Mixed signals, missed targets and blurred lines – all are among the concerns of some Canadian non-governmental organizations as they attempt to understand government foreign aid priorities and a growing emphasis on a 3D approach that combines military and humanitarian objectives. In this article, extracted from an interview with Vanguard, Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam Canada, shares the organization’s concerns, hopes and cautions.
Our mission is to address the underlying causes of poverty and injustice – addressing the policies and practices that create and sustain inequality – so while the Canadian government is a partner and co-funder of some of our programs, we’ve always been involved in policy debate.
We welcome the move to whole-of-government responses. But to influence government policy, we need to understand government policy. The International Policy Statement of the Martin government was pulled from the CIDA website without fanfare and my understanding is that the Harper government is not in a rush to replace it. However, they are making changes in their foreign policy, and in the aid component of that policy, and we are trying to understand what those changes are.
The new government made relations with the United States and its mission in Afghanistan priorities, and a lot of the issues that Oxfam has been dealing with day-to-day in Africa, Asia and Central America are only now starting to appear on their radar. This next year will tell us what they think on those issues.
The budget makes reference to focusing on fewer countries, promoting that as a strategy for increasing Canada’s aid effectiveness. So we were surprised and intrigued by the Prime Minister’s statements at the G8 meetings in June where he talked about the Americas as being a priority for Canadian aid. With Afghanistan, significant debt relief for Iraq, aid to Africa and now the Americas, that makes for lots of priorities and, sometimes, conflicting signals.
There is certain logic to focusing, but it can’t be too narrow – it doesn’t reflect the realities of Canada. First, as a country of people from around the world, it makes perfect sense that Canada would be concerned and engaged in issues in a broad range of countries. Second, one of the strengths of Canada’s aid program has been to support Canadian civil society – NGOs and other actors in Canadian civil society. It doesn’t make sense that Canada would only fund NGOs that are working in the 25 countries. The work of NGOs arises from our own strengths, history, engagement and relationships, and as long as we can demonstrate the impact of that work, I think there is a compelling case for the government to support that work, wherever it may be.
There is also a regional dimension. Often the solutions to national problems lie in regional capacity. To provide aid to Honduras or Nicaragua without understanding that it may also make sense to engage El Salvador and Guatemala may get you to 25 countries but it may also be self-defeating. A lot of our work involves supporting regional processes, recognizing, for example, that many of the elements people in Mozambique need to increase their capacity lie in their neighbouring countries. Focus makes good sense, but if you lose sight of those other dimensions, you might not make much of a difference.
International investment
You have two things coming together: Government policy, which is in transition, and CIDA, the agency, which is going through a transformation process internally. We are dealing with our fifth minister in five years. International cooperation is quite a complicated area and we haven’t been well served by the high turnover of ministerial responsibility. I know that’s a challenge for CIDA, and it’s a challenge for us. At Foreign Affairs there is more continuity but they, themselves, are still in the process of defining policy. CIDA’s budget has not grown in proportion to some other key ministries, so we are looking to the coming budget to send a clear signal to Canadians.
That’s important, because it was Lester Pearson who led the global process in 1969 that identified 0.7 percent of gross national income as the target that a country should meet for foreign aid. We are further from that target today then we were in 1969. We are quite anxious to get a clear commitment and timetable to meet that target by 2015, the date for the UN Millennium Development Goals. These are essential and important targets that are reasonable and attainable, and modest in the face of the need. But they are slipping out of our grasp every day, every year. We are not meeting the early benchmarks that were set. I know that 0.7 percent might not be a top-of-mind issue when a voter goes into the polling booth, but at a fundamental level I think Canadians are disappointed that we have not done more.
CIDA is moving increasingly to direct budget support, providing support to governments to increase their capacity rather than funding programs in a country directly. We believe that approach is appropriate. However, more of that aid should be going to fund essential social services – health care and education. Governments in the global South need a long-term commitment to those services so that they can scale up capacity to meet pressing needs. If you get a little money for health care this year but don’t know if you can count on any the next, you’re most likely to spend it on medicine or equipment. But if you can be assured of long-term funding over five or ten years, you’ll invest that aid in hiring nurses or teachers, removing user fees, and getting rid of barriers to services. Right now, a lot of our direct budget support goes into bureaucracy and systems. Within the mix, that may be legitimate. But to address the fundamental priority to alleviate poverty and assure people’s human rights are respected, the priority should be in strengthening essential public services.
