Vulnerability and Poverty

Povertics blog will no longer be updated but you can read all the latest opinions from the IDS community on our website

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 10:47:00 +0000

This will be the last post to be published on this blog. The Institute of Development Studies now publishes all our members’ and guest bloggers’ posts directly onto our website.

You can keep up to date with the latest opinion and expert analysis from your favourite development bloggers, comment on and share their posts, by visiting our website, following us on social media or subscribing to updates from the following IDS research and knowledge clusters:

We are sure you will continue to enjoy the conversation.

Best Wishes

The IDS Communications and Engagement Unit

Tackling ‘hidden hunger’: Launch of the Global Hunger Index

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 08:00:00 +0000

The lack of essential vitamins and minerals in diets, known as hidden hunger, affects over two billion people worldwide. This was the focus of this year’s Global Hunger Index, launched on Monday by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide. Despite increased access to food, the absence of micronutrients in a person’s diet can wholly undermine efforts to tackle hunger and malnutrition.

Because micronutrient deficiencies in all but their most severe forms are invisible, affecting people’s ability to fight disease and work proactively, and for children, to grow adequately, but not producing a specific physical disease, they are often overlooked.

Focusing on nutrition security on World Food Day
Today, as civil society, governments and communities come together in a call to action on World Food Day (WFD), the GHI is a reminder that efforts are needed tackle the causes of malnutrition. The focus of WFD this year is on “feeding the world, caring for the earth”. It highlights significant role of family farming in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition.

This marks a shift in how the global community thinks about hunger; moving beyond just thinking about consuming enough energy to thinking about nutrition more holistically and looking and what the nutrition community calls nutrition security. Nutrition security is about consuming the right amounts (not too little or too much) foods, in adequate amounts to meet both energy and nutrient needs to live a healthy and active life.

Governments need to support the fight against ‘hidden hunger’
Malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, are caused by a range of factors from poor dietary diversity by reliance on a few staple foods, to unsanitary environments due to lack of clean water and sanitation facilities leading to disease and poor absorption of nutrients. Additionally, wider structural barriers have an impact, such as a families’ ability to purchase ‘nutritious’ foods or maternity cover benefits allowing mothers to breastfeed exclusively for six months.

As Lawrence Haddad, Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI discussed on Monday night, the soon to be launched Global Nutrition Report found there is only data on micronutrient deficiencies for 5 out of 185 countries globally, highlighting both the need for more data on micronutrient status and the need for more actions to fight micronutrient deficiencies.

There are some interesting programmes underway seeking to improve micronutrient status of poor and vulnerable households and trial and ways of increasing dietary diversity. In Zambia, over 40 per cent of children under five are stunted or too short for their age due to inadequate dietary intake and disease. At the launch of the GHI, we heard from Richard Mwape, the District Programme Coordinator for Concern Worldwide in Zambia who told us about an agricultural programme he works on, Realigning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition (RAIN) which aims increase household consumption of crops of high nutritional value, as well as increasing homestead gardening and small scale animal husbandry.

While programmes like these are critical to trial new programmes and reach those communities who often struggle to access government programmes, ultimately we need governments to step in and for people to hold their governments to account.

What needs to happen next?
What do we need to do as a global community to address the challenge of hidden hunger?

Post 2015 development goals need to include specific goals not just looking at hunger and food security but taking a much broader view of the need for nutrition security and ensuring goals and indicators will address hidden hunger.
There is a need to create an enabling environment globally that will increases people’s access, especially vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and adolescent girls, to micronutrient rich foods and invest more into sustainable and diversified productivity increases for a range of foods such as fruits, vegetables and animal source foods.
Governments must ensure that they are creating a regulatory environment that promotes good nutrition- actions that range from enforcing the codes regulating the marketing of breast milk substitutes to ensuring that private companies are incentivised to produce nutritious foods.

We need to make sure that the Global Hunger Index is used as a tool to incentivise action and that people can use the information to hold their government to account and push for more action to ensure that everyone, everywhere has adequate food to lead an active and healthy life.

By Katherine Pittore - Nutrition Convenor at the Institute of Development Studies

Good news on Inequality in Latin America – Highlights from the UNU-WIDER Inequality Conference 5-6 September, Helsinki

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:24:00 +0000

Something ought to be done on inequality…..

I have just got back from a major UNU-WIDER conference on Inequality (5-6 September). Inequality is big news.

Something ought to be done.

It’s not just me that says so. Even the World Economic Forum has realized – and they should know about inequality. They live it. (Although Oxfam turned up this year and spoilt the fun with a report arguing that 85 people own as much as half the world population – quite brave really in a gathering which is reputed to attract 70 billionaires.)

It reminds me of the joke during the Yugoslav wars, when the international community was going through one of its all too frequents bouts of not knowing what to do. The cartoon showed an international general instructing peacekeeping troops – “On the command ‘do something’, do something”.

Something ought to be done ….. but what? Brazilian experience

The keynote address was by Marcelo Cortes Neri, Minister for Strategic Affairs in the Brazilian government. In an intellectual tour de force, he deployed a bewildering array of indicators to show how Brazil is doing on inequality and poverty reduction. See Inequality in Brazil: measurement, trends, impacts and policies (pdf)

Perhaps the most dramatic figure presented by Neri is the 69% fall in absolute poverty (US$ 1.25 per day PPP) in only 10 years from 2002-12. Half of this is accounted for by income growth and half by decreased inequality. So the good news is not restricted to cash transfers (Bolsa Familia) but is indicative of a much deeper social transformation. Declining inequality is illustrated by progress in the Gini coefficient from 0.607 in 1990 to 0.526 in 2012. The chart illustrating the trend in the Gini coefficient showed 30 years of increasing inequality to 1990, followed by over 20 years if decrease to a level below that of 50 years ago.

Per capita income for the poorest 5% (where the contribution of the Bolsa Familia is primarily felt) of the population has grown 138% in the period 2001-12, compared with 26% for the top 5% . Bolsa Familia is good value for money.

The Minister noted the contribution of education, but showed that there is much more to be done on quality (using the low maths ranking in the Pisa/OECD comparative chart, despite recent improvements).

Using the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI), 41% of municipalities showed a very low HDI in 2000. Ten years later, this figure was only 0.6%.Neri also argued that citizens seem determined to take matters into their own hands rather than wait for the authorities to help them. Improvement of housing conditions and acquisition of household durables serve as indicators, but so do studies of perceptions which show that people are more positive about improvement in their own living conditions than they are about the general society. In the Gallup World Poll rankings, Brazil’s score (averaging 8.69 out of 10) has been the highest in the world every year from 2006-14 (measuring self-perceptions of “highest future life satisfaction”). Bolsa Familia recipients showed the greatest increase in present happiness compared to past happiness. It is a scheme which covers 25% of the population at a cost of 0.5% of GPD and has a higher multiplier effect than other social transfers. Without Bolsa Familia, the numbers in extreme poverty would rise by 36%.

Income inequality remains high, but Brazil has the second lowest inequality of expected future life satisfaction (a Gini of expected life satisfaction in five years) – after Belgium.

The Minister used a telling image – that there is much to be done on inequality so that many of these snapshots represent a good frame in a bad movie. Inequality in 2011 was still 18^th highest of 155 countries (calculations based on data from Milanovic and Neri). The presentation was remarkably un-complacent – and he spent some time explaining the profile of those involved in the recent demonstrations (younger, better educated, mobilized through social networking).

Although growth has slowed, Neri concluded that continued progress was achievable and sustainable because of the rising indicators for education, labour, HDI and housing.

Brazil is in many ways a microcosm of the world. As Neri showed the poorest in Brazil would be poor by Indian standards, and the rich are rich like rich Americans. Brazil’s growth in GDP per capita was similar to change in the world average (3.5% to 3.6% from 2002-12).

The conclusion which I feel one must draw is that policies matter. I first visited Brazil in 1983 and visited Diadema where Lula’s PT had just taken control locally and I saw early housing projects. I also saw some of the slum conditions and the work being done by progressive sectors of the Catholic church. The work of the social movements over the past thirty years has been the foundation for changed social attitudes – and has provided the bedrock of support which makes policies of this kind sustainable. It is a remarkable achievement – but not so remarkable that it cannot be replicated in different ways in different contexts. Policies matter. Redistribution is easier to finance in a growing economy.

Not just Brazil

Brazil is special – but also part of a continental trend. This is suggested by detailed work conducted in a UNU-WIDER project led by Giovanni Andrea Cornia which analysed Falling Inequality in Latin America since 2000. See Falling Inequality in Latin America: Policy Changes and Lessons.

Inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, has fallen in almost all of the 18 countries studied (exceptions being Nicaragua and Costa Rica) returning the region to pre-liberalization levels (early 1980s) of inequality. It seems that the impact is lasting, not cyclical as inequality (unlike in other world regions) continued to decline during the crisis of 2009-12.

This is not only a story about social transfers. Accumulation of human capital by workers (education and training) has led to a decrease in the skilled-unskilled wage ratio, rising demand for less skilled workers and increasing minimum wages. Cornia and colleagues argue for a comprehensive understanding of the decline in inequality pointing to a range of factors: a shift towards left-of-centre governments committed to reversing inequality; prudent macro-economic policies; careful fiscal and monetary policies; commitment to using redistribution decrease net inequality (after taxes and transfers); avoiding financial crises, reducing dependence on foreign borrowing and increasing trade (intra-regional – and with Asia).

In this context, social expenditure and labour policies also play their role. A better protected and better educated work force, as well as policies designed to address inherited problems of the past including unemployment, informality and weakened collective bargaining institutions.

An even fuller picture can be gained by putting these results alongside the Commitment to Equity project coordinated by Nora Lustig. When I spoke with her at the UNU-WIDER conference, she explained that its purpose is to assess the readiness of governments to use the tax system and social transfers to address poverty and inequality.

Other insights: Databases and beyond

Lustig was also the opening speaker in a significant panel on the evaluation of international databases on inequality, put together by the Journal of Economic Inequality. The timing was good as it coincides with an update of the World Income Inequality Database (WIID) which was developed and is maintained as the only fully global source. Stephen Jenkins (London School of Economics) expressed a clear preference for WIID (, albeit with some caveats on data ) over SWIID – the Standardized World Income Inequality Database devised by Frederick Solt which is entirely based on imputational methodology.

There was much more to praise and think about at the UNU-WIDER inequality conference, including:

Good presentations from IMF specialists Andrew Berg and Michael Keen – Berg addressing some of the issues taken up in the paper Redistribution, Inequality and Growth favourably reviewed by Carlos Fortin; Keen presented a compelling case to show that general subsidies are unlikely to be an efficient way of helping the poorest. For those who wish to follow the BRICS track, there were two sessions on South Africa which provide important insights into the stubbornness of inequality 20 years into democratic government.
Finally, it is essential to be informed not only on income inequality, but also wealth inequality. Tony Shorrocks and Jim Davies returned to share the work that they initiated at WIDER which is now presented annually as the Credit Suisse Research Institute’s Global Wealth Report.

