Memorandum submitted by ActionAid
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
ActionAid is a rights-based development agency
with its international secretariat in Johannesburg. It reaches
over 13 million of the world's poorest and most disadvantaged
people in 43 countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas. ActionAid
started working in Afghanistan in 2002 and through its contribution
to policy debates and experience through projects in the field;
ActionAid Afghanistan (AAA) critically looks at the development
assistance in Afghanistan.
1. The role of NGOs, the impact of the decline
in direct core funding on the provision of humanitarian services;
the impact of the security situation on NGO activity:
Field activities have been severely hampered
due to increased acts of violence and threats to staff; as a result
of this volatile environment programme costs have significantly
increased. Dependence of NGOs on government-led programmes has
compromised their perceived neutrality. Reflecting on donor aid
policy including that of DfID for Afghanistan, ActionAid is concerned
that significant emphasis on state building is linked to wider
political and military objectives of stabilisation and political
transition.
— DFID in addition to its support to
the ARTF should also make funds directly available to NGOs operating
in Afghanistan
2. Tensions between the development and the
security agenda, overlap between stabilisation, reconstruction,
humanitarian and development assistance:
ActionAid recently carried out a political analysis
of the security situation and trends towards disorder, which identified
a number of issues that are fuelling the current instability.
Findings include resentment of lack of development progress, foreign
presence, funding delays, drugs, corruption, warlordism, incompetence
of police, negative attitudes towards women's rights, and criminal
and militant activity.
— DFID should continue to work with
other donors focusing on police reform and review its counter
narcotics policy along the lines suggested by NGOs.
3. The contribution of budget support, through
the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund to strengthening institutional
capacity and accountability:
NGO involvement in ARTF is purely at the project
implementation level and there is no mechanism to include a wider
civil society contribution for example in policy decisions or
evaluation and monitoring. Policy level engagement is difficult
owing to policy development taking place at World Bank HQ. Furthermore
ARTF lacks any clear gender policy although gender components
are reflected in some of the programmes implemented through it.
— DFID should work to influence World
Bank policies and management of the ARTF to ensure than gender
mainstreaming guidelines are applied across the board in the ARTF.
DFID should also use its influence to ensure that CSOs are invited
as observers on ARTF.
4. Harmonisation and co-ordination of the
donor response; the relationship between different aid modalities,
the role and effectiveness of the integrated mission:
An aid co-ordination and effectiveness group
has been established in response to the Paris Declaration but
again findings show that there is no CSO representation and it
is only the donors who are invited to the meetings. Further, a
lot of aid money coming to the country is going through external
budget. Not all donors are reporting their contributions to the
Ministry of Finance thus making it difficult to know the exact
amount of money coming into the country.
— DFID should encourage other donors,
who are channelling money outside ARTF, to report contributions
on timely basis to the Ministry of Finance to ensure a clear picture
about the aid money coming into the country.
1. INTRODUCTION
1. ActionAid is a rights-based development
agency working in more than 40 countries across Asia, Africa,
Caribbean and Americas, with its international secretariat in
Johannesburg. ActionAid started working in Afghanistan in 2002
and operates in the provinces of Jawzjan, Balkh, Samangan, Kabul,
Kunduz, Ghazni and Kandhar.
2. ActionAid implements a rights based approach
in its projects and programmes in its fight against the poverty,
injustice and insecurity that people and particularly women experience
in Afghanistan. In addition of the projects in the field ActionAid
Afghanistan (AAA) also contributes to policy debates through its
research and advocacy work.
3. At no time since 2001 has the security
situation in the country looked so dire. Over the last year, the
Taliban have regrouped, reorganised and refunded their insurgency,
launching bitter battles across the southern third of Afghanistan.
In addition, northern Afghanistan has not escaped unscathed from
the insurgency. There has been a spate of school burnings and
attacks on police posts, which may be linked to the Taliban. There
are also reports that Islamic militant groups have been able to
pay disgruntled militia commanders to commit acts of violence.
Economic motivation seems to be more prominent than ideology.
In addition to this, the precarious law and order situation in
various parts of the country has made humanitarian workers and
NGOs vulnerable to attacks from criminally motivated gangs and
individuals looking to make quick money from robbery, theft and
kidnapping.
4. For the Taliban, it is important to show
instability in northern as well as southern Afghanistan. That
can be done by attacking NATO troops or killing NGOs that are
implementing government projects such as the National Solidarity
Programme (NSP).
