Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-228)
RT HON
CLARE SHORT
MP, MR BARRIE
IRETON AND
MR MATT
BAUGH
TUESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2001
Chairman
220. The events of September 11 and after, as
mentioned by the Prime Minister in his speech in the City and
by the Chancellor last week, demonstrated that we need a coalition
against poverty. How do we ensure that the United States continues
to engage in this world? They gave 0.1 per cent of gross national
product to development aid. If they were only to come up to the
DAC average it would make a substantial difference. Is this not
a good opportunity for us to engage with colleagues from Congress
to demonstrate to them the benefits of a coalition against poverty?
(Clare Short) This is a profoundly important question.
The suicide bombers of 11 September appear not to have come from
poor countries. They were predominantly from Saudi Arabia and
the Emirates. The conditions that breed the bitterness and division
and the hatred, however, are linked to poverty and injustice;
there is no doubt about that. It is not that it excuses September
11 but it is partly the breeding ground for the events of September
11. I have just been at this World Bank meeting in Ottawa. There
is recognition that the world is more interdependent than ever
and the richest and most powerful are more vulnerable than ever
because the nature of modern technology and trade opens your economy,
opens the movement of people, and the nature of information technology
is vulnerable if people want to attack it and destroy the mechanisms
that keep a modern society going. I agree with you that it is
a historical opportunity to grasp that insight and take it forward.
Whether the US will do that I do not think we can say is guaranteed.
There is probably more understanding of the need but this is an
extraordinary country, a generous country, as anyone who has visited
it knows, made up of people migrating from all parts of the world,
the only great power in the world that almost turns its back on
the rest of the world. It is a paradox that it is like this and
that everyone thinks inwardly. I agree with you that we have to
redouble our efforts on poverty. You know the statistics: one
in five in abject poverty, 2.4 billion on less than two dollars
a day, more communications than we have ever had so the poor of
the world can see how the rich of the world live, which I think
makes more anger, and we have got two billion new people about
to be born in the next 30 years that will all live in the developing
countries. We have made great gains in development. We know what
to do and we can either take that forward and have a safer world
or not, and have more bitter division and trouble for the future.
We continue to work with the parts of the US administration to
which we relate as we do in the international institutions like
the World Bank, but this is not easy and I would encourage your
Committee to think of ways that you might try to visit and form
relationships with the appropriate Congressional committees. This
is a really important issue for the world. It is not that the
US is ungenerous. It somehow just is not sharing this insight
or the capacity to move it forward that other countries have and
it is urgent that we work on trying to get them there.
221. I read the Chancellor's speech with care
about the international trust fund for 2015 where he says that
the international community are going to require 50 billion dollars
a year to meet those targets, and phrases like "we must substantially
increase development assistance priorities". When it comes
to the 0.7 per cent target, what he said was, "and we are
committed to making substantial additional progress". I do
not know if it would cause you any embarrassment if this Committee
were collectively to say that the sooner that 0.7 per cent target
is met by the UK the better, not least because it will enable
us to exert much greater moral authority on the international
community.
(Clare Short) It would not embarrass me in the slightest.
I have been known to say such things myself, both privately and
publicly. The international development targets, now the millennium
development goals, because they were re-affirmed in the Millennium
Conference of the UN, we have got an unprecedented international
agreement right through—World Bank, IMF, all the multilateral
development banks except the Intra-American Development Bank.
The whole of the UN system, the OECD, DAC and all the bilaterals,
the EU, that those targets should be the umbrella under which
we all work, we should seek to drive them forward in every country.
We should measure progress and we have also got a global objective.
