We measure relative poverty in rich countries; absolute poverty in poor ones – what if we combine them?

Martin Ravallion, the World Bank’s head of research, has been doing some interesting thinking on poverty lines. We currently have an odd divide between poor countries, where absolute measures are more often used (eg $1.25 a day, the current international poverty line) and rich countries, which tend to use measures of relative poverty. For example, in Western Europe (including the UK) the poverty line is set at a constant proportion (typically 60%) of median income. Ravallion calls this a “strongly relative line”.

Ravallion argues that both approaches make sense – an absolute line in establishing who is able to feed and clothe themselves, a relative line in determining whether people feel socially excluded or not. In very poor countries, absolute survival plays a bigger role, but as countries’ average wealth rises, so social inclusion, and thus relative poverty, becomes more salient.

However, Ravallion argues that social exclusion matters even in the poorest imaginable country. So a sensible poverty line cannot simply rise and fall proportionately to average income, as in the strongly relative poverty lines used in Europe. Look at Ravallion’s graph. The strongly relative line keeps falling toward zero. The strongly relative lines will be too low (below survival levels) in poor countries. Ravallion says we need “weakly relative lines” which incorporate an absolute minimum, as in the bold line in his graph.

In a paper with Shaohua Chen published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, he puts some numbers on this (and lots of equation which were way above my head, so thanks to Martin for helping me make sense of it to write this post……). Up to an average national consumption of $2 per day, he sticks with absolute measures – anyone under $1.25 is poor. But then he switches to a relative measure – above $2 a day, the poverty line slopes upwards, reflecting the importance of social inclusion (see graph). The graph slopes up with a gradient of a third – less than the 60% of the UK strongly relative poverty line. Chen and Ravallion use data on national poverty lines across countries to set this schedule—the same data they had used to select the $1.25 a day line.

What do they find?

‘The trend decline in the incidence of relative poverty has not been sufficient to reduce the number of poor by this measure, which rose from 2.3 billion to 2.6 billion over 1981 to 2005 (see table 1). The turning point is around 1987.’

This contrasts with the more standard measures of absolute poverty, which have the numbers of poor people falling both as a % and in absolute numbers to 1.4bn people by 2005.

Why the disparity between the two (a rising absolute number of relatively poor, and a falling number of absolute poor)? As the global economy grows, poverty lines start to rise to reflect the higher costs of social inclusion, which puts a brake on the pace of relative poverty reduction, despite falling absolute poverty.

More background in Martin’s World Bank blogpost.

Robin Hood breakthrough; emerging market businesswomen; China v India v The West in Africa; Libya’s oil; climate change, conflict and US double standards; South Sudan’s GDP: Links I liked

Max Lawson updates us on a breakthrough moment on the Financial Transactions Tax (aka Robin Hood) and a new acronym – HFT or high frequency trading.

‘In China, 32% of senior managers are female, compared with 23% in America and 19% in Britain. In India, 11% of chief executives of large companies are female, compared with 3% of Fortune 500 bosses in America and 3% of FTSE 100 bosses in Britain.’  The Economist discusses why ‘women are storming emerging-market boardrooms’.

China used aid and other tools vigorously to encourage its companies to invest in Africa, but that did not seem to be the case for Europe and America, whose aid programs were more paternalistic, and seemed to be designed as charity. Deborah Brautigam discussed her new report on what Western donors can learn from China in Africa. But what about India in Africa? China has some BRICS competition…..

Global Witness warns against the risks of an oil feeding frenzy in post-Gaddafi Libya

Ed Carr rubbishes the research that suggests that ‘50 of 250 conflicts between 1950 and 2004 were triggered by the El Niño cycle, according to scientists’, as reported in the Guardian and the Economist. Can someone tell us who to believe?

CGDs Lawrence MacDonald berates US hypocricy on climate change : ‘Perhaps it’s time that India and other developing countries hard hit by runaway climate change turn the tables and start asking tough questions about U.S. energy policy in general and the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline [from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to Texas refineries along the Gulf of Mexico]  in particular. India, for example, could ask: “Have you given any consideration to what the increased emissions from tapping the tar sands could mean for us?” If the answer is “yes” then approval of the pipeline could only be construed as a hostile act. If the answer is “no” then the follow up question must surely be: “Why not?”