2. THE ROLE
OF NGOS,
THE IMPACT
OF THE
DECLINE IN
DIRECT CORE
FUNDING ON
THE PROVISION
OF HUMANITARIAN
SERVICES; THE
IMPACT OF
THE SECURITY
SITUATION ON
NGO ACTIVITY
5. Afghanistan is moving away from emergency
relief to sustainable development. This transition warrants a
long term strategy and commitment from all actors. But increasing
insecurity is the greatest concern for Afghan civilians and NGOs
operating on the ground. Threats of kidnapping and targeted attacks
on NGOs and their personnel, perceived to be aligned with international
military and/or the government of Afghanistan have rendered many
areas out of bounds for any development or humanitarian work.
6. The murder of 3 AAA women staff members
and their driver in May 2006 in northern Afghanistan sent shockwaves
throughout the organisation and larger international development
community. Up to now the investigation of the case remains inconclusive
and like the pace with which similar cases involving other international
NGO staff are progressing, it seems unlikely that anything concrete
will emerge soon. Since the killing of staff members AAA has pulled
out of the particular district in Jawzjan a relatively safe province
in northern Afghanistan. The increase in violent acts involving
humanitarian workers all over the country has put extra an strain
on NGO operations. Agencies including AAA are taking extra caution
while deciding to operate in a particular area. Thus, leaving
out people in areas where the security situation is perceived
to be dangerous. Further, programme quality in the field is suffering
due to periodic suspension of activities because of increased
acts of violence and threats to staff security. Field staff are
finding it difficult to achieve programme objectives in set time
frames; and intimate relationships with communities are getting
compromised in some areas as staff in not able to spend quality
time with the villagers. Lastly, the cost of operations has gone
up for all NGOs as they are now forced to hire security advisors
and put in place effective but expensive modes of communication
to speed up information sharing and mitigate the risk.
7. Donor aid policy including that of DfID
for Afghanistan places significant emphasis on state-building
linked to wider political and military objectives of stabilisation
and political transition. As noted in the BOAG Afghanistan briefing
paper of September 2006 around 80% of the NGO activities are currently
tied to the government programmes. While ActionAid support the
objectives of promoting effective and accountable authorities,
it has concerns on two counts. Firstly, the current emphasis on
the state-building is coming at the expense of providing basic
services to populations in regions outside the political or geographic
reach or the capacity of government to deliver. Secondly, implementing
government sponsored/lead programmes such as the National Solidarity
Programme involves a certain degree of risk as NGOs implementing
such programmes are seen by insurgents as collaborators and therefore
legitimate targets for an act of violence in the ongoing conflict.
8. Recommendations
— DFID in addition to its support to
the ARTF should also make direct funds available to the NGOs operating
in Afghanistan. In the absence of direct funding NGOs are unable
to maintain direct service delivery in areas where government
programmes are yet to reach. Further, dependence of NGOs on government
led programmes also compromises their perceived neutrality, which
is important to ensure safety of humanitarian workers in the field.
— DFID should also focus on strengthening
government's capacity to maintain law and order by focusing on
Police reforms and training of new police recruits. It could do
this by increasing contribution to Law and order trust fund (LOTFA)
and also facilitating streamlining of disbursement processes under
counter narcotics trust fund (CNTF).
3. TENSIONS BETWEEN
THE DEVELOPMENT
AND THE
SECURITY AGENDA:
OVERLAP BETWEEN
STABILISATION, RECONSTRUCTION,
HUMANITARIAN AND
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE
9. International non-government organisations
such as ActionAid operate in a highly political and narrowly defined
humanitarian space in Afghanistan, steering a course between the
people in the communities it works with on the one hand and the
myriad national and international actors which impact the political
and security situation on the other.
10. In September 2006 ActionAid's political
analysis of the security situation in Afghanistan identified the
following flash-points and trends towards disorder, as well as
identifying a number of issues which are fuelling the current
instability:[2]
11. Growing resentment about the lack of
progress in development
The peace dividend has not been felt by people
living in many communities throughout the country. This combined
with continuing and growing insecurity and criminality has undermined
the public's confidence in the government to maintain control
and move the country forward.
12. Resentment towards the foreign presence
Local people resent the foreign presence, and
often there is little or no distinction made between foreign troops,
UN officials and staff of international ngos. Most Afghans have
little or no access to running water, electricity or adequately
paying jobs. Resentment towards aid agencies and UN officials,
whose staff are often paid more than 10 times the salary of government
officials has generated public ill-will.
