The Palestinian struggle for self-determination and statehood is by all accounts one of the least successful of the past century. The list of new and transformed countries since the early 1990s includes Kosova, Montenegro, Serbia, East Timor, Eritrea, and South Africa. In Palestine, close to 60 years of armed struggle, negotiations, mediations, international support movements, boycott campaigns and other forms of resistance have failed to deliver the promise of statehood. There are many explanations, both internal and external, for the repeated setbacks of this struggle. A different approach may be needed to chart a new trajectory for Palestine’s future.
Palestine would benefit greatly if it did more to help the world. You may ask how Palestinians can usefully help others when they are having such a hard time helping themselves. When I was a teenager, my father, who has been a professor and teacher all his adult life, shared a valuable insight with me: “one of the best ways to learn is to teach.” Palestinians could take a lead in starting new global and regional initiatives in the public interest, that address issues of international public concern. Although these initiatives would draw on Palestinian experiences, Palestine would not necessarily serve as a role model. Palestinians have been the victims of narrow-minded thinking for decades. Far too many international aid officials and foreign consultants offer to introduce, wholesale, their own experiences to Palestine, whether it is in legal arbitration, electoral laws, human resource management, etc. without taking into account the local needs, constraints and interests. Palestinians will be well placed to avoid repeating such mistakes when they work with others.
When helping other people the Occupation ceases to become an excuse. It is the unacceptable face of Palestine’s current reality. Palestinians can start their own initiatives to “learn by doing” – and they don’t need to obtain anyone’s permission to start this kind of work. These projects would be a modern concept of Zakat (charity) that recognises that “growth and purity”, sometimes require social and political transformation, not just alms giving. One idea would be an Arab Institute for Electoral Management, drawing on the lessons from the successes and failures of past Palestinian elections, widely recognised as the best run in the Arab world; Palestinians could invest to become world leaders in long-distance, low-cost e-learning for primary, secondary and higher education to address both their internal needs and those of other people; an international centre or summer school for nonviolent transformation drawing on past and present international experiences would be a valuable global resource. At least a dozen other ideas could be explored in the fields of children’s trauma support, inexpensive emergency healthcare, water conservation, the arts and culture, etc.
The natural place to locate such initiatives is Jerusalem, a world city to which more than half of humanity feels a strong emotional and spiritual bond. The physical location of these initiatives is less important than their potential benefit to Palestinians, however. The organisations can just as easily be located in Gaza, Nablus, Bethlehem, or even among the Palestinian Diaspora. The staff of these initiatives should be recruited internationally, including from the Diaspora.
Much will be gained from encouraging Palestinians and Jews to work together on other peoples’ problems. This may seem a far-fetched ambition initially, particularly under initiatives that are led by Palestinians, but such experiences would do a lot to put each people’s problems in perspective. It would create a new benchmark for cooperation. The question would no longer be whether a Palestinian and a Jew got along. It would be whether their work made any difference.
Palestine would benefit enormously from such initiatives. A new generation of leaders with a more cosmopolitan outlook and management experience would emerge. It would foster a second track of diplomacy with people around the world, on an entirely non-governmental and constructive basis. It could create several hundred jobs; it can inject tens and even few hundred million dollars annually of long-term funding into the Palestinian economy. Palestinian public institutions, businesses, and universities would all benefit from the sharing of insights and experiences with their peers internationally. They would do so on a basis of equity and mutual interest, not as recipients of charity. It will identify East Jerusalem with a positive agenda for change and cooperation and as a international centre for Palestinian action. The foundation of a vibrant and independent Palestine could be greatly influenced by the active engagement of the best and brightest to address some of the world’s major challenges.
Showing posts with label NGOs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NGOs. Show all posts
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Good for Israel, Good for the World
Israel’s popularity around the world has been slipping since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin more than a decade ago. There was a time when thousands of young people came to Israel every year to volunteer on kibbutzim and archaeological sites. Those numbers have now been reduced to a trickle. Empathy and admiration for Israel doesn’t run as deep as it once did. The ongoing conflict with the Palestinian people and Israel’s Arab neighbours is the primary cause.