Government statisticians in the world’s newest country, South Sudan, have hit the ground running with its first GDP estimate. GDP per capita in 2010 was estimated at US$1,546 compared to US$769 in Kenya and just US$189 in Burundi. As a result of the oil revenue sharing deal with the North, gross national income (GNI) is much lower GNI at US$984 per capita. But this is still significantly higher than any country in East Africa:

Table: GDP and GNI of East African Countries in 2010, million USD, current

Can Cities build local ‘developmental states’? Some surprising good news from Colombia

Discussions of the role of states in development, and in particular the role of the hands-on ‘developmental state’ in producing impressive take-offs in East Asia and elsewhere, almost exclusively focusses on the national level. But in many countries, particularly since the push for decentralization in recent decades, local and city governments play an increasingly influential role. So might we see a ‘local developmental state’ emerge in some cities or regions, even when the national state isn’t up to much? A recent paper from the Overseas Development Institute argues that this is exactly what is happening in the former drug capital of Medellín, Colombia:

‘After more than two decades of very well-publicised narco-industry and paramilitary-driven violence and chaos, Medellín has made significant economic and social progress since the late 1990s thanks to a renewed appetite for local state activism that has proved both popular and effective.’

The authors, Milford Bateman, Juan Pablo Duran Ortíz and Kate Maclean, argue that this is nothing new:

‘A ‘local developmental state’ model appears to have emerged in many of the most successful countries and regions, most notably in post-war northern Italy, Southern Germany and in several Scandinavian countries…. The core idea is that sub-national levels of government can, and should, be pro-active in building the institutional and organisational infrastructures required for growth-ori¬ented micro-, small and medium enterprises to emerge and succeed.’

Cities can promote this form of local industrial policy through local state ownership of key enterprises, local taxes, and use of local powers such as planning laws and transport policy – ‘Medellín has proved adept at using pro-poor transport policies to link communities together.’

In addition, the city of Medellín has developed its own programme of cash grants, the Medellín Solidaria programme, similar to the successful Bolsa Familia experiment undertaken in Brazil since the early 2000s.

‘Medellin has set up a network of 14 publicly-funded business support centres (the local acronym is CEDEZO, Centros de Desarrollo Empresarial Zonal). These CEDEZOs are located in the very poorest areas and are designed to support business development by the poor by offering free-of-charge business support services and technical advice to anyone with a good business idea. Working alongside the CEDEZOs is the Banco de las Oportunidades, which provides microloans up to $2,500 at a favourable interest rate (0.91% monthly) to establish microenterprises.’ [i.e. nothing like your standard microfinance lender - one of the authors, Milford Bateman, is a trenchant critic of microfinance]

Fascinating – a lot of the good things that have happened in Latin America over the last couple of decades have been incubated at city level, even though, like Bolsa Familia, they are then sometimes adopted by national governments. Cities offer natural laboratories, ideal for testing a range of new approaches to sift out what works from what doesn’t. They are also at a scale where it is much easier for relatively small organizations to engage at the city level (see this example from Bogota). And turning around a city like Medellin is a huge achievement – in a previous job in the early 90s I published ‘Born to Die in Medellin’, a bloodcurdling set of interviews with teenage assassins in the City (a translation of Alonso Salazar’s great book, ‘No Nacimos pa’ Semilla’). Wonder what the surviving ex-gangsters are doing now?

Anything else to read on local developmental states? They certainly seem a lot more plausible than Charter Cities.

What does giving cash transfers only to women do to household dynamics?

Both in long-term development and short term emergencies, cash transfers (CTs) are all the rage, especially those handed over directly to women, who are widely thought to use the money more responsibly (spending it on food, rather than booze and fags etc).  But what’s the impact on household dynamics when a sudden influx of cash lands in the hands of its female members? A new-ish (May) paper by Oxfam and Concern explores this issue combining a literature review and country case studies of the use of CTs in Indonesia (rapid onset, earthquake), Kenya (rapid onset, food price spikes) and Zimbabwe (protracted crisis). In all three, women were the primary beneficiaries of the cash. Some highlights and quotes:

‘Overall, there were many positive benefits for women. This included increased self esteem and confidence to handle money and an acceptance by men that women are capable of handling money.’