13. Funding delays
ActionAid has been an implementing partner for
the government's National Solidarity Programme. The programme
has experienced major funding delays. Almost all 26 NGOs implementing
the programme have experienced delays in receiving their instalments
of funds, with ActionAid waiting in some instances up to 10 months
for the government to release instalments of funds to facilitate
implementation of the project. Similar delays have been experienced
by the communities in receiving their direct block grant from
the government;—translating into further delays. This is
compounded by the fact that local government officials in some
parts put the blame of this delay on NGOs, which in turn prompts
communities to ask questions about whether the aid agencies are
holding back the money for their own financial gain.
14. Role back of aid in the south
As the security situation has worsened in the
south over recent months many aid agencies which have operated
in the area have pulled out or drastically curtailed their activities.
15. Drugs
Programmes to control and eliminate poppy cultivation
fuel resentment, which can easily escalate to a generalised resentment
against all "outsiders" who are not part of the affected
community. A review of the current counter narcotics strategy
is required along the lines of suggestions made by the NGOs such
as increased focus availability of funds for alternative livelihoods,
focus on drug trafficking and law enforcement, etc.
16. Corruption
ActionAid's experience is that resentment in
the south focuses most commonly on officialdom which is perceived
as corrupt and making money out of foreign aid whilst the local
communities suffer the effects of insecurity and attempts to curb
poppy cultivation. In the north the resentment is aimed more at
aid agencies and ngos who are also seen as siphoning off reconstruction
money. Much of this perception stems from the fact that for many
people their lives have not noticeably improved.
17. Warlordism and ethnic divisions
Many of the militia commanders from the 1990s
hold positions of power at either the national or at the district
or local level. The NSP is seen by many as an opportunity to supplement
their income by charging protection money or a type of local "tax".
This presents a particular threat to agencies such as ActionAid
which is committed to transparency. Further there seems to be
no clear strategy to deal with warlords or warlordism, this makes
the process of reconciliation unclear.
18. Police incompetence
Police reform has been one of the major failures
of the post 2001 period. Paid only about £35 a month, many
police are illiterate, poorly trained and with few skills. Many
individual police officers have been implicated in drug trading,
smuggling and human rights abuse.
19. Attitudes towards women's rights
The work of many aid agencies such as ActionAid
in promoting women's rights is seen as threatening cultural values
by many religious leaders.
20. Criminality and continued militant activity
Criminal activity intersects closely with political
militancy as criminals exploit the vacuum of state control to
pursue their activities of extortion, kidnapping and violence.
21. Recommendations
— DfID should review its current counter
narcotics strategy along the lines of suggestions made by the
NGOs.
— DfID should continue to work with
other donors focusing on police reform, and should explore new
and creative ways of working with police authorities throughout
the UK to ensure increased applications of British police offering
their services in countries such as Afghanistan to train counterparts.
4. THE CONTRIBUTION
OF BUDGET
SUPPORT, THROUGH
THE AFGHANISTAN
RECONSTRUCTION TRUST
FUND TO
STRENGTHENING INSTITUTIONAL
CAPACITY AND
ACCOUNTABILITY
22. The Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust
Fund (ARTF) has two components, the Recurrent Window for funding
on-going budget costs, eg wages and operations and maintenance;
and the Investment Window which finances the development projects.
In FY March 2004-05 (Solar Year 1383) the Recurrent Window disbursed
US$235.2 million and the Investment Window US$50.6 million. The
UK contributed US$103.06 million in that year. As of January 2006
the investment window is made up of 12 investment projects totalling
US$267.6 million divided into three areas: (a) infrastructure;
(b) public sector capacity development, including strengthening
quality of education, and (c) rural development.
23. Preliminary findings of a review and
analysis of the experience with Multi-donor trust funds in conflict
affected reconstruction presented at the Oslo Inception Workshop
in May 2006[3]
reported that the government of Afghanistan had strong ownership,
and there was widespread support for the ARTF, especially in relation
to its budget support. The report states: "For all parties,
having the ARTF as a funding source has been extremely efficient.
For the Government of Afghanistan there is only one source of
funding for the recurrent budget and thus only one actor with
which to interact. Since the World Bank as a policy provides on-budget
financing and has long experience in managing funding in this
manner, the government has had an experienced interlocutor back
to the donors who in fact are providing a fiduciary management
service that enables more donors than otherwise to provide funding
to the budget."
