A wealthier nation doesn’t necessarily mean lower poverty rates.

The world has marked Oct. 17 as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty every year since 1993,when the United Nations General Assembly designated a day to promote awareness that poverty and destitution in all countries must be wiped out. This has become a stated development priority for most donor countries as well as many national governments and local groups working on the ground in both developed and developing countries.

Despite the multiple commitments and efforts to do away with extreme poverty, there are as many poor people today then there were in the early 1990s, with poverty in some nations, including Canada, being stubbornly persistent. Even with the progress made on the Millennium Development Goals, and in particular the goal that tackles poverty and hunger, the fact remains that there are only four to five per cent fewer poor people in absolute terms in the world today. And, notably, the vast majority of those living below the poverty line today (72 per cent) live in countries now considered “middle income,” whereas these same states were low-income countries in the early 1990s. At that time, 93 per cent of those below the poverty line lived in low-income countries. In other words, the increasing wealth of a nation does not necessarily correspond to decreasing poverty rates. High-income countries like Canada are a good example of this phenomenon. Canada is one of the richest countries in the world. Yet there are between three million and 4.4 million people living in poverty, representing 10 to 13 per cent of the population. This level of poverty is unacceptable in an affluent country well capable of a poverty rate close to, if not right at, zero.

Little attention paid to underlying causes

How do we explain that middle-income countries (such as Pakistan, India, China, Nigeria, and Indonesia) that have increasing resources to fight poverty, and even developed countries like Canada, allow for such sizeable numbers of their citizens to remain unable to meet their basic needs? Part of the answer is in the limited attention that has been given at the global and national levels to the underlying causes of poverty—including inequality, discrimination, and disempowerment. To date, mobilization to eradicate poverty has focused on addressing the symptoms of poverty instead of on the policy changes needed to do away with the causes of poverty. Canada has a historic future opportunity to provide leadership at the international level on this critical global issue. In 2013, the UN has convened a major event to assess progress on the Millennium Development Goals (before they expire in 2015) and prepare the ground for the post-2015 development framework. Global leadership is urgently needed to ensure that in the next round of goals, the structural causes of poverty are boldly addressed.

Canada can provide that international leadership, building, for example, on its role in maternal child health. But to do so with credibility, Canada must first show leadership and robust action at home. The federal government must urgently address poverty, homelessness, and hunger in Canada starting with the adoption of national intergovernmental strategies based on national and international human rights principles including equality and non-discrimination. This should include rights-based participation, such as complaints mechanisms and independent monitoring and review with enforceable targets and timelines. Canada must also show leadership by increasing and enhancing its aid commitments directed exclusively at ending poverty in the world.

The theme for this year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty,“Working together out of poverty,”highlights the need for all levels of government to work in concert to end poverty in Canada, as well as for a truly global anti-poverty alliance, one in which both developed and developing countries participate actively in addressing poverty issues everywhere. We are encouraged that today parliamentarians will be attending an evening panel discussion called “Ending Poverty Together: Real Stories, Real Solutions,” organized by the All-Party Anti-Poverty Caucus. We are also encouraged that today a group of civil society organizations, working on poverty issues internationally, are launching the “Reverse the Cuts” campaign, aimed at garnering popular support for the needed boost in the quantity and quality of Canadian aid. We are moving in the right direction, and with federal leadership we could make significant progress.

Julia Sanchez is the president-CEO of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, Canada’s coalition to end global poverty. Leilani Farha is the executive director of Canada Without Poverty and the CWP Advocacy Network, organizations dedicated to the elimination of poverty in Canada.

This Op Ed was published in Embassy Newspaper on October 17, 2012.

Wheels in motion for establishing a new set of global development goals

In the year 2000, at the UN Millennium Summit in New York, world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration. A commitment to a peaceful, prosperous and just world, the declaration included a set of global goals for development and poverty reduction, to be reached by 2015.  These goals came to be known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight goals on poverty alleviation, education, gender equality, child and maternal health, HIV/AIDs reduction and environmental sustainability in developing countries, as well as a ‘global partnership for development’, covering rich countries’ commitments to aid, an open and non-discriminatory trading and financial system, technology transfer and debt relief.

Some goals look set to be achieved by the 2015 target date. For example, the share of people living in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.25 per day, has fallen globally from 47% in 1990 to 24% in 2008. This is largely thanks to China’s phenomenal growth and poverty reduction, but is also part of a global trend. The world is on track to meet the targets set on access to safe drinking water and achieving parity in primary education between girls and boys. But progress in other areas has been disappointing. Hunger remains a global challenge and decreases in maternal mortality are far from the 2015 target. Progress on the ‘global partnership for development’ has been slow. Indeed, the MDG Gap Taskforce Report, released last week by the UN, says that in 2011, Official Development Assistance, or aid, from rich countries to poor countries fell for the first time in many years.

