economic development.

I see Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen as an important figure because he has tried to reintroduce ethics into economics. He contests the standard theory that people make economic choices on the basis of what is financially beneficial for them.

Aristotle is perhaps an even more important figure for me. He wrote about values in terms of virtues: human beings

try to be good, honest and so on. On that basis you can develop an alternative view of the ‘economic individual’, elaborating the ideas of the latest Nobel Prize winner, Danile Kahneman, who has rejected the notion of utility maximisation on the basis of empirical psychological research on rationality.

Q: What role do you see for the government in reconciling economics and ethics?

IvS: Since I am an economist by training, I do not include myself in that small group of anti-globalists who aim to reverse the whole process of globalisation. Openness and exchange between

I N T E R V I E W I R E N E V A N S TA V E R E N / 1 5

countries can have a positive impact, and not just for rich countries. I believe that government has a role to play ensuring that globalisation contributes to reducing poverty and instability.

The trend towards reducing the role of government we see in the Netherlands today is dangerous. Here, too, globalisation demands strong government to counter the growing power of the markets and the inequality and instability this leads to. Last year, I published an article on the privatisation of the Dutch taxi market showing how, contrary to expectations, it has resulted in lower quality and higher prices.

Anti-globalist spokesperson Naomi Klein sees globalisation primarily as serving the interests of multinational companies, which fill the coffers of presidential candidates. There is some truth in this assertion, but it is also very one-sided. Several prominent international commissions want another kind of globalisation: the final report of the World Commission on the Social

Dimensions of Globalisation describes a form of globalisation that creates opportunities for people and in which ethics plays a major role.

Q: The title of your chair specifically mentions Christian ethics. How important is the Christian aspect in your work?

IvS: My personal views on ethics are grounded in Christianity, but I do not necessarily deliberately draw my values from this particular tradition.

The dominant values in our society have been strongly influenced by Christianity, but also by humanism and by contact with other traditions outside Europe.

That is why I sometimes have difficulty answering the question of how Christian specific values really are. Ethical values, such as justice or benevolence, in fact have their roots in Greek civilisation, which makes it very hard to attribute them to one particular ethical tradition.

Nor can you say that Islamic values have nothing in common with Christian values, since these also go back to Aristotle and Plato – through, for example,

Averroes. For Muslims, love of one’s neighbour is equally important, for example, as it is in Christianity. We should not try and claim these values as Christian. That is why I am sceptical of the present government’s national debate on values – as if values can be forced upon people from above. I would rather see our government, at home and in Europe (it currently holds the Presidency of the European Union), listening to the values of the people, as expressed for example in outrage about excessive salaries and bonuses for top managers while employees are being made redundant or awarded very small pay rises. Inequality can be demoralising, with negative impacts on productivity, trade, and other economic variables: this is one of the central theses of the study of ethics and economics.

Irene van Staveren can be contacted at staveren@iss.nl This is a revised version of an interview originally published in the Dutch magazine VolZin, opinieblad voor geloof en samenleving, 3 (2004) 9, pp. 6-9.

Staff News New Staff

New appointments

Dr Kees Biekart, Senior Lecturer in Political Sociology as of 1 May.

Femke van der Vliet, External Communications Officer as of 1 October.

Michel Wesseling, Head of Office of Information and Communication Technology Management as of 1 September.

Harold Gabriel van der Linden, Facility Officer in the Office of Management and Budget as of 1 July.

Leaving Sally Brooks, Teaching assistant, Public Policy and Management, as of 31 July.

Niek de Jong, is leaving ISS to concentrate of finishing his PhD, as of 15 April.

Dr Abbas Abdelkarim Ahmed, has been appointed senior consultant at the National Human Resource Development and Employment Authority in United Arab Emirates, as of 1 July.

Prof. Amina Mama, holder of the Prince Claus Chair, as of 15 July.

Dr Brigitte Holzner, will take up a position as Gender Officer at the newly founded Austrian Development Agency in Vienna as of 1 September.

Helen Kooijman, Head of Office of Information and Communication Technology Management, is leaving ISS to take early retirement, as of 1 October.

Janneke Nijdam, assistant to the CESTRAD Documentation Centre as of 15 July.