Material presented at the UNU-WIDER Inequality Conference can be accessed here (see presentations, papers, and video)

by Roger Williamson

Jobs, light manufacturing and structural transformation - a comprehensive package for poverty reduction

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 10:33:00 +0000

The best thing about being a Visiting Fellow (in my case both at IDS and UNU-WIDER) is that you meet people from very different networks. Another good thing is that sometimes you stop “visiting” and get to sit down and record what you have learnt. Today is that day.

I was recently in Vietnam at the UNU-WIDER conference on “Institutional Reforms for Transformation, Inclusion and Sustainability”. Vietnam used to be one of the most aid-dependent countries in the world, but has posted sustained and remarkable growth rate figures, privatised most of its state-owned enterprises, the private sector has got into manufacturing, and the country has significantly reduced poverty rates. Is there a message here? Yes.

In the immortal phrase of The Economist, it is important to “make things you can drop on your foot”.

One of the things I do for UNU-WIDER is interview some of the brilliant conference presenters for their website. It is a crash course in their thinking for me, and an easy way in for viewers. I now want to give you some snapshots of what I learnt on work at the conference.

Think of the “new structural economics” and you think of Justin Yifu Lin, former World Bank Chief Economist.

In his conference presentation on how to avoid the “middle income trap”, he gave a six-step toolkit for growth identification and facilitation, showing how to spot industries and competitors who are ahead which are “ripe for the taking" - provided a government in the poorer country can remove binding constraints and cash in on latent comparative advantage. He shows how to develop a sensible industrial policy and avoid the traps of the old structuralism, primarily “comparative advantage defying economics”. That sounds bad. It is. It does not fly. It costs money and wastes resources.

Hinh Dinh and colleagues have spent years looking at light manufacturing in great detail – both all over Africa also in China. Certain industries are key to getting industrialisation going – light manufacturing tasks such as clothes, footwear and leather, woodworking, basic metal work, agroprocessing. In short, stuff people need for daily life, shoes, a shirt, a table. If you can make them, you can sell them, and you can eventually move up the value chain in manufacturing. Hinh Dinh’s work is full of detailed case studies. Reading the Africa accounts, you can also learn that cherry tomatoes have more value to growers in West Africa than bigger ones, and the story of Michelle Obama’s “inauguration shoes” – and how Ethiopia (with Chinese investment and know-how) broke into designer footwear. (It also helps to have a lot of cattle in your country. The shoe industry – it’s what you can run if you have the hides.)

Martin Rama gave us a global run-down on jobs based on the huge amount of work put into the 2013 World Development Report. Surprisingly enough, it is only the second time in 35 years that the WDR has focussed on employment. This report is a comprehensive approach to making good that omission.

Gary Fields has spent a lot of time talking to ordinary people in the informal and the formal sectors about their working experience in different parts of the world. This wisdom and experience is distilled in his book Working Hard, Working Poor. Fields goes back to basics – for him economic development means “improvements in people’s material standards of living”. One of his key messages is that given the extent of informal and self-employment among the poor, rather than wishing it did not exist, ignoring or even repressing informal workers, policy makers should understand their lives, the decisions they have to make and finding policies which help them.

There was much more good work presented – and the outlines by Lin, Hinh Dinh, Fields and Rama can be found among the conference presentations on the website. Of course the real scholars among you will read the entire works – cover to cover – with much benefit!

By Roger Williamson

Going beyond sports: The Commonwealth has an important role to play in development

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 29 Jul 2014 16:00:00 +0000

What remains of the Commonwealth?

Watching the teams march past for the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games remains as stirring as ever, for the handsome diversity of the athletes themselves and the dazzling colours and contrasting styles of their uniforms: 73 teams from 53 countries for "the friendly games." But is this the best that remains of the Commonwealth today?

If so, it is a bit sad and perhaps a challenge to remember and revive some of the Commonwealth's earlier achievements. At its best, the organisation's Secretariat provided practical and highly professional support for countries coping with the early challenges of independence or grappling with such divisive issues as negotiating fair deals with mining companies or multinational corporations.

The Commonwealth also produced policy reports on topics such as ending corruption or engendering development. The Institute of Development Studies provided some of the experts contributing to these activities - Mike Faber, Roland Brown, Richard Longhurst and others.

Interaction and shared learning should not just be confined to the sports arena

Many of us believe that the Commonwealth could and should still have a role in such activities, providing support and speaking out with frankness on difficult topics in a way which too readily get lost or distorted in the larger UN or in more limited regional organisations such as the OECD or EU or ESCAP. The Commonwealth has English as a common means of communication but otherwise is a microcosm of the larger world, with rich, middle income and poorer countries and many of the LDCs and Small Island States which need special consideration.

Corruption, financial regulation, reporting on assets held in overseas tax havens are only the beginning of a list of hot economic topics suitable for Commonwealth consideration. What also about topics such as diffusing tensions arising from religious or cultural differences, on which many Commonwealth countries have rich experience to draw on? Or multicultural education? The UK as well as other rich members of the Commonwealth now have as much to learn as they have to contribute in these areas.

Sport should not be the only arena for interaction and mutual learning, or the only place where Commonwealth countries, large and small, can gain medals and recognition from such friendly participation.

By Richard Jolly

Sharing ideas and learning lessons about social protection

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 12:30:00 +0000

Last week the Centre for Social Protection (CSP) welcomed a group of enthusiastic and committed participants to the CSP short course ‘Social Protection: Policies, Programmes and Evidence’. After having developed and run multiple courses and trainings in recent years for professionals in international organisations such as UNICEF and FAO, donors including DFID and governments in Rwanda, Ethiopia and Nepal, this is the first short course that was open for all applications.

We shared an exciting and stimulating four days together. With a group of participants bringing together experiences from 17 different organisations spanning 23 countries across the globe, this was very much a two-way learning and sharing opportunity. Sessions covered topics ranging from conceptual frameworks and institutional approaches to targeting and delivery of social protection and the creation and assessment of evidence. Training methods included presentations, group exercises and ‘buzz-group’ discussions.

A particularly valuable element of the course was the ‘Social Protection Marketplace’. A self-selected group of participants occupied ‘stalls’ that served as a platform for sharing experiences and questions that they are grappling with in their work on social protection and receiving feedback on those. We discussed the challenges of monitoring and evaluating a cash transfer programme in the extremely volatile and rapidly changing situation in Iraq where people are constantly ‘on the move’. We learned about efforts to make the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia more ‘climate smart’ and debated what this actually means and how such additional goals and components can be added on to a well-established social protection programme. We were also presented with the Egypt dilemma: there is political appetite for and commitment to promoting social justice but how can social protection play a role in a context of stringent fiscal constraints?

The four days of intensive interaction in Brighton provided participants with a stronger knowledge base about social protection and allowed for reflections about current practices in social protection, either in their own current work or future initiatives. Participants told us that the course “was extremely rewarding and very informative” and that they “will definitely recommend this to other colleagues”.

Following our own positive experiences and the participant feedback, we look forward to offering this course again next year. So spread the word and watch this space: join us in July 2015!

By Keetie Roelen, IDS Research Fellow

Anyone but al-Shabaab: Kenya’s political divisions laid bare by spiraling attacks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:33:00 +0000

Weeks after deadly attacks killed 60 at Mpeketoni in Kenya’s Lamu County, new raids on July 5th in Lamu and Tana River counties left over 20 dead, sowing fear anew in a country growing accustomed to sophisticated attacks of murderous brutality. As before, a heavily armed group came during the night, striking the local police station, torching homes and businesses while targeting men on a killing spree that was rumoured to last for hours.

Less than a day after the latest raids on the settlements of Hindi in Lamu and Gamba in Tana River, Deputy Inspector General of Police Grace Kaindi claimed in a press briefing that the outlawed Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) was behind the attack. This was despite a broadcast on an al-Shabaab-affiliated radio station which stated that the Somalia-based group was responsible for the raid on Hindi (no group has thus far claimed responsibility for the Gamba attack). Explaining the police thinking, Kaindi revealed that a board had been placed at a road junction, with the following message scrawled in chalk:

‘Raila Tosha (Raila is enough, the one who should lead)
MRC munalala (MRC is sleeping)
Waislamu Ardizenu (Muslims, it’s your land)
Sina nyakuliwa (Your land is being taken away)
Amkeni mupigane (Wake up and fight)
you invade Muslim county
and you want to stay in peace
Kick Christians out Coast
Uhuru down’

While Kaindi acknowledged that the board may have been intentionally placed to divert the attention of investigators, the initial police response to the raids is the latest episode in an unseemly politicisation of recent attacks that have shaken the country. As the al-Shabaab threat looms ever larger in Kenya, its divided political leaders risk leaving Kenyans even more vulnerable to appalling violence.

Westgate horror, political indifference

How did Kenya come to this point? Kenyans briefly united after the assault on the upscale Westgate shopping centre left 67 dead in September of last year. Across social media, Kenyans and friends of Kenya changed their profile pictures to an image of a lone-candle burning, emblazoned with ‘Kenya’. Ordinary Kenyans from across regional and religious divides brought food and thermoses of hot tea to the military personnel stationed at the blockades set-up in the city’s Westlands neighbourhood, as gunfire continued to ring out from the complex. President Uhuru Kenyatta, whose nephew was amongst those killed, cut a unifying figure on national television.

Days later, walking hand-in-hand with Deputy President William Ruto and Opposition Leader Raila Odinga into an inter-faith prayer service at the city’s eponymous Kenyatta International Conference Centre, the President announced that he would establish a Commission of Inquiry into the attacks. Nearly 10 months later, the Commission has yet to be created, and Kenyatta has been silent on the matter. In the weeks after the attack, CCTV footage aired on a Kenyan television network showed members of Kenya’s military looting a supermarket. Later, two soldiers were jailed, leaving bigger concerns of discipline and professionalism in the security services unaddressed.

Today, the partially-scaffolded, boarded-up Westgate centre stands as an eerie reminder of death and ineptitude. Surprisingly, the issue has generated very little public debate, even though attacks have multiplied, from bombed markets in the city’s working class neighbourhood of Gikomba, to exploding matatus on the Thika superhighway, to village massacres. Writing in Kenya’s Standard broadsheet, Kethi Kilonzo, an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya, wrote, ‘to date the country does not know how, why, who, where, and when. Terrorism and the terrorists have not been stopped. The question — what next? — remains unanswered. If the failings leading to Westgate had been uncovered, and these gaps and the persons responsible dealt with publicly and resolutely, would this have stopped the terrorism acts that have followed Westgate?’

