Tearfund input to Labour Party Policy Reviewon International Development

i)Tearfundwelcomes this opportunity to contribute to the Labour Party Policy review and hopes that it will result in an ambitious set of commitments and a bold approach to the fight against global poverty. The UK has been a leader in international development and has continued to be a generous aid donor – Tearfund is urging the current Government to stick to its 0.7% promise and welcomes the Labour Party’s campaign on this. However, it is also clear that we need greater action across Whitehall and we hope that Labour party members with other shadow ministerial responsibilities will actively engage in this discussion and ensure that there is policy coherence for development across the policy review. which faces up to the challenges of climate change; food insecurity and food price volatility; land grabs; violence against women; corruption; and an economic system that often passes down risk and punishes those who are poorest. We urge the Labour Party to adopt a comprehensive package of policy prioritieswhich builds on past achievements but faces up to the lack of progress on the MDGs in many countries, and which takes account of future global challenges.

ii)Tearfund is a Christian relief and development agency, working in over 50 countries across the globe to alleviate suffering and promote sustainable development. We work primarily through local church partners in developing countries but also have operational Disaster Management teams in certain settings such as Haiti and Pakistan. At the heart of our approach to development is the concept of ‘restored relationships’, and the belief that in order to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), we need to harness the assets and networks of the church. We would encourage the Labour Party to look at how local community-based organisations, including local churches, can be effective partners in development, both in terms of service innovation and delivery, and as advocates to hold Governments to account.

iii)Tearfund believes that to truly bring about change and sustainable development we need both structural change to address global injustice and community mobilisation at a local and national level. Without harnessing the assets of the local and faith-based communities, we risk an approach to international development that is not nationally ‘owned’, fails to address the need for behaviour change, and which is ultimately not sustainable. The example below shows how churches in Ethiopia have supported self-help groups that are resulting in income generation and gender empowerment.

iv)Tearfund has developed policy expertise across the following areas and we would be happy to provide further information to the working groups on:

Environmental Sustainability and Disaster Risk Reduction

Water and Sanitation

Governance and Corruption

HIV

Food Security

Gender

Taskforce 1: Supporting the sustainable empowerment of women and girls in developing countries

1.1Women and girls can bear a disproportionate share of the poverty burden and it is right for there to be a focus on this area, as a means to an end (poverty alleviation) but also as an end in itself. Gender discrimination continues to straitjacket women, barring them from basics such as education, healthcare and a fair wage. Given the importance of this issue, Tearfund hopes that all of the policy task-forces will address issues of gender inequality and that it will not be this group alone that considers the empowerment of women and girls.

1.2Moreover, we would suggest that the Labour Party adopts the language of ‘gender’ and endorses an approach that involves men and boys as well as women and girls. The engagement of men in this area is absolutely critical and Tearfund would like to highlight the work of ‘Restored’, a new international alliance that has been established to engage Christian groups and organisations to end violence against women[1]. Its first campaign is mobilising men to speak out and play their part in ending violence against women, an approach that has also been stressed by Michelle Bachelet, the new Director of UN Women.

1.3Tearfund welcomes the creation of UN Women and along with other NGOs, we have been calling on the Coalition Government to fully support and resource the organisation. DFID’s current business plan articulates the objective ‘to lead international action to improve the lives of girls and women’ and yet there is an apparent reticence to adequately back UN Women. The UK must fully throw its weight behind the organisation, fully fund it, and ensure that it is not ‘set up to fail’ from the outset.

1.4Tackling Violence Against Women (VAW) must be at the heart of any strategy aimed at addressing gender inequality and Tearfund’s recent report Silent No More[2], has highlighted the scale of the challenge. Tearfund welcomes the inclusion of this within UN Women’s priorities and we have also welcomed the appointment of Lynne Featherstone as the Government’s Champion in this area. However, we would like to have seen more priority accorded to this role and feel that it would have more weight if undertaken by a Minister based at the Foreign Office (returning to the previous Labour Government’s model).

1.5Gender inequality is evident in HIV statistics and so any approach to the empowerment of women and girls must involve action on HIV: in some nations, young women and girls are up to 13 times more likely to have HIV than young men; in other countries married women are more at risk from HIV than their sexually active unmarried peers. DFID is currently taking a rather ‘low-key’ approach to its work on HIV and at the time of writing, the UK has still to announce its contribution to Global Fund replenishment. We welcome the Government’s recommitment to achieving universal access (by 2015) and would urge the Labour Party to ensure that tackling HIV is a cornerstone of their international development policy. With full replenishment of the Global Fund (including a UK contribution of £840m over three years 2011-15) we could eradicate mother-to-child-transmission of HIV. This should be a clear ambition of Labour Party policy.