Dr Dele Olowu, will take up a position at the African Development Bank in Tunis, as of 1 July.

Dr George Tsogas, as of 1 July.

Dr Marianne van der Weiden, Academic Registrar, has accepted a new post as strategic manager with a branch organisation for vocational education, as of 1 June.

16 / PROJECT NEWS

Project News ISS project in Mozambique

Capacity Building in Good Governance and Public Administration In December 2003 Nuffic awarded ISS a grant to implement a project entitled ‘Capacity Building in Good Governance and Public Administration in Mozambique’. The project aims to contribute to the ongoing public sector reform in Mozambique by enhancing the quality of training, research and outreach capacities of the staff of four institutions: the Higher Institute of Public Administration (ISAP) of the Ministry of State Administration; the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FLCS) of the University Eduardo Mondlane; the Higher Institute for International Relations (ISRI); and the Academy of Police Sciences (ACIPOL).

A series of short and long-term training programmes will be conducted to improve the technical, functional and analytical skills of the staff of the four institutions in the areas of good governance and public administration. The project will also help the institutions develop their software and hardware teaching materials to complement the training programmes; and it will review the existing course curricula in the four institutions with the aim of improving them and also institutionalising the new training programmes both at Bachelors and Masters degree levels.

The impact of the project will be measured in the following areas: • Empowerment of civil servants in managerial positions with the necessary technical, functional and analytical skills in public administration, management and good governance.

• Improvement in the relevance of the course programmes of the four institutions in producing administrators with the high-level skills and competencies required by public and private sector employers;

• Improvement in the efficiency of delivering public services through the use of information, communication and technology.

Training programmes A total of 16 staff members of the institutions will benefit from long-term training programmes (MA & PhD studies).

Each institution will initiate an open and transparent process to identify and present candidates for postgraduate studies.

This will be considered part of the ‘good governance’ process and as a way of responding to the admission criteria set by universities/training institutions abroad.

Parallel with the above process of training MA students, a study will be conducted on alternative modalities for organising postgraduate studies. This will include analysing the possibilities of implementing an MA course in Mozambique in conjunction with Southern partners.

Curriculum development The four institutions have different and rather specific needs in relation to curriculum development, which have to be addressed through tailor-made and focused support programmes. Curriculum reviews, improvements and new curricula designs will begin in all the institutions this year.

Some lecturers from the four institutions will be sent abroad to work with resource persons on curriculum improvement and identification of resource materials.

Common curriculum Whilst the curriculum process will be handled on a largely institution-specific basis, ISS has also agreed with the Mozambican partners to introduce a common curriculum programme which will attempt to promote interaction, information and debate on topics of common concern.

Common research programme Whereas curriculum design is to be handled on a largely institution-specific basis, it was felt that research lends itself to cross-institutional initiative and activity. Thus activities planned in the institutions will be strengthened and enriched by an overall common research programme emphasising and facilitating collaboration. The programme will be facilitated by the ISS but coordinated by the participating institutions themselves.

Nicholas Aworti and Dan Smit

Continue on next page

PROJECT NEWS / 17

Project coordination and management The project is managed by four consortium partners: ISS, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the Institute of Housing and Urban Studies (IHS), Rotterdam, and Mozambique-based research consultants T&B Consult.

ISS is the lead organisation responsible for overall project management and the main service provider in terms of training and capacity building in public administration and governance. The TU Delft is the main provider of the ICT services component of the project whilst IHS provides additional capacity. T&B Consult, by virtue of its extensive involvement in Mozambique, handles the project office in Maputo. The international team leader is Ms Hanne Roden.

ISS has also entered into institutional collaboration with five regional partner institutions to implement the project: the Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), School of Development Studies, University of Natal (South Africa), Department of Political and Administrative Studies,

University of Botswana (Botswana), Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (Ghana), and the Institute of Local Government, University of Fort Hare (South Africa).

Between January and April 2004, an inception phase was carried out aimed at building a platform in Mozambique and conducting detailed planning on the project. Though the project is challenging, the inception mission team concluded that the consortium will be able to respond to Mozambican demands provided that a balance can be maintained between funding the Mozambicans’ internally driven processes and the consortium’s external inputs.

