CIVIL SOCIETY POLICY FORUM

Sponsored by World Bank and IMF

Washington, October 18-22

OVERVIEW

Promoting and Scaling Up Demand Side Engagement to Improve Governance

• Emphasis of Bank and IMF was on getting transparent and accountable monetary policies in government – WB/IMF setting up a new set of conditionalities and providing technical support; concern about ‘democracy’ deficit. WB/IMF acknowledged the exclusion of CSO’s from these multilateral discussions
• CSO’s named problems such as human rights protection and actual delivery of pro-poor policies, and lack of CSO input and feedback in the accountability processes. Little account of their pro-poor advocacy.

Universal Access to Basic Services in Developing Countries: The Case for Public Health and Education

• Discussion of Oxfam International Report “Essential Services: In the Public Interest” focused on the need for both donors and developing countries to spend more resources on sustainable public health and education.
• Major concern expressed was the ineffectiveness of short-term project funding which prevents poorer countries from doing systematic infrastructure planning and development.

Issues and challenges in assessing the impact of policy reforms on affected groups

• Flaw in processes is the lack of input from CSO’s and in fact from many government officials as their knowledge base is weak. There is reluctance on the part of recipient countries to question the policies or reforms as the donors money affects their recurrent budgets as well as any poverty reduction programs that are being funded.

Townhall Meeting

• Essence of Robert Zoellick and Rodrigo de Rato addresses was focused on accountability and the better use of i) new ‘savings’ of developing countries and ii) engagement of new private donors. [need to check web for full details.]

Tasks and challenges of globalization

• Market turbulence of the sub-prime lending losses heightened risk liquidity (because of lending to hedge funds) and limits expansion of market. But this time has had little effect on developing countries – but is expected to lead to a tightening of lending standards which will impact on developing countries.
• Current imbalance in developed countries of trade and balance of payments being low is a concern, but there is capital surplus in the market that offsets this. Danger is that ‘bounce back’ means problems won’t be taken seriously.
• Risk evaluation will be tightened up and have a flow-on effect on interest rates and commodities market.
• Globalisation has resulted in there being more money and savings in LDC’s – [being encouraged to invest in global markets though]. However the real surplus of savings is located approx 80% in US, Japan and Eurozone and 10% in China and India.
• Nouriel Roubini(Stern School of Business NY) predicted the current crisis in Sept06 as the first credit crunch of globalisation – and predicts that others will occur and affect low income countries next time. There is a serious problem of insolvency in the market, hedge funds have been holding ‘toxic waste’ of big players. There is a pattern of faulty reporting and lack of transparency - need better regulation.
• Rep of Harvard – while financial globalization is welfare enhancing we should expect periodic turmoil because it has enabled many things which market is not ready for – real need for more transparency, change of monetary response in crisis (which is to liquefy assets). Concluding comment: there is no trust in balance sheets of banks!

The New Aid Architecture

• Zoelleck: more player in Aid (private funds with whom WB will cooperate) broadens the support and adds to capability for developing countries – needs more a network for Aid not ‘architecture’. Challenge is to drive ownership by developing counties – some difficulty as some would have 800-1000 projects/foundations to deal with. Overall need to upscale contributions to IDA if MDG’s are to be met.
• Ghanan Finance Minister: countries need grants and multilateral agencies, both for recurrent costs and infrastructure development. Perennial problem for developing countries is the stop-start project funding and the delay of finance between grant and delivery. Ghana receiving assistance from India and China to fast-track development, but needs other windows’ to access resources – private as well as WB/IMF plus access to technical advice
• Nancy Birdsall, Centre for Global Development: outlined 4 ways donors and WB/IMF can assist:

1.      support countries in evaluating their own projects – give back more control

2.      focus on output-based aid eg extend finance for development when goals are met – child completes school. Make more use of NGO’s in enabling this.

3.      clarify the ‘public good’ e.g. pneumococal vaccination – donors are more willing and WB be guarantor for innovators

4.      develop a framework for paying officials – set between local and global scales in order to keep expertise in country

•  O-I Ngozi, Brookings: African and Asian countries are getting better at crafting country strategies to use aid and so gradually develop ownership. But there is frustration in aid being tied or unstable. Most aid is used in humanitarian aid and in tech support, not to support Govt programs. Need for WB to use its power to make aid architecture more simple. Most important thing is to build local resource – ‘it’s the people, not aid, that’s going to save a country.’
• Allan Gillespie: Outlined the Ulster Bank bond process which generates money for development (inspired by Gates Foundation) – The bonds have raised 4billion from 6 sovereign European Govts. Has AAA rating and can tap into bond markets (holding trillions) for development purposes. Has the advantage of ‘front-loading’ – gets immediacy and predictability and scale of improvement up front. Has to be applied to long-range issues e.g education, telephony, water or sanitation projects and to work through an agreed agency.