To counteract this decline in goodwill, the Israeli foreign ministry and Jewish groups in the Diaspora devote significant efforts and resources to correcting the public portrayal of Israel and the conflict. This approach is defensive and in the long run counterproductive. A colossal opportunity is being missed to take an approach that lays a different trajectory for Israel and that may even contribute in a small way to the foundations for peaceful coexistence between Israel and its seven closest neighbours.
Israel would benefit greatly if it did more to help the world. By this I do not mean emergency relief operations. These can only make a small dent as they would compete with the work of well-resourced agencies like Doctors Without Borders, Care, and Oxfam that operate globally with decades of experience. Nor do I mean a government aid agency like USAID or the UK’s Department for International Development. Israel is too small to make a real difference on the world stage with such an approach. Moreover an effort led by the government is bound to fail because it will seek to combine good deeds with short-term political gains.
Philanthropists and social innovators need to explore new initiatives in a genuine spirit of tikkun olam, the Hebrew phrase that means ‘repairing the world’ or ‘perfecting the world.’ What is needed are international initiatives that are new, in the public interest, that address issues of global concern - and for which Israel does not claim to have all the answers. One possibility would be to host or create the major international non-governmental organisation dedicated to preventing genocide around the world; or an international technology centre devoted to rapidly advancing micro-power and micro-desalination plants; $100-laptops are only one step in the quest for developing adapted educational technology for the world’s poor. A dozen other ideas spanning gender issues, gay and lesbian rights, strengthening judicial independence, low-cost health technology, and more could be explored. Such work would build on a history of Jewish engagement and identification with major social movements and political transformations, including the US civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle.
The obvious place to locate such initiatives is Jerusalem, a world city to which more than half of humanity feels a strong emotional and spiritual bond. A specially designated zone could encourage existing major international non-governmental organisations, like the International Crisis Group, Greenpeace and others, to establish their regional or global offices in Jerusalem. A combination of old and new initiatives would create a critical mass of similarly minded activities. It is entirely feasible for Jerusalem, within a decade, to be for the non-profit world what the City of London is to global finance and Silicon Valley is to IT.
Non-governmental groups do not have to wait for the ink on a peace treaty to be dry before creating the foundations for a new Middle East. The staff in these initiatives should be recruited internationally. Much will be gained from encouraging Jews and Palestinians to work together on other peoples’ problems. Such experiences would put each people’s problems in perspective. It would create a new benchmark for collaboration. The question would no longer be whether a Jew and a Palestinian got along. It would be whether their work made any difference.
Israel will benefit enormously from such initiatives. It will foster a second track of diplomacy with people around the world, on an entirely non-governmental basis. It will lay the ground for a different future and new partnerships between Israel and its neighbours. It will identify Jerusalem with a positive agenda for change and cooperation. In its first 60 years Israel contended with many challenges to its survival. The quality of the next 60 years could be greatly influenced by the active engagement of the best and brightest in Israel and abroad to address jointly some of the world’s major challenges.
You may at this stage express doubts and wonder whether what I have outlined here is somewhat utopian. I can prove otherwise. I head a non-governmental organisation that operates from Jerusalem for the last three years. Among other things, we work with universities to introduce practical, evidence based courses on public integrity reform and anti-corruption. We work in more than forty countries on all continents. It is incidental to our work that our staff comes from ten nations. They include Muslims, Christians, and Jews - Israelis and Palestinians.
To counteract this decline in goodwill, the Israeli foreign ministry and Jewish groups in the Diaspora devote significant efforts and resources to correcting the public portrayal of Israel and the conflict. This approach is defensive and in the long run counterproductive. A colossal opportunity is being missed to take an approach that lays a different trajectory for Israel and that may even contribute in a small way to the foundations for peaceful coexistence between Israel and its seven closest neighbours.
Israel would benefit greatly if it did more to help the world. By this I do not mean emergency relief operations. These can only make a small dent as they would compete with the work of well-resourced agencies like Doctors Without Borders, Care, and Oxfam that operate globally with decades of experience. Nor do I mean a government aid agency like USAID or the UK’s Department for International Development. Israel is too small to make a real difference on the world stage with such an approach. Moreover an effort led by the government is bound to fail because it will seek to combine good deeds with short-term political gains.