The team also noted with satisfaction that the project office in Maputo has made good progress in interfacing with Mozambican partners. It has laid a strong foundation for the project to be launched.

For more details on the project, please contact Dan Smit (smit@iss.nl)

ISS agenda

2004 9-11 September

All events are at ISS unless otherwise stated. Public Lectures start at 16.00 and take place in the Aula. For more information on events see the ISS website.

Conference: Neo-Liberalism after Three Decades; the End of an Epoch or a New Mutation?

20 September

Public Lecture and Discussion on the theme of Culture and Development, organised in cooperation with the Prince Clause Fund for Culture & development (The Hague). Speaker: Breyten Breytenbach, South Africa writer and poet and Director of the Goree Institute, Senegal.

Location: Peace Palace. Time: 16.00

23 September

Public Lecture: China's Open Policy And International Law by Her Exc. Xue Hanqin, Ambassador of the Peoples Republic of China in The Netherlands (co-organised with the Clingendael Institute)

27 September

Prof. Ashwani Saith (ISS) Decent Work: Just Another Slogan? Global Development, Population, Rural Livelihoods Seminars

4 October

Haroon Akram-Lodhi (ISS): Vietnam’s Agriculture: Processes of Rich Peasant Accumulation and Mechanisms of Social Differentiation. Global Development, Population, Rural Livelihoods Seminars

7 October

ISS DIES NATALIS 2004: Address by Professor Diane Elson, University of Essex, UK, on Femenist Development Economics

18 October 8 November

Christophe Z. Guilmoto (IRD-Paris)Lost in Transition. Global Development, Population, Rural Livelihoods Seminars Anthony Bebbington (Univ. of Manchester) Livelihoods and Resources Accessing in the High Andes: Desencuentors in Theory and Practice. Global Development, Population, Rural Livelihoods Seminars

22 November

Jonathan D. Rigg (University of Durham) Muddles Spaces, Juggled Lives: Livelihoods and Transition in Laos. Global Development, Population, Rural Livelihoods Seminars

25 November

Development-focused International Education; past and future orientations. Farewell conference/reception in honour of the outgoing Rector Hans Opschoor

6 December

Lionel R. Cliffe (Univ. of Leeds) Agrarian Reform does Mode of Production Offer a Point of Departure?

Henry Bernstein (School of Oriental & African Studies, London) Agrarian Questions of Capital and labour: Some Theory about Land Reform and a Periodisation.

Global Development, Population, Rural Livelihoods Seminars

18 / PROJECT NEWS

Project News

ISS Working with TPG on Development Issues

With the growth of Corporate Social Responsibility, many corporations are stepping into the development sector by supporting services and programmes in developing countries. What corporations often lack when they take on schemes like providing micro-credits or supporting HIV/AIDs programmes is sufficient awareness of the complexities that lie behind development programmes. Earlier this year, ISS worked with a major Dutch multinational, TPG, to brief Ludo Oelrich, Programm Director of TPG Moving the World presents ISS

senior management on issues around its support for the

Deputy Rector David Dunham with a bronze statuette as a token of thanks for the succesfull collaboration.

United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

A post and logistics company, TPG has partnered the WFP for over two years, helping to feed the hungry around the world. Its CEO, Peter Bakker, instigated the sponsorship with a dual motive: Bakker believed that a company the size of TPG has a responsibility to people in the countries in which it operated and he wanted to help alleviate poverty in the wake of 11 September. Bakker used specific criteria to find the right development organisation to sponsor: ‘It had to be global, it had to be a humanitarian cause and, most importantly, it had to use the core skills of TPG – logistics,’ says Ludo Oelrich, Programme Director at TPG for the World Food Programme partnership.

Throughout this partnership, TPG has provided logistics, knowledge-transfer and donations to help feed people in developing countries. The company has also benefited from a significant boost to its reputation since the start of its work with the WFP – Fortune magazine, for example, voted TPG one of the top ten best employers in Europe earlier in 2004. Nevertheless, management in TPG recognised that a deeper understanding of the issues involved in food distribution and security was required: ‘There was a need to create awareness about the world behind this programme,’ says Oelrich. ‘We needed to understand the actors in the development game and to be aware of how the private sector was being perceived in this area.’

