At last, a sensible suggestion for post2015

After my ‘bah humbug’ paper on post2015, I’ve been largely avoiding the subject as a monumental timesuck. However, a combination of Sabina ‘multidimensional’ Alkire and Andy ‘bottom billion’ Sumner is an unstoppable force, so I’m making an exception for their new paper, Multidimensional Poverty and the Post-2015 MDGs, which is worth a skim.

What Sabina and Andy do is use her previous work for UNDP on multidimensional poverty indicators (MPIs) to square an important circle. They suggest building an ‘MPI 2.0’ based on whatever combination of issues is finally agreed in the post2015 discussion. This would produce a single number that summarizes a country’s overall progress towards the post2015 goals.

That in turn would allow the post2015 process to generate more traction on national governments (the lack of which is the subject of my paper) through league tables. Imagine if every year, all countries (including the rich ones) are ranked on a comprehensive human development table that (unlike the Human Development Index and other similar efforts) has buy in and recognition from across the international community. Each annual report would pick out the countries that have risen/fallen relative to the others. Regional tables could compare India and Bangladesh, or Peru and Bolivia, to generate extra public interest and pressure on decision makers. Within countries, an MPI could highlight regional disparities (see map).

A particular advantage of the approach is speedy feedback for policy makers: The MPI reflects effective social policy interventions immediately. With measures of income poverty, a positive social change – for example in schooling or clean water – may not be reflected for a number of years.

One of the lasting institutional legacies of the MDG process is the investment in better quality data needed to assess progress – this proposal would build on that.

One suggestion though – MPI 2.0 is a dreadful name. Why don’t we just call it ‘poverty’ and argue that it should replace $1.25 a day as the international standard?

And here’s me at a recent IDS seminar explaining why I’m so underwhelmed by the general post2015 debate.

Beyond Horsegate: comparing the supply chains of the big 10 food companies

Erinch Sahan (right), a private sector policy advisor at Oxfam GB, introduces Behind the Brands, a big new report and company scorecard, launched today.

So we didn’t know we were eating horses. What else don’t we know about the supply chains delivering our food? 18 months ago, Oxfam posed this question to the Big 10: the world’s 10 largest food and beverage companies. In alphabetical order, they are Associated British Foods, Coca Cola, Danone, General Mills, Kelloggs, Mars, Mondelez, Nestle, Pepsico and Unilever. Today, we launch the results of our research and make it the centre piece of a brand-spanking new campaign: Behind the Brands.

The results aren’t pretty. The Big 10 seem unengaged with their supply chains (they don’t seem to know what’s going on and how to address it). Nor do they tell us much about where their commodities come from and next to zilch about how they use their power to shape the behaviour of suppliers. We came up with numbers to show this and ranked them across some important issues. This is how we did it.

7 critical themes
We chose seven themes that directly or indirectly change conditions for the poorest people in the food system: women, small-scale farmers, farm workers, land, water, climate, and transparency; asking whether the Big 10 are:

• improving conditions for women, small-scale farmers and farm workers;
• promoting equitable and sustainable access to and use of land and water;
• reducing emissions and helping farmers adapt to climate change; and
• being transparent about their supply chains and broader corporate activities

How the Big 10 stack up
After 18 months of analysis by Oxfam – and a long process of consultation with academics, industry experts, Oxfam staff on the ground, organisations working on international supply chains and the companies themselves – we came up with the following scores:

So what lies beneath these scores? The following questions transcend the themes and form the back-bone of the scorecard.

Are they telling their suppliers to do the right thing?
Most of what goes into the products does not come from farms operated by the Big 10. So the most important issue is how they shape the behaviour of their suppliers. On this point, the most relevant documents are their supplier codes (and supplier guidelines), which contain the standards they ask their suppliers to meet. An example is Unilever’s Sustainable Agriculture Code, which tells its suppliers to work with farmers’ groups to provide training to farmers and to provide safe working conditions for workers.

We had two problems in assessing supplier codes. Firstly, we cannot know if the codes are enforced, partly due to a lack of transparency around the auditing of suppliers. Secondly, most of the codes contain little meaningful detail. So we could not rely on supplier codes alone and had to broaden the scope of our scorecard.

Are they aware of the broader issues?
Across the themes, we assess if the Big 10 recognize the challenges faced by agricultural communities. For instance, under the women theme, we rewarded Coca Cola, Nestle, Pepsico and Unilever for publicly acknowledging that women lacked access to training related to food markets and for recognizing that small-scale farmers need assistance in adapting to climate change. While this can seem disconnected with their actual practices, for a company to address a problem, it must at least be aware of it.

