Submit a thread to our digital quilt for the chance to be featured in an exhibition and win £200. Learn more
Menu

Category: Uncategorized

Adaptation, or justice? Climate action in the Pacific

Posted on by Gillian Cooper

ABOVE: Butaritari, Kiribati – Islands in the Pacific are particularly venerable to the effects of climate change.  Photo Credit: KevGuy4101

What does ‘climate justice’ mean for Pacific Islanders? This was one of the main questions the Foundation aimed to understand with colleagues in Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand earlier this year.  Because of climate change’s cross-cutting impact on people, society and livelihoods, our small delegation met with a range of actors: leaders of civil society organisations, writers and other creative practitioners as well as staff of government agencies and academics working on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) programmes.

The immediacy of the impact of climate change to Pacific Islanders was clear after my first few meetings. It is happening right now – yesterday. Coastal communities in Fiji have already been relocated due to sea-level rise, with many more communities on the list. Many of the legal ramifications related to relocation such as title and ownership rights, and compensation have yet to be worked out. Some of the existing information on land ownership is ambiguous and if title deed goes way back, perhaps doesn’t exist.

The situation of Kiribati is particularly dire.  Kiribati occupies a total territory of 370km, but of that, 2% is land – low lying coral atolls; the rest is sea – its EEZ or Exclusive Economic Zone.  Kiribati’s main economic industry is its tuna fishery. At current emissions rates and sea level rise, Kiribati predicts that many of its islands will be under sea by 2080 and they would be uninhabitable well before then. The Kiribati President has already sanctioned the purchase of land on Fiji to relocate the entire Kiribati population of 100,000+ people. If this happens, it would be the end of a sovereign state due to climate change.  Another dilemma facing the nation of Kiribati is how to secure continued access to its tuna fishery for the economic and social development of its people. However, because the Law of the Sea states that the EEZ is determined by distance from land it is unclear what will happen to its EEZ if the land is underwater.[1]

“The immediacy of the impact of climate change to Pacific Islanders was clear after my first few meetings. It is happening right now – yesterday.”

For people whose link to the land is closely tied to their livelihood and identity, relocation could have far deeper ramifications. Fijian writer, Mary Rokonodravu, shared her concerns with me on the lack of attention given to the social and cultural implications of relocation. She referred to the historic case of the displaced people of Banaban from whom we could learn many critical lessons on the complexities and pitfalls of relocation. Back in 1945 when the island of Banaba was mined of its phosphate resources by the British Pacific Phosphate Company, the Banabans were forcibly relocated to the island of Rabi over 3000 km away. The provision for their re-settlement and adjustment to an entirely new environment and lifestyle was inadequete, leading to high levels of poverty.[2]

The response from the international community towards the impacts of climate change on Pacific islands has been to put vast amounts of financial support into the Pacific Islands for adaptation and risk reduction. Most of the bilateral and multilateral donors have funded large scale projects. This has created a highly complex landscape of agencies, donors and projects spending significant amounts of money, particularly at the regional level – so much so that those working in the sector seem fatigued by the complexity of the landscape. While there is immense capacity for the technical aspects of implementing CCA and DRR in the regional hub-countries, there is equally enormous and growing demand. The Green Climate Fund, which will bring millions in funding, will bring additional challenges for delivery.

The dominant narrative of climate change has therefore become climate change adaptation and risk reduction. Civil society, for the most part, has also had to frame its participation in the climate change response within the narrative of adaptation. However, none of the funding available from the main climate change adaptation funding pots is available to civil society. According to Krishneil Narayan, Coordinator of the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN), currently no civil society organisation from the Pacific, arguably the region most impacted by climate change, is involved in the Global Climate Fund Board – or as observers, where decisions and assessments are made on what will be funded nationally. So even where Pacific civil society could help influence the adaptation agenda and to determine how funds might be spent for the potential benefit of vulnerable communities, they are excluded from the decision-making table. Pacific civil society seems confined to the ‘consultation’ box for adaptation programmes and CSOs viewed as deliverers for climate change awareness projects.

“The narrative of adaptation and risk reduction is ‘crowding out’ the space for questioning the inevitability of climate change.”

Coastal communities at the frontline of climate change impacts undoubtedly need support for adaptation.  But where is the discussion of climate justice? Although climate justice is not a static concept and still evolving, a crucial aspect is the discussion of systematic transformation to tackle the root causes of climate change. But within this dominant narrative of adaptation and risk reduction, the inevitability of climate change becomes accepted. The narrative of adaptation and risk reduction is ‘crowding out’ the space for questioning the inevitability of climate change.

In addition, the space for solutions is limited to those with geopolitical and financial power and transformative change becomes obfuscated.  In discussing the case of Kiribati, one of the technical staff at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat said something that stuck in my mind. Rather than focus on relocation, support should be on development – so that Kiribati has the prosperity to make innovative solutions and be resilient to the changes ahead. However, within the current framework of climate change adaptation and relocation, those on the frontline become portrayed as always in need of humanitarian relief – needing to be helped rather than as co-creators of the solution.

So, what does climate justice mean for Pacific islanders? I wasn’t convinced that the question of ‘justice’ which challenges and advocates for transformative change of fossil-fuel based, consumption-hungry economies was foremost on the minds of civil society. However, what I did find was that civil society in Tonga were challenging the dominant narrative of adaptation and risk reduction in another way. They were considering the response to climate change not as an adaptation question but as one of resilience and ‘green growth’. Although it is still early days and small scale, for Tongans, green growth means building prosperity for people in Tonga through the sustainable use of their resources.

In November 2016, in a meeting organised by the Civil Society Forum of Tonga (CSFT) and the Oceania office of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Tongan government representatives, civil society and regional organisations identified seven principles of a green growth strategy: (1) development (2) justice (3) dignity (4) earth integrity (5) inclusion (6) governance (7) resilience (8) efficiency (9) inter-generational. Enhancing Tonga’s organic agriculture and the productivity of its fisheries through the protection and management of critical fisheries habitat are some of the first steps to realising their vision. A proposed local governance structure to establish structures and processes for a resilient governance arrangement is also being trialled. The challenge however is ensuring that green growth doesn’t just remain a niche but that it becomes the driver of the national adaptation response.