Although Kenyatta’s failure to establish a Commission of Inquiry has not caused a public backlash – perhaps owing to the fact that past Commissions of Inquiry have been a way for Kenya’s politicians to bury difficult issues – the lack of any official investigation feeds a feeling of despondency and fear over when and where attacks might happen next. In the UK, an inquest into the 7/7 bombings of London’s tubes and buses – the verdict of which was delivered in 2011 nearly six years after the attack – was significant as part of a longer process of reckoning and healing following the seemingly indiscriminate violence.

Although the then-Home Secretary, John Reid, ruled out a public inquiry into the bombings, as a number of bereaved relatives demanded, the inquest presided over by the high court judge Lady Justice Hallett shared considerable insight and findings on possible shortcomings in intelligence and emergency service responses.

So, Kilzono’s question stands: ‘What next?’ For the moment, neither the government nor the opposition seem to have much to say.

Mpeketoni and ‘anyone but al-Shabaab’

Since Westgate, grenade attacks, bomb explosions, ambushes and village massacres have affected Kenyans of many stripes – commuter, police officer and farmer, better off and poor, Somali, Luo and Kikuyu. Yet, as the violence spreads, affecting more and more aspects of ordinary Kenyans’ daily life, a creeping politicisation of the violence has polarised attitudes and occasioned greater discord in the face of a perilous threat. While al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the Mpeketoni massacres, in a televised address, President Kenyatta attributed the attack to unspecified ‘local political networks’, leaving little doubt that he blamed the political opposition. Kenyans from many tribes were killed in the massacre, yet Kenyatta’s Kikuyu tribesmen, who settled the area in the 1960s on land given by Kenyatta’s father and first President, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, were disproportionately affected.

Vanished is the presidential figure who originally sought to unite and reassure shocked Kenyans after Westgate. Instead, Kenyatta has stepped right into the fray of politicians’ acrimonious statements as well as hate speech spread by social media and text messages. Already, even before the Mpeketoni attacks, loyalists of Kenyatta’s ruling Jubilee Coalition sought to portray the earlier attacks as targeting Kikuyu. This, in turn, has fed a perception that the attacks were in fact ethnically-motivated violence perpetrated by sympathisers of the Odinga-headed opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD). The fact that no one claimed responsibility left open the possibility that al-Shabaab was not to blame.

The Daily Nation columnist Machario Gaitho wrote, ‘By the time the Mpeketoni attack came about, it was almost as if to confirm the prevailing narrative about a domestic anti-Kikuyu plot. President Kenyatta’s statement now takes that out of the murky realm of Jubilee social media activism and soapbox political rhetoric and elevates it to the official government position on a key national security issue.’

Fast forward two weeks to the Gamba and Hindi attacks and Kaindi’s claim appears less a statement born from extraordinarily efficient investigative abilities by Kenya’s police service and more a knee-jerk reaction to sully Jubilee’s opponents. Anyone but al-Shabaab is now responsible for the attacks. Thus, Kenya has moved in the past two months from suffering a series of attacks that no one claimed responsibility for – but which were thought to possibly be part of an intensifying al-Shabaab campaign in Kenya – to a succession of massacres claimed by al-Shabaab, but which the government and police blame on a range of political dissidents and outlawed domestic groups.

People die, politicians fight

As Kenya’s politicians continue to fight, Kenyans continue to die. The one thing Kenyatta’s blundering response to the Mpeketoni attacks did – and leaving aside whatever the truth may be of who carried out the attacks (Commission of Inquiry anyone?) – is to highlight how effectively al-Shabaab has come under the skin of Kenya’s domestic politics.

A widespread misconception at the moment is to externalise the al-Shabaab threat. This is not of course unique to the current juncture at which Kenya finds itself. In 2009, after al-Shabaab militants kidnapped British holidaymakers at an exclusive idyllic hideaway miles away from Kenya’s border with Somalia, Kenya Defence Forces poured into southern Somalia in an operation dubbed ‘Linda Nchi’ (‘Protect the Country’). Its purpose, ostensibly, was to lend force to the establishment of the pseudo state of Jubaland as a ‘buffer zone’ protecting Kenya from the conflict in Somalia. Subsequently, the Kenyan government pursued a policy of repatriating Somali refugees to Jubaland. A more recent operation in April and May this year, ‘Usalama Watch’ (‘Security Watch’), rounded up thousands of Somalis from Nairobi’s Eastleigh and South C neighbourhoods, who were then incarcerated at the city’s Kasarani stadium for a ‘screening’ process to root out anyone who was in the country illegally.

What all of these security responses have in common is a predilection of blaming ‘the other’, and particularly Somali people, for attacks in the country. Yet, the politicisation of recent attacks only unmasks more fundamental afflictions in Kenya that exist irrespective of al-Shabaab or, for that matter, the conflict in neighbouring Somalia. These include significant regional and ethnicised political divisions, a polarised politics that thrives on scare-mongering and fear, a lack of public trust in policing agencies, and an ossified security apparatus needing reform.

Military adventures in Jubaland and the targeting of Somali populations in Kenya have not strengthened security and have probably worsened an already grave situation. Rather, the safety and security of all Kenyans will only be guaranteed through a serious and sustained effort from its political leaders to address the country’s many long-standing challenges.

By Dr Jeremy Lind
This blog was originally published on African Arguments on 11 July 2014.

More nutrition science or political will?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 15:17:00 +0000

The second Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) has just been launched, providing detailed evidence on efforts to reduce hunger (ten indicators) and undernutrition (12 indicators) in 45 developing countries.

The data show that the richer among these countries often do better —more resources should, after all, mean better outcomes. They also show that some poorer countries have been improving their performancedespite difficult circumstances. Brazil, Guatemala, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, Peru and Tanzania came out as highly committed to taking action,with Burundi and Liberia making progress on reducing chronic hunger and undernutrition.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, 842 million people were suffering from chronic hunger between 2011 and 2013 —about 12 per cent of the global population. Undernutrition contributed to 45 per cent of the deaths of children under the age of five. And, in the first 1,000 days of life, it has long-term and irreversible effects, including on cognitive skills that can reduce an individual’s potential for learning and earning.

To address such a comprehensive problem, effective, joined-uphealthcare systems and hunger and nutrition interventions are necessary. These need a proper scientific basis — so evidence-based policies are crucial. But so is the delivery of interventions, and political commitment to improve delivery.

Another new study, which looked at effective leaders in nutrition, emphasised “the importance of locally collected and commissioned research, knowledge and data”, as well as nationally relevant research.

Elise Wach, the specialist who interviewed key experts in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India and Kenya for the study, stresses that, while evidence is necessary, it is not enough. She tells me: “Getting effective policies in place requires an ability to understand the perceptions, priorities and relationships between different stakeholders — both within the (often fragmented) nutrition communities as well as among the broader policy actors.” From here, she says, a leader might work to build alliances or to tailor how the problem is framed for different stakeholders.

Champions for effective delivery of national nutrition policies need to marshal the evidence, for sure — but they also need other skills. They can be dealing with a policy environment where rhetorical commitment from political leaders is higher than real commitment, where complexmultisectoral coalitions need to be built and maintained, and where there are donor and community interests at play.

By Roger Williamson. This blog was originally published by SciDev

Which 7 countries are most committed to ending hunger?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 12:21:00 +0000

In a recently published index, researchers analysed the political commitment to hunger and nutrition of 45 developing countries.

Hanci 2013 ranks governments according to commitment: green is high or moderate, orange is low and red is very low.

Some of the world's poorest countries are taking significant strides in addressing undernutrition and hunger, according to new evidence from the hunger and nutrition commitment index (Hanci) 2013. Guatemala, Peru, Malawi, Brazil, Madagascar, Nepal and Tanzania were rated highly committed, but Burundi and Liberia have made progress on action to reduce chronic hunger and undernutrition.

Findings from Hanci, launched on 25 June, show that in some countries, where there has previously been little action on these issues, significant efforts are now being made, including putting in place new laws and policies and increasing public investment. Burundi, for example, has improved access to clean water and sanitation and increased agricultural spending – significant improvements in a country with a hunger status of "extremely alarming", according to the global hunger index.

Hanci measures political commitment to reducing hunger and undernutrition in 45 high-burden developing countries, and compares their policies, laws and spending efforts. Where hunger is the result of an empty stomach, undernutrition is caused by multiple factors including poor diversity of food, lack of clean water and sanitation, inadequate feeding practices for infants and young children, and unavailability of healthcare. Therefore, government interventions must address both hunger and undernutrition, and commitment to tackling one does not necessarily automatically translate into tackling the other.

By shining a spotlight on how governments prioritise action differently on hunger and undernutrition, Hanci helps citizens to hold their governments to account. Annual updates can show how governments perform over time. Where evidence shows that action is lacking, more may be demanded. Conversely, where it shows that governments are taking positive steps, fair praise may reinforce further action.

This is needed because levels of hunger and undernutrition remain unacceptably high. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), between 2011-2013, 842 million people (one in eight) worldwide were estimated to suffer from chronic hunger. Recent research found that in many countries in Africa and south Asia, many children under five are stunted, or are too short for their age, and that undernutrition contributed to 45% of deaths of under-fives in 2011. Greater efforts by governments, businesses, civil society groups and citizens are needed to eradicate these scourges.

Nevertheless, it is evident that motivations for prioritising action on hunger and nutrition differ over time, and from country to country. Unlike Burundi, other countries with high levels of hunger and undernutrition are sliding back in their efforts. In Sudan, for example, Hanci shows that on many indicators, such as access to water and sanitation and women's economic rights, such efforts are weakening, threatening future progress.

Hunger and undernutrition are shaped by political choices, which are particularly important in the global hunger and undernutrition hotspots of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where economic growth offers unprecedented potential for governments to find revenues to tackle these challenges. However, high levels of economic growth do not necessarily lead to further action by governments. For instance, Zambia has enjoyed a decade of rapid economic growth but nearly half the population has suffered from hunger in recent years, and Hanci shows the Zambian government's efforts to reduce hunger and undernutrition are actually weakening.

Intriguingly, Hanci shows that in many cases, countries prioritise hunger over nutrition. Surveys of more than 500 experts in six countries show that spending on hunger is often strongly sensitive to electoral cycles, but spending on nutrition is not. Politicians anticipate that people vote on the basis of having their stomach filled, but know that electorates do not demand better nutrition.

Hence, those in power prioritise action to reduce hunger and lack political incentives to understand available solutions for chronic undernutrition. Many governments continue to overlook what a group of Nobel laureate economists has identified as one of the soundest economic investments for countries: spending time and money on nutrition.

By Dolf te Lintelo, research fellow in the vulnerability and poverty reduction team.

This article was originally published in The Guardian.