Do they know details of their own supply chain?
Do companies know the relevant details of their supply chains? A company that knows where there is poorer land governance, will know it needs to focus on that part of its supply chain; a company that identifies water-stressed regions that they operate in is better equipped to channel its efforts.

Are they committed to improving conditions?
Once they identify an issue, we want to see a company commit to tackling it. This could be a target or a general commitment to tackling a problem. For instance, under the water theme, we rewarded nine of the Big 10 for setting a target to reduce water use in their own operations (since this impacts availability of water for local farmers). In farmers, we looked for a commitment to ensuring that small-scale producers receive a price that allows them to earn a decent income (none of the Big 10 does this).

Do their projects address core issues in their supply chains?
The Big 10 are active in philanthropic projects but we focused on whether they are doing anything to address the core issues in their supply chains. For instance, we looked for projects that improve farmer productivity, women’s empowerment, wages, land rights, resilience to climate change and access to water (we have a long list). Under most themes, we also required that they work with a relevant organisation, such as a local union or a farmers’ organisation. Few of the projects conducted by the Big 10 met our criteria.

What remains unanswered
Whether the Big 10 use their power to make their suppliers do the right thing is not very clear. It is hard to get information about who they do business with and exactly where the commodities in their products come from. We know even less about how they engage with their suppliers and, after assessing information in the public-realm, are left with unanswered questions such as:

• How much emphasis do they put on social and environmental issues when negotiating contracts?
• Do they know how much it would cost for their suppliers to do business responsibly and do they pay enough to allow this to happen?
• How much information do they provide to their suppliers in terms of advance notice of upcoming orders and quality requirements?
• Who bears risks relating to transport and weather-related disruption and fluctuating demand?

Greater transparency about how they manage these issues with suppliers is an essential first step – starting with some facts on whether and how they incentivise their buyers to take account of these issues. Until the Big 10 stop hiding behind the excuse of “commercial sensitivity”, they are not serious about being held to account for their power to improve the lives of the marginalised, many of whom are growing the food we eat.

What do the Big 10 need to address?
The Big 10 have several gaping holes in their policies but Oxfam suggests that they prioritise taking action as follows:

1. Make explicit commitments to recognize and fix the injustices in their supply chains.

2. Identify areas of high risk and analyze and disclose their impact on supply chain issues.

3. Make clear their expectations of their suppliers and support them to do their part to fix the injustices.

Erinch Sahan led the team across Oxfam International that put together the scorecard.

Arab Spring v Muslim Tigers: what’s the connection between human development and revolution?

Just before the Arab Spring kicked off in early 2011, I was happily linking to some really interesting work by Dani Rodrik (one of my development heroes) on ‘muslim tigers’, pointing out that in terms of human development, the top 10 performers since 1970 were not the usual suspects (East Asia, Nordics) but Muslim countries – Oman, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria all featured.

So did the Arab Spring happen in spite of or because of such amazing progress? A new paper from Randall Kuhn of the University of Denver (right, without the hat) explores just that question and comes up with some intriguing hypotheses. Tigerishness in these countries is largely confined to childhood, which then gives way to:

‘“waithood” – the long and precarious path to adulthood facing Arab youth. Potential consequences of youth exclusion include lost productivity, social anomie, atrophying skills, and of course civil unrest. But these particular crises did not occur in a vacuum. While the Arab States experienced the same global economic recession as other nations, the specific crises were conditioned by decades of progress in basic human development.’

The most interesting aspect of this ‘waithood’ is the interaction between the labour market and the ‘marriage market’, which partly as a result of improved education has seen a ‘rapid transformation towards delayed marriage and high marriage costs.’ Female age at first marriage rose from 20.8 in 1966 to 29.2 in 2001 for Tunisia, and from 18.7 in 1973 to 31 in 2007 for Libya, and the changes have been similar for all women (rural and urban, more and less educated). In Egypt, the cost of marriage in 2005 was close to $7,000, or about 11 times annual household expenditure. As a result ‘an increasing number of women were accepting long engagements or delaying marriage in order to earn money to pay for the marriage or to wait for a better match.’ Oh, and by the way, ‘Unlike western countries, premarital sex does not have wide social acceptance.’

The result is a pressure cooker of expectations and frustrations. Young educated people unable to find jobs, seeing the status and fulfilment of marriage and parenthood receding into the far horizons the other side of ‘waithood’. And sex, drugs and rock and roll, which at least provide a temporary outlet for my kids’ generation in the UK, were not really on the menu.