Studies have already shown that despite the commitments made by industrialised countries at the UNFCCC’s Paris COP21 in December 2015, to do all they can to limit temperature rise to 1.50C, just burning fossil fuels from projects presently in operation will produce emissions that will put the globe well past 20C of warming this century. Fiji is the chair of the next COP23 to be held in Bonn, Germany.  Pacific civil society already see this as an opportunity to raise the profile of the climate change struggle in their region[3]. But will the issue get the attention it deserves? Can the stories of relocation and loss in the Pacific Islands help promote a more meaningful conversation from mainstream media in countries of the Global North about transformational change? Or will it reinforce perceptions of humanitarian need and climate change inevitability in current mainstream media discussions?

The Suva Declaration[4] prepared by PICAN and taken forward by the Pacific Islands Development Forum prior to the Paris COP21, is perhaps one of the clearest statements of asks from civil society and Pacific Island governments targeted at industrialised countries. But in addition to the asks, the narrative also needs to change. To do this, civil society needs to build its constituency to shape people’s world view.  This is a challenging task across the islands of the Pacific, but it’s something that PICAN has begun – to strengthen its network of civic voices across the frontline countries of Kiribati, Tuvalu and Fiji. Linking with other networks and movements in high CO2 emitting countries, who are putting pressure on their own governments for systemic change, will help to build their power, influence public discourse and change the narrative from a discussion around adaptation to one of systemic change.

[1] For more on this, see: https://www.ted.com/talks/anote_tong_my_country_will_be_underwater_soon_unless_we_work_together

[2] See more: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/14/our-heart-is-on-banaba-stories-from-the-forgotten-people-of-the-pacific/

[3] http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=391260

[4] http://pacificidf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Suva-Climate-Declaration-final_USB.pdf

Bringing the sustainable development goals home

Posted on by Commonwealth Foundation

The Commonwealth Foundation (CF) spoke to Namhla Mniki-Mangaliso about her role in domesticating and implementing the sustainable development agenda in African countries. Namhla is the Director of Africa Monitor, which currently acts as the Africa Working Group (AWG) secretariat, a broad regional coalition of African civil society organisations. The Commonwealth Foundation has funded and supported AWG since 2014.

CF: Namlah, welcome to the Foundation. Could you start by introducing Africa Working Group (AWG) and the Africa Monitor’s role as secretariat?

Namlah: Thank you so much for having me. Africa working group is a coalition, or let me say it’s a platform, of well over 150 civil society organisations operating in Africa, working on various aspects of sustainable development. We’ve been in existence for the last 4-5 years and working to make sure we can inform and shape the evolution of the sustainable development agenda in Africa. We started during the negotiation process and now we are very well positioned as civil society […] to influence the accelerated implementation and domestication of the sustainable development goals [SDGs]. African Monitor is one of the founding members of the working group and is also the secretariat. Our work at the organisation is to enhance sub-Saharan African citizen agency […] to build the capacity of ordinary citizens to engage well with their governments. And so there is a complete alignment with what we do and the intentions of the African Working Group in making sure that African Civil Society is engaged and influences the policy direction that Africa takes as it correlates to the sustainable agenda.

CF: What are the benefits and constraints of the work of the AWG as a loose association of organisations?

Namlah: It is a loose network. We did not want to institutionalise it and turn it into a [formal] organisation: it is a coming together of a multitude of organisations. […] We wanted the likeminded to come together, as long as they care about sustainable development and as long as they cared about improving the real lives of people on the ground in Africa. I think the benefits have been the automatic commitment that organisations have to the cause because it is the coming together of the likeminded. The way that things happen in the African context is that there is a lot of influence in the collective […] you can achieve a lot more if you operate as a collective than if you operate as individual organisations. […] The challenge I think has been to work through how then do you put in place systems for accountability, governance and transparency. How then do you make decisions? Particularly the strategic [decisions] around what you focus on. And I think we had to be very careful in […] how you govern and coordinate, how you spread the responsibility of doing the […] work throughout the members. But I dare say that we’ve done much of that now. The AWG has a secretariat, there are core group of organisations that are Founding advisory members, there are working groups within the AWG, and there are co-chairs within those working groups. And so there are continuous processes of engagement, we do [web conference] calls and those kinds of things, so that we are continuously talking […].

CF: The Commonwealth Foundation supported AWG engagement with colleagues at the UN in New York while the SDGs were being negotiated – could you describe that and tell us about the impact of that work?