This gives us an opportunity to get the international system working
together in a way it never has and measuring the success of economic
reform on systematic poverty reduction, which again was separated
in past endeavours. The Zedillo Report, the former President of
Mexico, the report he prepared for the UN Financing for Development
Conference that is coming up in March next year, I think, in Monterrey,
said that we need this change of conception of what aid and ODA
is for from propping people up with charitable handouts to building
effective modern states that enable people to be educated and
run their economy. There is no doubt that we have got failed states
that we have just been discussing and without some kind of inputs
and investment from overseas some countries will never get to
the point of being able to take off. The Zedillo Report, our and
the World Bank's recent report both said that we need to massively
improve the quality with which aid is spent, focusing it on poverty,
backing reforms, creating capacity, but we need to double the
quantity to get the whole world to meet the targets. Both reports
say the same thing. The Chancellor acknowledged that in his speech
and then said that the UK must make efforts and he is trying to
get the G7 to make efforts. We must make sure that the UK uses
its influence internationally, but it has to get itself into a
rather stronger leading position to have the moral authority to
call on others. I have said this to the Chancellor and I know
he is sympathetic but we all have to keep our eye on this ball.
The Comprehensive Spending Review has now started.
222. We understand that only too well. One last
question from me: poppies. One of the curses of Afghanistan which
we have not mentioned has been poor farmers growing poppies, which
have been a curse to us all in terms of massive heroin production.
I notice in your briefing that DFID had been giving emergency
help to half a million people, former poppy growers and labourers
and their families. What is happening to that programme? Do you
see it returning now there is some creeping stability in the country?
How are we going to ensure that Afghanistan does not revert to
growing opium poppies again in large numbers?
(Clare Short) The opium growing was part of the failed
state. As all the irrigation systems were destroyed by war—there
used to be enormous fruit growing and so on and exports from Afghanistan
historically—and as it ceased to be a legitimate state people
took to growing poppies and truckers took to trucking it out as
their only way to survive. They were not using it. It was because
it was a failed state with no legitimate commerce. The Taliban
appear to have used it in big quantities to purchase the things
that they wanted, and they had warehouses full of it. They did
not approve of anyone using it of course but were happy to trade
in it. It was corrupting not just Afghanistan but also neighbouring
countries. Iran is terribly troubled by the border traffic and
has tried to make enormous efforts to stop it getting into Iran.
It was also corrupting Pakistani institutions because you get
such mega money in this large scale drug dealing that then you
get corruption going into defence intelligence and other institutions
in Pakistan, so this was a failed state starting to cause this
kind of corruption through the drug trade. It damages our countries
but it was damaging neighbouring countries. Just before September
11 the Taliban, under a lot of pressure from the international
community and the UN, said that no more could be grown. There
were still warehouses full of it. This meant that these very poor
people had nothing, no crop, no income, and we were preparing
emergency programmes for them. Then September 11 happened and
we could not go ahead because with the situation it was impossible.
Now that will be part of the reconstruction: a legitimate open
state that therefore cannot be a big source of drug growing. Colombia
is another one: failed states that are not legitimate states behind
which big drug growing goes on by desperate, poor people who do
not use the drug and have no other means of making a living. It
has to be a core part of the reconstruction of Afghanistan and
Iran and Pakistan will be mightily relieved because of the damage
it was doing to them as well as of course addicts and people who
trade in drugs in our own country.
Chris McCafferty
223. I noticed in your objectives for the first
hundred days that voluntary disarmament is high on the list and
also de-mobbing soldiers and so on. Given that I do not think
we have ever seen an Afghan soldier without a Kalashnikov or something
over his shoulder, that seems very optimistic to me—desirable
but very optimistic. I wondered how you saw that happening. Who
would take responsibility for this initiation? Secondly, child
soldiers. Many of the boys have been fighting from a very young
age. A lot of them have lost one parent, many have lost two. They
must be very traumatised, very brutalised. Returning those children
to school I would suggest would not be enough. Is there any thinking
about how those children can be counselled and supported given
that they are the future of the country and we do not want history
to repeat itself?
(Clare Short) This is now where we start to unfold
the complexity of this welcome task we are going to have. Clearly
it will be essential, as rapidly as possible, as we were saying,
to build Afghan police and Afghan disciplined military forces,
properly accountable to the transitional government, properly
managed. DDR will clearly be part of that and this has happened
in many other countries, where you ask fighters to come in to
potentially join a new national armed forces but then to hand
in their weapons and be trained, as we have done in Sierra Leone.