What does fish have to do with food and nutrition security?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 10:21:00 +0000

The short answer is: a lot. Fish from capture fisheries and aquaculture is estimated to provide more than half of the world population with 15 – 20 % of their total intake of animal protein. In some low-income countries such as Gambia, Sierra Leone and Ghana, the share is more than 50 %. Fish also provides several of the micronutrients that are essential for healthy living and a large share of those who benefit are poor. Fisheries and aquaculture, including the related value chains, are also very important sources of income for low-income people and the interaction with natural resource management is very significant.

I expect that those working in or with the fisheries and aquaculture sectors know that. Unfortunately that knowledge does not appear to have penetrated the food and nutrition security deliberations. If you do not believe me, think about how many of the last 100 articles, books or briefs about food and nutrition security you have read included a significant section on fish? In fact my guess is that most of them did not even mention fish. The current debate and the many papers written recently about how agriculture can be made more nutrition sensitive also miss the point. We should talk about how the food system, including fisheries and aquaculture and the total supply chain, can be made more nutrition sensitive. If we limit the discussion and policy recommendations to agriculture, we are foregoing some very big opportunities for improving food security and nutrition. This is much more that semantics. Ignoring fish in efforts to improve diet diversity and reducing micronutrient deficiencies is particularly troubling. The CGIAR does include research and development for the fisheries and aquaculture sectors but the World Fish Center has the lowest budget of all the 15 centers and accounts for only 2-3 % of the total CGIAR budget.

As a food policy analyst I am as guilty as the next guy. It was not until a few years ago that I began to include fish in my food and nutrition security work, and it was not until I started interacting with the team who worked with the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security (HLPE), that I fully realized what I had been missing. The HLPE report No. 7 (Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture for food security and nutrition) just completed, is a powerful reminder to all of us, that fisheries and aquaculture and what they produce, are critically important to any debate and action to reduce poverty and improve food security and nutrition. The report, which is available at www.fao.org/cfs/cfs-hlpe or in hardcopy from cfs-hlpe@fao.org , is a goldmine of policy-related knowledge about the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, their importance, sustainability issues, governance and recommended policies for consideration by governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations. It provides a comprehensive assessment of the interaction between the fisheries and aquaculture sector and food and nutrition security. The report is a must-read for those of us interested in food policy.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen

Graduate School Professor, Cornell University and Chair, HLPE Steering Committee.

Kenya’s security crisis worsens after Mpeketoni attacks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 14:53:00 +0000

By Patrick Mutahi

The Mpeketoni attacks that took place on the 15th and 16th of June have led to a renewal of political divisions in Kenya and concerns over state responses to terrorism. While Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attacks as retaliation for “the [Kenyan] government’s brutal oppression of Muslims in Kenya,” President Uhuru Kenyatta blamed “local political networks”, insinuating that opposition figures were behind efforts to foment violence.

Wherever the truth may lie, Kenya has been affected by a spate of attacks in recent years. According to analysis by the Nairobi-based Centre for Human Rights and Policy Studies, the Mpeketoni attacks were the 61st to take place since Kenya’s military incursion into Somalia (Operation Linda Nchi) began in October 2011. Over half of these attacks have occurred in the country’s northeast, in Mandera, Garissa and Wajir. Police stations and vehicles, nightclubs and bars, churches, and mosques have all been targeted. The frequency of attacks has varied over time, with sharp spikes (such as in April 2012 when seven attacks were reported) punctuating longer periods when there were few attacks, such as in 2013 when only eleven attacks were reported. However, there has been an uptick in attacks in 2014, with five attacks in May alone.

Al Shabaab only claimed responsibility for six attacks

These attacks would advance its strategy to destabilise Kenya by instilling fear and contributing to a sense of insecurity. However, Al Shabaab has claimed responsibility for only six attacks since October 2011, with no one coming forward to claim responsibility for the other attacks. One theory is that Al Shabaab sympathisers are carrying out attacks independently of its command structures. Al Shabaab has many supporters in Kenya and a strong presence in places like Eastleigh, the centre for Nairobi’s Somali community. [1] Further, Al Shabaab has adapted its recruitment strategy, and increasingly draws in young Kenyans who are not Somali. This has become an achilles heal for the Kenyan government, raising counter-radicalisation of the youth to the top of the its security agenda.

Yet, in spite of the trend of worsening insecurity, there have been few arrests, feeding an impression that the state has lost control over the situation. In April 2014, the government launched Operation Usalama Watch, a crackdown on illegal immigrants. The operation was concentrated in neighbourhoods of Nairobi with large Somali populations, including Eastleigh and South C. The police conducted house to house searches, arresting anyone who did not have a form of Kenyan identification or valid travel document. Those arrested were taken to the city’s Kasarani Gymnasium and some were deported to Somalia, raising the ire of Somali leaders, other Kenyan opposition politicians, human rights advocates, and legal experts.

Draconian measures being adopted are counter-productive and breed resentment

The Kenyan government’s response to worsening security fits a wider pattern of draconian counter-terrorism measures adopted by governments in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere. Governments curtail human rights and basic freedoms in the name of strengthening security and safeguarding poorly defined ‘national interests’. Yet, trampling on human rights and civil liberties is dangerously counter-productive. The smouldering resentment it breeds risks generating terrorist recruits, alienates potential anti-terrorism allies, and weakens efforts to curb terrorist atrocities. In order to guarantee national security, protecting human rights and continued vigilance are paramount.

Ultimately, Kenya’s faltering responses to recent attacks only serve to feed a dynamic that further destabilises the country. They are also no substitute for serious security sector reforms. The Kenyan police forces are still largely reviled by a public that has long been accustomed to its corrupt, abusive and otherwise unprofessional practices. Other security agencies have been complicit in political repression, eroding public confidence in the state’s abilities to provide secure for all citizens without bias. A lack of adequate resources, poor training, weak leadership and an institutionalized culture of unaccountability in policing and security institutions have grievously undermined public faith and trust. Thus, security sector reforms – and not swoops by security departments that disproportionately target certain communities – will be critical for strengthening security and winning wider public support for the fight against terrorism in all its forms.

[1] Kenya’s Assistant Minister for Internal Security and Provincial Administration, Orwa Ojode likened the Al Shabaab to a snake whose head was in Eastleigh, Nairobi and tail in Somalia. Tom Odula, “War Fears: Somalis in Kenya Afraid of Xenophobia”, Associated Press, 11 November 2011.

[2] Roth Kenneth, ‘Human Rights, the Bush Administration, and the Fight Against Terrorism: The Need for a Positive Vision’ in www.hrw.org.

Patrick Mutahi is a researcher at the Centre for Human Rights and Policy Studies in Nairobi. Patrick has worked with the IDS Addressing and Mitigating Violence programme, and co-authored the report: Missing the Point: Violence Reduction and Policy Misadventures in Nairobi's Poor Neighbourhoods.

Towards Future Child Friendly Cities in Asia

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 14:25:00 +0000

Last week, researchers and practitioners, from think-tanks, academia, civil society organisations and various South Asian offices of UNICEF came together at a jointly hosted event by Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and UNICEF to think through the challenges of a rapidly pacing urbanisation in Asia, its impact on children and what can be done to make it happen better.

The avenues of urbanisation

Since 2007, more than half of the World’s population live in cities. In 1960, according to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, it was one third. In South Asia, the growth has almost doubled from low 17% to 31%, in half a century. The average growth rate of the South Asian urban population has consistently outpaced the World’s suggesting that the 50% milestone will be reached in much less time. Noticeably, it was already reached by China in 2010.

According to estimates 60% of the area to be urban in 2030 has still not been built. We are, therefore in a juncture where there is an opportunity to think about how to build these new urban territories in a sustainable and more equitable way. To do it, we need to understand why and how cities are growing.

Urban – the “close unknown”

In the conference we faced a hard to admit truth. Some of our research instruments, tailored to work so well in the structured spaces of formal urban neighbourhoods or in the relatively stable rural spaces, fail in the organic space of fluid, hidden and many times deemed as illegal residence of urban slums. Politicians themselves fail to acknowledge this reality. After all, rural areas are far, urban areas, namely the ones in the capital are just there, close!

However, we heard how easy it is for poor urban children to be unseen. We heard about street children, deemed as outlaws to be controlled by police forces. We heard about working children, also outlawed themselves, hidden and underserved, for the policy cannot risk to ease the life of those whose cares chose to engage in a banned activity. Finally, we heard about slum children, unreached and therefore “invisible”. Yet, probably, children are the measure of a capacity of a city to sustain a dignified and aspirational human existence.

Urban children – the measure of human friendly cities

In the context of a UNICEF conference, nothing would make more sense than to place the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) as the benchmark of what a city has to meet to be, not only a child friendly city but one that properly responds to all of those most vulnerable. Andrea Rossi, UNICEF Social Policy Adviser, encouraged us to build cities as if it were for our daughter, son, nephew or niece… (someone we care) and think: as s/he is living here, what does the city need to allow or provide so that s/he has the wellbeing s/he deserves?

In identifying the answer to these needs, we would build not only a child-friendly city, but an accessible city for all. It would be a city that would require us to address and look into the power structures surrounding the cities in all their territories and components.

Power to exclude, power to transform

So how can we provide for the children of these growing cities? Well, the resources exist. If cities are spaces of opportunities, it became clear throughout the conference, that proximity isn’t a direct precursor of access. The decision of planners (or the lack of planning, a political decision in itself), the power of local authorities, the powers inside the slums (sometime illegal powers, such as drug-lords capable of command the organic map of a slum so as to assure that only one entry exists to it), mediate and (sometimes purposefully) exclude the access to otherwise close services.

Those same powers hold, however, the key of transformation. We were reminded of how in the first municipality the Brazilian Worker’s Party was elected to administer, a radical project endowed the residents of a favela (the common name for a slum in Brazil) the property of the tiny plots of land where they each had their residence. It then called and mobilised them to, collectively, renew not only the public spaces but their own private spaces so that electricity, water and sanitation became accessible to each of them.

Another power was fought and probably conquered, at that moment: the power of an idea that constructed those living in the favela as outlaws or irrational, as “lesser people” in need to be convinced or forced to leave those spaces. The moment they were acknowledged as equals, with personal aspirations and desire to contribute to a better living space, both private and public, some good change happened.

In the conference we were called to look at the legitimate aspirations we, off almost all the countries in the world (safe the USA and Somalia), bestow in our children through the CRC. In the Asian cities of today and the urban territories to plan in the future, these can be the benchmarks for better cities. The resources, the powers, the opportunities and perhaps the capabilities to plan, with those that live there, already exist in the urban settings. It is time to learn how to tap into these and transform the cities. As they say: “the future starts now”. So I can only repeat the question posed by Andrea at the start of conference – what’s our idea for Asian cities?