Namlah: Let me contextualise New York a little bit. When we did the New York mission […] at the time the negotiation around the SDGS were starting and […] accelerating. The United Nations (UN) system is set up in such a way, that the African Group [AG], in other words the African ambassadors [had] no systematic engagement with […] African civil society, in fact there was barely any presence of independent African civil society within the UN system. And so the Commonwealth Foundation came at the perfect niche, the perfect time in terms of the support and the boost we needed to get going with what turned out to be a fairly important relationship that we established with the African Group. And that was about three years ago already now and I think since then, not only were we able to continuously engage with the African Group in New York to the extent that they now know who the AWG is, which means that we continued to have the political space to shape […] the sustainable development goals. What that means for us is that the perspective of African people, our constituents, found voice and space. We wanted to make sure that the agenda on the SDGs is about people, is about the poor, is about the excluded and the vulnerable. The terminology of ‘leave no one behind’ was at the core of some of the things that we were negotiating for. We wanted to make sure that there is a very strong focus on young people, because Africa is a young continent. And we wanted to make sure that there were real conversations around structural issues, that make economies function well, […] inclusive economies, economic justice and so on. And then we wanted to make sure that governance was a central part of the agenda and so some of the big, big achievements I think [reflect] what we had been fighting very hard for. So New York was the beginning of something that continued up to December 2015 where we continued to engage. What that meant was is that we had impetus, as the civil society network, to continuously position ourselves and get ourselves organised [and] to go back as civil society leaders and say there is a real need for our continued engagement in this space, and so how do we shape that engagement with the African Union [AU], how do we shape that engagement at the national level with our presidents and our ministers and so on and I would say that moment was a really important accelerant to the work we’ve been able to do since then, […]. I think once the negotiations were completed and September 2015 happened a number of other amazing things and big milestones were achieved, I can sit here and say in most of the countries that we work there are SDG civil society platforms that exist, that have in large part been initiated by African Working Group members. So whether you are thinking about Tanzania, Cameroon, Ghana or South Africa, the SDG platforms that exist in those spaces are in fact initiated and co-coordinated by AWG members. Beyond that civil society networks at the national level are actively engaging with their own governments to ensure that the SDGS are domesticated, that accountability and review mechanisms [are in place] to ensure that the SDGs are going to be implemented. Another angle that I think AWG are working very hard on is around the issue of data. In other words, what’s the role of citizens in producing the kind of data and knowledge that can actually inform and influence review processes? So citizen driven data is a strong element of what we’re working towards both to improve national accountability systems and therefore improve national governance mechanisms, but also to improve global and regional accountability.

CF: Why were Cameron and Tanzania selected to localise the SDG agenda and what have the successes and challenges been?

Namlah: So both Tanzania and Cameroon exist within the context [of] AWG […] working across all the major countries to ensure that the SDGS were domesticated. The civil society organisations both inside Tanazania and Cameroon are a part of the Africa Working Group, so we already had very fertile ground in relation to the engagement of civil society in those spaces. When we started last year we said that we wanted a pilot programme, something that essentially would give us a model on how civil society can engage in the domestication agenda. Now you must remember that the background to this is that we had spent three years in policy advocacy trying to shape the agenda, and then we were realising that it was time to implement and to make sure that it comes back to the national level. That meant a couple of things. It meant that there needs to be policy integration, that we need to take the 17 SDGs and make sure that they are integrated with the national development plans. There [also] needs to be the institutionalisation of multi-stakeholder systems that would make sure we can jointly plan and jointly make decisions and review the SDGs. And then implementation approaches so the SDGS can be implemented […]. Tanzania being in East Africa and Cameroon being in West Africa … also gave us a really nice spread in terms of the geography of the continent. We also wanted to make sure that we could learn from the results of what was happening in both of those countries and it’s been exciting because I think there are a couple of milestones that we can look at that have happened. The first of those, was can we make sure that civil society gets its act together and positions itself well to engage as a value creating partner in the SDG agenda? What does that mean? That essentially means the establishment of the civil society SDG platforms… this idea of saying that all of civil society […] engaged in the SDGS must come together and think creatively about how to effectively engage.

Interestingly in most of the countries, civil society has come to the same conclusion about their role in monitoring and review in the data processes, […] in joint planning, joint decision making processes… and that’s the first milestone that I think we were able to achieve in each of the countries. In Cameroon they developed what I think they called the civil society chatter that essentially was a framework of how civil society would engage with other stakeholders, particularly government in the SDG process both from the policy integration perspective and the joint planning perspective as well as the monitoring and review perspective. Interestingly in Cameroon, the government hadn’t begun to think about how it was going to engage with other stakeholders, and so the process that civil society started, with the support of the Commonwealth Foundation, eventually ended up being endorsed by the planning ministry as a way forward in terms of making sure that there was going to be multi-stakeholder engagement.
In Tanzania, a similar process unfolded where civil society set-up what they called the civil society SDG platform and developed a monitoring and evaluation framework that then was the basis for negotiations with government. Because the Tanzania government decided that the institute for sustainable development would be the lead agency for the domestication of the SDGS, they’ve got political commitment to establish a multi-stakeholder forum, where government, business and Civil Society Organisations come together to work on the SDGs. The AWG members that are presented as a part of the CSO collation.

So [these are] huge millstones that would not have happened if civil society wasn’t organised and hadn’t positioned themselves well. The big task is that it’s not enough to have the institutional systems in place, the SDGS are about implementation. What do you prioritise? How do you budget in such a way that those that are in the frontline are now in the position of benefiting from implementation and services? That’s what we are engaged in now […] now the institutions are in place, how do we prioritise, plan properly and implement so that we leave no one behind. The next 13 years is going to tell us how successful we are.

CF: What aspects of partnership with the Foundation have been valuable to the AWG and the localising process? What distinguishes the Foundation as a partner?

Namlah: I think probably the most important characteristic is something that we’ve found very difficult to get funders to understand, because funders work in very traditional ways […] they look for an organisation and they look for established track records and there is usually very little understanding of how change works in the African context: that you need to operate by coalition […] and the model of the African working group is very unique in that sense, because we are not an institution, we are the coming together of different organisations and networks that want to make an impact in Africa. I think what, for me, distinguishes the Foundation has been the ability to understand those organic processes and the willingness to listen to what would work and why we are organising this way […]. I think this fits in very well around the new strategy of the Foundation, which is around civic voices because it’s about understanding the very many ways citizens can organise themselves, in order to improve governance and in order to improve democracy, not for its sake but to make real impact in the lives of people. Being able to work together in that space and being able to co-lend and co-create together has been wonderful, and we talk about development effectiveness and the idea that the solutions for problems must come [from those] at the helm of those problems and I think that the Foundation has an amazing ability to come in, listen in, and say what are the big problems, what aligns with our strategy, what can we add value to, while leaving the decision making powers to those that are involved and I think that has been our experience. I mean we are talking about a modest sum of resources, but I think it has given us the impetus that we needed at critical moments […] to make important impact. I do hope that becomes the example [for] more funders […]. […] It is important to safe guard civil society and civic space in Africa, we can’t talk about democracy in Africa without talking about how you protect civic space […]. [Funders] understanding why that’s important, I think would make a huge difference.