Quote: ‘Some men are now consulting their women on how to spend income from other sources (female beneficiary, Zimbabwe)

On the whole, intra-household relations improved as a result of the CTs targeting women and there were indications that some of these improvements may last beyond the length of the programme.

Quote (although doesn’t agree with previous line): ‘It added to love [in the household] because we could get what we wanted and talk together. It only lasted during the CT. When we start to starve again love sort of disappears. It is better now as we are harvesting’ (male respondent, Zimbabwe)

‘However, there were also clear challenges.  Community relations did not necessarily improve, and in some cases worsened, as a result of the programmes. Jealousy and community division were noted in all three cases.’

One really interesting, and worrying finding from Zimbabwe was that cash is treated differently from food aid, and in some cases, damages social capital in the community;

‘Where cash was given in response to a food crisis, it is clear that while food aid was shared, cash was not. This was a major concern among recipients. Community sharing is critically important to women who tend to have a range of lending and borrowing strategies, with neighbours, family, shops and so forth, that enable them to cope when things get tough. Harming these coping strategies is potentially counter-productive for women who may find themselves increasingly vulnerable and less resilient to food insecurity in the long term.

The CTs also tended to reinforce rather than challenge women’s traditional household and social roles. CTs were perceived as helping women to simply perform their roles ‘better’, that is, women are expected to carry the burden of food provision and to manage CT payments responsibly, often in the face of multiple pressures and claims.

Likewise male roles were imbued with negative stereotypes, which will have damaging effects on the potential for long-term changes in gender relations.’

Quote: ‘We were told by…staff that men are a bit irresponsible and have many things they spend money on that do not benefit the household.’ A male CT beneficiary, Zimbabwe

The paper finds some serious weaknesses in the way CT programmes are designed with thinking through the impact on gender dynamics:

‘Complex social dynamics, such as polygamy, were not accounted for and the distribution of food within households remained highly gendered and hierarchical. Only in Indonesia was a gender analysis undertaken prior to implementation, and nowhere were concepts such as gender inequality or women’s empowerment defined or analysed. Women were not involved in pre-project discussions or in monitoring the work and the indicators of success largely focused on quantifiable data. There were key issues for women in terms of implementation, delivery mechanisms and communication that were not explored.’

Learning by failing; integrity v humour; China in Africa; South-south solar; behind India’s corruption protests; Rick Perry on climate change: links I liked

The first step to ‘learning by failing’ is recognizing and admitting the failures. Hats off to the World Bank on that one – what other development organization (including NGOs) would have the courage to admit publicly to a 40-70% failure rate on ICT projects? [h/t Chris Blattman].

It’s probably too optimistic to expect some belly laughs from something called the ‘The Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest’ (run by the Union of Concerned Scientists). Hold on…. yep, it was too optimistic. Least worst shown here, and see the others for yourself if you want to cast your vote [h/t John ‘knock em dead’ Magrath]

China in Africa guru Deborah Brautigam critiques the Economist scoop on the shadowy (and very rich) China International Fund

‘An Indian college has trained 12 Sierra Leonean women to become solar engineers as part of a drive to bring electricity to rural communities’. Development in a fast-changing world – South-south cooperation, low carbon development etc  .

‘Though bribery, or “graft”, is a fact of life for more or less everybody in India, the demonstrators are largely urban, educated and relatively well-off. “What you are seeing on the street is a middle-class rebellion,” said Mohan Guruswamy, a former senior official in the ministry of finance’. Interesting backgrounder on the Indian corruption battle. It’s not only the middle class though, Mumbai’s famous tiffin wallahs have gone on their first strike in 120 years in solidarity with protest leader Anna Hazare.