By Ricardo Santos (IDS PhD student and conference rapporteur)

Nutrition for Growth - One Year on

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 15:46:00 +0000

One year ago, on 8 June 2013, the global community gathered in London at the Nutrition for Growth event (N4G) to pledge, US$4.1 (£2.9) billion in efforts to improve nutrition worldwide. At the event 94 stakeholders from governments, civil society organisations (CSOs), and businesses came together to make ambitious commitments to improving nutrition globally, with the specific goal of preventing 20 million cases of stunting and saving 1.7 million lives.

Why is nutrition important?

Despite having enough food to feed the world, malnutrition, which includes both undernutrition and over-nutrition remains a challenge worldwide. Undernutrition, where individuals are not able to consume adequate energy or nutrients to live a healthy and active lifestyle remains a serious challenge, and is responsible for 45 per cent of all under-5 deaths. Undernourished children who do survive often remain stunted, or too short for their age. The 165 million children worldwide who are stunted are likely to complete fewer years of schooling, earn less as adults, have increased susceptibility to non-communicable diseases, and are less likely to escape poverty. At the same time, overweight and obesity, where individuals consume too much energy and expend too little increasing risks of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, are also increasing especially in low and middle income countries, where an estimated 80% of the cases of non-communicable diseases occur.

What has happened in the last year?

On 2 June 2014 representatives from a number of key organisations and governments who made pledges at N4G, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and the UK Department for International Development, came together in London to discuss progress over the last year and see what remains to be done.

Last summer, DFID in consultation with a number of CSOs, developed an accountability framework which details how pledges made at the N4G event will be tracked and accountability for nutrition improved. One of the key points of the framework was the establishment of the Global Nutrition Report, the first of which will be launched in November of this year. At the event we heard from Professor Lawrence Haddad, co-chair of the report’s Stakeholder Group about the report, that the report will detail the state of nutrition around the world, looking at both under and over-nutrition, in an effort to draw attention to the greatest problems that remain as well highlight success. The report will also include a chapter on progress towards all N4G pledges.

CSOs and businesses who made pledges have been working on a framework for reporting their own progress. The donors who made pledges have developed developing a new methodology for how to track money spent on nutrition specific and sensitive projects.

What needs to happen next?

The development of an accountability framework identified areas where gaps remain. Speakers at the event in London specifically highlighted the following:

The need for a data revolution. The process of collecting data for the Global Nutrition Report highlighted how many gaps exist in the current nutrition data. More funding needs to be diverted into collecting rigorous nutrition data.
Ensure nutrition is prominent in the post 2015 framework. Based on the idea that what is measured is what gets done, it is vital that nutrition is prominent in the post-2015 framework.
Improved integration and coordination. Much of the dialogue and funding has been focused on innovative solutions, but more needs to be done to look at how to better use existing deliver platforms or simply get down to doing things.
Increased funding. Nutrition is still seen in many countries as a donor issue. We need to see increased domestic resources allocated for nutrition globally.

Keeping the momentum

We need to make sure that the momentum and interest in nutrition is not lost. Nutrition has been a neglected issue for far too long but we have the opportunity to change that. The money pledged at N4G is not insignificant, but it is only a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed. The 2013 Lancet series estimated that $9.6 billion is need each year to scale up a set of 10 interventions with a strong evidence base in the 34 countries which represent 80% of the stunting burden to 90% coverage. We need to make sure that the $4.1 billion is used in the most effective ways possible.

Finally, as His Excellency Roberto Jaguaribe, Brazilian Ambassador to the UK said: “we need to recognise that nutrition is essentially a political issue, not a technical one”. We have the evidence base of what works, now we need to harness the political will to ensure we have the resources and will to implement effective nutrition programmes globally and high quality and accessible data available to all citizens so they are able to hold their governments to account.

By Kat Pittore, IDS nutrition convenor

The Practice of a New Paradigm: Development Cooperation among Fragile States

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Jun 2014 09:40:00 +0000

Time and time again, the debate on aid and cooperation receives the news of paradigms being changed, of new actors entering the field, threatening or heralding the breaking of the old rules and the instatement of new ones. “Traditional” donors, especially those that seek to place (or keep) themselves in the leadership of either financial donations (such as the World Bank, OECD-DAC,…) or development thought (here again the World Bank and OECD-DAC but also countries like the US and the UK) have recently devoted resources into academic research to better understand the role of the Rising Powers in Development.

In the shade, however, an indeed revolutionary way of cooperating for development is taking shape. Stemming from the OECD-DAC’s acknowledgement that development aid to “fragile states” was facing unsurmountable challenges and successive failures, given the specific nature of these countries and under the leadership of the fledgling country of Timor-Leste, Sierra Leone and Liberia, a new group was formed. The G7+ group of conflict afflicted countries started from their own acknowledgement of fragility. It started also with the affirmation that such specific status, never experienced by the almost totality of donor countries, made the G7+ countries the “experts” in their own development path. This was a powerful statement! It also made each G7+ country a solidary peer of the others and potentially, given its own capacities, history and learnings, an actor of development cooperation. This, even if eventually borrowing inspiration in the Non-Aligned Movement, is, indeed a different paradigm in development cooperation! In the last months, Guinea-Bissau experienced such cooperation from a fellow G7+ country, Timor-Leste.

G7+ cooperation in practice

In the 12^th of April 2012, democratic legitimacy in Guinea-Bissau was disrupted by a military coup. Most of the international community that promptly reacted (including the UN, African Union, US, Brazil, Russia, China and Lusophone Community) did not recognize validity to the exposed arguments for the coup, nor to the “transitional government”. However, ECOWAS did recognize it, creating a diplomatic stand-off. Only in January 2013 and in what was probably the first coordinated act of the Lusophone Community (CPLP), ECOWAS and the “transition regime” were driven to accept former Timorese President and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate José Ramos Horta to lead the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Guinea-Bissau. Arguably, the Timorese experience of transition into regular political functioning after a 2006 civil strife that almost victimized Ramos Horta himself, was one of the reasons for his nomination.

Just recently, in the weekend of May 18^th 2014, two years after the coup, an intense, peaceful and with record participation period of parliamentary and presidential elections was completed, returning Guinea-Bissau to institutional normalcy, without significant political contestation of the results. Throughout the preparation, most of the public narrative mimicked that of Timor: the need for openness between parties; the right to peaceful campaigning, highlighting contending parties’ rallies that occurred simultaneously, at close distance… and in peace; the need for transparent electoral process but also to an acceptance of the results by all parties and the military. During the same period, a Timorese blog, linked with the Timorese Presidency reflected on the governance aspects of regimes led by military juntas, using Latin American countries as case studies. Timor-Leste was probably reflecting on a process it was trying to assist.

A true diplomacy of solidarity

The process is just in its beginning. Meanwhile, Timor-Leste will lead CPLP from mid-2014 and is already intensifying the diplomatic and cooperation ties with other Portuguese Speaking Nations in Africa and even Portugal, the former colonizer, to which they offered to buy some of its rampant national debt (in a humbling turn of events for the European country). This small country’s diplomacy of solidarity, an expression that Brazilian President Lula da Silva used so many times, is taking shape. It is not a proud display of “successes” to share, like Brazil is doing, be it Bolsa Familia, ProSavana or the new project World Without Poverty, “a joint initiative focused on learning from the implementation of and innovations in poverty reduction programs in Brazil and sharing lessons from Brazil’s experience with the rest of the world”. It is not a “mutual benefit” Chinese model that invests in economic infrastructure such is recovering and widening railway routes linking original sites of raw natural resources to main ports (a model as old as industrial era colonialism). It isn’t conditional, paternalistic, nor seeks to impose the “right process of development” as so many times the “traditional” “Northern” aid model still finds itself being. It stems from shared challenges, the recognition that only positive collaborative relations can strengthen countries “in development” and the willingness to assist when need occurs, as the Timorese Resistance was assisted, namely by the African Portuguese Speaking countries and later Portugal and Brazil in the fight for independence.

At that time, some of the poorer countries in Africa assisted a weak and silenced effort of resistance that ultimately won. That ethos of cooperation and solidarity widens now the bonds between Timor, other CPLP countries and the G7+ countries. Maybe, this is a paradigm worth to learn more about… and foster.

Ricardo Goulão Santos is a PhD candidate working on education and employability in a post-conflict setting within the IDS Conflict, Violence and Development of the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction research team. He is also a visiting researcher at the National University of Timor Lorosa’e (UNTL).

Reflections on the CSP Conference on Graduation and Social Protection in Rwanda

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 May 2014 08:38:00 +0000

This is the ninth in the Graduation and Social Protection blog series

Last week I attended the Centre for Social Protection conference on Graduation and Social Protection, co-hosted by the Ministry of Local Government of the Government of Rwanda, with support from Irish Aid, UNICEF and DFID. I would like to share some of my personal reflections on the conference. They are by no means representative of the number of issues that were discussed, and I recommend reading Stephen Devereux's comprehensive ‘Learning Insights and Action Points’ on the conference website.

Graduation describes the moment when beneficiaries of a transfer programme (cash, food or assets) pass a threshold and manage to sustain a certain level of wellbeing over a period of time after exiting the programme. The rationale is that the transfers and complementary interventions (skills training, microloans) will allow beneficiaries to move out of poverty by increasing and maintaining their income generating potential and productivity and become resilient to shocks. The concept was pioneered by BRAC in Bangladesh and has been adopted by programmes such as the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia and Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP) in Rwanda.

Here are my take-away points from the conference:

1. Beneficiaries are often still poor after graduating

Despite some success stories, most 'graduates' are still poor after graduation. Maybe they managed to move from extreme poverty into moderate poverty, or from food insecurity into food sufficiency. But they are still poor and in many cases they might fall back because their context hasn't changed. They are still vulnerable to shocks, they might still have limited access to markets and basic services and in most cases after leaving the programme they no longer have access to a social safety net.

Taking into account the limitations of any single programme to address the multiple causes of poverty, maybe we shouldn't punch above our weight and claim that livelihood promotion programmes can achieve sustainable graduation? Maybe we need to be more realistic, and call programmatic thresholds 'exits from the programme', rather than 'graduation thresholds', as the VUP programme in Rwanda already does.

2. Systemic approach: yes, but let's not overburden social protection

The challenge seems to lie in drawing a line between where social protection ends and where 'other' interventions start, e.g. supplying basic services, facilitating access to labour markets, promoting inclusive economic growth. As one participant said, "social protection cannot become the solution for all of governments' failures". It is one part of the graduation puzzle and incomplete without the rest. We need to figure out how the different pieces fit together.

This line however should not in itself represent a point of no return, when people graduate permanently out of social protection. It rather demarcates responsibilities and highlights complementarities between programmes and sectors. Social protection is required on a permanent basis to help people manage the range of risks they encounter throughout a lifetime.