CF: What does the future hold for the AWG in the context of civil society supporting SDG? Could you identify gaps and potential gains?

Namlah: The bottom line is that we want the lives of African people changed in radical ways, and […] while we are still in the continent with the most young people in the world, the most resources under the ground, we still are faced with absolute poverty, huge unemployment issues and huge problems with governance. The SDG framework provides an opportunity within which that can change, but that’s not going to change by having the right policies in place, it’s going to change by implementation. And it’s our job, because we are civil society and we are independent from governments, [that] we work as a value creating stakeholder within the sustainable development agenda. It is our job to hold our governments accountable, to make sure that the resources that belong to the peoples of Africa are actually used to benefit Africa. […] so we’re not just going to challenge the status quo at the national level, we’re going to challenge it at the regional level [and] you can be sure we are going to challenge it at the global level because we know that it is the global dynamic that creates the mess in Africa, in terms of global resources [being] used and stolen and hidden […] and I think that the responsibility of the network is to be useful, directly in the lives of people, but also […] in giving voice to Africa’s aspirations globally and regionally.

CF: Namlah, thanks for giving us this insightful interview.

Namlah: Thank you.

ENDS

Welcome to the Bay Area by Sowmiya Ashok

Posted on by Commonwealth Foundation

Everyone has a letter and a number attached to them. The H-4 housewives wear canvas shoes and take brisk walks around the green at the heart of North Park Apartments; the B-2 grandparents push their American-born grandchildren on little tricycles; the H-1B techies play volleyball and the B-1 consultants stroll.

I am an F-1 OPT sitting next to a Chinese mom on a cement bench, watching all of this. All the picnic tables are occupied: an Indian man sits idly at one, six Indian women in sarees sit conversing in Tamil around another. As I sit facing the five-acre Moitozo park, I see three high-rise condominiums on each side, named after mighty trees native to central or northern Europe. Ahead of me, the sunlight is slowly fading behind the hills. Orange farms stretch nearly all the way to the next set of condos, built in less than six months, to meet the growing housing demands of the valley. A nip in the air prompts a young woman walking past to tie her dupatta around her head; her anklets crash noisily into her runners. The crowd, gathered around the park in printed kurtas and chiffon sarees, is linguistically divided. The Tamils and Telugus sit on park benches to the left; the Hindi speakers to the far right; the Bengalis and everyone else are transient.

I have just arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area, to spend a few weeks living with a techie couple from Tamil Nadu, India, one of whom I went to school with in Chennai. The North Park Apartment Village in North San Jose, at the heart of which I sit, is popular amongst the Indian techies, with its offer of one, two, three bedroom apartments and town houses with in-built gadgets and an “an array of resort-style amenities.”

Many of these men and women have come — in several waves — to Silicon Valley to work for American tech giants and spend their days building virtual platforms geared to bring down barriers between humans. So why are they isolating themselves hundreds of kilometres away from home in hi-tech ghettoes formed along ethnic networks?

They bring with them temples, pure vegetarian restaurants, a fanatic love for movie stars and a competitive spirit that has forced a reverse gentrification in Bay Area schools: the brown kids with their soaring grades are driving away the white kids. Nearly every second restaurant on El Camino Real, a highway that runs through the heart of the Bay Area, is an Indian one; the competition so fierce that specialising in a particular food item is the only way to survive. One offers the juiciest biryani, another the crispiest medu vada. There are numbers to match this change too. A 95 per cent white population in 1940s, has now come down to around 50 per cent in the Bay Area; the Asian quotient has steadily increased to about 33 percent. A Vietnamese-American Uber driver tells me that real estate wars in the area are now fought between the Indians and the Chinese: “It comes down to who has the hard cash to seal the deal.” The Chinese often win.

Continue reading…

Learning exchange between Citizens UK and SAAYE

Posted on by Gillian Cooper

My colleague, Mithika and I are looking forward to our upcoming trip to Johannesburg to work with the full core membership and Secretariat of the Southern African Alliance on Youth Employment (SAAYE). As part of the capacity development support to SAAYE, the Foundation has brokered a learning exchange between Citizens UK and the Alliance, trialling a new model of support.

SAAYE is a recently formed alliance of church-based youth organisations, student groups and activists, trade union representatives and youth development trusts from nine Southern African countries. The Foundation has supported the Economic Justice Network (EJN) in establishing SAAYE; EJN now act as SAAYE’s secretariat. Over the past 18 months, SAAYE has been bringing the group closer together, clarifying their strategic mission, and building partnerships and allies. The Foundation has provided support to the Alliance and its members as they have continued to develop their mission at the regional and national levels. Foundation support is also helping the Alliance to enable working relationships between members.

The learning exchange will take SAAYE’s work from strategic planning to the next step: to formulate their actions for change, over a two-year period. We have linked them up with Citizens UK because of their expertise in organising and building the power of civil society to advocate and act. The sessions will be led by Lead Organiser, Emmanuel Gotora and Yasmin Aktar from the East London Community Organisation (TELCO). In addition to Citizen’s skills in developing the capacity of civil society leaders to constructively engage with people in power, the Learning Exchange will draw on Citizen’s work around employment and work such as the Living Wage campaign and the Good Jobs campaign which directly address youth unemployment using a multi-stakeholder group of leaders from London’s community groups, industry employers and training institutions. These experiences will provide some relevant lessons and ideas.

It is our hope that at the end of the four-day exchange, SAAYE national teams and the Secretariat will have analysed where, with whom and how, in each of their theories of change, they should target specific actions to have the greatest potential impact. Key questions like: Where can SAAYE have most relational power in making change on youth employment in each country? Who has power inside and outside the formal structures regarding youth employment policy nationally and regionally? How do the people who can make decisions relate to each other and how can SAAYE influence them? The outputs from the learning exchange will be available on the Foundation’s website.