A brilliant question on climate change to Republican front runner Rick Perry, and a truly lamentable answer (listen carefully to both). My post-holiday euphoria didn’t last long – shades of Mike Hulme’s ‘Why we disagree about climate change‘. [h/t Alex Evans]

Anyone want my job? Oxfam’s looking for a new Head of Research

So here’s the deal. After seven happy years in charge of Oxfam’s policy research team, I’m moving sideways to take up a new post as senior strategic adviser (though I personally prefer my colleague John Magrath’s suggestion of ‘chief opinionator’) and we’re looking for a new head of research. Here’s the blurb from the ad in the last week’s Guardian (the cartoons are added):

The role
This is one of the most influential positions within Oxfam. You will be managing a team that will deliver high profile research in support of Oxfam’s global campaigns. You will also play a key role in building the capacity of the whole organisation to deliver high quality, high impact research in countries where we work, including developing a vibrant community of practice, creating high profile research collaborations and securing significant research funding. Moreover, you will play a large role in shaping the intellectual leadership of Oxfam on the challenges facing development, positioning Oxfam as a cutting edge development thinker. You’ll represent us externally, both as a media spokesperson and as a writer of key articles.

What we’re looking for
A strong conceptual thinker, and recognised researcher of development, humanitarian and poverty issues, you’ll have proven your ability to link grassroots programmes to policy development and be equally comfortable with the use of statistics and modelling. You’ll also be an adept strategist, bringing an appreciation of the impact research has on making change happen, and with the written and verbal communications skills to influence through lobbying and media. You’ll have the leadership and management skills to drive complex organisational change that delivers high-impact, high quality research.

I can’t recommend the job highly enough – the team is great, there’s a major new campaign to resource and interest in research across the organization is at an all-time high. We could be at the threshold of something new and exciting – want to lead it?

Full details and online application here. Closing date is 4 September, so get your skates on.

Please tell any suitable friends and colleagues, and if you want to pick my brains, feel free – just use the comments box and say if you don’t want it published for other blog readers to see.

Is inequality the root cause of global crisis? The World Bank’s lead research economist thinks so

Back from my week off (Edinburgh Festival – fab) with a load of holiday reading to review. Here’s the first installment – an eccentric new book by Branko Milanovic, inequality guru and lead economist at the World Bank’s research division. The Haves and the Have Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality is aimed at people who love playing around with data.

In fact, it makes a perfect toilet book for geeks, an intriguing scattergun collection of ‘vignettes’ covering everything from wealth inequality in Pride and Prejudice (yep, that Pride and Prejudice – the Jane Austen/Colin Firth, puffy shirt one – see left) to a comparison between ancient Romans and today’s super rich (turns out that Carnegie, Rockefeller and Bill Gates are/were a lot richer than fabulously rich Roman Marcus Crassus).

Anyway, the book is so gloriously random and weird, that I am not going to try and review it. Instead, here’s an excerpt that caught my eye – a ‘vignette’ that argues that income inequality caused the global financial crisis.

Here’s how the reasoning goes:

‘In the US, the top 1% of the population doubled its share in national income from around 8% int he mid-1970s to almost 16% in the early 2000s. That eerily replicated the situation that existed just prior to the crash of 1929, when the top 1% share reached its previous high-water mark. American inequality over the past hundred years thus basically charted a gigantic U, going down from its 1929 peak all the way to the late 1970s, and then rising again for 30 years.

What did the increase mean? Such enormous wealth could not be used for consumption only. There is a limit to the number of Dom Perignons and Armani suits one can drink or wear.. So a huge pool of available financial capital – the product of increased inequality – went in search of profitable opportunities in which to invest.’

So the rich hand over their vast piles of spare cash to the financial sector and tell them to invest it well.

‘Overwhelmed with such an amount of funds, the financial sector became more and more reckless, throwing money at anyone who would take it.’

‘The second part of the equation explains who borrowed that money. There again we go back to the rising inequality. The increased wealth at the top was combined with an absence of real economic growth in the middle. The real median wage in the US has been stagnant for 25 years, despite an almost doubling in GDP per capita. Middle-class income stagnation became a recurrent theme in American political life, and an insoluble political problem for both Democrats and Republicans.’

Since they could not increase their wages, they helped them accumulate household debt.

