Striking a Balance

A Guide to Enhancing the Effectiveness of Non-Governmental Organisations in International Development

Alan Fowler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134172573
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

At a time of rapid global change, development NGOs are having to scale up their impact, diversify their activities, respond to long-term crises and improve their performance on all fronts. Striking a Balance offers both analysis and a practical guide to how NGDOs can fulfil these demanding expectations.

Written for all those involved with NGDO work, the book describes the objectives of sustainablepeople-centred development and the process required to achieve it, focusing on the five factors which determine effectiveness: suitable organisational design; competent leadership and human resources; appropriate external relationships; mobilisation of high quality finance; and the measurement of performance coupled to 'learning for leverage'. In each are the book explains the capacities needed and how they can be assessed and improved.

Effectiveness calls for NGDOs which retain their non-profit values, establish the right type of Professionalism, manage dilemmas and balance choices to continually reflect the priorities, rights and needs of those who give them legitimacy: people who are poor and marginalised. This book provides a reference of current and future practices which will help NGDOs to do so.

Part 1

NGDOs in International Development

1

Understanding International Development

The Changing Nature of International Development

A programme of international development assistance, commonly called the aid system, has existed for 30 years or more Initially the system assumed that inputs of finance and expertise from Northern-donor countries could accelerate and direct change in poorer countries of the world – the South,¹ In later years it became clear that development could not be externally directed but required local ownership and sufficient capacity to guide the process. Throughout, the primary public goal of international aid remained one of bringing about changes which reduce the proportion of poor or otherwise disadvantaged people in society. About 15 years ago an important condition was added to this goal, namely that change should be sustainable today and for future generations. Even more recently, under the label of re reforms for ‘good governance’, the purpose of aid has expanded to include the promotion of a particular form of politics based on democratic representation, social justice, the rule of law, and adherence to international agreements on human rights.

However, some 30 years of providing aid involving hundreds of billions of dollars, millions of staff and countless projects, together with major shifts in priorities, strategies and approaches, have not made a substantial impact on the scale of poverty in the countries of the South. Transition to market economics in countries of the East, furthermore, is leading to increased human deprivation and criminality, with increasing pollution and the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources.² This disappointing reality has added extra fuel to long-running debates, from across the political spectrum, about whether die principles of the aid system arc correct and whether present priorities and practices will ever lead to solutions. Disappointment also re-enforces the arguments of those who question the validity of the market-based growth model of development which underpins aid strategies, or if poverty reduction is the real purpose of international assistance³.

A more critical appraisal of the aid system is one sign of the post Cold-War context, which has also brought a new agenda for government aid Recognising this shift, some agencies are trying to change themselves and the aid system overall unfortunately, too many others believe that with modest adjustments they can carry on as before.

Suggesting how to enhance NGDO effectiveness calls for an approach which is both critical and pragmatic, starting from an analysis of what NGDOs have to be effective at. This chapter therefore explains what is currently known a hour the various tasks NGDOs must master in order to be an effective force for change within the aid system and within society at large.

Changing insights about the nature of poverty

Today, poverty is seen as a complicated condition, but this has not always been the case. Initially poverty was simply treated as a lack of the minimum nutritional intake needed to sustain life; calorie counts became the key measure and feeding programmes the response. The poor were then identified as those who fell below the minimum.⁴ Subsequently, this limited definition expanded to incorporate a basic set of human needs, including calorie intake, shelter and clothing, it was argued that without these basic needs people could not lead a human existence. Consequently, consumption became the common poverty measure, with a threshold set for the proportion of income that should be spent on basic requirements. The response of the aid system was to provide technical assistance and investment in primary health care, water supply and income generation.

Another shift in argument broadened the understanding of poverty to incorporate quality of life; this acknowledged people’s capability to fulfil valuable functions within society. This capability is determined by a person’s access to and control over ‘commodities’, which include tangibles such as food, income, and natural resources, but also cover less tangible, but nevertheless important, items such as education, good health social standing and security. From this point it is a small step to link ‘control over commodities’ to the ability to influence decisions on how commodities are both generated and distributed. In other words, powerlessness in society is an additional poverty dimension.⁵ Programmes, therefore, sought to organise people around common concerns and to help attain greater voice in matters affecting them. Today poverty can be seen as a human condition where people are unable to achieve essential functions in life, which in turn is due to their lack of access to and control over the commodities they require.⁶.

In this way, poverty reduction can be seen as a process through which people progressively gain control over commodities in a rough sequence related to:

survival such as food, shelter and warmth;

well-being, health, literacy security; and.

empowerment, in the psychological sense of self-esteem and status, and in the political sense of exerting influence over decisions which affect their lives.

People, then, become increasingly entitled to commodities which are environmental, economic, social, cultural and political in nature. The question is: what stands in the way of people getting their entitlements? In other words, why, in today’s world, do people remain m a state of deprivation?.

There are doubtless as many explanations of continuing poverty in the world as there are political and moral positions. It might be agreed that poverty arises from an individual’s inability to gain access to life’s essentials. In terms of selecting appropriate action, however, it is necessary to identify the reason(s) for this inability, as well as to determine who is responsible for altering the situation: the individual, civil society, the market, the state? It is here that ideas diverge and disagreements arise. The following list summarises positions taken on this critical issue. If effective development is to ensue, a decision has to be made on whether or not inaccess to commodities is:

part of the natural or divine order of things;

due to cultural norms which act as constraints on the generation or distribution of wealth;

intrinsic to (international) market capitalism as an economic system;

a consequence of international power relations and protection of Northern interests in a process of inter-dependent global modernisation;

an expression of inadequate institutions and inappropriate public policies, or their management, which makes society unable to use existing resources well;

a product of undemocratic politics and exploitation by unaccountable regimes through self-serving public policies backed up by force, threat and abuse of human rights, using the state’s instruments of coercion;

part and parcel of the historical trajectory of a country’s growth and the world’s development which, with technological advance, savings and capital accumulation, will eventually be eradicated;

due to rapid population growth;

due to market forces and behaviour rapidly eroding proven coping strategies;

a result of the incapacity of human kind to comprehend and manage complex international relations;

or a mixture of the above.

It is vitally important for all aid agencies to reach an organisational decision about such causes, otherwise only the symptoms of poverty will be treated. In the case of NGDOs, their impact will not be sustainable m the long term; if causes are not tackled, problems will persist. Second, treating symptoms can actually reinforce the causes of poverty by, for example, undermining people’s motivation to act and to claim their entitlements or generate their own solutions. One sign of an effective NGDO, therefore, is an ability to explain the cause(s) of the issue it is trying to address. Surprisingly, very few NGDOs do.⁷.

As to who is responsible for improving people’s access to life’s essentials, there is currently a pendulum swing away from the dominant Northern (welfare state) notion that society bears the ultimate responsibility for the well-being of its members. The responsibility for poverty reduction is no longer so clear cut and remains a highly contested issue.

Marginalisation and social exclusion

In addition to poverty, concern has extended to social justice, human rights and the problem of marginalisation of groups within society, especially women, By marginalisation is meant the exclusion of certain populations from the processes of decision-making that affect their well-being and prospects: this certainly applies to women in many countries. The 1995 UN Conference on Indigenous People has drawn attention to how groups with pre-colonial origins are systematically excluded, exploited and their rights abused due to the way countries continue to evolve economically and politically.

Exclusion in public decision-making is e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: NGDOs in International Development
• Part 2: Making NGDOs Effective
• Part 3: Improving and Moving On
• References
• Endnotes
• Chapter Readings
• Index