1.6Community-based responses to both Violence against Women as well as HIV, are essential and should be supported through institutional funding streams. The reach of faith-based organisations should be better harnessed as they can play a significant role in supporting behaviour change and mobilising volunteers. The following examples highlight ways in which community organisations are pioneering innovative approaches to these injustices.

1.7One other key area where Tearfund has identified significant gender implications, is in the response to the water and sanitation crisis. Women and girls often have responsibility for water collection and young girls, particularly after puberty, are less likely to attend classes if schools do not have adequate sanitation facilities. For a girl’s basic schooling period from grade four to ten (age ten to 16), she will have to manage about 450 days of menstruation. It is estimated that ten per cent of school-age girls in Africa do not attend school during menstruation or drop out completely at puberty because of the absence of clean and private sanitation facilities in schools. About half the girls in sub-Saharan Africa who drop out of primary school do so because of poor water and sanitation facilities.

1.8Tearfund works alongside and through the local church to improve health and access to sanitation. In the community of Abayatir in Ethiopia, a Tearfund partner has been running participatory hygiene and sanitation training. One of the women involved with the project has said the following: “Before we constructed a latrine, if we had to go, we had to find an open field and during the dark we were exposed to danger, especially women. In our culture a woman’s dignity means that if she needs to defecate she has to go early in the morning before 6 o’clock, when people wake from their beds. If you miss that time in the morning then you suffer all day.”

1.9Tearfund welcomed the UN Secretary-General’s Strategy for improving Women and Children’s Health which was launched at the 2010 MDG Summit. It was especially encouraging to see that moment being used as a way of bringing together both donor and recipient countries. Having said that, the commitments were incredibly narrow, both from a gender perspective (by focusing on women as mothers) and from a health perspective. The need for an integrated approach was highlighted but there no commitments made on water and sanitation, despite the fact that 15% of all maternal deaths are caused by infections in the six weeks after childbirth, mainly due to unhygienic practices and poor infection control during labour and delivery.[3]

1.10Finally, but perhaps most importantly, Tearfund would like to stress the importance of investing in the ‘enabling environment’. DFID’s recently published Strategic Vision for Girls and Women rightly states that, “changes require both direct action and a positive enabling environment, that seek to improve a girl’s or woman’s relations with the men and boys around her and her status within her family and wider society.” However there is then very little information given about how DFID plans to invest in this ‘enabling environment’ and in particular how it plans to implement the UK’s commitment to CEDAW Article 5 which highlights the need to address social and cultural patterns which reinforce gender stereotypes. By actively including faith organisations and traditional leaders in a response to gender inequality, there is a better chance of challenging stigma and stereotypes. Often church & traditional leaders are gatekeepers to cultural change within the community and can bring about a fundamental change in attitudes and opinions if supported and resourced to do so.

Tearfund’s recommendations:

  • The Labour Party should adopt an approach to gender which is inclusive of men and boys, and which invests in behaviour change including through community-based and faith-based organisations
  • The Labour Party should ensure that related strategies (e.g. on HIV; Violence Against Women; Water & Sanitation; food security) are gender sensitive and fully resourced
  • The Labour Party should make the eradication of parent-to-child transmission of HIV a cornerstone of its development policy
  • The Labour Party should give its full backing to UN Women and provide sufficient resources for its operation to be effective.

Taskforce 2: The challenge of inequality between and within countries

2.1 The challenge of inequality within and between countries cannot be ignored and for Tearfund is a matter of justice. As countries such as India and China continue to grow economically, it is essential that we regularly re-evaluate our approach to both aid and advocacy in those countries. We must also continue to invest in those countries which are grindingly poor and which have seen very little economic growth in comparison with richer or emerging economies. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are not growing their economies and as Paul Collier has pointed out, often this persistent poverty is linked to conflict and fragility. However there are mechanisms we can use, such as debt relief, to reduce the inequality that exists between countries

2.2The bottom line for Tearfund is a focus on poor communities and so for this reason, we have supported the Government’s continued investment in India which according to a 2010 UNDP report, is home to a higher number of poor people (410m) than the 26 poorest African countries combined. Having said that, it is appropriate that the UK uses its influence with the Indian Government (and with others) to highlight the importance of investing in basic services to meet the MDGs. The recent announcement that India will be increasing investment in healthcare to between 2 and 3% of its GDP is hardly ambitious – the Fair Play campaign has been calling for African Governments to invest 15% of GDP in health and it is hard to argue that the Indian Government should take an alternative approach.