ISS arranged four workshops over a period of three months for the TPG senior management involved in the programme.

The workshops covered a range of topics related to food and development, food security, the development players involved and the role of corporations in food aid. Professors and students from ISS worked closely with TPG to create workshop content for a non-academic audience and that would have a practical application within TPG. Dan Smit, an associate professor at ISS who helped create the content, says that working with TPG provided the Institute with a framework that can be used for other corporations: ‘The content of the workshops was demand-driven, interactive and flexible to adapt to a changing audience. It led us to think of a replicable process for other corporations, where content can be plugged in to get the discussion going.’ Each workshop was facilitated by ISS academic staff, with other invited speakers from the WFP, the Dutch government and elsewhere.

Most importantly, the workshop raised the wider issues of supporting a development programme like the WFP: ‘TPG needed to be aware of the politics around the World Food Programme and they needed to look at the key problems of starvation. Two thirds of the problem really starts after the food has been delivered to your doorstep,’ says Ashwani Saith, Continue on next page

F O O D FA I R / 1 9

an ISS professor who made a key contribution to the workshops.

Within ISS, this was a first move towards working with corporations, and it was initially met with scepticism by some academics. ‘Academics tend to have a stereotyped view of the private sector,’ says David Dunham, Deputy Rector at ISS. ‘TPG proved to be different. Their management was younger, more open-minded and critical, and they had a pragmatic problem-solving approach to third-world issues. Those who worked with them came away with the impression of a company that was genuinely trying to come to terms with a positive role for the corporate sector.’

Dunham believes that ISS can help corporations when they are serious about development initiatives: ‘It is important for a development studies institute to have its feet on the ground. The private sector is part of the reality we deal with, and cooperating and collaborating on development-

oriented ventures is a healthy trend. The workshops raise many issues, such as the private sector as a contributor to poverty and as an actor that can help reduce it.’

In a changing world, where the boundaries of responsibility in development are becoming blurred, ISS is in an ideal position to make corporations aware of the risks and issues of their involvement in development initiatives, in addition to its schooling of mid-career professionals from developing countries: ‘TPG was the first corporation that we have worked with,’ says Dunham. ‘It was an interesting and fruitful experience for both sides and it is opening up new ways of thinking. At the moment, we are feeling our way, but we see a need for this kind of assistance to corporations.’

For more information please contact Thierry van Hövell tot Westerflier, ISS Manager of Resource Development, at vhovell@iss.nl

ISS International Food Fair

The ISS International Food Fair is an event which takes place every year. It is a One World restaurant, where food from all over the globe is shared in abundance…

From Ethiopian injerah to Indonesian sate, from West African fufu to Bolivian majao… A genuine ‘Taste the World in one evening’ trip! Granted, few people manage to sample all the dishes, but everyone can taste the love and pride with which the food was prepared.

Food Day was once part of the annual International Day, a day of cross-cultural exchange, when students from the various countries represented at ISS would take the opportunity to let each other and their

guests feel, see, hear or taste what typifies their part of the world. As the participation of students increased over the years, it was decided that the event should be split into two separate events.

The second event, the performance and exhibition night, will be held later this year. Imagine traditional dances and songs by performers, some more confident than others, from over 30 different countries, some with audience participation, making it hard to see where the stage begins and ends…

A heart-warming celebration of our kaleidoscope of cultures!

20 / ETHICS OF DEVELOPMENT

Ethics of Development Value-Conscious Reflection on Alternative Paths and Destinations Des Gasper There is now a lively field of thought called development ethics. We see it in some development organisations: the Inter-American Development Bank, for example, has a large Ethics and Development initiative; Mary Robinson, the former High Commissioner for Human Rights, heads an organisation called Duties Sans Frontières; and ‘rights-based’ approaches are becoming widespread.

We find it too in academic fields like international relations and development studies. The ‘development ethics’ title emerged in France in the 1950s and has spread considerably, for example through the work of Denis Goulet and Amartya Sen. A basic stimulus is the perceived feasibility of greatly reducing extreme poverty and the moral urgency of doing this, given the suffering and liferestriction which such poverty brings and its typically undeserved and inescapable nature for the victims.

Huge numbers of them are children.