The learning exchange between SAYEE and Citizens UK takes place in Johannesburg from 24 to 31 March, 2017. Photo Credit: Alan Levine Flickr CC 

The Commonwealth theme for 2017: all we are saying…

Posted on by Vijay Krishnarayan

It is right that the Commonwealth’s theme for 2017 “A Peace-building Commonwealth,” follows from last year’s “An Inclusive Commonwealth.” The explicit and logical connection between inclusion and peace is important.

It takes on the notion that peace might be threatened by diversity and compels us to understand the relationship between pluralism and peace. It also encourages us to acknowledge the importance of governance in creating an environment for peace. Institutions that are not able to engage with the people they purport to serve are increasingly likely to get a loud wake up call.

The events of 2016 put peace back on the agenda. The Global Peace Index published its tenth anniversary report last year analysing the main trends. It charted the continuing deterioration in the overall global levels of peace. Among the 163 countries mapped, it found a widening gap between the most and the least peaceful. Of the index’s chosen indicators “the impact of terrorism” and “political instability” showed the sharpest decline. The report attributes the global deterioration to conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa and the associated international repercussions. The number of refugees and displaced persons doubled between 2007 and 2015 to nearly 60 million, accounting for more than 10% of the population in nine countries.

What these global figures do not document is the heightened exposure to the fallout from conflict and instability, experienced by specific sections of society including women, young people, minority ethnic peoples and sexual minorities. Between 2008 and 2014, the homicide rate in developing countries was twice that in the developed world, and further increased in the least developed countries.

Multilateral institutions, including the Commonwealth, have their part to play in addressing this prevailing climate but they should proceed with humility and caution. Multilateral institutions come with moral baggage that also needs to be handled. The Commonwealth has a colonial history, which is relevant to its role as an agency for peace-building. This is acknowledged in the seminal publication “Civil Paths to Peace – the report of the Commonwealth Commission on Respect and Understanding,” which reminds us that “The history of the world matters to contemporary problems, since the effects of past maltreatment and humiliation can last for a very long time.” The colonial legacy should not prevent the Commonwealth from being an active agent for peace, but it must be one of the elements that informs our work in this field.

The Commonwealth consistently flags the importance of civil society in peace-building. This gives the Commonwealth Foundation – the Commonwealth’s agency for civil society – a place to stand. The Foundation’s Vision is for a world where every person is able to fully participate in and contribute to the sustainable development of a peaceful and equitable society. We recognise the opportunity provided by the globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals to place peace in the context of development. When they met in Malta in 2015, Heads of Government noted the consonance between the Commonwealth Foundation’s mission and Sustainable Development Goal 16 with its emphasis on peaceful and inclusive societies and building effective, accountable institutions at all levels. How does the Commonwealth Foundation turn this mandate into practical action?

There are around 11.5 million children worldwide still thought to be working illegally. In South Asia there is an increasing willingness to address their plight. With Commonwealth Foundation support, Global March has been working with partner organisations to build on the experiences of Bangladesh’s Shishu Adhikar Forum, India’s Bachpan Bachao Andolan, and Pakistan’s Grassroots Organisation for Human Development to raise awareness, advocate for policy change and build the capacity of civil society, government and law enforcement agencies to work together against child domestic labour. The project has supported the development of national intervention plans with guidance for those working to address the causes of violence against children as well as secure fair and sensitive judicial processes. There have been compilations of legislative literature, expansive regional and national consultations, and extensive analysis of existing structures – all aimed at enhancing advocacy for stronger policies that will contribute to a peaceful childhood for millions. We were delighted when the Chair of Global March, Kailash Satyarthi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (jointly with Malala Yousef Sai) in 2014 for his work in this field.

Port Harcourt has grown rapidly over the past forty years and is now one of five Nigerian cities with a population of over a million. It is estimated that between 20 and 40 per cent of the people in Port Harcourt live in self-built waterfront settlements. With Commonwealth Foundation support the Stakeholder Democracy Network and its partner Human City Media Advocacy is encouraging communities to exchange experiences and engage with the State authorities as plans for the redevelopment of their city are made. This new project will develop the ability of young people to use art forms such as music to express their vision for their city. Radio programmes will be produced, shows and performances will be staged and public discussions convened all with the aim of bringing people and institutions together on the future of Port Harcourt.

These two examples articulate the Commonwealth Foundation’s approach to peace-building, which emphasises the importance of civic voice and agency. They illustrate the centrality of young people to peace-building and show how creative expression can provide the means to express a desire for peace and inclusion. Other Commonwealth Foundation programmes show how those previously side-lined can come to play a leading role in making the case for peace – most notably women.

Abuse, threat and grievance fuel and sustain instability, conflict and violence. It’s easy to see how these can compromise social and economic progress and this underscores the importance of a Sustainable Development Goal that focuses on peace. The Global Peace Index estimated that in 2015, violence cost 13.3% of global GDP and pointed out that the economic loss from conflict far outweighs investment in peace-building and peace keeping.

The Commonwealth Foundation seeks to help create and support an environment where people who are not heard can engage effectively in the processes that shape their lives. We believe engagement of this kind has the power to shape a peaceful existence for all. The Foundation’s programmes highlight the importance of human dignity for all, as both a requirement for and characteristic of a peaceful society. It’s a timeless theme that resonates particularly loudly in 2017.

A full length version of this article features in the Commonwealth Ministers’ Reference Book 2017. Find out more about this year’s Commonwealth theme at the Commonwealth Secretariat’s website. Photo credit: Flickr CC ResoluteSupportMedia

Circus by Anushka Jasraj

Posted on by Commonwealth Foundation

I am reading a book about circus life. The author is a Japanese man who fell in love with a trapeze artist named Mala, and followed the circus around India for five years. That is two years longer than I have been married, and I am already planning my escape.

Every morning I eat five multi-vitamins and one tablet that stops ovulation, so I do not become pregnant. My husband’s name rhymes with heron, and he does not know I am on birth control. He is forgetful. He eats almonds with his breakfast, and fish curry for lunch, to improve his memory. It’s strange, I tell him, that fish are such forgetful beings, but we eat them to remember better.