As the 2015 target date approaches, attention is turning to what should replace the MDGs. This was the focus of a conference hosted by the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC) and the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID) in Ottawa last weekend. It will also be the focus of the High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which will meet for the first time on September 25^th, alongside the 67^th UN debate session of the General Assembly in New York.  The panel, co-chaired by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom, has been asked by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon to prepare a bold yet practical vision for a global post-2015 development agenda. It is expected to submit its report in May 2013, which will serve as a key input into a UN special event on the MDGs and the post-2015 agenda in September 2013.

If the MDGs are anything to go by, the post-2015 development agenda will have much influence over international development priorities in the decades beyond 2015.  It is likely that the High-Level Panel, and others attempting to influence the post-2015 process, will suggest that some elements of the MDG approach be kept. For example, the clear, quantifiable and time-bound nature of the MDGs helped galvanize political and public support for global poverty reduction efforts like never before, and served to unite the world around a common set of development targets. Given this success, building the post-2015 agenda around a set of global goals that can be clearly communicated, and that resonates with the public, makes sense.

But to be relevant and meaningful not only in 2015, but also the decades following, the post-2015 agenda will need to go further than the MDGs.  To really tackle extreme poverty, and capture a vision of development that is environmentally sustainable, it will need to focus on more than poverty reduction in developing countries, and will require policy commitments from developed countries, such as Canada, that go far beyond aid.  Given the planetary crisis of global warming, and the implications of this for the world’s most vulnerable people, the post-2015 agenda will need to prioritize sustainability and climate change and incorporate targets on these for all countries.   With trade  such an important driver of development in developing countries, a global development framework that does not expect rich countries to commit to fairer trade rules will fall short.  With inequality on the rise in many countries, as the Occupy movement and entrenched poverty in middle-income countries attest, incorporating inequality into the framework could recognize and seek to tackle one of the biggest problems that many rich, emerging and poor countries face.

Ultimately, the post-2015 agenda will be a political agreement, negotiated by member states of the United Nations. Given the world’s recent track record on global governance – the failure of Doha and disappointments in Copenhagen on climate change and at Rio+20 on sustainable development – stakeholders will need to be balance ambition with pragmatism. The changing nature and composition of global politics will also need to be taken into account.  The line between rich and poor countries is more blurred now than it was in 2000, and a global agreement that does not reflect the views and commitment of emerging economies would be a disappointing outcome.  Non-state actors, such as philanthropists, business, international NGOs and anti-poverty youth movements, are much more prominent in global affairs today than they were at the start of the millennium, and the framework will need to make sense to them and clearly show that they can contribute.

2015 may seem like a long way away, but the wheels for establishing the post-2015 development framework are well and truly in motion. The process itself will consume a lot of time, energy and money, and critics will surely question its relevance in a context of diminishing aid resources. But based on the MDGs experience, the post-2015 agenda is set to play an important role in framing global development for decades to come.

By Kate Higgins, from The North-South Institute.

Kate Higgins leads the Governance for Equitable Growth program at The North-South Institute.

This article was first published in iPolitics: http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/09/25/wheels-in-motion-for-establishing-a-new-set-of-global-development-goals/, on Sept.25, 2012. Thanks to iPolitics for permission to post on CCIC's website.

This was a wake-up call, not a walk-out, to the Global Partnership

If I push my face right up to the window of my hotel room, I can just about see the Eiffel Tower rise high above Paris’s cityscape. Just below me is the Seine. And behind me, out of view, lies the office complex of La Défense and its modern-day Arche de Triomphe.
The contrast between the two visions – traditional and modern – is striking.
For the past week, I have been here in Paris preparing for, and then participating in, the final meeting of the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF).
Since 2003, the WP-EFF has led a series of High Level Forums on Aid Effectiveness (HLF), initially among OECD donors and partner governments, and more recently a much broader range of development actors. The HLFs produced the seminal Paris Declaration (PD) in 2005, the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) in 2008, and more recently, the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (BPd) in 2011.
While Busan did move the agenda forward, for the past six months civil society has been keenly observing and participating in the work of the Post-Busan Interim Group (PBIG). The PBIG was tasked with the design of the global monitoring framework and indicators for assessing progress on Busan, and the governance framework of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC).

This final meeting was to discuss and finalize the PBIG proposals and launch the new Global Partnership, the WP-EFF’s successor.