24. However the review also found that there
was no effective strategy for capacity development, either for
the budget support functions or for the project implementation.
Many projects did have a capacity development function, but it
was on an ad hoc rather than planned basis. The Inception
Report found that there was no explicit strategy for maximising
the impact of capacity development. At a project level the review
found that the human skills base was aging, and that donors provided
their own training with little co-ordination of human resource
development. Technical assistance has also been characterised
by poor institutional arrangements with little co-ordination to
capture best practice or avoid gaps and reduce duplication. The
Inception Report found that the ARTF achievements are fragile,
and are dependent on external technical assistance and continued
improvement in national stability and security.
25. The vast majority of the government's
funding comes from outside the country. In Solar Year 1383 (March
2004-05) 4.8 billion, a large percentage of the government's annual
budget, of this was provided by donors with only US$1.7 as core
budget. Of this 1.7 billion, 1.3 billion was directly supervised
by donors. This means that only 8% of public funds were fully
controlled by the government itself. At the same time because
of the historical lack of capacity of the government, ngos and
private contractors have played a large role in project implementation
and service delivery.
26. ActionAid received funding from the
ARTF for project implementation as part of the National Solidarity
Programme. ActionAid has been facilitating implementation of the
NSP since 2004, and last year its contract budget was US$1.4 million.
Currently ActionAid works in 298 communities establishing community
development councils, facilitating the elaboration of Village
Development Plans, supporting the communities in problem prioritisation
and developing sub-project proposals. The communities then submit
these proposals to the government for approval and ngos facilitate
the implementation of these projects.
27. Involvement of non-government organisations
and other civil society organisations in the ARTF has been almost
purely at the level of project implementation. Ngos have had no
input into decision-making, which is mainly the domain of the
donors, nor have Ngos and csos had any involvement in monitoring
and evaluation. It is a major challenge for ngos and csos to find
ways to engage with the ARTF in policy development. The emphasis
of policy development in the ARTF is primarily in Washington DC
at the World Bank headquarters.
28. The investment window of the ARTF has
focused too much on infrastructural projects at the expense of
public sector capacity development. The public sector development
aspects of the ARTF take place as if in a vacuum devoid of a political
analysis and conflict prevention tools. DfID has committed itself
to making all its development work conflict sensitive[4]
and is committed to ensuring that development takes better account
of its possible effect on conflict. To this extent, and as a major
contributor to the ARTF, it is important DfID uses the findings
from its Afghanistan Country Governance Assessment to ensure that
conflict sensitivity is applied to all aspects of ARTF's Investment
Window projects.
29. DfID should ensure that public sector
capacity development and rural development projects within the
Investment Window of the ARTF include on-going conflict analysis,
so that they can take account of views on the ground, and not
just base their analysis on bi-lateral relations with the government.
This is inevitably both time consuming and requires dedicated
funding. DfID should encourage the use of assessment tools such
as ActionAid's Participatory Vulnerability Analysis, a methodology
which brings together different actors within communities to look
at their own vulnerabilities and propose solutions to either minimise
or solve them.
30. ActionAid's own experience with the
ARTF is that there is a lack of mechanisms to involve implementing
partners. Early on in the ARTF's implementation, there was a one-off
attempt to set up a forum for implementing partners, run by a
foreign consultant attached to the Ministry of Rural Development.
However, the forum did not continue, and ActionAid's experience
was that nothing changed in policy or practice terms as a result
of the suggestions and ideas raised in forum, although participants
felt it had provided a useful focus for the exchange of information
between themselves.
31. The Inception report in its conclusions
on the ARTF noted that "The ARTF has been an extremely useful
harmonising instrument for budget support and contributed to co-ordination
of the national rural development programmes". It went on
to note that "It is unclear to what extent ARTF is contributing
to any further harmonisation, since is so small compared to other
resources".
32. In relation to gender, the 2006 review
of the ARTF found that in the absence of a clear gender policy,
although some projects had clear gender targets, this was on an
ad hoc basis and dependent on individual task managers, rather
than a result of a systematic policy. However, the three large
development projects of the ARTF do have gender mandates:—for
example the National Solidarity Programme requires the establishment
Community Development Committees with equal participation of women,
it also requires that female CDC members plan, implement and manage
atleast 1 sub-project proposed under NSP. Further, gender has
been identified as a cross cutting theme for Afghanistan National
Development Strategy (ANDS) to ensure that all sectoral strategies
incorporate gender components in the proposed programmes and projects.