Final word to Randall Kuhn:

‘No developing region had seen such improvements in multiple indicators of human development, reflected in declining child mortality, increased schooling, and increased stature of women. This progress permeated widely throughout most populations and sub-populations. Advances in human development contributed to a fundamental reordering of the relationship between citizen and state. Human development fostered a set of higher expectations, both physiologically and socially determined, that placed considerable pressure on governments, particularly in the context of extended adolescence. As the bond between citizen and state frayed, a new generation of political protest movement emerged, facilitated by the rise of information technologies. In addition to material grievances, the wave of protest reflected a collective sense, emerging throughout the Arab world, that citizens could expect more from their governments, including a right to self-determination. If human development does indeed shape the path to revolution, we may hope that it will also determine the ultimate success of the Arab Spring, which remains a work in progress.’

I’m told that Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa team are heartily sick of reading what they call ‘Western narratives’ about the Arab Spring. Is this just another one of those or something more interesting? For the moment (until someone puts me straight), I go with ‘interesting’.

Has Zimbabwe’s land reform actually been a success? A new book says yes.

I’ve never been to Zimbabwe, so tend to get my messages from the news coverage. On land issues, that means a picture of a predatory state driving white farmers off the land and handing it out to cronies and bogus war veterans, who fail to produce anything much in the way of crops.

Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land, a new book co-authored by Joe Hanlon, Jeanette Mangengwa and Teresa Smart, sheds a very different light. Based on field visits, numerous conversations with farmers, and mining the available data, it paints a much more nuanced picture that is broadly positive about the impact of Zimbabwe’s land reform. It makes some telling points, including:

The media story about efficient white commercial farms is a half truth at best: at independence in 1980, 700,000 black farmers were squeezed onto 53% of the farmland, while 6,000 white farmers had 46% (and often the best land at that). Yet when Zimbabwe achieved majority rule, one third of white farmers were insolvent and a third were just about breaking even. Only 5% (300 people!) could be described as ‘very profitable’.

It often takes a generation for a land reform to produce results – the larger of Zimbabwe’s two post apartheid land reforms is only a decade old, but new farmers have already caught up with the previous white-dominated system in production (although of course, there are always better and worse farmers in any category). That is initially being achieved by bringing some of the idle land into production, but yields are also rising.

Zimbabwe is special in several ways: one of the best educated populations in Africa actually sees farming as a good way to earn a living. Those making a success of farming include ex army generals, teachers and businesspeople.

The book is not an apologia for Robert Mugabe’s government – it acknowledges corruption and cronyism, but argues that the more recent land reform was driven from below, initially in the face of Zanu opposition, before the government finally decided to accept a fait accomplit – ‘perhaps the only thing Robert Mugabe and the British Government agree on is a myth, namely that Mugabe was responsible for the land occupations’. The book also points out that not all cronies are the same – some are just interested in speculating on land values, but others have actually become successful commercial farmers.

The more recent land reform comes in two types: ‘A1’ farms handed out about 150,000 plots of 6 hectares to smallholders by dividing up large white farms, while the ‘A2’ model sought to create large black commercial farms by handing over much larger areas of land to about 23,000 farmers.

One side effect of Zimbabwe’s educational record is plentiful research and survey data, which the authors make the most of in exploring the impact of the land reform. Has most land gone to government cronies? No.  Large-scale black commercial farmers have received just 7% of the land handed out since independence.

The first half of the book covers this history, the second surveys today’s agriculture, with evocative reportage from the field supplementing the number crunching. The book draws lessons about which farmers succeed and which fail, and why.

Overall, a lot of the smaller A1 farmers (including a significant number of women beneficiaries of the land reform) have become successful small commercial producers, breaking into markets for tobacco, maize and barley, often as contract farmers. This despite the lack of support for new farmers (a contrast to the lavish support for white newbies in earlier times).

The big A2 farmers have faced more of a struggle, both because hyperinflation and economic crisis had more of an impact , and because political infighting and favouritism tends to target the big farms. The largely unreported story here, though, is that the dollarization of 2009 and subsequent economic stabilisation has led to a resurgence of agriculture.

Not all is great of course, land reform has led to deforestation, and gold panning is causing environmental damage. Paid agricultural workers now number more than a million, and often face low wages and poor working conditions. Water and irrigation remain a big challenge.

The book concludes:

‘In the biggest land reform in Africa, 6,000 white farmers have been replaced by 245,000 Zimbabwean farmers. Zimbabwe’s land reform has not been neat, and huge problems remain. But 245,000 new farmers have received land, and most of them are farming it. They have raised their own standard of living; have already reached production levels of the former white farmers; and with a bit of support, are ready to substantially increase that production.’

So who’s right, the book or the Daily Mail? I’m off to Zimbabwe for a few days in March, so hopefully will get a clearer idea then, but would love to hear your views before I head off.

And if you’re in London, there are two opportunites to hear from the authors this week – at Chatham House on Thursday, 31^st January, 5pm (need to book) and LSE today (28^th January), 6.30pm (no booking required).