Added to this are concerns that reflect the widening scope of the concept of ‘development’ over the past fifty years: the central importance of health yet the enormous scale of sickness; the importance of peace and security yet the frequency of violence, often planned; the unbalanced distribution of the costs of change and the frequency of processes of impoverishment which inflict the main costs upon the weak; the increase of meaninglessness and of searches for meaning in ways that involve aggression towards others; and the questions of upon whom do obligations fall, and what ethical statuses are attached to national boundaries and to differences between cultures.

Development ethics looks at interpretations of societal development in the broad sense of progress or desirable

change, at the types, distribution and significance of the costs and gains from major socioeconomic change, and at value-conscious ways of thinking about and choosing between alternative paths and destinations. It aims to help in identifying and making choices about societal development, including by identifying and assessing the ethical concepts and theories that are implied.

DEVELOPMENT AS IMPROVEMENT There are many relevant foci in development ethics, in part because the term ‘development’ is used in diverse ways: long-term economic growth and change; societal progress; planned intervention; what happens in the ‘South’; or what agencies in or from the ‘North’ do to, with and in the South. Here I will briefly mention the discussions of what is meant by development as improvement, including a reassessment of economic growth and its supersession by a criterion of ‘human development’.1 We should not equate development, in the sense of societal improvement, with economic growth and its social accompaniments, which are better described as ‘modernisation’. Descriptive concepts such as industrialisation or economic growth should be kept separate from a normative interpretation of development, so that we can normatively assess any particular case of industrialisation, economic growth or

modernisation. Has the case advanced human values overall? We need for example to examine possible relationships of economic growth and modernisation to violence and insecurity. The ways that the terms ‘effectiveness’ and ‘efficiency’ have been handled – for example if efficiency is mis-defined only in terms of economic impact – has often sustained a misplaced equation of development to growth of economic activity. ‘Equity’ is often objectionably treated as a purely subjective concern outside, and in contrast to, ‘efficiency’, and then left invisible, like people. Many aspects of equity demand attention, each as a different face of respect for human dignity, each with legitimate claims in some circumstances.

Theories of ‘human development’ have grown out of ideas about human needs.

The basic needs theory of the 1970s has been upgraded by concepts formed by Sen and others. Important siblings or successors of needs ethics are: UNDP’s work on human development, which uses Sen’s capability approach; Sen’s generalisation of such ideas into a philosophy of ‘development as freedom’; and Martha Nussbaum’s richer capabilities ethic based on a fuller theory of human personality. They indicate a core of universal basic human priorities, at a general level. They give support to the human rights view that there are some defensible universal moral constraints.

But they give space for major variation between cases and cultures: in operationalising basic priorities, in prioritising beyond a basic level, and in some cases in interpreting what is basic.

Development ethics can be seen a s an academic sub-discipline or inter-

CONFERENCES / 21

disciplinary field; as a field of professional ethics, comparable to business ethics, medical ethics and so on; or, probably of most relevance, as a forum for serious reflection (including feeling), on a broader scale than in the traditional model of professional ethics: amongst development policy-makers, planners, practitioners and activists, and their major clients, and amongst academics and students. It uncovers the issue of costs and who bears them, and places the burden of justification on those who advocate paths which involve further suffering for poor people now. It investigates conflicting

values, priorities, unintended effects and policy alternatives. Some of these roles match what economists traditionally saw as their contribution, but they are done with attention to a broader range of methods and human values, a wider repertoire of evidence, testimony, frameworks and insights. It can contribute to illuminating choices in development and, let us hope, towards more democratic and humane national and global politics.

Des Gasper is Associate Professor of Public Policy

1

Management at ISS. He can be contacted at

Development – From economism to human

gasper@iss.nl.

development (Edinburgh University Press, 2004)

This is the theme of my book The Ethics of

International Conferences 2004 You can inform us about forthcoming conferences or workshops in your country or region by filling in the standardised conference sheet on the ISS alumni website: www.iss.nl/alumni/conferences

September 22 Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Will the 21st Century Be More Peaceful? Symposium to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Jan Tinbergen.

