Tackling rural poverty, together

Stephen Wallace

Chair, Advisory Group on Civil Society and Aid Effectiveness
Vice-President, Afghanistan Task Force
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Ottawa

Some CSOs are seen as a threat to authoritarian governments. Can donors help improve relations between the two?

We’ll make progress if we can foster the simple recognition that a civil society organisation is not just a pressure group, but can play a constructive role as a development actor in its own right. We must emphasise the successes of multi-stakeholder dialogue. As this awareness spreads, it will help to overcome scepticism and resistance and create space. Adjusting donor policies can help here. For example, programme-based approaches can inadvertently exclude CSOs from the development process. They can sometimes lead to state-centric models of development, when in fact effective aid is more about broader country models of development. We need donor models of support that build, rather than undermine, CSO contributions, and enhance capacity development.

We need to help countries understand the unrealised potential of civil society. Helping CSOs to form, develop, and be accountable to their constituents will give them greater legitimacy in the eyes of their governments. One of the things the Advisory Group hopes to showcase over the coming months is that wherever you see a local context favourable to CSOs, you are also seeing real development progress.

What sort of best practices have you seen in this regard in Afghanistan, given your role as Vice-President responsible for CIDA’s Afghanistan Task Force?

Trained healthcare workers from Afghan CSOs are implementing the government's national health plan

Things are happening in Afghanistan that show remarkable advances in relations between CSOs, donors and the state. The Microfinance Investment Support Facility (MISFA) there has disbursed more than $340 million so far, and has extraordinarily strong credentials in terms of repayment rates and successful economic development. 70% of its clients are women and, over the course of the next two or three months, we’re likely to see the 500,000th client sign up as micro-finance recipient. One reason it's succeeding is that government did not implement this facility itself, but played a lead role in putting in place basic laws and regulations to permit effective micro-finance operation, and then let international CSOs like the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), the Aga Khan Foundation, and CARE work with over a dozen local organisations to actually carry out the activities.

Another example in Afghanistan is in primary healthcare, which in 2002 was reaching only about 9% of the population. The Basic Package of Healthcare Services (BPHS), the technical foundation of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health, has involved strong CSO participation in training, institution-building and healthcare delivery. By 2006, the mortality rate for children under five had dropped by 25%, to about 191 per 1,000. By 2007, BPHS coverage had been extended to 82% of the population. This sort of partnership between state and donors as enablers and CSOs as strong facilitators is allowing us to leapfrog the development process and accelerate change in a way that would not otherwise be possible. It’s proving extraordinarily successful.

What are the Advisory Group's biggest challenges?

We have to remain true to our multi-stakeholder character and, at the same time, further understanding and good practice. We must secure multi-stakeholder consensus in Accra and in other forums where thinking about CSOs is not so advanced, and where CSOs are often outnumbered. As I mentioned, there's also the issue of CSO diversity and how we deal with that. And finally, there's the post-Accra agenda: we have to maintain momentum.

Interview conducted and edited by Timothy Nater.
Photo 1: Mushtaq Ahmed, CIDA
Photo 2: Real Lavergne, CIDA
Photo 3: Emily Philips -- www.msh.org

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