Civil society and Millennium Development Goals
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The South Asian context
The people of Nepal have proved that they can change their traditional way of thinking and the old autocratic structure. Though difficult, old norms, values and practices can be changed with persuasion, perseverance, patience, and above all, commitment. Today the people of South Asia, comprising two-third of the global poor, are struggling in a world of political corruption, criminalisation, conflict, militarisation and poverty, despite the presence of the world's largest democracies. The problem of poverty is further aggravated by various other social deprivations and discriminations and its many remote locations that are inaccessible to free social services. The structural adjustment policies of the current open economy and its strategies of industrialisation are likely to further burden the poor. First, South Asian countries are becoming increasingly dependent economically on the global market. Second, international politico-economic processes, corrupt political leadership, inefficient state institutions and growing militarisation are adversely affecting regional development. Third, government decisions are not based on socio-cultural and geo-political conditions. Fourth, local communities are gradually losing their significance as they are drawn into the ‘modernization projects’ of the government. Fifth, high-powered groups continue to enjoy their lofty, elevated positions. Finally, the small increment in literacy, income and participation has not generally changed the conditions of women. Instead of scaling up the security of its citizens by realising their creative potentials, governments in South Asia have increasingly pursued destructive military tools for national security. For example, South Asia currently spends US$ 15 billion annually on the military, thus snatching a large share of the poverty reduction budget. Despite years of economic development, there is increasing hunger, illiteracy and a swell of preventable diseases. Children who embody the future of the region are in a far worse condition. The region is witnessing a massacre of the innocent. Still, South Asian governments continue to waste resources on weapons of mass destruction. The civil society organisation is built on the arena of non-coercive action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market; though in practice the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiable. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forums, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by organisations such as registered charities, NGOs, community groups, women’s organisations, faith-based organisations, professional associations, trade unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups. Achieving the MDGs within a Human Rights framework The international community brought a different, a more hopeful, universal vision to the challenges of the 21st century at the UN General Assembly in September 2000. They articulated a global consensus in the Millennium Declaration, focusing on global justice through commitment to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. For all donors, these goals were to become the defining paradigm of international cooperation for the next eight years. The MDGs place an unequivocal responsibility on all development actors – official donors, multilateral institutions, civil society organisations (CSOs) and the private sector – to contribute to their realisation. The imperatives to act, and the costs of inaction, are morally shocking. One-third of all human deaths – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 daily – are due to poverty-related causes (such as starvation, diarrhoea, pneumonia, tuberculosis, measles, HIV/AIDS, malaria, prenatal and maternal conditions). This death toll since the end of the Cold War in 1990 is about 270 million people, a majority of them being women and children, roughly the population of the United States. The UNDP’s 2003 Human Development Report has demonstrated that the era of globalisation has accompanied such levels of poverty with a widening inequality gap, where the richest 5% of the world’s people receive 114 times the income of the poorest 5%. Nearly half the world’s population (2.7 billion) with 1.9 billion in Asia/ Pacific lives on less than US$ 2 a day and command a mere 1.25% of the world’s global social produce, while a third as many people in rich countries command 64 times the income and 81% of the global social product. The South Asian region with a population of 1.35 billion out of the total world population of 5.68 billion has the highest incidence of poverty not only in terms of absolute numbers but also as a percentage of the population, compared to any other regional group of countries in the world. Thus in South Asia, as much as 43% of the population lives in absolute poverty, compared to 14% in East Asia (excluding China), 24% in Latin America and 39% in sub-Saharan Africa. That places the number of poor, according to these estimates, between 330 million to 440 million, more likely on the higher side. If it is taken at 40%, then nearly 360 million poor would have been living in the rural areas and 80 million in the urban areas. Urban poverty is, to a considerable extent, a spillover of rural poverty. The eight MDGs are clear and committed benchmarks for donor and developing country governments. Yet they are exceptionally modest in their reach. For example, the first goal is to reduce the proportion of people living on less than US$ 1 a day by 2015. If achieved, it will still leave an estimated 900 million people in absolute poverty. In spite of coordinated campaigns by the UNDP and some CSOs, ordinary citizens have little sense of ownership of the MDGs. Indeed, the goals are silent in basic issues of citizens’ rights, empowerment and improved equality, and thus ignore the politics inherent for their achievement in many countries. Even the World Bank recognises, at least intellectually that empowerment and equality are essential social conditions for overcoming poverty. CSOs are concerned about an overt shift to a new agenda that conflates the combating of terrorism and combating of poverty, as if they were the same thing. Indeed, the US in its war against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, has spent billions that could surely, have been put to better and more productive use. The obligation to respect, protect and fulfil human rights rests with the state. There is little doubt that the objective of governance in developing countries is to empower citizens living in poverty. In practice, however, donors and governments alike have focused largely on the technical management of government resources and effective implementation of macro-economic and anti- poverty policies. The challenges of Poverty Various sectoral interventions such as Women’s Empowerment, Food