I am getting ahead of myself. I am not aware of detailed plans
of this kind but we have done it in other countries and something
like this is going to have to happen. As you say, something like
that is going to have to happen in a country where people take
great pride, and always have, in having a weapon, though of course
not in the quantities, not the tanks and anti-aircraft weaponry
that now is littering the country. It will be difficult but it
must be done and it will be done because there will have to be
some disciplined Afghan security forces. It will not be easy but
it will have to be done and it will no doubt be approved by the
transitional government who will want their own armed forces,
I am sure, and then with help from the UN and the World Bank and
others like us who have tried to do it in other countries. Child
soldiers: when you look at the 2015 targets for getting all children
in the world into primary education, countries like Afghanistan
stand out as nowhere near. Of course there are lots of child soldiers
because of the disorder. We have in Sierra Leone and other places
the DRC, UNICEF in the lead, child soldiers who have been de-mobilised,
programmes of counselling in care to try and get them ready to
go back into normal life. It is not easy. Some of these very young
children, especially in the case of Sierra Leone, have killed
members of their own family, raped and pillaged. They are very
damaged children but we have to do what we can. There are a lot
of damaged people in Afghanistan. I had an asylum seeker in my
advice bureau on Saturday morning with a note from one of my local
hospitals saying he had got post traumatic syndrome. I wonder
how many people in Afghanistan have not got it. He was having
dreams and was anxious to get back because his family was there,
and that is a grown man, father of eight sons, he told me. Yes,
that will all have to be done. We are doing it in other parts
of the world but this just starts to elaborate and describe the
scale of the task we are going to have.
Hugh Bayley
224. We have not talked about the EU. What has
their role been and are you satisfied with that role?
(Clare Short) I have had a meeting with Chris Patten
about this and we had a meeting of the Development Council. They
have done quite well to get resources released and find extra
resources from ECHO for the humanitarian effort. Part of the EU's
complete failure to distribute its resources in proportion to
the poor of the world is so little for Asia. In the Asia pot in
their budgets they have got little. They are looking to be part
of helping the reconstruction of Afghanistan and understanding
quite well that the EU, which is a major source of development
systems, ought to be there and ought to be helping. They have
difficulties. Chris Patten is really anxious because he is responsible
for Asia in the way the arrangements work and Poul Nielson is
responsible for the ACP countries. He is looking to help but has
not got much of a budget to deploy which reflects the other problem
we have got with the EC, but it is also, it seems to me, an opportunity
to get the EU to take the proportion of the poor of the world
that are in Asia more seriously and that is what we really must
try and do.
Mr Robathan
225. Could I return to the question close to
my heart? I have read what you say about giving money to the UN
for mine action services and a map of those in Afghanistan and
I appreciate entirely your desire to do that. Could I just request
that in your department CHAD in the form of Mr Baugh watch very
closely on the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisation
because I think there is a concern which you brought out earlier
about high overheads and so on and I would be very interested
to hear about this.
(Clare Short) I give that assurance and have already
given it, but we will not have an international system that works
unless the UN can look all across the world at where the land
mines are, how to deploy the money, how to systematically clear
them. If we all say that UN systems are not perfect, therefore
we will not change, we will never get such a system. Our whole
purpose in moving that is to beef up and strengthen that UN capacity
which we think made improvements in Kosovo. We will be watching
like hawks, I can promise you, because it is effectiveness we
need.
Mr Colman
226. Could I ask about the UN Donor Alert and
the way it is made up? We need to learn about things that have
gone well and from things that have not gone well. The NGOs who
spoke to us explained how they were distributing the aid that
the World Food Programme was trucking in and they explained that
aid covered a whole range of things, not just food. We then asked
them what were they doing in addition to that and I think it was
Islamic Relief who pointed out to us that the range of product
that was within the UN Donor Alert was very limited and they were
giving examples that the range of food available that was available
was extremely limited. Perhaps we could have a separate paper
on how in fact this was constructed, the Donor Alert. They said
that they had been taken account of in terms views but still felt
a number of things had been left out over which they had to have
UK appeals in order to obtain the money so that they could supply
this over and above what was in the Donor Alert. For lessons to
learn in the future it would be interesting to know what was left
out and what was left in and what were the things left out which
left the NGOs to shake the money boxes rather than, as I have
referred to, come through the UK taxpayer.