I call him Heron because it is disrespectful to speak his name. When I am alone I say his name to myself: Kiran. I am expected to cook all his meals and have sex with him weekly. The unexpected consequence of such an arrangement: a desire to know and be known. There is a dissonance between his lack of affection, and the intimacy of our shared life. The closest Heron comes to expressing tenderness is when he says, You don’t eat enough. On Sundays, he watches my favourite TV show with me, without complaining.

I found the book at a used bookstore; the previous owner has drawn a moustache on all the animals, the binding is damaged, but the photographs have maintained their sheen. The Japanese man writes about a skeletal old woman who does not eat. At each performance, she walks around the ring, and the audience watches as the circus master offers her a glass of water. It sounds mundane, but it is one of the most dramatic moments in the show, because any day now the woman is expected to collapse. At night, the author watches the woman, expecting to find her sneaking food from a pocket hidden in the voluminous folds of her sari. Instead he discovers that she sleeps heavily and snores like a steam engine.

Continue reading…

I Am Not My Skin by Neema Komba

Posted on by Commonwealth Foundation

What is a one-arm Zeruzeru doing at a security guard interview? I could sense their disbelief but I didn’t let their gaze deter me. I had travelled far for this job. I needed it.

I’d put on my best outfit – a dark blue polo shirt tucked in my combat-green cadet trousers. I adjusted my sun hat and waited in line.

‘Yona Kazadi,’ the receptionist called.

My heart was thumping but with my head held high, I walked into the interview room. Two men sat beside a woman behind a large wooden table. They had stacks of paper in front of them. I held out my hand to greet them. The woman asked me to sit. I took off my sunglasses and sun hat, and sat on the wooden chair in front of them. The room was quiet except for the buzz of the ceiling fan, as its blades sliced through the heat of the room.

Dressed in a yellow hijab and a dark blue long sleeved dress, the woman introduced herself as Miriam, the human resources manager. The men were superintendents. From the way they looked at me, I knew they wanted to know just one thing: what in the hell made me – a man with a missing arm – want to be a security guard?

‘Tell us about yourself,’ the woman said.

And so, I sat before them and told them.

*

It was the dead of the night, I said. I lay awake on my thin sponge Dodoma mattress listening to the sound of rats running on the plywood above me. I tried to force myself to sleep. I had been having trouble sleeping since Baba Joseph told me it was time to move out of the home. I was almost 18, he explained – an adult in the eyes of the law, and old enough to survive the streets. But I wasn’t ready; I didn’t know what I would do to survive in Serema – a town seething with hate for people of my kind.

The faint squeak of the rusting hinges of our front gate broke into my thoughts. It might have been my mind playing tricks. It’s hard not to be paranoid when you’ve been hunted all your life. I heard footsteps outside my window. I held my breath and forced myself to lay still. Sweat ran down my brow, and my mind began to churn with images of the massacre of the thirty children asleep in the rooms of this asylum – and me, Yona Kazadi, unable to protect them.

I tried to pray but God has always been elusive to me, even though my grandmother and Baba Joseph, our guardian, insisted he was real.

From infancy, I was called a child of the devil. They said my mother slept with Shetani, which is why my skin and eyes are pale, and my hair the colour of maize. People pointed when I passed and called me Zeruzeru. They spat into their clothing whenever they were close, to protect themselves from the evil they thought I carried. They feared my blinking eyes, and the wobbling of my head.

But that night I clutched the rosary beads my grandmother gave me, and said, ‘God, if you exist, if you hear me, protect us.’

It felt like a defeat – an acceptance of my own weakness – but I wanted to believe that someone out there was more powerful than the evil in the hearts of men. Where was God all these years we have been ridiculed and killed? Where was his power when machetes chopped off our limbs? And when he created us, did he run out of melanin?

The abduction and killings had started with people calling albinos dili. Witch doctors had told them that potions made with albino bones could make them rich, and the younger the zeruzeru, the more potent the potion.

I was living with Bibi Ghasia, my grandmother, in Siwanda when the rumour started. Siwanda was a village on the plains, with a handful of trees and red mud huts with thatched grass roofs. The red plains rolled all the way into the clouds.

We lived on one of the hills, kept chickens, grew cassava and cultivated millet on a small patch of land in front of our house. Abandoned pits of old gold mines pockmarked the bare valley beneath us. In the distance, we could see the shiny aluminium roofs of Victoria Gold – the Mzungu’s mine. People weren’t allowed near it but, occasionally, locals broke in to steal gold.

I’d just started primary school when news of albino abductions became commonplace. The prime minister begged people to stop the killings, but that didn’t help.

My school was 5 kilometres from our house on the other side of the valley, where the Christian mission and the church were. With a khanga draped over my head to protect me from the sun, my grandmother walked me to school every morning. She was old but strong, and was never without her panga – a machete secured to her waist by a tight khanga. She wore a red rosary on her neck. I always felt safe with her. People feared her; they called her a witch. But Bibi told me to ignore them. One day they will get tired of their own ignorance.

It wasn’t long before the superstition about albinos reached Siwanda. Impoverished miners began seeking our bones.

My grandmother and I were walking to school one morning when two miners wielding machetes launched themselves at us from a fence. I can still hear the scream from my grandmother when they caught me. I remember her charging with her panga, and trying to drag me from their hands. I remember the crack of bones as a blunt panga shredded my flesh. I remember the blood, the sharp dizzying pain, and my grandmother’s shivering body against mine. I remember the silence from her God.

A worker from the mission found me later – my grandmother had died protecting me. They said it was a miracle I was alive. My forearm was barely attached to my elbow. They brought me to Lubondo hospital where, they said, it had to be amputated. I was later taken to Kivulini asylum.