Canada talks about good governance. But good governance does not equate to strong government. Good governance requires a strong and vital civil society – citizen’s organizations, women’s groups, professional associations, unions, journalists and community groups able to hold governments to account. It is the citizens of the global South, not Canada, who should be holding their governments to account for how aid money is being spent. So in terms of rebalancing Canada’s good governance agenda, it has to recognize the importance of civil society. One of the ways to do that is by working through Canadian civil society.
I also think a lot of Canadians have questions about the extent to which our defence preparedness is shifting from a peacekeeping focus to a more assertive role. We’re trying to understand how these things interrelate and what they tell us about the government’s agenda, and what that tells the world about Canada’s agenda. It’s too early to come to some conclusions, but it is not too early to have some concerns.
Humanitarian space
Our legitimacy in a conflict zone is rooted in the fact that we adhere to humanitarian principles – we provide support to people based on their need, and no other factor. Not their religion, not their political persuasion, not their strategic advantage.
The targeting of aid workers is a very disturbing trend. One OXFAM staff member was killed in Darfur this past year; a number have been victims of violence. There are concerns about the security and safety of our staff all around the world, but particularly in countries with high levels of conflict such as the Sudan and Sri Lanka.
So as we try to protect our humanitarian space, an issue of concern is the blurring of the lines. Increasingly we find combatant forces fail to distinguish between NGOs and other targets. And we may be making this situation much worse by further blurring important distinctions.
When military forces and provincial reconstruction teams play simultaneous roles of defence, development and humanitarian assistance, and where there is an explicit connection between those roles, where support to a community is seen as advancing Canada’s strategic interests, that creates a grey area. It is increasingly difficult to protect the role we play and the humanitarian space in which we play it.
Governments and the military are not the only actors in this. Some NGOs and corporations work as contractors delivering humanitarian assistance for a government as part of its diplomatic and defence agenda. Soldiers in uniform who go into schools or medical centres with a goodwill mandate can turn those locations into targets. That blurring of distinctions jeopardizes our work and our space – and may endanger civilian lives.
When Oxfam Canada looks at whether we will work in a given country, there are a series of criteria we consider. For example, if Canada is playing a belligerent role in a country then we do not operate there – other Oxfams might but we would not. There are a whole series of things we do to maintain our independence in these situations. And we are very conscious of our own security – we only travel at certain times, and in convoys; and we don’t travel with armed escorts because that makes us a target. We support local NGOs where it isn’t appropriate for us to be operational.
We are very clear about the need for, and advantage of, coordinating our work with others on the ground. But we do that through the United Nations and other structures. In the countries where we have a presence, we have ongoing discussions with the embassy, but our people on the ground do not relate to the Canadian military on the ground. In Ottawa, we have ongoing policy discussions. Those are distinctions we make and we’re very careful about following the protocol because not following it puts people at risk. There is a difference between working in coordination and working in concert.
We’re not naïve about this; there are responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions for soldiers on the ground to protect civilian populations. In conflict areas, we recognize it is increasingly difficult to maintain that separation, but we think it is increasingly important. We see the rising death toll as evidence of that. Politicization of aid is not new; use of humanitarian assistance to sway hearts and minds is not new. The sophistication of 3D approaches is increasing, and I recognize that for the public it has a persuasive and compelling logic. But in an increasingly complicated dynamic, it is all the more important to make absolutely clear and simple distinctions.
We participate in training at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre and we talk with military officers, and we know they often share our analysis and our concerns. Many officers are asking, first, whether this is their core business and, second, whether it is really cost effective – mobilizing the Canadian military around a humanitarian response is a very expensive option. Some people are increasingly not making a distinction between soldiers and aid workers, but it isn’t clear to me that we are helping address that issue by losing sight of that distinction ourselves.
We are anxious to ensure there is a lot of policy dialogue around this issue, that we are really exploring the consequences and the risks. We need to broaden that discussion and have more people reflecting on this question of consequences. There are compelling reasons for development, diplomacy and defence coming together, but we need to be clear about their staging – and the different roles of different actors in helping people secure their human rights.
SIDEBAR
Started in 1963, Oxfam Canada focuses its program on women’s rights and gender equality, promoting economic justice, access to essential services, rights in crisis and active citizenship.
Part of Oxfam International, a confederation of NGOs working in more than 100 countries, it has provided humanitarian assistance to vulnerable peoples in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. From Guatemala to Zimbabwe, the organization has delivered aid in conflict and post-conflict zones, and operates in precarious conditions in the Sudan and Sri Lanka.