3. Learning lessons..

...across actors: The presentations covered a range of different approaches, from small NGO-led pilots to nation-wide government programmes across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Important lessons can be drawn from these cases on what works and what doesn't. NGOs can test different models, provide more extensive, individualised support to beneficiaries, even if only on a short-term basis. Governments are looking at more long-term and scalable approaches that are financially sustainable and reach a larger group of beneficiaries. Pooling the experiences and evidence and sharing lessons will help to design programmes that improve the chances of poor households to climb up the ladder.

...within programmes: As one participant said "Let's focus on doing it well. Let's focus on getting programme delivery right, on time, as promised." Delivering a transfer programme in itself is already quite challenging. One consultant working on the PSNP in Ethiopia told me that at the higher policy level people are discussing a comprehensive social protection framework, whilst at the district level there isn't enough capacity to allow the programme to work as it is. Comprehensive approaches are important, but maybe we need to focus on delivering well first, before jumping ahead and complicating things?

...from beneficiaries: One panellist said "No offence to all you academics, but we do a lot of thinking for people who live poverty 24 hours a day". Much of our discussions focus on how and who to target, what kind of support to give and where to set the benchmark. Whilst these are all important issues that are part of the reality of programmes, it often distracts from focusing on the beneficiaries and understanding the range of challenges they face every day to 'graduate out of poverty'.

Thanks to the organisers and participants for sharing their experiences and making this conference possible!

Martina Ulrichs is an independent consultant based in Ottawa, Canada. This post was originally published in the IDS Alumni blog.

Generation Nutrition: We have the knowledge to stop children dying from Acute Malnutrition NOW

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 May 2014 12:02:00 +0000

Last week, a new campaign, Generation Nutrition, was launched in the UK parliament calling for an end to child deaths from undernutrition.

Currently, child deaths from undernutrition represent 45 per cent of all under five deaths, something this campaign aims to address. There is no doubt about the overwhelming progress made in terms of child survival. The under 5 mortality rate has almost halved in the last 25 years, from 12 million children dying before their 5th birthday in 1990 to 6.6 million in 2012 (WHO). However progress to reduce child deaths from undernutrition, especially severe acute malnutrition, has stagnated in many countries. Undernutrition is different from hunger, and requires a separate and targeted approach.

Using community based management to treat acute malnutrition

One in 12 children in the world suffer from acute malnutrition, which is a potentially life threatening condition caused by a number of factors acting together including a lack of food, poor sanitation, and disease. However, recent years have witnessed major progress in terms of our ability to treat severe acute malnutrition. Using community based management of acute malnutrition, most children can be treated as outpatients, affordably and effectively. Despite this, treatment is still not reaching most children.

Director of Food and Nutrition at the Ministry of Health, Sierra Leone, Aminata Shamit Koroma spoke about the high levels of severe acute malnutrition in Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone 7 per cent of children under five suffer from severe acute malnutrition. She hopes that Generation Nutrition will support the country to reach the goal they have set for themselves, to reduce rates of undernutrition to 2 per cent by 2020. She talked about how community management of acute malnutrition programmes were initially introduced in only 20 health centres in four districts but now they are operating in 423 centres, out of 1200 health centres in the country and they are hoping that by the end of this year they will be able to increase that number to 600.

Power of political will and civil society in pushing this agenda forward

At the campaign launch event, we heard from Jean-Michel Grand, Executive director of Action Against Hunger UK. He highlighted that despite the fact that we know what needs to be done, and that treatment has been shown to have an 84% per cent success rate, only 1 in 10 children are who need treatment can access it. Grand emphasised the importance of political will in addressing undernutrition and called on governments to move away from viewing acute malnutrition as only a humanitarian issue.

Jane Edmonson, Head of Human Development at the Department for International Development (DFID), spoke about DFID’s investment in programmes to prevent and treat severe acute malnutrition in many countries (including Malawi, Ethiopia, and Kenya). On this subject, she talked of the importance of civil society for holding DFID to its promises in reducing acute malnutrition worldwide.

Augustin Flory, head of Nutrition at the Child’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) highlighted the long-term consequences of malnutrition for an individual. Ultimately, a malnourished child will likely attend fewer years of school, earn less as an adult and will be less lively to escape poverty. This not only impacts an individual, but also the family and even a nation.

Almost a million children die each year from malnutrition, we can be the generation to end this, if we act now. Learn more and sign the petition.

by Kat Pittore

The Graduation and Social Protection conference: What did we learn?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 May 2014 13:08:00 +0000

This is the eighth in the Graduation and Social Protection blog series

The Graduation and Social Protection conference closed in Kigali on Thursday 8 May, with a series of 46 ‘Learning Insights and Action Points’ distilled from the 10 sessions. (These will be posted on the conference website soon.) Key conclusions included the following:

Graduation that is defined as exiting from a social protection programme after a certain time period, or after reaching a threshold level of income or assets, risks having people falling back into poverty when the support is withdrawn and the next shock hits them.
Graduation that is achieved by combining social protection and livelihood development (such as asset transfers and access to finance) has a greater chance of providing people with sustainable livelihoods after they leave the programme.
The most effective approaches require cross-sectoral coordination, so that households do not exit from social protection support into ‘no support’, but instead move from social assistance to accessing a broader range of social services and economic opportunities.
The linear pathway to graduation that is implied in many graduation model programmes fails to recognise that livelihoods are not linear, and that the primary functions of social protection are to provide life-long insurance and to build resilience over the life-cycle.
The achievements of successful graduation programmes should be put into context. Most participants move from extreme poverty to moderate poverty – so they remain poor – they remain self-employed, and many ultra-poor people will never have the potential to graduate.
Stakeholders have different attitudes to graduation. While some believe that graduation is essential to reduce dependency and maximise poverty reduction impacts, others believe that the focus on graduation distracts attention away from the core functions of social protection.
Political commitment is crucial for programmes to succeed, but too much political pressure can result in premature graduation, and can undermine the government’s commitment and responsibility to provide basic welfare and safety nets to all citizens and residents.
A disaggregated and context-specific approach to social protection and graduation is called for. Social protection systems should provide a permanent safety net for some poor and vulnerable people, and an opportunity to graduate out of poverty for others.

An innovative feature of the conference was the addition of a one-day workshop on Friday 9 May, organised by the Social Protection Sector Working Group for Government of Rwanda officials who are engaged with social protection. The Conference Directors interacted with these officials about the implications of the graduation conference for social protection thinking and practice in Rwanda. This workshop provided a rare opportunity for the deliberations of an international conference to be taken forward into implications for policy and programmes, discussed with and by national policy-makers, immediately after the conference ended.

Stephen Devereux is Co-Director of the international conference on ‘Graduation and Social Protection’, which was co-hosted by the Government and Rwanda and the Centre for Social Protection from the UK Institute of Development Studies, with financial support from Irish Aid, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF.

Stephen Devereux is inviting participants to comment on his closing remarks at the conference: Learning Insights and Action Points. Comments should be sent to s.devereux@ids.ac.uk

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Nigeria’s COPE CCT programme and its ‘premature’ graduation strategy, any hope for participants’ human capital development?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 08 May 2014 09:56:00 +0000

This is the seventh in the Graduation and Social Protection blog series

In recent weeks, Nigeria has occupied global headlines due to a number of good, bad and ugly events. Arguably, the ‘good’ event was the announcement that Nigeria is now Africa’s largest economy. Among the ‘bad’ and ‘ugly’ events, the continued attacks by ‘Boko Haram’ insurgents in the Northern part of the country, not least the unfortunate abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno state, by suspected members of the Islamic fundamentalist sect.

Yet, underneath these good, bad and ugly headlines, there lies extreme poverty and underdevelopment. With rates of extreme poverty estimated to be as high as 60%, the vulnerabilities experienced amongst extremely poor households continue to rise. This is despite attempts by state and non-state actors to address these vulnerabilities through social protection programmes (SPP), such as the ‘In Care of the People’ (COPE) Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme. While several factors contribute to this unfortunate reality, the practice of prematurely ‘graduating’ participants out of programmes like COPE that is a major factor that keeps extremely poor people in their vulnerable conditions.

Where did COPE come from?

Nigeria’s debt relief agreement with the Paris Club and World Bank in 2005 came with concerns about what the country would do with the ‘gains’ from the debt relief. The creditors were adamant that Nigeria should make ‘pro-poor investments’ towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Thus, following the ‘success’ of Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America, the Nigerian government established the COPE CCT programme in 2007, aiming to reduce vulnerabilities and intergenerational poverty in extremely poor households in Nigeria by targeting mostly female-headed households with children of school age.

The COPE CCT programme pays a monthly Basic Income Transfer (BIG) of approximately $10 per child with a cap of $33 for four or more children for 12 months to a designated family member. This transfer is based on the condition that participating households ensure their children maintain at least 80% attendance in school and take part in routine health immunization programmes provided by the government. Participating households are only enrolled in the programme for one year and are expected to ‘graduate’ afterwards – that is, exit the programme and live (above their vulnerabilities) happily ever after. A Poverty Reduction Accelerator Investment (PRAI) fund of approximately $560 is given to each household at the end of their one-year participation. The PRAI fund is for establishing a business or trade with the intention that it will generate income for households and subsequently sustain them upon their graduation from the programme.

COPE’s ‘premature’ graduation strategy and human capital (under)development

Based on findings from fieldwork conducted in Nigeria on COPE’s implementation in three communities in Ibadan, Oyo state, Southwest Nigeria, between May and October 2013, one can argue the programme assists households in purchasing basic household items in the short-term. However, with respect to long-term development of the human capital of children in particular, COPE is unlikely to make any significant contributions. This is because the programme only lasts for one year and the structural problems of poor education and health infrastructure exists in many parts of Nigeria. The PRAI fund is also too low to effectively establish and operate an income generating trade in Nigeria owing to the high cost of production and challenging macroeconomic environment in the country. Some of the households who participated in the programme therefore remain exposed to the same, or even worse, vulnerabilities regardless of their participation in the programme.

I suggest that by extending the participation period and providing better support to households over and above the payment of the PRAI, COPE can hope to provide better human capital development outcomes. As it stands, the design and implementation of the programme has predominantly negative implications for the long-term human capital development of participating households whose vulnerabilities to various shocks remain high within the Nigerian context. Therefore, the government and its development partners need to urgently rethink COPE’s graduation strategy.

Olabanji Akinola is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science and International Development Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

This blog post is part of a series for the international conference on ‘Graduation and Social Protection’ which is co-hosted by the Government and Rwanda and the Centre for Social Protection from the UK Institute of Development Studies, with financial support from Irish Aid, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF. The content of this blog series reflects the opinions of each individual author, and not necessarily those of IDS, UNICEF, DFID, IRISHAID or the Government of Rwanda.