Email: j.huisman@stichtingoikos.nl 26 Canberra, Australia. Lies, Conspiracy and Propaganda. Contact: Prof. R. Cribb. Email: Robert.cribb@anu.edu.au

October Beijing, China. Non-Traditional Security in Asia: Illegal Migration, its Impact and Policy Recommendation. Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong. Information: hkcsp@hku.hk Hamburg, Germany. City States and Mega Port Cities in Pacific Asia: Economic and Political Strategies in Comparison.

5-7 Bangkok, Thailand. 2nd Water & Wastewater Asia Conference. Contact: Seonaid Thomas.

Email: attendingwwa@pennwell.com 18-23 Shanghai, China. Research on China-In China: Methodological Issues in China Research. Organised

by NIAS and the Nordic Centre at Fudan University, Shanghai.

Information: www.lu.se/nc/docstud_seminar 21 Oxford, England. Spatial-horizontal Inequality and the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal. Address Professor Mansoob Murshed. Email: murshed@iss.nl

20-21 Hong Kong. Log on: Chinese Women and the Cyber Networks. Contact: Kuah-Pearce Eng. Email: kekuah@hkucc.hku.hk 21-23 Singapore. Regional Conference on Cost-effective Healthcare. Contact: SGH Postgraduate Medical Institute. Information: www.cehealth2004.com 21-23 Paris, France. Post-transitional Vietnamese Families: Exploring the Legacy of Doi Moi. Contact: Magali Barbieri. Email: barbieri@ined.fr 22-24 De Kalb, Illinois, USA. Burma Studies Conference.

Centre for Burma Studies, Northern Illinois University.

Information: www.grad.niu.edu/burma/conference2004.htm 25 Paris, France. Vietnam’s Integration into the World and State Sovereignty Issue. The central government faces up to local and international actors. Contact: Céline Marangé. Email: celinemarange@hotmail.com 27-29 Daejeon, Korea. The 10th Asia Pacific Management Conference.

Information: http://enterprise.kaist.ac.kr/apmc/c.htm

November/December 30-3 The Hague, the Netherlands. 8th Asia Europe Young Leaders Symposium sponsored by ASEF and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Information: iias@let.leidenuniv.nl

ISS Forum The ISS Forum, the new moderated electronic discussion platform on the ISS website (www.iss.nl), is up and running. The forum is linked to DevISSues so that readers can respond to the main articles and discuss the content with each other. So far, only a few readers have made us of the forum, so we would like to remind you once again to take a look at it. We see the forum as a way of stimulating intellectual debate among our readers and hope that you will take advantage of this new service.

You can access the forum by going to the DevISSues page on the ISS website and clicking on the forum link next to the article you would like to respond to. Please tell us if you experience any problems using the forum.

22 / TEACHING NEWS

Teaching News

New Human Rights Programmes at ISS Development is essentially about achieving a life in dignity for all. Consequently, basic human rights are nowadays widely recognised as indispensable components of development.

This field comprises many complex problems and questions, and there are no easy answers or ready-made solutions. Nevertheless, both in theory and in practice, attempts are increasingly being made to analyse and address the human rights deficits of development processes.

Examples include the human development and human security discourses, attention to the impact of globalisation on the scope for realising human rights, and the current emphasis on the rights-based approach to development.

Regarding the latter, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has stimulated highly relevant and inspiring practice in the field of children, youth and development. More broadly, a variety of organisations are actively engaged in the process of defining positive and negative links between human rights and development cooperation. Their experiences shed light on the pros and cons of various human rights support strategies and of sanctions practice. These organisations include the United Nations Development Programme, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Union, and other global, regional and bilateral donor organisations.

However, human rights still have a much less firm footing in the activities of some other potentially highly relevant actors, such as the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund.

In the long term, attempts to address human rights and development deficits benefit from a solid understanding of: • the historical evolution and causes of human rights and development problems; • relevant theories that have emerged in this field; • the advancement of international human rights law; • the role of major actors, including states/governments, peoples (collectives), individual human beings, civil society actors and international and regional organisations; • the various strategies that have been/could be resorted to for the purpose of tackling human rights and development problems in actual practice.