Should men speak on all-male panels? Summary + time to cast your vote

Right, I have now waded through dozens of comments, tweets and my own tangled thoughts on Monday’s post. What stood out?

Boycott v constructive engagement: is it better to politely push conference organizers, suggest female panelists, and express ‘strong disinclination’ to take part in testosterone-fests, or to play hardball with a blanket ban? And is the crime less heinous for a three man panel than a six man one?

Should this approach be extended beyond gender, especially to having representation from developing countries?

Pressure during the event itself: questions from the floor and from panelists should ask organizers to explain themselves and/or panelists should make the effort to ask for female colleagues’ input to the debate and pass it on (duly credited).

Should we add a ban on all-female panels on gender issues?

Don’t blame the event organizers when the real problem is broader – the lack of women at top level in a number of development-related institutions (yes, but a combination of conscious effort and affirmative action by event organizers can be part of redressing the wider problem).

For the moment, I’m coming round to the following position: When asked to participate on a panel, right-thinking men  should

a)      Ask about the current make-up of the panel

b)      If it’s devoid of either women or people from other relevant population groups (depending on the topic), both express serious reservations and try and suggest some names

c)       If they think the organizers are not serious, they should decline, but if they seem to be really trying, it’s OK to say yes

d)      Before the panel, try and get input from colleagues to fill in any potential gaps in the panel‘s analysis due to its grotesquely distorted composition

e)      When speaking on the panel, mention the disparity, and try and ensure a fair spread of questioners (male domination applies to questions at least as much as it does to panelists)

And of course, none of this applies if the panelists are Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela and Jim Kim, but Christine Lagarde is not available that day.

There, that should ensure I never get invited to speak at a panel again. Result.

And since everyone likes voting (judging by last year’s top ten), please could you tell me whether I’ve got it right? The Poll will remain open for a few days. The question is

When asked to appear on panels, men should

a)      Simply refuse to appear on male-only panels

b)      Constructively engage with organizers in the way set out in the blog

c)       Just be grateful, say yes and abandon all this pitiful liberal self-doubt

Should men boycott all-male panels at conferences?

A conversation on twitter this weekend triggered (yet another) ethical dilemma. Gosh it’s exhausting trying to be a do-gooder. Claire Melamed started it by sending round a link to an article arguing that men should sign a pledge stating publicly that they will refuse to take part in all-male panels at tech conferences (which are regularly men-only affairs, apparently). As a regular token NGO speaker at various talkshops, would I make a similar pledge, she asked? Owen Barder is already signed up, she added.

They may not be as extreme as geeky tech events, but lots of development gabfests do indeed feature men on the panel talking to women (and men) in the audience. That violates basic fairness, inhibits the profile and (possibly) career development of half of the potential talent pool, and is likely to distort the agenda and resulting discussion (less focus on care economy, women’s rights etc). So obviously, the answer is yes to a boycott, right?

Except…..

Most people who contact me don’t know the final panel line-up yet. They are in the process of contacting a range of potential speakers, both men and women. Prominent women in the development debate (like Claire and her outgoing boss at ODI Alison Evans) are in huge demand, so presumably have to say no quite a lot of the time. Should I say ‘provisionally yes, but if you end up with a male-only line-up, I’ll withdraw at the last minute’? That seems to me to cross the line from principled to prima donna – pretty unfair on already stressed-out conference organisers who may be trying ever so hard to ensure a balanced line up. Or should I say ‘are you committed to inviting a decent number of women speakers to ensure a gender balance on your panels?’ – everyone is going to say yes, but how do you measure how serious they are?

Then of course there’s the organisational profile thing. In fantasy mode, suppose I get a call saying ‘Barack Obama, David Cameron and Jim Kim are speaking on development, and need a token NGO person, could you do it? Christine Lagarde is busy that day, sorry.’ Am I really going to say no?

And what about a panel with all male speakers and a woman chair (a pretty common occurrence)?

And why privilege gender over eg ethnicity – what about all-white panels on development (which are even more common than all-male ones)?

Oh dear. The torments of the self-obsessed liberal.

Tell me what you think, and depending on the response, I may well set up another online poll to help solve my dilemma. Meanwhile, the interns poll is still getting votes (see right), and the agnostics (NGOs should decide for themselves whether to pay interns) has overtaken the ‘pay all interns’ lobby and is drawing away. Unexpected result – love it.

Love, death and violence against women in the DRC (and elsewhere): what are we missing?

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, so expect a rash of stories about sexual violence in the DRC’s current conflict. Here Rachel Hastie, Oxfam’s protection adviser,  cautions against a simplistic ‘heart of darkness’ narrative, and argues for a more nuanced and human understanding of the phenomenon.

