FRIDE Humanitarian Action and Development

Strengthening Women's Citizenship: the experience of Sierra Leone

Clare Castillejo — 2008-08-29T03:50:00+01:00

Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images

There is currently great interest in citizenship within the development community. Strong citizenship has come to be seen as a vital ingredient for good governance and development, and strengthening the citizenship of poor people is viewed as a way to ensure their rights and participation in governance.

However, one of the biggest challenges is how to strengthen citizenship for women in developing countries. In many African countries women have little contact with the formal state and their lives are governed by customary governance systems that seriously limit their rights and opportunities for political participation. This is particularly true for women in fragile states, where the formal state is weak and inaccessible.

CGG

Based on field research in Sierra Leone conducted by FRIDE and CGG, this Working Paper by Clare Castillejo examines how processes of post-conflict state-building have redrawn the boundaries of authority between the formal state and customary governance systems, and thereby provided new citizenship opportunities for women.

The paper explores the changes that are taking place in women’s rights, women’s political participation and women’s mobilisation in Sierra Leone, in the context of state-building. It also makes recommendations for how donors can support the strengthening of women’s citizenship within their support for state-building in Africa.

The aid effectiveness agenda and decentralised cooperation

Miguel González Martín — 2008-08-29T03:50:00+01:00

Atelier Teee, Flickr

Decentralised cooperation represents approximately 15 percent of total Spanish ODA. To its significant quantitative reach must also be added the important institutional development which it has experienced in recent years through autonomous legislation, strategic planning, the creation of new agencies and the opening of new offices and expatriation of personnel. The debate over the effectiveness of aid that has emerged in the international arena in recent years, and which crystallised in the Paris Declaration, is conceived by and for states.

Even if moves have been made to incorporate civil society into the debate, there is still little sign of serious efforts to include sub-state actors in the process of reflection. In the Spanish case, the debate over aid effectiveness, along with other questions, is fuelling a growing level of analysis and increasing numbers of proposals regarding the role decentralised cooperation should play in the overall framework of Spanish development aid.

On one hand, analysts speak of the necessary coordination of autonomous and centrally managed cooperation, in order to avoid duplication and overlapping and thereby cultivate the efficiency of the system. At present, the difficulties of coordination extend from the limitations of existing mechanisms to the lack of real political will, not to mention the absence of an adequate framework of incentives for coordination.

On the other hand, it is also argued that decentralised cooperation could specialise in certain sectors or geographical areas, applying at the internal level some of the principles inspired by the division of labour among donors proposed by the EU.

However, even though coordination is very necessary and a debate about the potential areas for decentralised cooperation is possible, this Comment article argues that the added value of decentralised cooperation must be sought out by fostering a dynamic of cooperation that is born of closeness to the citizenry. The objective should be to thereby underline, in a new way, the relationship between the various actors who participate in cooperation.

Democratic ownership and mutual accountability

Paolo de Renzio, Lucy Hayes, Stefan Meyer, Felix Zimmermann — 2008-08-29T03:50:00+01:00

Democratic ownership” and “mutual accountability” are the two main fields of political contestation in the global governance of aid.

Democratic ownership describes the aim of extending the creation and implementation of development strategies beyond the government, and towards parliaments, major auditing institutions and civil society. Mutual accountability refers to the negotiation, measurement and implementation of the two sides of the aid relation: good governance on part of the Southern states and good aid provision on the part of Northern donors.

These issues are being discussed in a series of multilateral, high-level events in 2008. In June 2008, FRIDE invited three experts to Spain, to present aspects of the international debate.

This activity brief by Stefan Meyer, reflects some of the key points of the debate. Includes three short statements by the Felix Zimmermann, Lucy Hayes, and Paolo de Renzio.

Brazil as a new international development actor

Sarah-Lea John de Sousa — 2008-08-29T03:50:00+01:00

Brazil’s position in the global system is marked by different factors: Being aware of its hybrid position between the North and the South, and the external perceptions that identifies Brazil as an important and crucial country for the regional stability and development (concept anchor country launched for example by the German Development Agency), Brazil projects its global identity as a “voice” for the developing world in crucial international debates. In this context, Brazil refuses to be seen as a donor, but identifies itself as a partner for development.