‘Thus was born the great American consumption binge that saw the household debt increase from 48% of GDP in the early 1980s to 100% of GDP before the crisis’ Result? ‘The interests of several large groups of people became closely aligned. High-net-worth individuals and the financial sector were keen to find new lending opportunities. Politicians were eager to ‘solve’ the irritable problem of middle-class income stagnation. The middle class and those poorer than them were happy to see their tight budget constraints removed as if by a magic wand, consume all the fine things purchased by the rich, and partake in the longest US economic expansion since World War II.’

Conclusion: ‘The root cause of the crisis is not to be found in hedge funds and bankers who simply behaved with the greed to which they are accustomed (and for which economists used to praise them). The real cause of the crisis lies in huge inequalities in income distribution that generated much larger investable funds than could be profitably employed….. in a democratic system, an excessively unequal model of development cannot exist with political stability.’

The IMF has also previously linked inequality and financial crisis, but not as comprehensively as this. Wonder if it’s true?

How can advocacy NGOs respond to the global meltdown? FP2P Flashback

OK, it’s looking ever more likely that we are heading for a European double plunge recession (double dip sounds too pleasant), so here’s some thoughts from December 2008 about how to respond.

Ever since the global financial and economic meltdown broke, NGO colleagues have been debating how to respond. That debate is now focused on the G20 summit process, which started in Washington DC on 15 November and will reconvene in the UK on 2 April. In conversations with colleagues in the UK and elsewhere in recent days, a potentially useful typology emerged. Here are some options, in ascending order of commitment in terms of cash, staff and policy development:

1. Repackage what you’re doing already: a number of NGOs are reframing their existing policy and advocacy work (on aid, tax, climate change, IMF and World Bank reform) in light of the financial meltdown. This makes sense anyway, since you need to keep your messages relevant.

2. Stick to process: In any political negotiation like the unfolding series of G20 summits, there are always going to be important process issues – who’s in the room, what is published, who’s consulted, how transparent is the negotiation of statements, communiqués and commitments? NGOs have worked on this for decades in the World Bank, IMF, WTO and elsewhere, and many of the arguments are easily transferable to a new forum.

3.  Highlight human impact: journalists and decision makers may not look to NGOs for their ideas on revising bond contracts or capital reserve requirements (and who can blame them…?) but they do want to hear from us about how the crisis is affecting poor people around the world. Simply ‘bearing witness’ may not slake the policy wonks’ thirst for technical detail, but it can be a serious contribution to the debate.

4. Oppose bad things: Stopping anti-development issues getting onto an agenda is often a relatively easy thing around which to rally a coalition. In the WTO Doha round, an effective developing country coalition – backed by NGOs and others – successfully blocked the EU’s efforts to force investment and other ‘new issues’ onto the Doha agenda. The EU’s insistence led to the collapse of the 2003 Cancun trade ministerial – but after that, the EU did withdraw its demands.

5. Propose new things, but get in early: Negotiating processes are more plastic in the initial stages, when new ideas can find their way onto an agenda, provided they are framed in the language and within the boundaries of the process. In the early stages of the Doha Round, developing countries and NGOs worked together within the language of the Agreement on Agriculture to argue for extra flexibility to protect crops judged particularly important to small farmers. These ‘special products’ marked an important conceptual shift in the negotiations, and become a litmus test for disagreements between the more dogmatic free traders and development advocates.

Then there’s a sixth option that could go anywhere in this list – shocks like the current financial and economic crisis challenge received wisdom and the rules of the game, and provide an opportunity to drastically change the ‘discourse’ (how I hate that word). Think how the oil shocks of the 70s triggered the rise of monetarism/collapse of Keynesianism. The current crisis has already thrown up hitherto unimaginable shifts on issues such as progressive taxation, redistribution, nationalisation, reregulation and the role of the state (for a recent example, here’s Peter Mandelson rediscovering industrial policy). Joining in the counter-hegemonic arm-wrestling can involve anything from a couple of op-eds, to generating some huge tome like From Poverty to Power, but I don’t think I’m up for another one of those (at least, not yet).