There’s a lovely photograph in the atrium of the Oxfam office. It shows Masumbuko, a 36 year old man, draping his arms around his wife, Grace’s, neck as she shyly looks to the camera. It was taken by fashion photographer Rankin for the exhibition ‘From Congo with Love’. Masumbuko says “I fell in love with my wife the first time I saw her. There was something about her – the way she was talking, the way she was walking, her nose, her ears…. I can’t go a day without looking at her.”

It’s sweet and lovely, and all the more so because they live in eastern Congo, which has been described as ‘the rape capital of the world’ – Rankin’s photo gives me a glance into the lives of these two people that jars with the protection reports and field assessments sitting on my desk just a few metres away.

Whether it be Bosnia, Liberia, Darfur, or DRC, sexual violence has been an aspect of many of the conflicts and humanitarian responses I’ve been involved in during my time with Oxfam. Rape and other forms of sexual violence are an appalling violation, devastating in their immediate and long term consequences for individuals and their families and communities.

In recent years there have been some significant gains in getting sexual violence in conflict onto the international agenda, largely won by the many women’s groups, organisation and individuals who have campaigned tirelessly in the face of hostility, indifference and derision. There is still a long way to go, as news reports from Syria, eastern DRC, and Mali illustrate, but who would have thought just 10 years ago that we would now have a Special Representative to the UN Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict – the formidable Zainab Hawa Bangura, a security council resolution with a ‘naming and shaming’ mechanism, and a sitting Head of State indicted by the ICC for rape as crime against humanity?

There has been a huge amount of public campaigning to make the extent of rape in war and its consequences more visible, to galvanize more concerted action from donors, policy makers, the international community and Governments around the world. Yet there is something that makes me very uneasy about the way the issue is being raised and what the long-term consequences of that might be.

Masumbuko and Grace

Just a couple of weeks ago The Guardian ran a story that one-third of Congolese men admit committing sexual violence. Can this be true? In a country of with an estimated population of more than 20 million men and boys aged 15+ are there really almost 7 million who admit to being rapists? Well, no it’s not true of course, of the 708 men interviewed in and around Goma, including in a military base in the conflict-affected east of the country, a third admitted to committing acts of sexual violence. This in itself is shocking, the levels of disclosure give an indication of the extent of acts of sexual violence, and how little sanction these men expect from their peers and community, but it does not equate to a third of all Congolese men being rapists. Similar headlines periodically appear from conflict zones around the world, and the aid agency assessment reports all too frequently portray conflict zones as populated by violent male rapists where women only exist as passive victims.

This news coverage has not done justice to the report of the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES), from which the statistic was sourced. IMAGES has produced a very intelligent, and thoughtful report that deserves much more careful consideration. The researchers themselves highlight that sexual violence is a commonplace occurence and 9% of men and 22% of women they interviewed had experienced it during the conflict. Sexual violence isn’t experienced in isolation – killings, torture, lost homes, livelihoods and the death of family members are all part of people’s experience of conflict. Rigid gender roles create vulnerabilities for women and for men, and the report’s authors call for greater focus on the impact of disempowerment of men and how gender relations are affected by conflict in order that the root causes and drivers of such violence are addressed.  Three quarters of the men they spoke to said they felt ashamed to face their families because they can’t provide for their basic financial means.

There’s no shortage of similar analysis: a fascinating and comprehensive report from The Nordic Africa Institute provides a compelling study on how an aggressively militarised masculinity is promoted during times of conflict and of its impact on gender relations and violence against women, as well as against men who do not conform to that ideal. HEAL Africa’s research highlights the disparity between idealised masculinity and the reality of men’s lives, again making the link to male violence in conflict and the community.

The study’s author calls on humanitarians to recognise the interdependent and interactive nature of gender, but we do seem to prefer it simplistic: men as the perpetrators of evil, women as the pathetic victims, without looking at the root causes of violence and how we need to address them in order to have any positive impact. There’s also little space for the men and boys who are themselves victims of (largely) male violence, and those men who are working to promote greater gender equity and to care for and support women and girl survivors of violence. There’s something quite alarming about how comfortable we are in portraying African men and women in this way – reminiscent of a ‘heart of darkness’ narrative of African men as barbaric savages incapable of loving and caring for their wives, daughters and mothers.

All these reports give us a good insight into gender relations in conflict, the impact of militarised masculinity, the economic stresses that prevent men providing for their families, the underlying cultural and social relations, beliefs and assumptions that create startling gender inequalities and the link to violence against women and girls. So why don’t we use this knowledge to develop better understanding, cleverer programmes, and campaigning on the issue? In asking that question, I’ve encountered resistance and occasional hostility and aggression that has left me with some difficult questions to ponder.