33. ActionAid's experience of the ARTF is
that there is an over-emphasis on employing international contractors
for implementing its investment window projects, without sufficient
emphasis on capacity development of national staff, or identifying
potentially capable national contractors. In its own implementation
of ARTF funded projects, ActionAid changed the practice in its
own development districts to ensure local recruitment of poor
workers. ActionAid used a participatory rural appraisal methodology
to identify the participating workers and carried out a pilot
study in one areas, which the government agreed initially to roll-out
nationwide, although in the end this did not happen.
34. Recommendations
— DfID should work to influence World
Bank policies at the headquarters level as well as with the management
of the ARTF to ensure than gender mainstreaming guidelines are
applied across the board in the ARTF. This should include both
the Investment Window and the Recurrent Window.
— DFID should use its influence to
ensure that CSOs are invited as observers on ARTF.
— FID should encourage establishment
of an independent aid ombudsman to monitor and evaluate the work
done by donors.
— DfID should work in close collaboration
with the Afghanistan Ministry of Women's Affairs to ensure than
it elaborates a gender policy which is articulated across government.
— DfID should use its seat on the World
Bank Board of Governors to ensure that all multi-donor trust funds
have clearly articulated gender policies and include gender targets
throughout its funding, from the very inception of the MDTF.
— DfID should ensure that the ARTF
establishes adequate instruments to ensure that the experiences
and recommendations for policy and practice change made by implementing
partners of the Investment Window are taken into account, and
acted on as appropriate.
— Multi Donor Trust Funds should give
more emphasis to developing national capacity and employing national
contractors. DfID should work with other international donors,
as well as use its position within the World Bank Board of Governors
to improve MDTF practices in this regard.
5. HARMONISATION
AND COORDINATION
OF THE
DONOR RESPONSE;
THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN DIFFERENT
AID MODALITIES,
THE ROLE
AND EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE
INTEGRATED MISSION
35. In line with the Paris Aid Effectiveness
meeting the Ministry of Finance has established an aid co-ordination
and effectiveness group involving all donors. This group has been
established keeping in view that a lot of donors are channelling
their funds outside the state treasury ie funding projects in
Afghanistan directly and not through ARTF/GOA.
36. There is no CSO representation on this
group as similar to ARTF it is only the donors who are invited
for the meeting.
37. A database has been created by the ministry
of finance where donors are encouraged to report money they are
channelling through the "external budget". This is to
ensure proper records of the money coming to the country. The
External Budget records the expenditures which are directly executed
by the donors, ie which do not go through the Government's treasury
system. The external budget shows an interesting pattern of spending
during the past few years. The size of the external budget increased
from US$824 million to US$1,344 million (by 63%) between SY1381
and SY1384. The main drivers of this increase were security and
economic governance expenditures. In SY1385, however, actual external
budget expenditures declined dramatically as compared with previous
years. Actual external budget expenditure in SY1385 was US$743
million, only 44% of the budget (US$1,720 million).
38. This decline in external budget can
be attributed to two reasons. One is the shift from external budget
to core budget including the national army's salaries and subsidy
of the diesel fuel for power generation in Kabul city. The other,
more importantly, is deterioration in reporting which appears
to be the main reason. The sharp decline in reported external
budget security expenditures (from US$937 million in SY1383 to
US$303 million in SY1384 and only US$20 million in SY1385), during
a period of time when major security sector expenditure programs
were being ramped up, confirms the importance of this latter reason.
39. Recommendations
— A lot of NGOs are putting in their
own resources, independent of GOA and official donors, in the
country. DFID should use it use its influence to ensure that CSOs
are invited to aid co-ordination meetings.
— DFID should encourage other donors,
who are channelling money outside ARTF, to report the same on
timely basis to ministry of finance. This will ensure a clear
picture about the aid money coming into the country and will also
provide information about the sectors/areas it is being spent
on.
September 2007
2 Delivering Aid, Ensuring Security in a Changing
Environment: A political analysis of the security situation of
Afghanistan. ActionAid September 2006 Back
3
Inception Report: A Review and Analysis of Multi-Donor Trust
Funds in Conflict Affected Reconstruction: Oslo May 2006. Back
4
Conflict Policy Statement, DfID 2007. Back
| 