10 Challenges to ‘business as usual’ for development agencies: FP2P flashback

OMG, nearly three years on and almost everything on this list would still be on today’s version. But at least I could point to progress, in the shape of specific bits of thinking, reseach and/or programming. on nearly all of them. What new additions would go on today’s list, I wonder? Domestic taxation; resource scarcity and planetary boundaries; the damage wrought by an excessively large and powerful financial system – any other candidates?

From Poverty to Power is explicitly not official Oxfam policy, but its combination of literature review, programme experience and extensive discussions, both within Oxfam and beyond, highlights a series of challenges to ‘business as usual’ in the development sector. In response to a number of requests, Penny Lawrence (OGB International Programmes Director) and I put together this initial short-list.

1. What difference does inequality make? Using inequality, rather than poverty, as your starting point takes you in different and potentially more interesting directions. Inequality is about relationships – within households, communities, countries. Reducing inequality by rebalancing power, opportunities and assets is central to development. But how different is that from what we are doing already? If we applied an ‘inequality lens’ to our work, what would we do less/more of? Progressive taxation? Land reform? Birth registration?

2. Do we have a religious blind spot? Religion is a key driver of active citizenship (both good and bad) in many communities. While many believers work in development agencies, and figure prominently among their supporters and overseas partners, the development industry remains largely secular. How could we improve our understanding of the links between faith, religion and development, and engage more constructively with different faith groups?

3. Is it time to go urban? For the first time in history, the world’s population became majority urban in 2007. Burgeoning shanty towns are home to a billion people now, rising to 2 billion by 2030. Yet a glance at their websites will show you that many development agencies continue to focus on rural areas. They argue that this is because most poor people still live in the countryside (and are predicted to do so until 2040). But the shanty towns will probably be home to the new social and political movements in the years to come: urban change is a messy affair, involving some familiar issues – water, education, health and some unfamiliar ones – housing, crime and property rights; do rural-centric development agencies need to follow the migrants into the shanty towns?

4. Is building effective states part of our remit? What is the role of international NGOs in building states (identified in the book as critical to development success)? Do NGOs have an anti-state bias – how many staff see the state as part of the problem, not part of the solution? In both effective and ‘fragile’ states, do we need to work with local government institutions, often following decentralization processes? Where has this been successful? Or should NGOs stick mainly to supporting active citizenship, and their ‘convenor’ role, facilitating dialogue between citizens, states and other actors, such as the private sector?
 
5. Are we biased against waged labour? Experience suggests that what poor people often want more than anything else is a regular wage: job creation is one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty. Yet NGOs can often be ambivalent about labour markets – they support (and campaign for) modern, formal, unionised labour, but in other situations, seem to prefer peasants to casual labourers. Would we rather have no jobs or bad jobs? What determines our view? How much are we listening to the communities we work with?

6. How do we integrate humanitarian and development work better? The book gives added urgency to this organizational chestnut, stressing the role of shocks in driving long-term social and political change and pointing out that many of the emerging issues in development (climate change, social protection) sit between the two camps. These may eventually prompt a wholesale restructuring away from separate ‘humanitarian’ and ‘development’ departments, but in the meantime, perhaps the best way forward is to identify the best forms of integration across different types of emergency and at different stages of the humanitarian cycle. These would require incorporating issues such as partner strengthening, social protection, institutional and policy reform into our humanitarian work as an emergency develops.

7. The future of INGOs: Although the book avoids large doses of navel-gazing on our role, it does raise some difficult issues on accountability (why have agencies often demanded less of themselves than they have of many corporates?) and political engagement (we need greater clarity on e.g. what it means to be ‘impartial but not neutral’; the difference between becoming more politically literate, and becoming political actors)

8. National v global: The book argues that development remains primarily a national process, born out of the interaction between citizens and states. Global forces, including rich world activists and INGOs, can help or hinder, but they are not the main actors in the drama. That analysis holds implications for how we design both our national programmes and our international campaigns (e.g. Make Poverty History), where big “global” messages can seem incompatible with the analysis of where change really happens.

