Development and Advocacy

214 Pages·2002·0.65 MB·English

by  Maria Teresa Diokno-Pascual

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
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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