Although it has less economic, demographic and territorial resources than other emerging actors, like China and India, Brazil is an interesting partner for a triangular development cooperation projects as it shares key values with the EU and countries like Canada (for example, in the fields of democracy, human rights and its approach to multilateralism). It also has special know-how due to its domestic experiences in combating underdevelopment, hunger and health problems, and it has the added value of local, historical (postcolonial) and cultural “nearness” to the developing world, especially SA, the Caribbean and Lusophone countries in Africa and Asia.

The original version of this comment in english is available in The North-South Institute web.

Financing for gender equality

Ana Lydia Fernández-Layos — 2008-08-29T03:50:00+01:00

Gary.fotu in Flickr

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), an organism of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, is dedicated to following up on and assuring compliance with multilateral commitments on gender equality. Among these is the Beijing Platform for Action. Each year a two-week meeting is organised bringing together government representatives and a large number of non-governmental organisations for negotiations, reflection and the exchange of ideas. The 52nd session, held in 2008, has centred on financing for gender equality.

With a new consensus based on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), the amount of finance going to gender equality and women’s empowerment has been reduced. At the same time, while the emphasis of development aid has changed from specific projects to the use of multiple pragmatic foci and the revision of policies, new opportunities have opened up for the adaptation of existing strategies and instruments to facilitate gender equality.

Ana Lydia Fernández-Lagos argue that in recent years gender equality has not been adequately taken into consideration in the new aid architecture. For this reason, the international summits that will take place this year, for example the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra and the revision of the Monterrey Consensus on development finance in Doha, offer an important space for the global feminist movements to win concrete commitments with regard to the promotion of gender equality through development aid.

The 52nd Session of the CSW in February and March 2008 made the integration of gender perspectives in the international development aid a priority. Taking a civil society standpoint, this Comment article explores the key issues being negotiated between North and South, and between governments and NGOs, and proposes courses of action to move forward with the promotion of gender equality .

Ownership with adjectives

Stefan Meyer, Nils-Sjard Schulz — 2008-08-29T03:50:00+01:00

AFP/Getty Images

This synthesis report carried out by Stefan Meyer and Nils-Sjard Schulz, looks into the impact of donor harmonisation on
democratisation processes in recipient countries. It is based on four case studies (Mali, Nicaragua, Peru and Vietnam) and explores the political implications of the aid effectiveness agenda and particularly of the new aid modalities.

Following the Paris Declaration, donors and governments engage in a closer relationship in defining policies. In this dynamics, other stakeholders such as CSOs, parliaments, public oversight institutions, the media and sub-national governments (dubbed the oversight triangle in this paper) may become increasingly marginalised, which could hamper the democratic process and lead to negative “side-effects” for democratic ownership and domestic accountability.

The focus is thus on donors’ performance as increasingly active actors in the domestic political economy dimensions of participation, transparency and accountability, rather than as external and neutral aid deliverers. Among the conclusions aimed at sensitizing policy-makers and planners, the study stresses the necessity to address country specific political dimensions and the overall quality of compliance with the five PD commitments, especially regarding downwards accountability and “good” ownership.

An abridged version in German has been published in FriEnt Impulse.

Transparency in the extractive sector: deepening Spain's commitment with the EITI

Nils-Sjard Schulz — 2008-08-29T03:50:00+01:00

Peter Eigen, Sarah Wykes and Marie-Ange Kalenga

On 28 May 2008, FRIDE facilitated a meeting of members of the Commission for International Cooperation of the Spanish parliament (Congreso de Diputados) with representatives of the Board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the CSO platform Publish What You Pay (PWYP).

The meeting was organised in parallel to the PWYP outreach event on 25 May and the EITI board meeting in Madrid between May 26 and 28. It aimed at, firstly, discussing the state of the EITI process and, secondly, exploring the specific contributions of Spain and the Spanish parliament to the fostering of governance in resource-rich developing countries by improving transparency and accountability within the EITI.