For me personally, this has just been a journey over the past year and a half, but for many of my colleagues here they have been following the trajectory of the WP-EFF and developments around aid effectiveness as far back as 2005.

Back then there were 17 people protesting out on the streets. Today there were 35 of us participating inside the room.
This past week, we managed to get a bit of a taste of how far we have come since Paris. On Wednesday, as it did for HLF-3 in Accra, BetterAid released a book documenting the accomplishments, experiences, assessment and outcomes of what we achieved between HLF-3 and HLF-4 in Busan.
Separate from that book, people here feel that In Accra, we were encouraged by the promises made by governments for an enabling environment, for human rights, decent work, sustainable environment and gender equality. And we welcomed our inclusion after Accra as independent development actors in our own right and as full members of the Working Party.

Through BetterAid, we advocated for a human rights framework for development, gender equality, decent work and environmental sustainability. Through the Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness, we created the Istanbul Principles and the Siem Reap CSO International Framework.
At Busan we made some small progress – as well as suffered some big losses - both in terms of substance and process, engaging for the first time technically as an equal negotiator at the table.

And in Busan, while we recognized the incremental changes we had made, it felt like everything was still contingent on these coming six months.
In that vein, I guess the past two days have been a success.
The Working Party adopted the mandate and governance of the Global Partnership, with periodic Ministerial-level meetings, and a process driven by a Steering Committee of 18 - with a seat for civil society and co-Chaired by Andrew Mitchell, British Secretary of State for International Development. Two co-Chairs – from emerging economies and partner countries (likely Africa) – still have to be nominated by the end of July, as do ten of the other Steering Committee members.  (The North American seat will be taken by Donald Steinberg, US Administrator of USAID, with Canada opting to take the next rotation following the first Ministerial meeting of the Global Partnership in 2014.) The prospect of a possible observer seat for local government and trade unions has been kicked to the first Steering Committee meetings, likely to occur sometime this fall.

The monitoring framework and a set of 10 indicators - that will be used to assess progress on the commitments made in Busan - were also endorsed, using baselines of 2010 to measure progress. The indicators include a focus on inclusive country processes to determine results, enabling environment for CSOs, the contribution of the private sector to development, transparency, predictability, reporting of aid through budgets, mutual accountability, gender equality and women’s empowerment, effective institutions and the use of country systems, and untying aid. Wherever possible, the indicators are drawing on existing sources of data.  The Joint Support Team to the Steering Committee – UNDP and the OECD – still have to determine how to actually operationalize the agreed indicators.

Also endorsed at the meeting was a framework for a common open standard on transparency as agreed in Busan. This standard will ultimately join together the standard of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), which Canada signed on to at HLF4, and the OECD’s Creditor Reporting System. IATI is an aid data standard, whereby signatories provide detailed comparable information in an open data format. The CRS is also an open data database on donor aid spending produced by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) at the OECD. Whereas the CRS provides historical annual OECD donor data on aid flows, IATI allows users to dig down deeper into past, current and forward-looking spending at the project level (including narrative reports). The two standards will now be completely aligned and integrated, allowing for a single electronic reporting standard over the full range of aid spending for all donors, including CSOs as donors.

But while some of the outcomes seem positive, the past two days have left a sour taste in the mouth of many of the CSOs – and others – here.

Why? Perhaps not surprisingly, this first full gathering since Busan of WP-EFF members felt much less like the final negotiation of the Global Partnership, than a party for the Working Party. It began with somewhat mindless panels (about changing mindsets), high-level speakers giving warm and fuzzy speeches, and farewell parties. This is perhaps warranted to some extent given what the WP-EFF has achieved.

But as a result, it provided barely any opportunity to debate proposed changes to the proposals on monitoring and governance that had been drafted by the 18 members of the PBIG. Every amendment from CSOs, from NEPAD or CARICOM was responded to by the Chair with the resounding thud of a rubber stamp on the original proposal.

This hit a nerve for all of us in BetterAid – as well as partner countries, and some other stakeholders. So following the morning’s opening panel with OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria and Secretary of State Mitchell, the two BetterAid co-Chairs made a constructive statement to the Working Party addressing a sentiment that has been mounting and finally crystallized here in Paris. In short,

“The past six months have confirmed our belief that since Busan the multi-stakeholder nature of this forum has itself been compromised. It is not a global partnership, interested in generating consensus and compromise among the range of stakeholders – whether us or others. [...] At this point, we have elected to go back to our respective constituencies – more than 5,000 networks and organizations - to see whether we should continue to engage in this Global Partnership, and what the basis of that continued engagement should be. We remain committed to the spirit and principles of Busan.  For us, that means moving beyond paternalism and power imbalances to inclusive partnership and mutual respect.”