9. We need a better way to analyse change: Oxfam, along with many other NGOs, describes itself as a “change agent” – but agreeing and making explicit our understanding of how change happens is difficult. From Poverty to Power’s annex on change builds on DFID’s ‘drivers of change’ work and proposes an analytical framework covering both drivers (context, institutions, agents, events) and dynamics (e.g. path dependence, lightbulb moments, alliances), which it applies to eight case studies from individual grassroots struggles to the Gleneagles G8 Summit. However it is still pretty abstract and needs to be refined through experience.

10. And finally, (cheating on the ‘10 challenges’ format here…) three other candidates for the short list:
· Migration: we need to understand better its role in development (both internal and international migration) and what policy or programme actions can increase the benefits to both sender communities and migrants themselves
· Democracy: we have a default preference for democracy, but how central is it to development? Does it distort our understanding of active citizenship and development in countries like China and Viet Nam?
· Technology: critical to development, yet many NGOs are instinctively ‘anti’ – stressing issues of risk and control over access to knowledge, and seldom supporting any new technologies (except renewables).

It would be great to hear your views on these (whether you work for Oxfam or not). What stands out? What have I missed? Over to you.

This post was first published in December 2008

Advocacy v Service Delivery in Russia: FP2P flashback

Next up in this holiday week selection of largely unread posts from the early days of the blog, a story from Russia

Contrasting case studies from Oxfam GB’s Russia programme, which has tried different ways of supporting Russia’s estimated 5.6 million disabled people. Traditionally, we have run a microfinance programme which has benefited a total of 40,000 people – 5,500 recipients plus other beneficiaries, such as family members. Total expenditure to date some £2m ($3.1m and falling…..). Recently, however, we tried something different – advocacy.

Up until this year, disabled people in Russia had to register every year in order to be entitled to work and to receive benefits from the Russian government. This proved to be both time consuming (up to six months of every year), humiliating and sometimes ridiculous. Someone with an amputated leg had to prove every year that the leg had not magically grown back over the intervening twelve months. And only then would it be possible to get entitlement to benefits.

Natalia, the leader of a self help group for disabled people in Russia, supported by Oxfam, told us what this meant for her, “I am permanently disabled, and yet every year I have to go through a six month process to prove to the government that I am disabled – this process is humiliating and tiring. You go back and forth and back and forth to the doctors and go through so much bureaucracy. I am young and fit so I am able to do this process but imagine if you are a pensioner in an isolated village – it is impossible. Those who have been injured and have lost limbs, still have to prove every year that they are disabled – it is a degrading system!”

Working with the Global Call to Action on Poverty (GCAP) coalition in Russia, Oxfam staffer Vitaliy Kartamyshev included the issue of registration for disabled people in a more wide-ranging report on healthcare in Russia. The report proposed a change to the regulation so that people who are permanently disabled only have to register once in their lives.

In March 2008 the report was launched at a national press conference. This was followed by intensive lobbying of senior government officials at the Ministry of Health and the parliament (Duma). The regulation № 247 on “introducing changes in the rules of recognizing disability” was passed on April 7, 2008 by the Ministry of Health . The government adopted the precise change in regulation concerning disabled people proposed by GCAP.

Total cost of the campaign, in terms of Oxfam spending? About £100,000 ($155,000). This change will affect tens of thousands of people, including an unknown number that have simply given up registering because of the hassle, and may now be persuaded to claim benefits.

It’s hard to compare the two approaches – service delivery is pleasingly concrete, and so it is easier to assess its impact. Advocacy work often suffers from issues of attribution (did the Russian government change its law because of the campaign, or would it have done so anyway?) and impact (how do you measure the impact on people’s wellbeing of not having to waste six months a year wrangling with officialdom?) Advocacy more closely resembles a venture capitalist approach – of ten such campaigns, maybe only one or two will achieve their aims, but they will ‘win big’, whereas service delivery appeals more to the predictable world of logframes and planners. What’s clear from this example, though, is that both have their place in the NGO armoury, which is why, over time, advocacy has become more significant in Oxfam and other NGOs’ work (though it still remains a small proportion of the total spend).

This post was first published in October 2008