Are the gains that have been made in women’s rights and on sexual violence in particular still so tenuous that we have to keep using shock statistics to get attention and action? Can we keep negating and colluding in the invisibility of the sexual and other violence targeted at men and boys in places like the DRC in order to make the violence against women and girls more visible?  And how does that impact on our understanding of gender relations and the root causes of such violence which lies at the heart of any effective work to tackle gender-based violence?

I’d like to take a more sophisticated approach to the understanding of gender in conflict, to really start taking on board some of the excellent research carried out in recent years. For all the horror stories, the rapists and the murderers, whose acts of violence are depicted in horrifying detail in the growing stack of reports on my desk, there are also thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people like Masumbuko and Grace, who fall in love with each other, marry, have children, care for and love each other, and they need a place in this narrative too.

India’s slums: how change happens and the challenge of urban programming

Got back from a fascinating week visiting Oxfam India last week, so the next few days’ post will be on India, sadly the world leader in poverty (by a long way). One of the areas that Oxfam is keen to develop there is its work on urban poverty, where it already works with migrant labourers, waste pickers, domestic workers, and on issues such as housing and access to identity papers. So I spent a couple of days visiting programmes and talking to partners in the slums of Delhi and Lucknow. (I prepped by reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers – wonderful book)

I know they’re grim to live in, but I have to confess to really enjoying visits to urban ‘informal settlements’, especially at dusk, with that particular sense of intimacy as cooking smells and firesmoke drift through the air and domestic workers, rickshaw pullers and street vendors return at the end of another hardscrabble day to grab an hour or two to socialize and relax.

But today, we’re encroaching on that precious leisure time, chatting to an animated group of slum leaders, mainly women, on the edge of Lucknow (see pic). Here, an Oxfam partner, the Vigyan Foundation, is promoting community organization to demand identity papers, water and sanitation, and access to health and education.

Vigyan moved from rural to urban work in 2005, after running a slum mapping exercise by Oxfam in Lucknow & Allahabad. The work highlighted the importance of identity and visibility in Indian politics. Simply by showing the location and population of Lucknow’s many informal settlements, (the previous census had simply denied their existence), they were able to win numerous victories on access to state funding and services.

Beyond the specifics of the slum dwellers’ demands, Vigyan is working on slum dwellers’ sense of ‘power within’, when it comes to their rights and identity itself. Organizers describe it as moving from ‘we are on government land, we shouldn’t be here’ to ‘we are building the city, we have rights, we are not ‘encroaching’’.

The foundation also wants to counter anti-slum prejudice among Lucknow’s better-off residents by highlighting the extent to which the slum actually subsidises the city (eg by supplying cut-price domestics and street vendors, paying sales taxes, rubbish recycling). Anybody know of research on this in India or elsewhere?

Talking to local activists, as well as Vigyan’s staff, I am struck by how little we/they work with the many sources of social capital in informal settlements. They seem to think there is no savings activity taking place other than formal microfinance schemes (Portfolios of the Poor suggests there are numerous more indigenous ways of saving among poor urban people); anxious to maintain their secular impartiality, they largely avoid religious groups and leaders, despite their enormous presence and importance in the slums; they don’t seem very curious about networks based on place of origin (eg waste pickers from Assam), or moneylenders or the role of local teachers. Yet all these are part of an ecosystem of power and relationships that plays a huge role in how people in slums interact. If well-intentioned activists go into a slum and start organizing as if on a blank canvass, they are at best going to miss opportunities. At worst, they are more likely to fail.

We talked about how the slum interacts with the external world of state officials and elected officials. Government-recognized ‘notified slums’ are ‘politically empowered’, so the first hurdle as slum dwellers start to organize is to get their slum notified, so it appears on the political and fiscal map.

Their least worst allies in this are the lowest tier of elected officials, the ‘corporators’ (what a great word). After notification, they distribute voting cards and see the slum as a ‘vote bank’, but at least that means the residents have a degree of leverage. Political parties have been visiting for years – lots of slum dwellers get voter cards long before they get formal i/d papers.

Seen from the bottom up, the corporators are the most engaged, but the least powerful links to the political world. Above them, few members of the higher tier state assembly (MLAs) are interested. Officials largely ignore city politicians anyway, as they answer to the state government. ‘The officials are worse, especially the low level ones – they ignore us or demand bribes. At least corporators listen, even if they don’t do anything.’

I ask the women why they get organized in this way: “Because we’ve got confidence, the people at the top listen to us now. When we had a water crisis, we approached the water department and got hand pumps. We used to work alone in our employers’ houses, but now we know how to talk. We want our children to assert themselves, not be like us.

Why vote? “We’re positive if our candidate wins, they will provide basic services. When it doesn’t happen, we’re disappointed, we wait five years and vote for someone else – what else can we do?

