Development and Advocacy Oxfam GB Oxfam GB, founded in 1942, is a development, relief, and campaigning agency dedicated to finding lasting solutions to poverty and suffering around the world. Oxfam believes that every human being is entitled to a life of dignity and opportunity, and it works with others worldwide to make this become a reality. From its base in Oxford, England, Oxfam GB publishes and distributes a wide range of books and other resource materials for development and relief workers, researchers and campaigners, schools and colleges, and the general public, as part of its programme of advocacy,education, and communications. Oxfam GB is a member of Oxfam International, a confederation of 13 agencies of diverse cultures and languages, which share a commitment to working for an end to injustice and poverty – both in long-term development work and at times of crisis. For further information, visit www.oxfam.org.uk Development and Advocacy Selected essays from Development in Practice Introduced by Maria Teresa Diokno-Pascual A Development in Practice Reader Series Editor: Deborah Eade First published by Oxfam GB in 2002 © Oxfam GB 2002 ISBN 0 85598 463 5 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. All rights reserved. Reproduction, copy, transmission, or translation of any part of this publication may be made only under the following conditions: • With the prior written permission of the publisher; or • With a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd., 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE, UK, or from another national licensing agency; or • For quotation in a review of the work; or • Under the terms set out below. This publication is copyright, but may be reproduced by any method without fee for teaching purposes, but not for resale. 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Published by Oxfam GB, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY, UK The Editor and Management Committee of Development in Practiceacknowledge the support given to the journal by affiliates of Oxfam International, and by its publisher, Taylor & Francis. The views expressed in this volume are those of the individual contributors, and not necessarily those of the Editor or publisher. Oxfam GB is a registered charity, no. 202 918, and is a member of Oxfam International. Contents Contributors vii Preface ix Deborah Eade Development and advocacy 1 Maria Teresa Diokno-Pascual NGOs and advocacy: how well are the poor represented? 7 Warren Nyamugasira The international anti-debt campaign: a Southern activist view for activists in ‘the North’ … and ‘the South’ 23 Dot Keet Human rights and religious backlash: the experience of a Bangladeshi NGO 47 Mohammad Rafi and A.M.R. Chowdhury Disaster without memory: Oxfam’s drought programme in Zambia 62 K. Pushpanath Campaigning: a fashion or the best way to change the global agenda? 74 Gerd Leipold Northern NGO advocacy: perceptions, reality, and the challenge 84 Ian Anderson ‘Does the doormat influence the boot?’ Critical thoughts on UK NGOs and international advocacy 95 Michael Edwards The effectiveness of NGO campaigning: lessons from practice 113 Jennifer Chapman and Thomas Fisher Heroism and ambiguity: NGO advocacy in international policy 132 Paul Nelson Northern words, Southern readings 149 Carmen Marcuello and Chaime Marcuello Menchú Tum, Stoll, and martyrs of solidarity 160 Larry Reid The People’s Communication Charter 172 Cees J. Hamelink Annotated bibliography 182 Organisations 194 vi Development and Advocacy Contributors Ian Anderson works in international structured finance and is Chair of Oxfam International and Vice-Chair of Oxfam Hong Kong. Jennifer Chapman is a freelance researcher and consultant who is an associate of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in London. A. M. R. Chowdhuryis the Director of the Research and Evaluation Division of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in Dhaka. Maria Teresa Diokno-Pascualleads the Freedom From Debt Coalition in the Philippines, a broad-based movement which served as a model for Jubilee 2000, later known as Jubilee Plus. Deborah Eadehas worked in the development NGO sector for 20 years and is Editor of the journal Development in Practice. Michael Edwardsis Director of the Governance and Civil Society, Peace and Social Justice Programme at the Ford Foundation in New York. At the time of writing, he worked for The Save the Children Fund (UK) in London. Thomas Fisherleads the community finance team at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in London and has a special interest in non-farm rural livelihoods. Cees J. Hamelink is Professor of International Communication at the University of Amsterdam, Editor-in-Chief of Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies, and Honorary President of the International Association for Mass Communication Research. Dot Keetis a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Southern African Studies at the University of the Western Cape, a member of the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town, and an activist in Jubilee 2000 (SA). Gerd Leipold advises NGOs on campaigning and organisational development. He is trained as a physicist and physical oceanographer and was previously director of Greenpeace Germany and director of the disarmament campaign of Greenpeace International. vii Carmen Marcuello works at the Department of Economics at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. Chaime Marcuelloworks in the Department