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Graduation and Social Protection Conference Blog: Matthew Greenslade (DFID) reflects on the conference so far…

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 07 May 2014 16:03:00 +0000

This is the sixth in the Graduation and Social Protection blog series

This conference is big and has been well organised by IDS. There are lots of government officials in the mix from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Uganda and Rwanda to keep things grounded in the real world.

The key points for me from Day 1 after presentations from Bangladesh and Rwanda and lots of good discussion are:

We need to think in terms of objective – in this case sustainably improving livelihoods – rather than instruments.
We need to get better at thinking about how sectors fit together/integrate to achieve this objective.
For social protection this will help us think through whether we are developing simple transfer programmes/public works, to be complemented by other programmes (probably in other sectors), or more integrated approaches in one programme (a la Bangladesh)
Countries should mostly stick to the simple transfer approach – hard enough to do in itself in the real world - to provide the solid base of the social protection system. There will then also be a number of alternatives that can be built ‘on top’ – for example public works (part of social protection system), intensive or non-intensive livelihoods support (will probably not be part of social protection system), skills training etc.
The graduation model from Bangladesh is important to learn lessons from – it is probably unlikely to be parachuted in to different country contexts intact because of cost and logistics and the fact that countries already have programmes in place (at various scales and levels of effectiveness) – but it does have something very important to say about how different programmes/sectors should fit together to sustainably improve livelihoods (and it may also be implementable in part or in whole for sub groups of the population).
Ultimately, increasing demand for labour, goods and services in the wider economy will be the lynch pin of long term poverty reduction – but support to the poorest from the outset is key to addressing market failures (poverty traps), breaking intergenerational poverty, leaving no one behind and supporting social stability.
It was useful to be reminded by Rachel Sabates-Wheeler and others of the need for solid, long term resilience to underpin sustainable graduation – although it doesn't always fit with donors' emphasis on short term results! As was a reminder from Michael Samson to keep thinking multi-sectorally (though I know this is hard in the day to day real world!)

Matthew Greenslade is an Economic Advisor in the Social Protection Team in DFID HQ.

This blog post is part of a series. The content of this blog series reflects the opinions of each individual author, and not necessarily those of IDS, UNICEF, DFID, IRISHAID or the Government of Rwanda.

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The Graduation Approach: A Promising Pathway out of Extreme Poverty?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 07 May 2014 08:48:00 +0000

The fifth in the Graduation and Social Protection blog series

The Graduation into Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (Graduation Approach) tries to put extremely poor people on a journey towards sustainable livelihoods and autonomous income within an 18 to 36 months timeframe. Policymakers attending the Reaching the Poorest Global Learning Event 2014 organized last February in Paris by the CGAP-Ford Foundation Graduation Program expressed enthusiasm for introducing the Graduation Approach in their countries to reach large numbers of the poorest.

It is estimated that there are nearly 1.2 billion people living with less than US$1.25 a day. The Graduation Approach is an ambitious effort to try to address the multiple constraints of the extreme poor, originally developed by BRAC in Bangladesh. The CGAP-Ford Foundation Graduation Program has been testing the Graduation Approach with 10 pilots in eight countries since 2006.

What impact so far?

By 2012, between 75 percent and 98 percent of participants at six of the 10 CGAP-Ford Foundation Graduation Pilots met locally-determined criteria for graduation into sustainable livelihoods, including indicators of improved nutrition, increased assets, and enhanced social capital. The Program’s robust learning agenda includes 8 randomized control trial (RCT) impact evaluations, and qualitative research in all sites, on top of regular monitoring by program staff. A pooled analysis of research results will be available mid-2014. Early results so far from randomized RCTs in Bangladesh and at six of the 10 CGAP-Ford Foundation Graduation Pilots show that the Graduation approach can significantly improve the lives of the poorest. There are signs of significant and sustained positive impact for households participating in the program, especially in terms of increased income, consumption and food security. Improvements in other measures of well-being are also documented by qualitative research in particular: “hope” and/or “happiness”, and female empowerment have increased in all sites where it was measured. Early research also suggests that the cost-effectiveness of the program is high.

How does it work?

The Graduation Approach combines a mix of interventions to escape extreme poverty, ranging from safety nets and the creation of livelihoods, to access to financial services. Participants receive consumption support, access to savings services, technical skills training, a variety of assets, and regular individualized life skills coaching over a period of 18-36 months.

Purposefully targeting the extreme poor, the Graduation Approach is built on five core elements:

1) Consumption support gives participants “breathing space” by stabilizing their consumption and easing the stress of daily survival. It can be offered through a pre-existing government safety net program, in contexts where this is available.

2) Savings allows households to build assets, instills financial discipline, and familiarizes participants with formal financial services.

3) Asset transfers help jump-start one or more economic activity. Livelihood support services and market infrastructure must be analyzed beforehand through a thorough market analysis in order to identify sustainable options that can absorb new entrants.

4) Technical skills training provides knowledge on managing assets, running a business, and information on where to go for assistance and services (e.g., veterinary care).

5) Life skills coaching on a weekly basis over the 18 to 36 months of the program helps to boost participants’ self-confidence, while supporting them with business planning and money management, along with health and disease prevention services and social support.

What are the next steps?

We are excited that a number of governments – such as Peru and Colombia-- and large donors -- such as the UNHCR, and IFAD -- view the Graduation Approach as offering a significant opportunity to strengthen their strategies and programming for people living in extremely poor conditions. They are in the early stages of planning or implementing this approach on a large scale: some will serve the extreme poor through their safety net programs, whereas others will focus on specific segments such as, refugees, internally displaced persons, or food-insecure households. From their experiences over the next few years we hope to learn how the key components of the graduation approach can be integrated into existing social protection, poverty alleviation, food security or economic development programs.

For more information, please see graduation.cgap.org and Reaching the Poorest: Lessons from the Graduation Model.

Aude de Montesquiou is a Microfinance Specialist at CGAP.

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Linkages and Opportunities for Agriculture and Social Protection

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 06 May 2014 15:57:00 +0000

The forth in the Graduation and Social Protection blog series

I am looking forward to the graduation conference greatly and congratulate all those who have put together such an interesting programme. I have worked on graduation over the last few years, approaching it from a social protection perspective. Now, most of my time is spent on agriculture, I have the opportunity therefore to wear a different hat to next week’s event.

I am anticipating, however, that it doesn’t need to be too different to the hat I previously wore. Many of the issues and concerns important for those working on social protection and agriculture are shared. Both provide a safety net to some of the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society, ensuring no one is left behind. Both increase incomes and provide opportunities to transform lives. Both try to ensure people are more resilient and opportune in dealing with risk. Furthermore, many of the people supported through social protection and agriculture programmes, are the same. In Rwanda for example, 90% of households cultivate at least one plot of land. Most (if not all) of those in receipt of social protection support are engaged in agriculture to one extent or another.

If we are to achieve ‘sustainable graduation’ therefore, it is vitally important those of us working in different sectors or departments coordinate, cooperate and collaborate. This point is not new, and links are often being made. I look forward to discussing and learning from participants where this is already happening. In Rwanda, I feel we have the opportunity to strengthen the linkages.

Working on agriculture in DFID Rwanda, there are two early opportunities to strengthen the links. Firstly, as we support Government in the implementation of the latest Strategic Plan for the Transformation of Agriculture in Rwanda (PSTA III), we will support the Ministry of Agriculture in efforts to coordinate with the Ministry of Local Government and others Ministries relevant to graduation. Secondly, in the programme of support to the agriculture sector DFID are currently developing for the next 3 years, we will improve linkages between agriculture and other programmes we support that are ‘enablers’ of graduation. This involves linking agriculture with the Vision 2020 Umurenge Program (VUP); the Access to Finance Rwanda (which provides financial services to the poor and vulnerable) and support to climate funds that helps build climate resilience, to name only a few examples.

The conference, therefore, provides a timely opportunity to:

explore why these critical linkages are important
consider how we work across disciplines, government ministries and departments
to discover more concretely, what can and should be done.

This approach should help us end the conference with a tangible idea where next and the action required to get there. To this end, I would be interested to explore with delegates working in Rwanda if we can start to establish a ‘system’ for graduation that enables linkages to take place, ensuring graduation is sustained. Within this system, you could choose to graduate people sequentially, moving them from a social protection programme into an agriculture programme at an appropriate stage or, through a layered approach, where social protection and agricultural support is provided together. I look forward to discussing this and many other opportunities that I am sure will emerge over the course of the week.

Mark Davies is a livelihoods advisor for DFID Rwanda.

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Philanthropy and development back on the agenda

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 06 May 2014 14:51:00 +0000

Philanthropy as a global issue won’t go away – and it is getting more interesting. Last month delegates at the Global Partnership for Effective Development’s high level meeting in Mexico attended a special event on philanthropy. They discussed how better to connect foundations with southern governments.

However, the issues surrounding philanthropy and development need to be set in a wider context. The global expansion of the middle class, and the development of emerging countries is a clear focus of attention as demonstrated by Future World Giving, a welcome initiative from the Charities Aid Foundation. OECD voters are likely to become increasingly resistant to aid to middle income countries with their space programmes and their growing economies. In spite of the prevalence of chronic poverty and growing inequalities in these same regions, both official development assistance and private philanthropic giving from the North is likely to increasingly focus on the low income countries. All this makes the future of philanthropy and development a more important area of study than ever.

Three years ago IDS, The Resource Alliance and the Rockefeller Foundation embarked upon an ambitious project on: “The Future of Philanthropy and International Development in the Pursuit of Human Wellbeing.” It remains one of the biggest global consultations and studies on philanthropy and development to have ever taken place. Through global dialogue meetings, specially commissioned papers and a high-level two-week summit, the Bellagio Initiative heard from a diverse group including policymakers, academics, opinion leaders, social entrepreneurs, activists, indigenous peoples and donors from over 30 countries.

The Initiative’s final report published in 2012 recommended that more inclusivity, connectedness and greater levels of transparency and accountability were needed from philanthropic organisations and development agencies if trust is to be rebuilt with communities. Failure to do so, it argued, will make it impossible to promote human wellbeing and tackle development challenges worldwide.

Every one of the Bellagio Initiative outputs including the consultation documents and the final report are available on the IDS OpenDocs website.

The report also urged a reorientation of development policy to addressing threats to human wellbeing and changing the measurements of development to make them more accurate in assessing wellbeing. It also recommended that philanthropic and development organisations must accept the profoundly political nature of the development process and get involved in this aspect of current development debates. This will require listening to marginal people, utilising new resources, and rediscovering philanthropy’s advocacy role.

Jay Naidoo, South African trade unionist, government minister and activist delivered one of the most memorable quotes of the Bellagio Summit: “If we don’t understand politics as the central challenge and obstacle to delivering human wellbeing then we’re missing the plot. That is the big issue that confronts us.”