(Clare Short) I am going to bring Matt in because
I can hear him muttering, but I want to say that everyone must
remember that NGOs are a part of the operation but were not the
leading part. They do need a public profile. The minute the emergency
started—I have told you what I think of Islamic Relief:
it is a fabulous organisation operating across the world, not
only in Islamic countries, let me add, founded because of the
famine in Ethiopia. Adverts appeared in all the papers. The problem
we had then was getting anything into the country. People need
to be able to give but they also need to be having a public profile
and saying that they are delivering even when sometimes it takes
them a bit longer to deliver. This is what I would appeal to the
Select Committee about. We are trying to do more public education
on that to get the UK to be a country with a public that really
understands all this work and the need for them to recognise the
interdependence of the world. We see public opinion terribly concerned,
young people's opinion terribly concerned, and then all they think
they can do about development is give to a charity. People do
need to know that the UK public gives £200 million a year
to charitable giving for development. The UK taxpayer gives currently
just over £3 billion rising to £3.6 billion by 2003/4
and if we reached our 0.7 target it would be just over £7
billion. Charitable giving is good but if people think that is
the only route, it is distorting what our country owes into the
international system. One other point and then I will bring in
Matt. There were distortions in food aid because a lot of countries
are offloading their surplus foods. The UK gives money to buy
in the region, which also helps the region and means you buy more
appropriate food, the food that people are used to. Other countries
send ship loads of food and often it is not the food that people
want. When I visited the refugees from Sierra Leone in Guinea
they had bulgar wheat or something and they are rice eaters. You
have lost everything and then someone gives you some food you
have never known, you do not know how to cook. That goes on in
the international system and that is a problem. We need to untie
international food aid, which is one of our objectives for better
quality aid. Matt, can you comment on these particular points?
(Mr Baugh) I think it is important that we realise
the UN donor alert is exactly that, a donor alert for UN agencies.
Those UN agencies will have implementing partners which will be
international NGOs and local NGOs. It is important that that NGO
base also puts out its own base and has it owns programmes as
part of the wider effort. In a way it is where the line between
UN donor alert and NGO programmes is drawn. It is a standard approach
essentially, all NGOs operate in that manner. We are working with
NGOs, both international and local, that are also UN implementing
partners but we determined that their programmes were not essentially
double-funding in our contributions for the UN agencies as well.
(Clare Short) The other thing is the public like to
be able to give, although I think we should remind the public
they are giving through their taxes, so they believe more in the
contributions they are making through our 0.7 aspiration. There
is nothing wrong with NGOs making a public appeal to add something.
227. My point, Secretary of State, is whether
rather significant areas of aid have, in fact, been left out of
the World Food Programme which the NGOs have had to scrabble around
to get in.
(Clare Short) Not for the emergency.
(Mr Baugh) The NGOs will pick up the important sector
of supplementary feeding which a number of the NGOs engaged in
food provision are doing, which is very important.
(Mr Ireton) The 700 million headline figure which
was pledged included both the UN alert and help for NGOs as well
directly.
(Clare Short) The NGOs are part of the implementation
mechanism of the UN. They are basically organisational parts.
You have got this massive World Food Programme and they have got
to get smaller organisations on the ground. Oxfam and Christian
Aid are organisers of employing Afghans to do it and they bring
in an organisational capacity at the end of the delivery mechanism,
so they are part of the UN system in that sense, it cannot deliver
at the end of its tentacles without that. Remember, NGOs also
include Afghan community groups, because we use the phrase and
then do not think of all the locals who are doing it.
Chairman
228. Secretary of State, thank you to you and
your officials for your time this morning. I think the questions
and answers have demonstrated there are many complex issues inter-related
in all of this. I think we probably share your view that these
are issues that cannot simply be described in a single headline
or a single sound bite, and I am sure you will agree with that.
Because of their complexity I am sure that during the life of
this Parliament they are issues, either collectively or individually,
that we are going to be returning to and working on with you and
your officials and we look forward to that.
(Clare Short) I fear maybe even in the next Parliament
but, as I say, it is a welcome job. Thank you very much.
Chairman: Thank you very much, Secretary
of State.
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