We are at the table, sure, but it is still a process led by three governmental co-Chairs, who can simply choose to replicate the experience of the past six months. And that is not a position we want to be in.

Various officials over the past few days have underscored time and time again the benefits and legitimacy that having civil society at the table has brought to this process.

It is great that these officials can see the benefits of having us there. We need to be able to see the benefits too. And for us, that means having a co-Chair and a seat for trade unions.
As I said at the beginning, from my window I can only see the old Paris out my window. But I can’t quite see the new.

This blog was written by Fraser Reilly-King, Policy Analyst (Aid), CCIC. The views expressed are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of CCIC or its members.

CSOs on the Road from Accra to Busan (Part II)

To conclude, Brian pointed to ten lessons that can be drawn from this work that are preconditions of effective policy dialogue:

1)   All stakeholders must take their roles seriously and build upon previous accomplishments. For CSOs, this meant ensuring that we participated as independent development actors in our own right and that the dialogue moving forward was inclusive of all stakeholders setting the agenda and outcomes for Busan.

2)   There must be an openness to changing practice. For CSOs this meant changing the politics of this process - strengthening our own accountability to principles of CSO Development Effectiveness, and for all governments this meant being inclusive and respecting the views of all stakeholders. For civil society, it also meant balancing our focus on advocacy and messaging, with listening and negotiation skills. We also had to respect difference and the limitations of what could actually change, and work within a very complex dynamic.

3)   We were most successful when (and not always) there was clarity of purpose and mandate, and where we set realistic (but ambitious) objectives against realistic timelines. For civil society this is a challenge, since we often take a normative approach to issues, with a comprehensive agenda; but we soon realized that as participants in this process, to move the agenda forward,  we had to compromise.

4)   Multi-stakeholder processes need to be well-resourced. This is not just about financial resources – which donors provided through a pooled-funding mechanism that definitely helped facilitate national meetings and consultations and the preparations leading up to Busan – but also the human resources and leadership that all organizations participating committed.

5)   Civil society requires space and opportunity to construct iterative and representative processes from the ground up. It was important that we engaged as many CSOs as we did, but engaging civil society also requires space and time to draw out both the diverse views of CSOs and but also find the common threads.

6)   The need to reform processes for global, regional and national policy dialogue that are appropriate to and respect different multi-stakeholder requirements. In constructing multi-stakeholder processes, we need to actually reflect on whether these processes, are appropriate for all the stakeholders at the table. BetterAid was limited in the number of voices it could bring to the table, and we couldn’t always command the diverse constituencies and expertise we had.

7)   Multi-stakeholder processes work when all stakeholders recognize their responsibilities and seek to implement their commitments. Constructive policy dialogue builds on evidence drawn from implementation and from the challenges of implementing more ambitious reforms. For CSOs this means tackling the challenges we face as development actors, and being accountable at the national, regional and international level to the Istanbul Principles by examining and changing our practices.

8)   To sustain a focus on the country level requires deliberate efforts and significant investment of resources by all stakeholders. All said we need a country heavy framework for implementation of Busan. CSOs agreed that this was essential following Accra, and to some extent we did this. But as important as what we did was, these national engagements were episodic, but were unable to sustain a high-level of engagement at the country-level. This is limited by resources, by the spaces available, by support that is sustained irrespective of the changing agendas of governments, and by limited knowledge about these processes at the country level. Too often at the country level, we invest in the skills of very few people. This needs to change and we need to build much broader and deeper momentum at the country level

9)   There needs to be an enabling environment for CSOs that allow for multi-stakeholder dialogue. In Accra, enabling environment was not a major focus of our work; but since then, we have deepened our understanding of that issue, deepened the norms for what constitutes an enabling environment, and this has now emerged as a core issues in Busan.

10) Leadership is fundamental to generating the political will and sustaining behavioural and institutional change. This process had that in different degrees at the global, regional and national level, and we need to sustain that will. But to be successful, leadership must rise above and take risks.

Rich food for thought.

But what is now giving people indigestion are two things: whether the future Global Partnership will actually be able to sustain such a genuine multi-stakeholder as things slowly seem to be slipping back into an inter-governmental one; and whether ultimately this new global partnership is going to translate three years of work into better outcomes for the poor.

This blog was written by Fraser Reilly-King, Policy Analyst, CCIC. The views expressed are his own and not necessarily reflect the views of CCIC or its members.