Security, Effective Service Delivery, Reducing the Digital Divide, Resource Management, etc. undertaken by the states and CSOs, claim to support the MDG goals. However, ending poverty is inherently a political process, specific to local economic, social, cultural, ecological and gender equality. As the work of Amartya Sen demonstrates, people-centric development for poverty eradication is ultimately about recognising the rights of the vulnerable and transforming the power relations and cultural and social interests that sustain inequality. Development is therefore a political process that engages people, particularly those who are poor and powerless, in negotiations with each other, with their governments, and with the world community for policies and rights that advance their livelihood and secure their future in their world. People in poverty are not subjects to be acted upon by ‘development’ but rather central actors in sometimes confliction politics seeking pro-poor development strategies. Consequently, finding avenues to address unequal power, capacity, and access to resources for those whose rights are beyond reach – due to poverty and marginalisation – is a fundamental challenge to development actors. The UN system, the Charter, and its various Declarations and Covenants on Human Rights, provide a normative framework within which these issues can be addressed. The rights framework is dynamic and continues to evolve through intense national and multilateral political processes. It has been the result of many decades of struggles by peoples’ organisations – women’s movements, indigenous nations, gay and lesbian networks, workers and labour organisation, fishers’ and farmers’ organisations and human rights defenders. Human rights are essentially active and should not merely be ‘promoted’ or ‘protected’, but must be practiced and experienced. They have implications for the actions of all donors, governments, and non-state actors in development. The challenge for development practitioners, the civil society and official aid agencies alike, is to make the language and analysis of rights accessible to citizens and organisations working to overcome the conditions of poverty. In this context, the MDGs are one expression of economic, social and cultural rights, which all governments are bound and accountable to. Achieving these goals would be a positive though insufficient step towards the eradication of poverty. The MDGs are minimal but very useful targets, which can serve as a political framework for leveraging political commitment to poverty-focused development. Some NGOs focus on the MDGs in their advocacy for accountability with their governments and multilateral institutions, with strong support from the UNDP. Others, understanding the importance of a holistic approach to poverty, point to the limitations noted above. But the MDGs can only be achieved within a rights framework whereby citizens and governments are engaged in restructuring global and national power relations in order to transform the root causes of poverty. Hence democratic governance and citizens’ rights at all levels, with full local ownership of development initiatives, are fundamental. There is a great deal of evidence that donors have compromised human rights in their ‘war on terrorism’ in countries such as Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Nepal has also followed with arms import for human security to deal with the Maoists insurgency in the name of ‘war on terrorism’. The civil society joining with donors and developing country governments insists that aid must focus on effective strategies to address poverty. Humility is a critical ingredient on the part of donors, the civil society and governments, to ensure structural reforms and gender equality. Well targeted and effective country designed poverty reduction strategies will require a diversity of approaches and policy mixes that may often challenge the policy prescriptions emanating from the Bank and Fund that currently seem to define the overarching contents of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) of the World Bank. Donors must stop dictating what they think the Least Development Countries (LDCs) must do. They must instead support national political processes for determining appropriate strategies in relation to local economic, social, cultural, ecological and gender equality circumstances for poverty reduction. A few donors, such as DFID in the UK, have set out ‘a rights based approach’ to the development and achievement of the MDGs, which includes ‘incorporating the empowerment of poor people.’ What are the realities of these donors’ commitments and practices towards meeting the MDGs? What are the implications of these practices for more effective delivery for improved governance and citizens’ rights in the recipient countries? What are the perceptions, perspectives and approach of the people to eradicate poverty? How do the poor define poverty and ways to deal with these issues? Ownership is not an absolute condition, but rather a definition of relationship and the power and influence of different stakeholders to negotiate the content of this relationship. Local ownership cannot be understood without understanding gender equality or inclusive participation. Do women, dalits, tribal, ethnic and minority communities have equal access to the society’s resources and power? What are the options and opportunities provided to them to determine their lives? Donors and governments have to move beyond the rhetorical respect for local ownership with real change, evidenced in institutional practice and donor commitments to expanding the resource base for international cooptation. Similarly, the path to successfully achieving the MDGs is to determine the right strategies, tools, processes and mechanisms. Aid must be treated as money held in trust for people in poverty. Currant attempts to divert resources for poverty reduction to pay for donors’ security interests are the most serious expression of the endemic problems of aid resource being hijacked to fund rich country priority. The people of this region has the right to choose what is poverty and the problems, concern and issues pertaining to these and how they want to tackle the issues of poverty. CSOs have a critical role to monitor the progress of MDGs. They have to watch for the effective implementation of the targeted programmes by various stakeholders, and critically analyse the gaps to suggest positive actions, especially to mitigate the knowledge gap. Causes of slow and ineffective progress have to be addressed by justifiable actions. Wherever possible, civil society should act as a watchdog to keep an eye on how the state and non-state actors are working. It should influence the governments with appropriate advocacy measures to adopt and adapt policies and actions that speed up the processes of achieving targets set up by the MDGs. |
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