Philanthropists and social innovators need to explore new initiatives in a genuine spirit of tikkun olam, the Hebrew phrase that means ‘repairing the world’ or ‘perfecting the world.’ What is needed are international initiatives that are new, in the public interest, that address issues of global concern - and for which Israel does not claim to have all the answers. One possibility would be to host or create the major international non-governmental organisation dedicated to preventing genocide around the world; or an international technology centre devoted to rapidly advancing micro-power and micro-desalination plants; $100-laptops are only one step in the quest for developing adapted educational technology for the world’s poor. A dozen other ideas spanning gender issues, gay and lesbian rights, strengthening judicial independence, low-cost health technology, and more could be explored. Such work would build on a history of Jewish engagement and identification with major social movements and political transformations, including the US civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle.
The obvious place to locate such initiatives is Jerusalem, a world city to which more than half of humanity feels a strong emotional and spiritual bond. A specially designated zone could encourage existing major international non-governmental organisations, like the International Crisis Group, Greenpeace and others, to establish their regional or global offices in Jerusalem. A combination of old and new initiatives would create a critical mass of similarly minded activities. It is entirely feasible for Jerusalem, within a decade, to be for the non-profit world what the City of London is to global finance and Silicon Valley is to IT.
Non-governmental groups do not have to wait for the ink on a peace treaty to be dry before creating the foundations for a new Middle East. The staff in these initiatives should be recruited internationally. Much will be gained from encouraging Jews and Palestinians to work together on other peoples’ problems. Such experiences would put each people’s problems in perspective. It would create a new benchmark for collaboration. The question would no longer be whether a Jew and a Palestinian got along. It would be whether their work made any difference.
Israel will benefit enormously from such initiatives. It will foster a second track of diplomacy with people around the world, on an entirely non-governmental basis. It will lay the ground for a different future and new partnerships between Israel and its neighbours. It will identify Jerusalem with a positive agenda for change and cooperation. In its first 60 years Israel contended with many challenges to its survival. The quality of the next 60 years could be greatly influenced by the active engagement of the best and brightest in Israel and abroad to address jointly some of the world’s major challenges.
You may at this stage express doubts and wonder whether what I have outlined here is somewhat utopian. I can prove otherwise. I head a non-governmental organisation that operates from Jerusalem for the last three years. Among other things, we work with universities to introduce practical, evidence based courses on public integrity reform and anti-corruption. We work in more than forty countries on all continents. It is incidental to our work that our staff comes from ten nations. They include Muslims, Christians, and Jews - Israelis and Palestinians.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Integrity risks in the aid system
I have had the opportunity to assess the integrity of the international aid system over the past ten years, both in major inter-governmental agencies, bilateral aid programmes and through the lens of NGOs and local communities. Is corruption in aid more pervasive than it is in international business, politics in poor countries, or in the state bureaucracies more generally? I'm afraid that the answer may be yes. What is most damaging about this type of abuse is that it hits the poorest the hardest. Not all aid is directly targeted at the world's poor. But it is given in their name.
Some of the practices I've come across on a recent visit to one of the poorest countries in the world included the following:
On a positive note, I came across one sanction mechanism which has legs recently. One of the more interesting audit and monitoring mechanisms I've come across contains a credible set of enforceable against offenders: If a contractor is found to have cheated the penalty is proportionate to the number of inspections made. If 5% are inspected, the fine is 20x the value of the single offence. Contractors are not just blacklisted. They are fined. Contractors in turn have local agents and are thereby made responsible for internal controls. As the sub-contracting companies are paid in arrears and the orders are large, the fines can easily be 'withheld' and the incentive are in place to continue fulfilling the contracts with the main agency.
In a case that is unfortunately far more typical of large-scale aid projects, particularly by agencies that purport to have a 'zero tolerance' policy on corruption, the executing agency (a major inter-governmental organisation)
Some of the practices I've come across on a recent visit to one of the poorest countries in the world included the following:
- 'Double-dipping' by local NGOs who seeks or accept funds from more than one donor for the same project. Current reporting standards and audit reports are an inadequate safeguard. Only improved information capture and donor coordination can get around this problem.
- Theft or diversion of resources from intended beneficiaries, e.g. village leaders obtaining infrastructure, being the only ones to use the 'communal library', phantom projects in remote areas, etc.
- Kickbacks on salaries, whereby consultants to projects are asked to pay 10-15% of their reported consultancy fee back to the person who sub-contracted them, usually the head of the domestic NGO. This appears to be an almost standard practice.