Kivulini means ‘under the shade’. I was nine years old when they took me to live there. It was in the outskirts of Serema. A red-bricked wall topped with broken glass enclosed a half-acre compound, which consisted of a large dormitory for children, a few classrooms, a chicken hut, a pigsty, and a small vegetable garden. Baba Joseph opened the doors to this place in 2007, after his wife and son had been murdered by a gang of men. He doesn’t talk about what happened, but I’d seen the story in the newspaper. We all have similar stories: fugitives running from human poachers – some even from their own parents.

I got up from my mattress; I couldn’t just lay there and wait for something to happen.

‘Courage is not the absence of fear, my children,’ Baba Joseph told us. ‘I know you are afraid, but you must learn to live even when you are afraid.’

I tiptoed to the corner of the room and grabbed a spear from the stash of weapons I kept there. A machete would make me more like them, and I refused to be like them. I tiptoed to the door, and with a shaking hand, I turned the key of the Solex padlock. The door opened into the room where all the boys slept. The girls’ dormitory was on the other side of the wall, but they left and entered through a different door. Sophia, the only other adult, took care of the girls and helped in the kitchen.

Continue reading…

The Foundation’s Network Effectiveness Framework: what’s it all about?

Posted on by Gillian Cooper

Over the last few years I’ve had the privilege of working with a number of the Foundation’s civil society partners across the globe.

Many of our partners have initiated exciting projects to address some of the most pressing issues of our time: youth unemployment, sustainable energy, climate justice. For civil society, one of the ways to increase its power and recognition is by connecting and collaborating with other organisations, individuals, and experts to build a stronger voice and network for change.

Networks have always been important mechanisms through which civil society can increase its power and voice. However, they have gained increasing relevance in the last few years. For one, the power of technology has made the ability to connect people, attract support and to get the message out that much easier. Some well-known networks and social movements such as Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Living Wage Campaign, Black Lives Matter have demonstrated that a strong message, effective use of online media and in many cases a distributed and devolved network leadership, can challenge and create powerful change.

Over the last little while, the civil society sector has faced more than its usual share of disruption. Shifts in funding and aid arrangements and shrinking of the operating space for civil society have meant that the sector is considering new ways of connecting and collaborating. Networks and movements that use more agile, fluid structures for organising and connecting actors can provide a way in which to advocate for some of the urgent issues we face.

But, if you’ve ever worked as part of a network, you’ll know that working collaboratively is never straightforward. Because networks are made up of independent organisations and actors, each with their own purpose and way of working – managing their different interests and finding a common vision or voice can be like ‘herding cats’!

So what is the Foundation’s Network Effectiveness Framework (NEF) all about? Recognising the challenge of maintaining the momentum of collaborative working and sharing a vision across different interest groups, we hoped that by developing a tool, our partners could analyse and assess their progress as a network as well as identify areas and needs of capacity to improve the effectiveness of their change agenda. At the same time it needed to provide the Foundation with monitoring benchmarks to show progress to its own funders. I began to research networks and evaluations on what makes them effective. What key elements determine their success? What is and isn’t a change network? How can you keep network members keen and motivated? Is it possible for all participants to have a stake?

Drawing on the research as well as the work of our partners, we see that most networks that work towards a social change, policy reform purpose are facilitated by an identifiable supporting entity – the network leaders – a steering group, organiser or secretariat that provides strategic leadership and administration. From a central ‘core’, membership is often diffused. In well-developed social and policy change networks, membership can be multi-layered with sub-structures, such as a technical advice committee or geographical hubs, allowing for decentralised forms of decision-making.

The Foundation’s NEF aims to look holistically at all aspects of network effectiveness – leadership, structure, impact. The framework breaks down network effectiveness into four main areas or ‘elements’. Ideally, all four elements should be analysed to provide a holistic view of where you are as a network and where you’d like to get to, to effect change. The four elements and their ideal ‘state’ are as follows:

1. Vibrancy: A vibrant network has clarity on the change it wants to see, devolved leadership, actively addresses gender and power imbalances in its structures and learns from its experiences.

2. Connectivity: A connective network has structures that allow for a diversity of connections required to make decisions and achieve its outcomes.

3. Resources: A well-resourced network values, utilises and cultivates funding from members as well as external funders and is transparent in its management of funds.

4. Policy advocacy strategy and impact: An effective strategy has a clear problem identification, is backed up by research evidence and is targeted where power lies. A network has made an impact when the media adopts its messages, decision-makers engage the network in determining the policy agenda and its recommendations has led to changes in policy.

Each of the four NEF elements is broken down into key characteristics:

Vibrancy

Characteristics:

  • Shared vision
  • Recognition of gender and societal power imbalances
  • Distributed leadership
  • Learning and development
 Connectivity

Characteristics:

  • Structure
  • Connections between core members
  • Linkages with wider constituents
Resources

Characteristics:

  • Financial resources
  • Skills capacity
 Policy advocacy Strategy and impact

Characteristics:

  • Strategy
  • Influence of the policy debate
  • Engagement with decision-makers

We developed a number of questions to probe and help network leaders and members reflect on the main attributes and capacities of each of the above characteristics. These are presented in the The NEF matrix. The framework is designed for network leaders and members to undergo a self- assessment process, ideally working in groups, using the questions in the matrix in a facilitated workshop setting. The workshop should also outline targets and agree on actions and responsibilities to improve. These can be recorded on the NEF Record Sheet, developed on Excel. Ideally, the targets should form part of the network’s workplan.

In the end, each of the characteristics is rated using a red-amber-green status and scored to provide an overall tally. Both the rating and scoring should be helpful to quickly demonstrate progress and change to network members. Although the ranking is helpful, it is the discussion, reflection and consensus between core members on each of the characteristics and on the strengthening needed that is the most important result of the framework analysis.

It is important to say that a key aspect of this framework is the recognition that there is no one-size-fits-all with regard to network structure and operation. Different structures will be appropriate for different purposes and contexts. Network leaders are encouraged to assess and experiment with the structural needs that best serve the change they want to see. The NEF questions have been designed to help networks reflect on this.