ISS promotes serious reflection on and analysis of the above areas and issues. It offers various programmes and courses on human rights. While each has its own distinct objectives and form, they share a number of common features. These include:

• a development orientation (in a broad sense, i.e. including issues affecting the South, North-South relations, countries in transition, and extending to related areas in need of development and/or change in the North); • a multidisciplinary approach (with attention to political, economic, legal, cultural, gender, religious and other relevant aspects); • explicit attention to economic, social and cultural rights within the framework of interdependence and indivisibility of all categories of human rights; • a collective and participatory search for innovative and integrative human rights strategies.

To serve the interests and needs of different students, ISS has developed four specialised teaching programmes: • A 15.5-month Major which provides students with a broad understanding of the links between human rights, development and social justice.

• A 10-week assessed Postgraduate Human Rights Diploma Programme aimed at strengthening capacity for the promotion, protection and advancement of human rights. While participants are encouraged to engage in solid academic analysis of a range of important issues in human rights protection and promotion, the programme also goes beyond theory by delving into some main tools of human rights activity and, for example, exploring the pros and cons of ICT for human rights work.

• A 7-week non-assessed Special Graduate Programme in Development, Law and Social Justice (certificate course) which provides space for human rights professionals to share their experiences. It is primarily intended for experienced professionals who are working in NGOs active in the promotion of social justice, development and human rights, and for academics who are actively and directly associated with the work of NGOs in the same field. Occasionally, persons working in governmental institutions or international organisations are also admitted to the programme.

• A 6-week certificate course and an 8-week diploma programme on globalisation and labour rights which expose the participants to the main issues and concerns on globalisation and develop possibilities for action within a human/labour rights framework. The curriculum was developed on the basis of extensive discussions with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. The course is primarily for mid-career trade union members, and other individuals involved in the promotion of human/worker/labour rights.

Besides these four courses, the postgraduate programme on Children, Youth and Development pays special attention to children’s rights, and there are other relevant modules in the MA programme in which people can participate as auditors.

For more information, please check the human rights page on the ISS website (www.iss.nl/tprogrs/HRP.html) or contact studentoffice@iss.nl

SHORT NEWS / 23

Short News Survey of Japanese students In June, ISS alumnus (MA 1998/1999 and 2 diploma programmes) and representative of the ISS-Japan Alumni Association Dr Tetsuya Kakuhashi conducted a survey among 16 Japanese students currently studying at ISS. Important outcomes of the survey were: 57% of the students were self-financed and 36% received a scholarship; the ISS tuition fee is attractive compared to other European universities; 43% of the participants want to work in the development field after finishing their studies; one of the best aspects of ISS is the multicultural environment and the quality of staff. Further information can be obtained from the head of marketing. Email: nijhof@iss.nl

Cooperation between ISS and Ritsumeikan University

Professor Louk de la Rive Box has been appointed new Rector of ISS. He will replace the current Rector, Professor Hans Opschoor on 1 January 2005.

Professor de la Rive Box has built a strong national and international reputation as expert in development studies and is currently Professor in International Cooperation at the University of Maastricht.

ISS is cooperating closely with the Graduate School of International Relations at Ritsumeikan University, Japan.

In March, ISS signed an agreement with Ritsumeikan University under which the Institute will welcome a number of Japanese participants on a regular basis. At a press conference on 20 May, it was announced that two students would be arriving at ISS this September. The new person in charge at Ritsumeikan University is Professor Kunihiko Tatsuzawa. Professor Tatsuzawa can be contacted at: tatsuzawa1@m8.dion.ne.jp

Local news from The Hague If you would like to keep up with local and national Dutch news and cultural life in The Hague, you can consult the new English website: http://www.thehagueonline.com

Surya P. Subedi , who was Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in International Law and Development at ISS between 1993 and 1996, has recently been made an honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) by her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain for his services to UK-Nepalese relations. Although he moved to the University of Hull, England, in 1996 he returned to ISS every year to teach a course on the International Law and Organisation for Development programme until 2001.

He has recently taken up the position of Professor of International Law at the University of Leeds Law School.

A citizen of Nepal, Professor Subedi was also awarded the Order of Gorkha Daxin Bahu III, a high state honour, by the King of Nepal in 1998 for his services to international law.

He holds a DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford.

