Experiences of an Applied Anthropolgist in the NGO Scene
Entering the NGO Scene
When I started sending out avalanches of applications to the NGOs after my graduation, I received rejection after rejection, or what waas worse, no responses at all. In retrospect, I guess I was still lucky, because I spent "only" four months looking, and in September 2001 finally found a posistion with the Bank Information Center in Washington, D.C., if only and internship.
The Bank Information Center is an NGO that works to reform multi-lateral development banks. The organization believes that the activities of these main-stream development agencies often hurt people in developing countries rather then help them. My courses in applied anthropology, especially those focused on development issues, had sensitized me to the problems of the top-down development agendas. In my interview with the Bank Information Center (BIC), I was able to present my understandings of oppurtunities and pitfalls of development aid in a way that appealed to the interviewers.
In my interview I was also able to refer back to an information interview I had asked a BIC staff member for a few months previously. This information was very valuable, because it showed me that the organization had the goel of empowering people in developing countries against development banks. The information interview helped me ensure that I was a match for the NGO, but that ther were also a match for me, something I came to appreciate as I got to know the development NGO scene more and realized that many NGOs themselves take top-down approaches.
The Bank Information Center is one of many organizations that monitor and seek to influence multi-lateral development banks (MDBs). The term MDBs includes the World Bank Group, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the African Development Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. Many NGOs also include the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in their campaigns, although the IMF does not strictly fall under multi-lateral development banks, as its primary goal is global finacial stability and not development in itself.
Background on Multi-lateral Development Banks
In order to give a better understanding of our work, I will have to explain a bit about MDBs in general. MDBs are made up of their member countries which call into two categories: donor countries and borrower countries. The donor countries make yearly financial contributions through their Ministries of Fincance to the MDBs and in turn receive "shares." These shares are not expressed in financial ownership, but they translate into voting power. The higher a donor country's share are, the more voting power the country has regarding projects and operations of the respective Bank. Formal votes rarely take place, but the agendas of the biggest donors informally influence Bank operations in tangible ways. The United States is the biggest shareholder for the World Bank Group, and for the Asian Development, the US and Japan have the two highest shares to equal percentage.
The borrowing countries receive loans or grants out of MDB's resources. Loans and grants are taken out by borrowing countries in various sectors including infrastructure, agriculture, forestry, health, education, power and energy, and the economic sector itself. The programs with the biggest impact on a developing country are so-called structural adjustment loans. The purpose of such loans is to reform an entire sector of the borrowing country, most often the economic sector. These loans are tied to strict economic conditions that usually include increased privatization of government services, opening markets to exports and increasing interest rates. These loans not only increase the borrowing country's national debt, but often result in price increases of basic services, (especially water and power) and economic disadvantages for the country's poor population.
Project loans also often cause damage for the so-called "project-affected" people, who in the language of the Banks are supposed to be the "benificiaries." Hydropower projects and other large infrastructure projects, such as roads, have attracted the most attention among international media and NGOs because these projects often result in large-spread involuntary replacement of communities, destruction of livelihood sources and enviromental degradation. The classic example of such a controversial project was the World Bank's Narmada dam in India, which inadvertently contributed to organizing and consolidating the NGO campaign on MDBs.
Due to the pressure from civil society, MDBs have gradually started creating and improving safeguard policies that serve to protect "affected people." However, as international institutions, MDBs are immune from the international and national laws and there is no oversight mechanism to ensure the Banks will comply with their own policies. In the past years, large controversial projects, such as Narmada, caused NGOs to look for ways of holding MDBs accountable to their own policies. In the past years, large controversial projects, such as Narmada, caused NGOs to look for ways of holding MDBs accountable to their own policies. The World Bank was the first MDB to respond to civil society pressure by establishing an independent accountability mechanism. This so-called Insepction Function gives project-affected people the possibility of seeking redress from the Bank, if they believe that they have been or will be harmed because the Bank violated its own policies in the planning and construction of a project.
Experiences with the NGOs in the MDB Campaign: Past and Present
Past: Bank Information Center, Washington, D.C.
At the Bank Information Center, I was working for the Asian Program. We focused on the activities of the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank in Asia. Our goals were to improve both the MDBs' policies and individual loans in forms of projecs or programs. These two goals go hand in hand, as strong policies sucha s clear guidelines on compensation in the case of resettlement, or enviromental safeguards, will ideally result in improved projects.
For the campaign on policies, our work consisted of reviewing the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) current policies and making recommendations on how to improve these policies to ensure that the intended "beneficiaries" of programs and projects actually do benefit from the Bank's operations. ADB, as well as the other MDBs, has started making its policies reviews open to public consultation. However, the consultation processes are often not as transparent and participatory as we and our partners in developing countries would like. Part of our team's work consisted in pushing for more and improved consultations on policy reviews. Together with our partners, we were quite successful in pressuring the ADB to open the drafting process of its first enviromental policy ever. Although still lacking, this consultation process has become a model we are calling on for the revision of further policies.
We conducted our policy campaigns in coordinatio with communities who had been adversely affected by ADB operations, and we encouraged them to use their experiences to show the weaknesses of existing policies. Sometimes our recommendations to the ADB would consist of joint papers from several organizations, based in the States, Europe and Asia. The coordination process was one of the biggest challenges, making sure that those partner organizations with the best expertise in certain areas would be the ones to speak on those issues.