2.3One response should certainly be the continued investment in civil society organisations and particularly in accountability strengthening. Tearfund welcomed the 2009 White Paper commitment to invest an amount equivalent to 5% of budget support funding to help build accountability, a commitment taken forward by the current Government. By investing in civil society voice, and supporting the participation of a diverse range of groups and organisations, it will be harder for governments to ignore the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable.

2.4This kind of investment needs to go hand-in-hand with action to increase transparency and tackle corruption, to ensure that a country’s resources and revenue are used in more equitable way, and for the benefit of poor communities. Tearfund’s recent research, “Corruption and its Discontents” (2010) has highlighted the numerous ways in which people living in poverty are negatively impacted by corruption. Interviews that took place with communities in Zambia, Peru and Cambodia led us to identify seven fundamental ways in which corruption undermines development:

Corruption undermines the quality of, and access to, public services

Corruption reduces access to justice

Corruption perpetuates the abuse of women

Corruption contributes to environmental degradation

Corruption wastes scarce financial resources

Corruption makes people economically poorer

Corruption undermines trust and social cohesion

2.5In Africa alone, the cost of corruption has been estimated at US$ 148 billion a year, representing 25 per cent of the continent’s GDP.[4]Tearfund welcomes the implementation of the Bribery Act 2010 but recognises that corruption extends beyond bribery and much more must be done if the UK is to play its part in tackling this crucial issue. The Anti-Corruption Champion’s role (currently Ken Clarke) is to weave together the threads of anti-corruption work that run through all major Government departments. For this reason Tearfund is calling on him to work alongside a range of stakeholders in devising a publicly available anti-corruption cross-Whitehall strategy, which outlines specific objectives, funding commitments and a full monitoring and evaluation plan. Multi-stakeholder involvement, transparency and co-ordination of anti-corruption policies are essential if corruption is to be tackled effectively. The Labour Party should champion and push for a comprehensive cross-Whitehall corruption strategy.

2.6Industries operating in developing countries need to be more responsive to issues of equality and justice and in particular, the extractives industry (oil, gas and mining) should promote values of good governance.About 3.5 billion people live in countries rich in oil, gas and minerals. Revenue from these sectors are often one of the greatest sources of wealth generated within developing countries and could be harnessed for meeting the MDGs. In 2008 for example, exports of oil and minerals from Africa, Asia and Central and South America were worth roughly $1,189 billion, nearly 27 times the value of international aid ($44 billion) to Africa. In the same year, the continent of Africa exported oil and minerals estimated at $393bn.

2.7Many large multi-national oil, gas and mining companies are listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) – about 86. In terms of its total value, the LSE represents 1.2 Trillion Euro of the total 2.16 Trillion Euro for the Eurozone, or about 59% of extractive sector value. The companies registered on the LSE pay large sums of money to resource-rich countries for the sale of oil, gas and minerals which could serve as a basis for development and poverty reduction.

2.7The information from company financial reports, if disaggregated to the level of each country, would be a vital tool in building public accountability, giving citizens essential data with which to hold their governments accountable for the revenues mobilised and how they are used and ultimately lift many out of poverty.The Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which has a Section (1504) to ensure transparency in the mineral, oil and gas sectors, was signed into law by President Obama in July 2010. The US, through its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has expressed the need for similar legislation in other major jurisdictions in order to create a level playing field. It is crucial that jurisdictions such as the UK and other parts of the EU come up with similar legislation to create a level-playing field and to secure greater transparency and accountability in the sector. Tearfund would encourage the Labour Party to champion strong accountability measures through amendment of the Transparency Obligations Directive (TOD) which captures all those companies listed on the LSE and which requires project-by-project as well as country-by-country reporting (equivalent to Dodd-Frank).

Tearfund’s recommendations:

  • UK aid should be driven by need and we should continue to invest in the poorest communities, whilst strengthening the ability of civil society organisations to hold their governments to account
  • The Labour Party should commit to developing a cross-Whitehall anti-corruption strategy
  • Greater transparency in all sectors, but especially in the oil, gas and mining sector should be championed by the Labour Party as a route to addressing inequality. The Labour Party should push for strong European legislation in this area

Taskforce 3: Making growth work for the poor and generating new resources for development

3.1As the G20 works through its agenda for development, it is essential that members think seriously about the ‘type’ of growth that is both equitable and sustainable. As noted above, it is possible for an oil-rich country (for example), which is rapidly growing its economy, to fail to invest in any measures that will benefit its population at large. It is well documented that a country like Equatorial Guinea (currently President of the African Union) can have a reasonably high rate of GDP, coupled with high-levels of poverty.