So far we have found NEF’s application insightful in probing and pinpointing capacity support needs in the developmental stages of the Southern African Alliance for Youth Employment (SAAYE). We hope to apply NEF with other Foundation partners in 2017.

I hope that organisations and network leaders will find this framework useful. I really believe that making connections, finding common ground and making linkages through networks and collaboration with tried and tested partners as well as forging new and different relationships will become more and more important in this new political and development era. As Naomi Klein put it in her acceptance lecture for the Sydney Peace Prize in November last year, ‘Intersectionality … is the only path forward.’ The enormous problems of inequality, human rights abuses and climate change are all linked; so we need to do better at linking up and working with others to find solutions.

I would be very grateful to have any feedback on any use of the NEF, which can be left in the comments section below. We would be keen to know how you’ve used it but also:

  • Are you or your organisation currently part of a network and what do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of this alliance?
  • Do you feel that the NEF can help your network build on its strengths and address the weaknesses? If not – why not?
  • What’s missing from it?

The Network Effectiveness Framework is available for download here.

Photo: Flickr CC: Rosmarie Voegtli

Strategic Planning – Can it Really Make a Difference?

Posted on by Vijay Krishnarayan

A couple of months ago I was drying the dishes with my Mother-in-Law after a good Sunday lunch and she asked what kind of week I had coming up. I told her that we were working on the draft of a new strategic plan, a document that would guide our work over the next four years.  She asked “Will it make any difference?” Her response troubled me.

I’ve worked with civil society organisations for a long time and frequently on matters of capacity and organisational development. I’ve seen strategic planning exercises from different points of view: as driver; an informant; and as a facilitator. I confess that on many occasions a small voice inside whispered what my Mother-in-Law said out loud.

I took that sense of doubt with me into the process of developing the Foundation’s current strategic plan back in 2012. At the 2011 Heads of Government Meeting we were asked to re-launch the Commonwealth Foundation. That started with the development of a new strategy. We reviewed and consulted and came up with a plan that struck a chord with what others were saying about civic engagement in governance and development. The process also made us ask tough questions: What will you prioritise?  What will you stop doing? What resources will you need? When I reflect on the strategic planning processes that haven’t made any difference it is the ones that haven’t asked or answered these tough questions.

A plan can also fail because the process that formulated it didn’t engage the people with an interest in its outcomes – whether they be staff, board members or partners. The phrase “bad process – bad product” was never more true. For the Foundation, staff ownership has been a hallmark of our strategic plans and we’ve seen the benefits in implementation over the past four years.

The Foundation’s current plan runs through to June 2017. It has people’s participation in governance at its heart and commits us to: developing the capacity of civil society organisations to engage with institutions; improving the quality of that dialogue; supporting creative expression as a means of shaping public debate; and sharing the learning generated along the way.

At the end of 2015 and with 18 months of the current plan period remaining we understood the need to base its successor on what we have learned over the past four years. We commissioned an external evaluation, which was comprehensive for an organisation the size of the Foundation. It drew on: 60 interviews (with staff, Board and partners); inputs from 30 stakeholder institutions through an online survey; and field work in the Caribbean where grants and projects were appraised.

The final report acknowledged that participatory governance for development was a long term project and found that the Foundation was making good progress. Our main themes resonated with what the global development community was saying. It recommended the alignment of our new strategic objectives with 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDG 16 in particular. It also identified areas for improvement, each of which raise tough questions for the next period. The recommendations included the need to:

  • Develop the capacity of civil society organisations where there was a real chance of lasting change rather than focussing exclusively on engaging with regional institutions such as ECOWAS or CARICOM

  • Assess whether civil society was getting enough out of the various established set piece engagements with Commonwealth ministers such as the Commonwealth Health Ministers Meeting

  • Place greater emphasis on grant making that tests new approaches and offers the prospect of learning from experience

The evaluation flagged the need for the Foundation to continue making tough choices about the way we use our resources. It urged further focus in grant-making and programming given the scale of the current budget. It concluded that if choices needed to be made between quality and quantity, we should choose the former, because it will result in deeper impact, and attract new partners in the longer term.

The new plan commits us to strengthening “civic voice.” This is a new term for us and we have used it to respond to the ways in which civil society continues to evolve. Increasingly citizens are engaging directly with institutions via social media. Institutions are reciprocating with the increased use of referendums.  The Foundation wants to support those voices that are not heard in these exchanges. The term will also enable us to explicitly include writers and story tellers in our work. There will be strong emphasis on developing civic voice so that it can engage constructively with institutions.

We will focus on civic voice in order to:

  • Enable broader participation in policy processes from research and analysis to advocacy or active involvement in reform

  • Improve the accountability of institutions in relation to the implementation of policy or the delivery of services

  • Broaden the public conversation on policy issues through dialogue and creative expression

We secured Board approval for the new strategy at the beginning of December. Their agreement validated the findings of the evaluation and endorsed the place of participatory governance for development at the heart of the Foundation’s work. The concept remains as relevant now as it was in 2012. It resonates even louder now with the Commonwealth Charter and the SDG Agenda both of which highlight the importance of inclusive and accountable development.

Ultimately we want to see effective institutions that deliver better development outcomes as a result of civic influence. Partnership and dialogue between stakeholders is universally accepted and civic voice is central to that. Over the past 12 months Commonwealth initiatives on climate change, gender equality and countering violent extremism have each acknowledged the importance of civic engagement. This requires a People’s Commonwealth that is better equipped to both broaden and deepen the ways in which institutions tackle the development challenges of our times.

The coming six months will see the Foundation add details to the outline that the strategic plan provides. We will develop indicators to help us gauge the plan’s success and map out how we will deliver it through a biennial workplan. We’ll also review our resources to make sure that we are in the best shape to implement. It has taken a year to get to this point but in many ways the work starts now.

Photo: Flickr CC Samuel Mann Strategic Planning Workshop