The methodology which was chosen for the Bellagio Initiative was ambitious, perhaps too ambitious and it brought together a dizzyingly broad range of participants. The different “thought worlds” of business and foundations, activists and development academics made for an uneasy mix and problems in “translation” between the approaches and priorities of the participants. Despite the challenges it produced some amazing resources that should be compulsory reading, not just for those interested in the role of philanthropy in development cooperation, but for everyone focused on the broader global development challenges of a post-2015 world.

Bellagio Initiative outputs on IDS OpenDocs

About the Authors

Roger Williamson was a member of the IDS organizing group for Bellagio, Visiting Fellow, IDS
James Georgalakis is Head of Communications, IDS

Livelihoods, Social Protection and Graduation, Perspectives from the Chars Livelihoods Programme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 06 May 2014 08:51:00 +0000

The third in the Graduation and Social Protection blog series

‘Graduation’ is a hot topic at the moment, not just within the Chars Livelihoods Programme (CLP), but in the development world generally. It is particularly in focus for social protection and livelihoods programmes; those programmes that aim to help participants ‘graduate’ out of extreme poverty.

There are, of course, many tensions between the ideas of livelihoods, social protection, graduation, poverty, not least of which is “how are these things defined?” Does a livelihoods programme like CLP ‘do’ social protection? Or vice versa? Are they fundamentally different things? Does graduation mean something different to them, and if it does, should it? And is the graduation door one-way?

CLP has been engaging with these issues for several years now, defining and refining what we mean by poverty, what we mean by graduation, and how we’re going to measure it. Initially, the discussion began as a way of measuring how the programme was doing, before moving on and taking a more participant-centric focus. Although it’s still a work in progress (and I would argue that it must remain a work in progress, given the shifting and context-dependent nature of the beast!), some answers to these questions are starting to emerge from the discussion.

For CLP, poverty is a complex and multi-dimensional concept. It is set within a context that includes many important aspects (institutions, relationships, laws, cultures) that the programme has either no (or very little) control or influence over. Therefore acknowledging this complexity and being clear about the results that the programme CAN deliver are critical.

CLP, in common with other programmes in Bangladesh, has therefore defined its graduation criteria using 10 indicators that cover major aspects of the vulnerabilities, risks and weaknesses that it intends to address. These indicators have been a work in progress since at least 2008, and go far beyond simple measures of income or expenditure, embracing empowerment and environmental factors as well.

For CLP, graduation is a one-way door. We see graduation as being a line in the sand that reflects the outputs and short- (and maybe some medium-term) outcomes that the programme has worked with participants to achieve. For us, graduation is about where people’s journey has got to once their CLP assistance comes to an end.

This does not, however, mean that we pretend all these people are permanently out of extreme poverty. People obviously suffer shocks and stressors that push them back below our graduation line in the sand, as shown in our recent research on asset values, and why some households do better than others.

Thus we track a sample of participants long term, with some indicators that, although not part of the graduation criteria, show modifications in knowledge, aptitudes and practices, and how these change over time. From that perspective, CLP acknowledges the importance of both graduation AND sustainable improvements in livelihoods. These are two related but different aspects. So we can see that, for example, people’s participation in groups and meetings steadily declines over time (meaning fewer and fewer people would ‘graduate’ on that criteria), but that maintaining ash or soap close to latrines or water points stays consistently high back through the cohorts.

It may well be that the ‘attending groups or meetings’ indicator is not a particularly good one for looking at the sustainability of changes or programme impact. It is entirely possible that people make the rational and positive decision that they do not need to continue with such formal groups or meetings. Its importance as an indicator could easily decline once people felt themselves to be empowered or less vulnerable in other areas of their life, such as income, asset values or vulnerability to disaster. Nevertheless, it was selected as an indicator of graduation (i.e. short- or medium-term outcomes) because of its perceived importance in terms of social inclusion and empowerment, highlighting the difference between graduation and sustainability or resilience.

The CLP, despite being an avowedly livelihoods-oriented programme, nevertheless acknowledges that it does do social protection as well, at least in some ways. For example, an average of around 6% of our participants are either living with a disability or include in the household someone with a disability or long-term, chronic illness. These people have often faced greater struggles than non-disabled people, suffering greater depths of poverty, exclusion and intolerance. Nevertheless, we find them participating actively, and, in some cases, achieving better results than their non-disabled contemporaries. One lady I visited recently had been selected as a demonstration participant under CLP’s milk marketing project, despite her physical disability. She was doing such an excellent job of looking after her cattle that it was delivering four or five times more milk than the control group.

But will all members of a social protection programme be able to graduate? Clearly, the answer is no, just as all members of a graduation-focused livelihoods programme will not graduate.

What can be done for those participants that do not graduate, or that fall back into poverty? For CLP, the programmatic answer is simple – we are not set up to provide additional assistance, or provide assistance more than once. This is a point that will have to be picked up by the policy makers and funders.

Nevertheless, we shouldn't imagine that falling back into poverty is a one-way street either. Our recent research into asset values interviewed Shahida, whose livelihood took a massive hit when the land that she had invested in was eroded. Although she was then in the low-asset category, nevertheless with her savings she had managed to invest in a fishing net and a share cattle. She was applying the skills that she learnt during the CLP’s assistance to rebuild her assets through looking after the cattle properly, showing that, even if her immediate circumstances had changed, at least she had reserves of knowledge and resilience to draw upon.

Hopefully in time she and her family will succeed in re-establishing their livelihood and maybe even ‘re-graduate’ – another concept to add to the overall graduation debate?

Mat Pritchard was recently appointed by Maxwell Stamp as the Team Leader for the Chars Livelihoods Programme.

Image credit: Boat in the chars/Source: CLP

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Graduation and Social Protection conference kicks off in Kigali

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 02 May 2014 15:00:00 +0000

The second in the Graduation and Social Protection blog series

On 6-8 May 2014, more than 150 people will gather in Kigali, Rwanda to discuss graduation and social protection programmes across the world. Why?

The promise of ‘graduation’ out of social protection is seductive. By delivering an integrated and sequenced package of assistance that includes consumption support (usually regular cash transfers), asset transfers (to generate streams of income), access to financial services (savings and/or credit), training or coaching and mentoring, poor people get both social protection and the possibility of escaping from extreme poverty into sustainable livelihoods and self-reliance. Governments can report progress on their poverty reduction targets, and donor agencies can demonstrate value for money to their electorates.

Early indicators of success with the ‘graduation model’ in Bangladesh prompted replicate pilot projects in other countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The governments of Ethiopia and Rwanda have adapted elements of the model in their graduation-oriented national safety net programmes. But there have been few opportunities to compare experiences across these diverse contexts. This conference offers a space for policy-makers, practitioners and researchers to share and reflect on the lessons learned from their engagement with graduation.

The conference aims to critically assess different conceptual and operational approaches to graduation – how graduation is understood and how it is implemented – across countries and programmes. It aims to review the small but growing evidence base from evaluations of graduation projects and programmes across the world. And it aims to identify the key factors that are associated with success as well as the factors that prevent achievement of graduation targets – the ‘enablers and constrainers’ of sustainable graduation outcomes.

There are also several challenging questions and unresolved debates that presenters at the conference will address. For example:

Should graduation be conceptualised differently – not as ‘exiting’ from social protection programmes (from ‘eligible’ to ‘ineligible’) but as moving from one form of social protection to another (e.g. from non-contributory social assistance to contributory social security), or as a transformative process of gradually accumulating assets and building resilience?
Is the vision of a smooth linear pathway out of extreme poverty too simplistic, especially in contexts where harsh agro-ecologies and climate variability mean that the livelihood protection function is more urgent than the livelihood promotion objective?
Is two years or even five years of support too short – should graduation be conceptualised across generations? Are children the key to sustainable graduation?
How can women and female-headed households, who are often left behind because of their constrained resources, benefit more from graduation-oriented programmes?

These are among the issues that will be debated in Kigali, as participants share their experiences and reflections, and learn from the insights and ideas of others. This is very much a policy-maker and practitioner-focused event. Our hope is that the conference will contribute to improved policy and practice in future social protection and graduation-oriented programming, leading to better lives and more secure livelihoods for poor and vulnerable people.

About the author

Stephen Devereux is Co-Director of the international conference on ‘Graduation and Social Protection’, which is co-hosted by the Government and Rwanda and the Centre for Social Protection from the UK Institute of Development Studies, with financial support from Irish Aid, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF.

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Introducing the ‘Graduation and Social Protection’ blog series

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 02 May 2014 08:35:00 +0000

The first in Graduation and Social Protection Conference blog series

Next week over 150 people will gather in Kigali for a 3-day international conference to discuss graduation and social protection. This blog series, hosted on the IDS Povertics site, will run alongside the conference. The series aims to enliven the debate, promote wider engagement from policy-makers and practitioners and prompt the community of practice to act in the interest of the people who are most affected by the practical and theoretical questions that will be addressed at the conference.

I recently returned from a field visit in North West Bangladesh to a riverine island district where people live on islands made of silt that erode, evolve and migrate with the rains. We were visiting the long-running Chars Livelihood Programme (CLP) that targets the so-called ‘extreme-poor’ and provides an integrated package of livelihood support, cash transfers and plinth-raising to lift people above both the water and the extreme poverty line.

Image: Feet above the water line. Source: Sarah Barns

It was there I met Salma*. Salma self-identified as a ‘graduate’ from the CLP. Her two year stipend and programme of integrated support ended seven years ago. Although she was still relatively better off than non-beneficiary households, her assets were evidently depleted. The heifer she had bought with the original asset transfer had been sold and in its place a less fruitful bull, which she intended to sell one day for meat. Our brief visit prompted questions about the sustainability of graduation for Salma and other beneficiaries, the possibility of graduating from extreme poverty into moderate poverty and the difficulties of measuring graduation beyond the programme’s boundaries.

Throughout the course of this blog series, our authors will explore some of these questions and many of their own. The debate will be kick-started by Stephen Devereux, co-director of the conference, who will introduce some key questions and outline his hopes for the week ahead. On Monday, Mat Pritchard from the CLP will delve deeper into the challenging questions surrounding graduation in Bangladesh. Olabanji Akinola will argue that the development community must do more to avoid the unfortunate reality of premature graduation he witnessed in his recent research into the ‘In Care of the People’ (COPE) Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme in Nigeria. Aude De Montesquiou looks through the lens of the CGAP-Ford Foundation Graduation Programme’s graduation pilots currently being evaluated, and Mark Davies asks what graduation means from an agricultural perspective.

We hope that you will all contribute and shape this debate online and at the conference. Let us know what you (really) think in the comments section below…

*Salma is a pseudonym.

Bridget Holtom is a social protection policy officer at DFID and is the Communications Coordinator for the international conference on ‘Graduation and Social Protection’ which is co-hosted by the Government and Rwanda and the Centre for Social Protection from the UK Institute of Development Studies, with financial support from Irish Aid, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF.

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