In our project campaigns, we were very careful to take directions from the "project-affected" people and try to find out what they wanted us to do for them. In the beginning of campaigns, affected communities had very basic needs, such as getting access to Bank documents (e.g. policies, and loan documents), finding out who at ADB and/or the borrowing government was in charge of which project, and finding opportunities to meet with these people, or getting contact addresses. In consultation with the communities our team also engaged directly with the US Treasury (Treasury has a desk on multi-lateral development banks, and people appointed to MDB oversight, as the US contributions go through this channel) and ADB management. Helping communities go through the Inspection Function (ADB's independent redress mechanism), was also a very important part of our work.
Present: NGO Forum on the Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines
My nine-month internship at the Bank Information Center helped me get connected in the network of NGO partners and finally helped me get a placement with the NGO Forum on the Asian Development Bank (Forum on ADB) in Manila in the Philippines. I started at the Forum on a six-month short-term contract as Policy Analyst, then took a three months stint as Acting Director during staff transistions, and after my current leave in Germany, will be going back to take the posistion of Campaign Support Coordinator on a regular full-term contract. After having already focused on Asia, I was very eager to continue on the MDB campaign out of Asia, and in addition, I was looking forward to being based in Manila, which is also the base of the Asian Development Bank's headquarters.
The nature of my work at the Forum is similar to what I had been doing at my previous organization, but with added complexities and responsibilities. The Forum is a network of organizations involved in the MDB campaign. The fact that the organization is a network means that we try to act in consensu with our active members. Before we decide on a strategy on a particular campaign, either for policies or projects, we consult via e-mail and phone communications with the particular working groups. Although this takes quite a logistic effort, it always amazes me, how we can really decide on actions together with maube up to five or ten organizations, determine which organizations does what part, and then "hit." In a project campaign for instance, such coordination could consist of affected community providing information on the project, of one partner organization drafting a sign-on letter to ADB staff, maybe a Japanese and American organization to raise the attentuion of their Ministries of Finance/Treasury Department, and another organization to take up person to person lobbying with government and/or ADB staff.
Due to our geographical posistion in Manila, the person in person lobbying part often falls to the Forum. We communicate frequently with ADB key staff people, and are quite well known, if not always liked, in the institution. Although we obviously create pressure on the Bank, we also have our allies inside the Bank, who are interested in seeing institutional change, but have our come to realize that this change is unlikely to happen from within the ADB. It is these allies that help us push our cause inside the Bank and provide us with inside information that we can use strategically in our campaigns.
Required Skills and the Advantages of Anthropological Training
Going from communications with project-affected communities to lobbying meetings with ADB big shots requires a bit of cultural transfer. Changing out of the NGO activist gear of jeans and T-shirt in to a more formal outift with dress shoes and a blazer is only a metaphor for the shirt that is necessary to have an effective impact at the traditionally Japanese dominated institution. Whe I talk to ADB staff, I try to talk in "their" language, i.e. I use phrases out of policy and program documents to demonstrate that I am informed about Bank procedures. At the same time, my message has to carry gome the needs of the affected people which comes down to describing in plain terms the despair and losses suffered.
My classes in applied anthropology prepared me well for this challenge. I particularly often think of the texts we studied on the applications of anthropology in development and business. It may seem self-evident, but to remember that there is such a thing as instututional culture is a condition to success for my work. To be able to bridge this institutional culture so that it meets with tehc culture of communities in developing countries is success in itself.
Cultural sensitivity cannot be underestimated in applied development work. If ever I were to forget that I am working to emporwer people and would start speaking for them instead, I would become guilty of the same mistakes I criticize the ADB for. My somehwat cumbersome title of Campaign Support Coordinator inidicates this awareness. As the headquarters of our NGO netowrk, the NGO Forum offers to support campaigns, but we do not take it on ourselves to initiate campaigns without the authorization of affected people. This is why I am a Campaign <i>Support</i> Coordinator, not a Campaign Coordinator. Even though this may sound like splitting hairs, this is exactly the kind of sensitivity that represents one of the biggest challenges in our work.
Working as a Westerner for an NGO in a developing country also calls for cultural sensitivity in itself. In any case, I try not to forget the implications of my role as a Westerner in a developing country.
The internship requirement for OSU's anthropology program proved invaluable in gaining initial experience with an NGO. I did my internship witha n NGO in the area of sustainable development and resource management in Beliz, whish is quite different from the type of NGO I work for now. However, the internship served as a relaity check and helped me transfer many experiences to my current work. The first thing I realized was that NGO work is not peace and love. I had never held any illusions in this regard, but to witness first hand the office politics within an NGO, the rivalry among different NGOs, the ambiguous relationship with donors, and the perceptions of community members of NGOs, was eye-opening. I think my anthropological antennae, or what you could call participant observation, quickly helped me become aware of what was going on these different levels and how to work with or around certian situations.
The combination of course work, thesis research and internship during my Master's program provided an excellent foundation for my work today. What is more, as I gain more practical experience, I realize that I can continue going back to lessons learned during my training as anthropologist and they become relevant in new ways. Being able to experience this link between my anthropological roots and my career is extremely gratifying.
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