Email: subedi@justice.com

Mrs Gerda Unnithan Kauffman has been awarded a royal honour for her many years of helping the underprivileged in India. The honour was presented on 23 June at ISS by Rector Hans Opschoor, on behalf of the Mayor of The Hague. Mrs Unnithan, who formerly worked at ISS, received the honour especially for her efforts in running the Khejri Sarvodaya Trust, a health organisation in Jaipur.

Email: gjunnithan@hotmail.com

New African expert database The Association of African Universities has launched a new database of African experts, titled Roster of African Professionals (ROAP) to meet the needs of member institutions, partners, and Africa governments to access and tap into African expertise in various fields. Details of the database and how to submit bio-data can be found on the AAU website: http://www.aau.org/roap.

Hans Opschoor presents Gerda Unnithan with her award

24

Development and Change The journal Development and Change is published five times a year by Blackwell Publishers (Oxford, UK) on behalf of the Institute of Social Studies. For more information, see the ISS website or email us at d&c@iss.nl.

Available online at http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/online

Volume 35 / Number 4 / April 2004 David Mosse

Is Good Policy Unimplementable? Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice

Ray Bush

Poverty and Neo-Liberal Bias in the Middle East and North Africa

Vedi R. Hadiz

Decentralization and Democracy in Indonesia: A Critique of Neo-Institutionalist Perspectives

Behrooz Morvaridi

Resettlement, Rights to Development and the Ilisu Dam, Turkey

Sarah Gammage

Exercising Exit, Voice and Loyalty: A Gender Perspective on Transnationalism in Haiti

Barbara Burton

The Transmigration of Rights: Women, Movement and the Grassroots in Latin American and Caribbean Communities

Luin Goldring

Individual and Collective Remittances to Mexico: A Multi-dimensional Typology

Special rate available to ISS alumni Increasing to 6 issues a year from 2005

Development and Change

Working Papers ISS Working Papers can be found on the ISS website at: www.iss.nl, Publications/Working Papers. They can also be ordered in hard copy from: The BookshopPO Box 29776, 2502 LT The Hague, the Netherlands.

Edited by Ashwani Saith and Ben White Development and Change is internationally recognized as one of the leading journals in the field of development studies and social change.

With more than thirty years of publishing experience and with a truly interdisciplinary character, it occupies a unique position in the field, covering a broad range of topics and publishing articles from all the social sciences and all intellectual persuasions concerned with development. With a mix of regular and special theme issues, Development and Change is devoted to the critical analysis and discussion of the complete spectrum of development issues.

393

José Cuesta, Juan Ponce, Mauricio Léon, Simulating progressive social transfers: gas subsidies and solidarity bounds in Ecuador (February 2004)

394

Paul van der Wel, Privatisation by stealth: the global use and abuse of the term ‘public-private partnership’ (March 2004)

395

Thanh-Dam Truong, Liberalisation, care and the struggle for women’s social citizenship in Vietnam (April 2004)

396

Theo van der Loop, Industrialisation, value chains and linkages. The leather footwear sector in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (April 2004)

397

Dawood Mamoon, Financial sector reforms in Pakistan and a test for Mckinnnon and Shaw’s transmission mechanism: ‘Lessons from the last decade’ (May 2004)

Personal rate: £59/€89/$96

Special ISS alumni rate: £20/€30/$32 Subscribe online at

www.blackwellpublishing.com/journals/dech

Colofon Development ISSues is published three times a year by: Institute of Social Studies PO Box 29776, 2502 LT The Hague, The Netherlands, Tel: +31 (0)70 4260 443 or 4260 419, Fax: + 31 (0)70 4260 799, ISS website: www.iss.nl, Email: DevISSues@iss.nl Editors René Bekius, Andy Brown Editorial Board Karin Arts, Erhard Berner, Kristin Komives, Peter de Valk, Priscila Camarco Ramalho (Scholas) Editorial assistants Karen Shaw, Marie-Louise Gambon Photos Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are by courtesy of Jager & Krijger Design and Production MUNTZ Marketing Communication Group Circulation: 11,000.

Material from Development ISSues may be reproduced or adapted without permission, provided it is not distributed for profit and is attributed to the original author or authors, Development ISSues and the Institute of Social Studies. ISSN: 1566-4821.