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Editorial, volume 8, number 3
'Development' has officially been with us now for nearly 50 years, having been launched by US President Truman in the aftermath of World War II. The last five decades have indeed seen remarkable changes in terms of many of the conventional indices of development - economic growth worldwide accompanied by rapid industrialization in many countries; improvements in healthcare and the gradual eradication or containment of many infectious diseases; the establishment (if not the achievement) of agreed international goals regarding a broad spectrum of economic, social, political, and cultural rights and freedoms, ranging from the duty of governments to provide free universal primary education to its citizens to the right of every human being to form or belong to a labour union, to associate freely, to worship, 'to take part in the government of his [sic] country', to peaceful association, to found a family, and so on.(1) Several major international conferences have been convened to deepen public understanding of and support for, and to take forward these commitments, most recently in the fields of the environment (UNCED, 1992), human rights (WCHR, 1993), population and reproductive health (ICPD, 1994), social development (WSSD, 1995), women (FWCW, 1996), and housing (Habitat II, 1997).
Yet there is growing disquiet among citizens' groups, leading intellectuals in the South, and many organizations worldwide that are concerned with poverty and/or rights issues, about whether, even if the 'Development Dream' could really come true, it would be a human paradise or a soul-less inferno. There has always been a degree of scepticism about the capacity of an agenda set largely in the North to 'deliver' development to the peoples of the South. Certainly, the institutions that are effectively propelling the process today - the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Trade Organization, and, increasingly, the major transnational companies - are widely perceived to represent the interests of Northern capital. However, given that discrepancies between rich and poor nations are significantly wider today than they were 30 years ago, and that not only are the poor getting poorer, but a large number of 'new poor', North and South, are also joining their ranks, there is a greater willingness than before to question the entire concept of 'development'. In other words, there is greater impatience with the top-down orthodoxy that these unfortunate results are merely temporary hiccups, not trends; instead, many now see them as an inevitable, even necessary, product of a flawed system. Tinkering with the machinery is, then, a diversion, a waste of effort. Far better recognize that we have developed the wrong machine to do the wrong job - and are damaging people and their societies in the process of trying to kick-start it - and so to go back to the drawing board.
This, in very crude terms, is the argument put forward by Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash, in this issue of Development in Practice, claiming that international and practice in the fields of human rights and development are often used by the 'social minorities' of the One-Third World in cynical ways for oppressive and selfish purposes. Drawing on their own experience both of being on the receiving end of 'Development' and their contact with the traditional and new alternatives emerging from its rejects, the 'social majorities' of the Two-Thirds World, they call for a profound change in how we conceptualize our individual and social rights and responsibilities, our moral values and the meanings we attach to these, the balance to be struck between between our rootedness in very diverse realities, and the universals that can nevertheless connect us across social and cultural divides. Approaching these concerns from a rather different angle, Grahame Russell holds that development must by definition be based on the comprehensive enactment of human rights; that human rights violations and development are incompatible; and that full respect for human rights and freedoms and development are mutually reinforcing. In this sense, his paper stands for those who would rather 're-claim' and reform 'Development' rather than abandon the term because of what it has come to represent.
These are arguments that even the most analytical of development agencies are often too busy to hear. As Sasja Bökkerink and Ted van Hees and show, NGOs can play a critical role in questioning the policies and the accountability of the major institutional players. However, they seldom truly take themselves back to the drawing board. Radical change is firmly off the agenda, especially for governmental and non-governmental agencies that depend on public funds and goodwill. Despite their diligent stakeholder analyses and ever more exotic varieties of planning and evaluation, these tend to remain locked in the need for their own existence. NGOs may be better than other development institutions at saying that they are working for their own extinction, but the reality is that very few (if any) have voluntarily chosen to self-destruct (as opposed to having the funding rug pulled from under their feet). In fact, NGOs have proliferated massively in the last two decades, while some of the more established, such as Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, CARE, or World Vision, have expanded not only in size but also in the scope of their activities.
This growth has been accompanied by greater (and overdue) scrutiny of what the NGOs claim to do, and of what they actually do. While this may fall short of a genuinely radical review of their purpose as well as of their performance, it is a healthy process none the less. Here, Warren Nyamugasira challenges the cherished belief that NGOs can, or even should, aim to 'represent' those on whose behalf they seek to work through their international advocacy programmes. Sam Barnes offers a detailed account of NGO involvement in various aspects of the peace-keeping programme in Mozambique, concluding that a far clearer definition of roles, mandates, and appropriate expertise is needed if there is to be constructive partnership between governmental, inter-governmental, and non-governmental entities - themes picked up by Alan Whaites in his theoretical analysis of the relationships between 'civil society', NGOs, and governments, by Simon Ticehurst in his account of 'second-wave' structural adjustment programmes in Bolivia, and by Chris Dolan in his report on a conference on 'principled aid' recently sponsored by the European Community's Humanitarian Office (ECHO).
If the whole 'development enterprise' is in question, it is clear that procedures alone will not ensure the health and integrity of the institutions it has generated. And there is, after all, a difference between accountability and responsibility. However, given that development agencies that do not have a clear public mandate, such as NGOs, exist and will continue to do so as long as someone is prepared to fund them or to pay for their services, it helps to ensure that they are properly run. Mick Moore and Shelagh Stewart set out ideas for how NGOs could enhance their performance and their reputation, as well as their autonomy, by adopting a series of self-regulatory mechanisms. Gerald Daly and Gordon Knowles examine different aspects of personnel management, the former in emergency aid programmes, the latter in agencies that recruit people to work overseas.
Deborah Eade, Oxfam GB
August 1998
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