New Aid Architecture: Philanthropy

• Aga Khan Foundation: has 31 sources of funding to work on long-term projects in health, education, strengthening environmental factors and building civil society. Takes an ‘area development’ approach and uses cultural elements to drive the economy – has 30-50 year commitment to a development area. Draws on immigrant diaspora to contribute to emerging nations – e.g. Afghanistan. [claims grants are not tied to religious affiliation.]
• George Vickers, Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation): focuses on promoting human rights, building capacity of governments to change and on building strong civil societies; concentrates on countries at the periphery of globalisation – growing emphasis on global governance. Maintains ‘Resource Watch’ and EU Institute (HR watchdogs); also monitors xenophobic values in government. Works primarily with ‘in-country’ people and provides technical ‘know-how’.
• Schumacher, Former US Ag. Minister and now works with Kellogg’s Foundation – focus is on building partnerships to develop sustainable agricultural projects and access to markets in US, mostly via ‘Farmers Markets. Drawing on skill base of new immigrants with agricultural background to give them first rung into the market. [doublespeak led me to believe this was code for projects which WB are involved in].
• Comment from the floor on the significant flows of money from faith-based communities being seen as part of the ‘new aid architecture’. [no real response]

Education’s Missing Millions: Including Disabled Children in Education for All/Fast Track Initiative  processes

• See World Vision report on Education’s Missing Millions for details.
• 77 million children still out of school are disabled – 85% in Africa
• Major barriers: physical access; teachers without training in disability ed, esp. lack of understanding of emotional needs; negative attitudes of family towards disabled child; fears of reaction from non-disabled children; lack of equipment and technical aids; no inclusive education policies
• Some models of ‘Can Do’ Inclusive Practices were shared: Kenya – itinerant teachers for blind students; UK Leeds in poor area – teachers with signing for profoundly deaf; teacher ed programs in Mumbai to enable inclusion of chn with palsy.
• Spokesperson for Disabled International (Venus Hagan)gave an overview of a partnership model in the Philippines between local communities, NGO’s and government for inclusion of disabled students in mainstream schooling
• Significant problem across the board – forever seeing a disabled child as a child. Little education in having or being given personal agency
• World Bank, Joy Phumaphi’s comments: We have problem with the concept ‘it is expensive to be inclusive’ – governments need to be challenged on this as lack of education is a long-term disability with long term social and economic costs. The Bank can use its position to pressure in this regard. All parties could learn from the OECD Disability Assessment Tool and scale up the use of this. Key is partnerships in LDC’s to improve teacher education and training – more than the first level entry level of FTI
• Comment re the resource gap for FTI. The primary source of funding is through IDA. Currently WB allocates $300 million towards gap. Role of Bank and CSOs to keep lobbying governments re making IDA contributions. Conditional cash transfers could be a mechanism to promote inclusion of disabled children in education.

Second Generation PRSPs

• Peter Lanzel, German Churches: Low visibility of PRSP’s contributing to poverty reduction and insufficient funding to CSO’s who do much of the work on the ground. Future challenges lie in: PRSP as poverty reduction strategy in WB policy, the application of the Paris Declaration (restrictions on LDCs) and IDA being linked to this. These roundtables setting policy exclude CSOs.  CSOs have difficulty at country level in contributing to poverty reduction plans (required by IDA and Paris Dec) because they disrupt power patterns, yet they still deliver a significant number of programs. PRSP process does not take into account the links with the need for other pro-poor policies, specifically re.trade.
• AFRODAD reported on 5 country case studies

~ there is some economic growth because of PRSP’s  and do address some of the corruption issues (but, in essence, do not replace structural adjustment policies)

~ cross-sectoral input – health, education, finance – is beginning and PRSP helps link programs to budgets. However time frames need to be set by country not WB. Fiscal space being created by PRSP but the macroeconomic framework is only discussed with governments and WB

~ ownership and sustaining engagement is weak because of reliance on donor funding and little consultation with government officials

~ little consultation with CSOs in PRSP process and minimal interest of governments in doing so

~ PRSP process is too statistically driven and has short term benefits for the poor, rather than actually changing things

• WB – Louise Kord

~ 62 of 67 IDA countries are using PRSPs for debt relief; 2^nd generation PRSP should focus more on economic growth

~ considered country ownership was improving as was cross-sectoral coordination but there is a lack of PRSP planning in budgets and of consultation with other stakeholders cf ‘Minding the Gap’ study (online)

~ 2^nd generation PRSPs to focus more on ‘shared growth’ and factors preventing poverty reduction; more focus on rural and gender work

~ more dialogue is needed on who is benefiting from social programs – need realistic measurement tools and more participation by CSOs; need to have macro-economic focus on growth to contribute to poverty reduction long-term.

Louise Cleary

30/10/07