- Long-term and contract staff for domestic NGOs being required to return 20-40% of their salaries as 'overheads' to the organisation. This is a common practice among international consultancies. What differentiates the local context in this country is that the reported project salary is equivalent to a basic salary. When up to 40% are subtracted it becomes an inadequate or unviable salary, meaning that staff feel less commitment to their employers or are forced to take up more than one job. One I spoke with is working with their domestic partners to have an open reporting mechanism, actually pay overheads, and discourage this practice generally.
- Lack of governance within NGOs, with professional staff filling the board, NGOs being run like family businesses, poor audit procedures, etc.
On a positive note, I came across one sanction mechanism which has legs recently. One of the more interesting audit and monitoring mechanisms I've come across contains a credible set of enforceable against offenders: If a contractor is found to have cheated the penalty is proportionate to the number of inspections made. If 5% are inspected, the fine is 20x the value of the single offence. Contractors are not just blacklisted. They are fined. Contractors in turn have local agents and are thereby made responsible for internal controls. As the sub-contracting companies are paid in arrears and the orders are large, the fines can easily be 'withheld' and the incentive are in place to continue fulfilling the contracts with the main agency.
In a case that is unfortunately far more typical of large-scale aid projects, particularly by agencies that purport to have a 'zero tolerance' policy on corruption, the executing agency (a major inter-governmental organisation)
- Has no complaints mechanism to headquarters in the country, let alone outside the country that local people are made aware of.
- Independents audits do not take place
- In a project that spans several thousand villages, less than one per thousand (yes, a tenth of one percent) of community organisations are proactively monitored.
- Auditors are only concerned with financial audits. Technical audits are someone else's responsibilit
- Many people think that these problems are benign. After all, some money does remain in the country. Other people think that the problem is limited to developing countries. Let me give you three case illustrations that I have come across first hand that illustrate the opposite:*
Case scenario #1 A research institute with an international reputation for breakthroughs in scientific research asks a donor to fund a $12 million research programme that may lead to a cure for rare congenital disorder. A donor commits $10m to this programme. Another donor commits $5m. Each donor believes that he is the major benefactor of this research programme.
Problem Neither donor is aware of the size of the other's contribution nor that the research institute has raised more than it budgeted to conduct the research.*
Case scenario #2 The December 2004 tsunami that swept through parts of Asia killed thousands and destroyed the livelihoods of many coastal communities. In the coastal Indian state of Tamil Nadu dozens of fishing communities lost their fishing vessels and thereby the basis for their livelihood. Aid agencies were quick to provide them with boats. Many communities ended up with more boats than they had previously owned. In order to operate the bigger fleet of boats some fishermen have taken their children out of school. School attendance is decline, illiteracy is on the rise, and over fishing is a growing problem. In the Indonesian province of Aceh hundreds of children were orphaned by the tsunami. Dozens of orphanages were built. The well-equipped orphanages provide better teaching facilities and overall conditions than schools in poor fishing and farming communities can provide. Because there are more orphanages than there are orphans, some children are encouraged to pretend to be orphans to benefit from these new facilities. This is disrupting families, schools, and local communities.
Problem By the time the problem of the boats and the orphanages was identified, it was already too late. Once the boats were in use and the orphanages were built it was difficult to undo the damage they were causing. Mechanisms to prevent such waste and perverse effects are needed upstream.*
Case scenario #3 A major Scandinavian children's charity with a programme in an African country gets $2m a year from a European government to build schools and recruit teachers together with local communities. The region they are working in is the poorest, most war torn region in one of Africa's poorest countries. The projects are good: the schools are built and the children attend them. The projects are implemented through local NGOs who know the region well. The Scandinavian children's charity does regular inspections and audits and they are satisfied with the work. This is a model project meeting important development needs in a country that is only just emerging from war.
Problem Once the project is up and running and delivering positive results, the local NGOs can easily 'sell' the project to other donors. The Scandinavian children's charity and the European government are unlikely to ever find out.
Anyone with residual doubts about how serious this problem is must see Sorios Samura's remarkable undercover documentary:
Corruption in Africa Part 1Corruption in Africa Part 2Corruption in Africa Part 3
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