Anti-poverty vision

Lysa John represents eleven years of work in the field of Governance & Advocacy. Prior to GCAP, she has been associated with ‘Wada Na Todo Abhiyan’ - one of the largest civil society networks with outreach across 29 States/ Union Territories and membership of over 5000 development organizations - and with Yuva Mumbai.

Lysa John/ Photo credit: MDGs in Asia and the Pacific

OneWorld South Asia: With only five years left to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, what do you think are the major challenges for overcoming poverty in South Asia?

Lysa: For me basically there are three levels to be worked out. One is to look at the successes that have been achieved across the region in relation to the Millennium Development Goals; particularly on areas where we know we are not doing very well like maternal health, gender equality or education.

What we also need to do is map the happenings across the region, measure the concrete outcomes that have been achieved in terms of legislation or improved statistics. That is one exercise that needs to done by civil society, as well as heads of State.

Second, we need to identify a very strong package for women and socially excluded groups in the context of the MDGs. Obviously, relief measures are not going to help anymore and so we need to look at very specific initiatives for improving the lot of Dalit, tribal and indigenous groups, and of course women in the region.

Essentially, the idea is to pick out those who are most likely to fall through the cracks when the MDGs are implemented - those are the people we need to reach and bring on par with the rest of the population.

Thirdly, the MDG’s emerged from a set of targets that were agreed on by the donor countries, specially the OECD countries. This agenda needs to be viewed much more radically, in terms of the Human Rights Declaration and Framework, and also in terms of a transformative agenda - not just looking at manifestation of the problem, but dealing with the problem itself.

For instance the aftermath of Haiti earthquake, aid, relief and rehabilitation need to go along with actually reviving and restructuring the social agenda of the country, looking at its governance and strengthening its economic agenda. I think these are the three points that we are looking to target when we talk of the next five years.

OWSA: What needs to be done to strengthen the worldwide campaign against poverty?

Lysa: The first thing that needs to be done is to strengthen the mechanism for government accountability and the sole collective effort should be to keep democracy alive and thriving across the world. Even if you look within South Asia it has now become a hotbed of conflict, challenging democratic governments.

Second is to break through the boundaries of identity, in terms of gender, caste, class and as civil society members reach out to one another, understand what’s happening around, bring on board a kind of culture that does not allow citizens to be repressed or suppressed in any way. It is going to take a lot of effort, but it is important to keep the dialogue going, and collectively respond to the happenings at the international level.

We are seeing the same kind of effort on the climate change issue, where the demand is that the realities of Africa, Latin America or Asia must be included, their voices must be party to the framing of global agenda.

I feel the whole ocean of enabling diversity in our perspective and action, to be able to build a bridge of communication with people who may think completely differently and come with very different experiences, that’s what would help us to go a long way in strengthening our effort, making our responses much more valid.

The third essential aspect in any kind of global action is really reaching the unreached, meeting people from other sectors actually the people who have nothing to do with the agenda of social development, maybe people from private sector.

I believe campaigns like Nine is Mine really enabled us to reach a lot of people and students across countries, and helped us bring them into the development debate - these kind of initiatives are extremely important.

Another question of relevance here is how do we leverage the media , not just commercial or glamorous media but basically local media like radio or newspapers to really capture people’s imagination about the idea of change and the fact that change is possible with collective effort!

OWSA: There is a strong link between poverty and climate justice. What action do you think is needed to address both the burning issues of global warning and poverty in developing countries?

Lysa: The major problem is that the articulation of poverty and climate change is clear only when we are talking about the problem and not when we are talking about the solutions.

When we are articulating what we need to do on climate action or why we need to mobilize the world or global community to come together to speak about climate change, the developed countries always come out with the point that the most vulnerable are the women, marginalized people, indigenous communities etc.

But when it comes to the solutions and decisions on climate action we see that its basically the business communities, heads of government and probably some northern civil society groups who take leadership on the agenda, and this I think is not going to work anymore.

Unless it becomes a process driven by the communities who are directly affected; a process where radical solutions emanate from indigenous networks of people who actually bear the brunt of climate change on their lives or livelihood;  unless they really come up with solutions or frameworks that really challenge the way the world lives,  problems will remain.

In this year there are two important discussions that are coming up - one of them in Bolivia in April, and then the formal UN climate summit in December in Mexico. I think there is much optimism here - the fact that they are both being held in Latin America which is a strong base for indigenous movement means that people are having a stronger positioning in civil society than last year.

OWSA: Also how to mobilise the international community and national governments to provide more support/ aid for development?

Lysa: My position on this is a little nuanced because I think that what has happened is that we have talked about aid for several decades now and that’s now probably the first global response to any problem, if there is a crisis. Somewhere we ask governments to put in more and more aid.

On one hand those aid commitments are not being met by most of the governments including those of the Millennium Development Goal  number 8 which is directed towards international aid. On the other hand we are not putting sufficient energy into strengthening the national accountability framework either.

Worldwide a lot of campaigning energy is around the demand for aid, the demand for debt relief in the context of Hiati has also come up very strongly, but I think we also need to make equal amount of effort in strengthening the position of countries economically and within the global government structure so that they don’t need to seek aid at all. That’s the kind of transformative agenda that we should be talking about.

In the context of India itself the kind of space we have seen a few decades ago when we went into the world as global citizens was with the identity of victims. In this decade we are being seen as a global leaders both in terms of being economically advanced and also in terms of social legislation and progressive social movements that we have. This has come to boost our dignity and self-respect, the feeling of being on our own and able to make independent decisions.

This in fact does change the way we relate to other countries, considering the mindset of aid being tied with so many conditionalities, including arm-twisting to rework trade terms - I think that needs to be challenged completely.

I think aid should be allowing countries to determine their own agenda; at the same time they need  to be monitored; and helped to strengthen democratic processes.  Civil societies also need to keep vigilant about where the aid is going and to ensure that it is actually reaching those for whom it was intended.

OWSA: On a personal note, what is the excitement of leading one of the largest mobilizations against poverty in the world?

The most exciting thing is how the campaign really has a life of its own and the kind of leadership you see at the grassroots level for making an initiative succeed.

It is simply amazing - whether it is the Stand Up campaign or Nine is Mine, or All India People’s Manifesto, and now in India the whole idea of looking at a parallel process of planning commission review - how much energy and determination we have on the ground.

Similarly in Bangladesh and Nepal there is phenomenal kind of effort, where even the heads of state have come out on national media platforms; endorsed the MDGs and made commitments towards ending poverty, including pushing legislation to address hunger, education, and food insecurity.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan the GCAP campaigns in spite of very difficult circumstances have been able to mobilize local communities and even local authorities around the issues of poverty and climate justice.

Last month we had the women’s tribunal on climate justice in Baluchistan where women in large numbers came into the public sphere, some of them for the first time. It resulted in the local authorities committing to set up and strengthen grievance redressal mechanisms for women who have to bear the brunt of climate change.

Efforts like these were also seen in Africa, where there is engagement with the G20 group, and the push to attain a formal seat in the G20 on par with the European Union.

I was in Patna in Bihar and it was amazing to see how many people from farthest parts of the region were traveling overnight to be part of something that was calling for equality and justice.

It is this spirit of change that every individual harbours within them that gives one energy to move forward and be part of this larger movement.