of Sociology at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. Paul Nelsonis Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, and previously worked for 15 years as a policy analyst for several US-based NGOs. Warren Nyamugasirais the Director of the Advocacy Centre for Strategic Change in Uganda, and has worked in the NGO development sector for more than 20 years. At the time of writing, he was working for World Vision International in Rwanda. K. Pushpanathworks for The Save the Children Fund (UK) in Vietnam. He represented Oxfam GB in Malawi and Zambia at the time of writing. Mohammad Rafi is Senior Research Sociologist in the Research and Evaluation Division of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in Dhaka. Larry Reidhas been active in Central America solidarity groups since 1983, both in Canada and in the region. More recently, he has been involved in fair-trade issues and is a member of the board of TransFair Canada. viii Development and Advocacy Preface Deborah Eade ‘Communication is the nervous system of internationalism and human solidarity.’ (Juán Carlos Mariategui, Lima, 1923) The realisation that development and humanitarian relief projects will never, in and of themselves, bring about lasting changes in the structures which create and perpetuate poverty and injustice is nothing new. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, debates raged about whether the satisfaction of ‘basic needs’ comes first, or whether ‘social change’ is the only way to address the underlying structures that prevent these needs from being met. The emergence in the early 1990s of advocacy programmes and public-policy departments within mainstream development and relief NGOs reflected the growing sense that the ‘needs versus change’ dichotomy was a false one, that progress is uneven and incremental, and that sustainable change requires a range of inputs at many different levels, from the household and local community right through to the boardrooms of global institutions.1The new orthodoxy was that work to change the policy environment, and to promote specific policies, should thus inform and be informed by efforts to bring about tangible improvements in the daily lives of those who are living in poverty and whose basic rights are abused. This strategy is not one of seeking to achieve spectacular success through NGO advocacy alone, but of taking an integrated approach to the pursuit of social and economic justice for all. Thus, contributions to this volume describe modest but significant achievements, while also revealing something of the painstaking work that underpins them. But just as there are profoundly conflicting views of what ‘development’ means, as well as how best to achieve it, so there are many differing approaches to advocacy. In both areas, there may be yawning gaps between what an agency says it believes and does, and the way in which it actually behaves. An obvious example is that of an organisation’s declared commitment to promoting gender equity ix or cultural diversity, despite the fact that it has a male-dominated leadership and a top–down form of management. When that same organisation takes the moral high ground in public and seeks in its advocacy work to tell others how they should manage their affairs, these gaps can become dangerous credibility deficits. Research recently undertaken by ActionAid (Chapman and Wameyo 2001) gives some insight into the spectrum of advocacy options, not all of them mutually compatible. What the research does make clear, however, is that although advocacy is self-evidently of a political nature (both in itself, and in terms of what it seeks to achieve), agencies seldom appear much clearer about their politics than they are about which development theory they espouse. Yet no number of campaigns or high-level lobbying activities will add up to a coherent political platform, any more than thousands of projects will constitute a theoretical standpoint on development. The perceived disjunctures between rhetoric and reality in the field of advocacy work have exposed NGOs to increasing criticism, particularly since the much-publicised anti-globalisation demonstrations in Geneva, Seattle, and Prague. The fact that some critiques are intended to deflect or diminish the impact of NGO advocacy work does not in itself render them invalid. Indeed, NGOs’ apparent failure to check that their own houses are in order before launching public attacks on major institutions has sometimes rendered them easy targets — as, for instance, in a piece published in The Economist, entitled ‘Angry and effective’: The increasing clout of NGOs, respectable and not so respectable, raises an important question: who elected Oxfam, or, for that matter, the League for a Revolutionary Communist International? Bodies such as these are, to varying degrees, extorting admissions of guilt from law-abiding companies and changes in policy from democratically elected governments. They may claim to be acting in the interests of the people — but then so do the objects of their criticism, governments and the despised international institutions. … Who holds the activists accountable?2 In fairness, and as this volumeattests, disquiet about aspects of NGO advocacy was already being voiced by those more sympathetic to the NGO community long before the issue began to hit the headlines (see, for example, Sogge et al.1996, especially Chapter 5, and Michael Edwards’ contribution to this volume). It is therefore worth high- x Development and Advocacy