Why do so many women become leaders?: “The men are away earning money, so women have more time. And anyway, we suffer more: when there is no water, women are hit hardest. Women care about the kids, whereas our husbands just drink. If I have a problem (eg domestic violence) the other women help – that’s what an organization means. We’re illiterate (the attendance sheet has as many thumbprints as signatures), and we’d never gone outside before, so meeting and interacting like this feels good.”

The women and Vigyan organizers are inspiring, the sense of energy and personal and political progress palpable. In contrast,

Opening a new seed bank

conversations in villages often seem more static, with a few organizers, usually men, hogging the airtime. But if the urban world is so much more promising (and its population rising so much faster than in rural areas), why is it proving so hard for international NGOs to overcome their rural bias and develop a greater level of urban work? Is it the greater difficulty of establishing attribution in the chaos of the slums, in our logframe-dominated world? Or do we prefer the ceremonies of rural work (the songs, garlands and, yes, ribbon cutting – see pic) to the gritty urban reality of minding where you step and dealing with drunks?

Your thoughts, as ever, appreciated.

What can opinion polls tell us about well-being and revolution? Quite a lot, actually

I’m on a plane to Delhi today, to the big OECD conference on ‘Measuring Well-Being for Development and Policy Making’. In preparation, I dropped in on the scarily smart (in both senses) young pollsters from Gallup. Fascinating, and also vaguely relevant to today’s ‘blog action day‘, on the theme of  ’the power of we’ – few organizations are better placed than Gallup to tell us what ‘we’ actually think.

Gallup is moving increasingly into working in developing countries, picking up on issues like food security and water and sanitation.

But it was their work on well-being that really got my interest. Since 2005, they have been developing their wellbeing survey methodology, and now run it annually in 161 countries. They divide up the poll questions into two bunches:

Evaluative: Evaluate your life on a scale from 0 to 10 today. Where do you think you will be about 5 years from now?

Experiential: how did you feel yesterday? (well-rested; treated with respect; smile or laugh a lot; learn or do something interesting) What about negative feelings? (physical pain; worry; sadness; stress; anger)

That produces a well-being snapshot across a lot of people (something like 200,000 in the last poll), and the results are a real mix of the expected (Greece and Spain top the list of most worried nations) and the unexpected.

In which latter category I would put their findings on gender and well-being. Globally, women say they have roughly the same degree of life satisfaction as men. The best countries to be a woman (i.e. those where women are most likely to say they are ‘thriving’) are Denmark, Canada and Australia. The worst are Afghanistan, Nepal and Madagascar.

So far, so unsurprising. But when we get onto gender gaps, it gets much more interesting. The biggest gender gap, in terms of men reporting more positively than women are in Ukraine and Vietnam. The list of countries where women are significantly more positive about their lives than men is led by Qatar, Angola, South Korea and Iran.

If you’re skimming, read that list again. Maybe the cartoonist (left) is onto something? (OK, I’m heading for the bunker right now).

Even more baffling: South Korea has the worst gender pay gap in the world – women earn 38% less than men, and 10% more women say they are thriving than men. Any theories?

Other fascinating findings from the Arab world: Across the Arab world, men’s support for women’s equal legal status and right to hold any job they are qualified for was positively linked to men’s life evaluations, employment, and other measures of economic and social development. Gallup also found that there is no link between men’s support for Sharia as the only source of legislation and antagonism toward equal rights for women.  If the economy continues to suffer, women’s rights may as well. This suggests that economic trouble may be a greater threat to women’s rights than public support for religious legislation.

Now the standard NGO response to reading something ‘counterintuitive’ – i.e. we would rather it wasn’t true – is to question the methodology. But unless you really are an ubergeek, I would strongly advise against taking Gallup on. Like I said, they are scary, as is their readiness to get down and dirty on methodology.

I recommend an idle wander through gallup.com – a real treasure trove. The Middle East leads the world in negative emotions – but how about Somaliland having the lowest level of negatives (maybe just not being Somalia gives you a boost?)

Finally, as they talked about measuring anger and rage across the world, I asked the obvious question – could you have predicted the Arab Spring? There answer was ‘not yet’ – ‘we know when something is ripe for chaos – you can see Spain and Greece are really brittle right now’. Their polling showed that despite high GDP growth, well-being was ‘plummeting’ in Egypt and Tunisia for some years before the uprising. Hope they don’t manage to crack the predictive thing, or I imagine some rather unsavoury customers will be lining up to buy their services.

Here’s some more links for potential browsers and data geeks, c/o Gallup’s Andy Rzepa

“Income, Health and Wellbeing across the World”, paper by Angus Deaton

“Women and Men Worldwide Equally Likely to Be “Thriving”” Lymari Morales and Kyley McGeeney

Gallup WorldView, data visualisation portal

And a footnote from Oxfam wellbeing guru Katherine Trebeck. The Oxfam Humankind Index for Scotland will be broken down by gender next year so we’ll see how women and men compare according to the 18 priorities our consultation revealed (the Scottish Government have promised us access to unpublished data that allows us to do so).

Day of the Girl (and a small revolution in the birthplace of humanity)

Guest post from Carron Basu Ray, (right) who coordinates Oxfam’s ‘My Rights, My Voice’ programme

The Ngorongoro area of Tanzania is regarded as the birthplace of humanity, a vast, strikingly beautiful part of the world. The Maasai pastoralists who live there are among the most marginalised people in the country and their children, especially the girls, have little access to quality education. I was in Tanzania a couple of weeks ago, meeting representatives from partner organisations and Oxfam colleagues who are implementing a dynamic education project that works with marginalised children and young people, their allies (parents, teachers, community leaders, etc) and many others on education issues and youth empowerment. The work is part of Oxfam’s eight country My Rights, My Voice global programme, funded by the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

I was lucky enough to spend some time with one incredible young Maasai woman who is trying to do something about the educational challenges facing her community. Rose (not her real name) is from the Ngorongoro area and is determined that every Maasai child, especially the girls, has access to a complete (primary and secondary) quality education, as she herself did. Rose works with one of Oxfam’s partner organisations, raising awareness about the importance of educating and empowering girls among members of her community – including the girls themselves, supporting their school attendance, and promoting gender equality.

Inspirational. Smart. Funny. Compassionate. Rose is a young woman who overcame the odds stacked up against her, who is now – what we in the development sector would refer to as – an ‘agent of change’ or ‘active citizen’. With supportive parents who fought many power struggles with her and through her hard work, perseverance and some lucky breaks along the way she completed her primary and secondary education, got a good job, chose whom she wanted to marry, and is now leading change and transforming the lives of girls and young women.

Most poor and marginalised girls and women in low income countries are not so lucky in completing a decent quality education and in having their rights respected. Girl’s primary school completion rates are below 50% in most poor countries and globally one in three girls is denied a secondary education. This has serious ramifications not only for every young girl’s life, but also for her family.

Rose and many other girls and women I have met and know are in my thoughts today, as they are most days. From the 16-year-old community carer looking after children who’d lost their parents to AIDS in Orange Farm, South Africa; to the eight-year-old girl I sat with one morning in Andhra Pradesh, India, who just wanted to go to school so she could write a letter to her father who was working away from home; to my 11-year-old niece in London whose passion for school and life knows no bounds.  Every day is a day to reflect on the rights, needs, and aspirations of girls (and of course women).

But today (11^th October) is also the first official UN Day of the Girl, which hopefully means a lot of people who don’t ordinarily think about some of these issues, will be made aware and take some time to reflect. A single day is fine, but not enough – we should be thinking about gender inequality and girls every day of the year. We can’t overcome poverty and suffering if we don’t fully address gender inequality, look at power relations and support women and girls in claiming their rights, working with men and boys to also fully realise, champion and safeguard these too.

Ending child marriage

The first Day of the Girl focuses on ending the practice of child marriage. About 10 million girls are forced or coerced into marriage before their 18^th birthday every year. As the UN webpage explains, the theme of this year’s day was chosen because it is ‘a phenomenon that violates millions of girls’ rights, disrupts their education, jeopardizes their health, and denies them their childhood, limiting their opportunities and impacting all aspects of a girl’s life.’ Enough said.

To mark the day, Plan is launching its fantastic ‘Because I Am A Girl’ (BIAAG) campaign, which will bring to life the diverse and complex experiences girls face the world over. We are all aware of and (no doubt) fully signed up to the idea that a complete quality education transforms lives, leading to empowerment, opportunities and choices that would not otherwise have existed. Universal education can break the cycle of poverty in a family, community, society. The significance of this for girls is stark. Those who complete both primary and secondary education are more likely to be literate, healthy and survive into adulthood – as are their children. They are more likely to marry and have children when they themselves are no longer a child, are more likely to reinvest their income back into their family, community and country, and better able to understand their rights and be a force for change. The BIAAG campaign will work with girls, communities, traditional leaders, governments, global institutions and the private sector to address the barriers that prevent girls from completing their education. Thinking and talking about girls’ education seems particularly apposite in the week that 14-year-old activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in Pakistan for standing up for girls’ right to education.

As Rose and many, many other girls and young women I have met around the world have shown, empowered girls and women are transforming their lives, communities and countries. The world will be a better place for it.’

Duncan: and here’s Plan’s great BIAAG video (declaration of nepotism interest, it’s made by my sister-in-law, Mary Matheson)