Memorandum submitted by Afghanaid
SUMMARY
1. As one of the few British NGOs and certainly
the oldest British NGO devoted completely to assisting the people
of Afghanistan, Afghanaid is pleased to contribute to the International
Development Select Committee's (IDSC) inquiry into the effectiveness
of British aid programmes in that country. Afghanaid has been
a major implementing partner for aid programmes of both the British
government and the European Community for most of its history
in Afghanistan. Starting in 2003 however, there has been a significant
shift in the way donors have chosen to deliver aid in Afghanistan.
Afghanaid is submitting this paper as a case study of one NGO's
experience of that shift in order to accompany and complement
the evidence submitted by BAAG. Afghanaid's own experience is
presented in this paper, as well as the community level impact
stemming from (1) declining support for needs-based livelihood
assistance, (2) sporadic and unpredictable aid flows, and (3)
poor public sector co-ordination. Afghanaid's conclusions closely
mirror those of BAAG, as the organisation remains deeply concerned
about the erosion of assistance to the remote and inaccessible
communities which we have a mandate to serve.
2. Donor funding has shifted in most cases
towards almost exclusively investing in budget support and government
sub-contracting programmes. In practice, this shift has meant
a decline in support to help communities find sustainable ways
to ensure food security and to meet basic needs. It has also diminished
the role of formerly key NGO development partners. This donor
shift was predicated on the assumption that the emerging Afghan
government would be able to develop capacity quickly enough to
deliver much needed programmes across Afghanistan in a timely
fashion, an assumption that has proved to be false. While some
ministries have indeed made rapid progress, there is still a huge
gap between what is needed and government capacity to deliver—particularly
at provincial and district levels. Many NGOs have skills and the
interest to assist in sub-national capacity building efforts,
yet they are not being supported to do so, in spite of requests
from poorly trained and resourced local government representatives
in remote areas.
3. There has also been a shift in the focus
of rural development programmes. New donor programmes in this
sector are increasingly focused on developing market potential
rather than ensuring a safety net to ensure basic needs, yet both
are essential for balanced and equitable development. New value
chain strengthening initiatives are so far very localised and
targeted at regions near well developed market towns, leaving
the more remote and vulnerable areas without livelihoods support.
4. In addition to shifts in sector focus
and partnership mechanisms, problems with aid delivery mechanisms
for those programmes delivered through the Government of Afghanistan
have been severe, further preventing aid from reaching people
who need it most. The result of inconsistent, interrupted, and
non needs-based aid programmes has been increased frustration
and mistrust by rural communities of both the international community
and the Afghan government. Although Afghanaid like many NGOs is
committed to locating alternative sources of funding to continue
vital front line programmes, sources of such funding are extremely
limited. There is currently no national programmes to support
livelihoods needs in rural communities (particularly related to
agriculture, food security and income generation).
AFGHANAID BACKGROUND
5. Afghanaid was registered as a charity
in the UK in 1983 in order to provide emergency assistance to
Afghans displaced by fighting. By 1985, it was running a fleet
of ambulances across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As fighting became more localised during the early 1990s, Afghanaid
began assisting in the rehabilitation of major infrastructures
and the re-vitalisation of food production. Afghanaid is now a
largely Afghan-managed NGO with a staff of 450 Afghans. It is
governed by a Board of Trustees in the UK, where there is also
a small Afghanaid fundraising office. Afghanaid's Head Office
in Kabul provides support and oversight to programmes in four
provinces.
6. Afghanaid's mission is to work in the
most vulnerable and remote areas of Afghanistan. For that reason,
based on criteria including poverty indicators and poor access
to essential services, Afghanaid has been implementing community
development projects in the provinces of Badakhshan, Samangan,
Ghor and Nuristan for an average of seven years. Sadly, because
of the severely deteriorated security situation, our recent activities
in Nuristan have been limited, but Afghanaid has wide coverage
in the other three provinces—currently reaching over 900
villages across 14 districts.
7. Afghanaid's own history reflects the
changing aid priorities in this country that has suffered so much
strife and conflict over the past 25 years. From 1983 to 1995,
we focused on emergency relief assistance needs, but then shifted
to integrated rural development activities, combining agricultural
extension, animal health care, vocational training and kitchen
gardening for women, micro-finance, and infrastructure which would
help communities improve production and access to markets. In
2003, Afghanaid entered into a robust partnership with the Government
of Afghanistan by facilitating the National Solidarity Programme
(NSP). NSP is an excellent initiative for encouraging wide participation
in local governance decisions and in implementing primarily small
scale infrastructure projects. It is one of the Government of
Afghanistan's National Priority Programmes and is scheduled to
reach every rural community throughout Afghanistan if security
conditions and donor support allow.
8. Until 2006, with funding from the EC
and DFID, Afghanaid was able to complement local governance gains
by expanding livelihoods support available to Community Development
Councils (CDCs) and various interest groups they represented (for
example women's and farmers' associations). In 2006, both donors
discontinued their direct support for NGOs facilitating integrated
livelihoods activities.
DECLINE OF
NEEDS-BASED
AID
9. Until 2005, Afghanaid was able to offer
much needed livelihoods skills training so necessary in the remote
areas where Afghanaid works. Funding for this integrated livelihood
skills training came from DFID and the EC. Both agencies discontinued
this type of support to rural communities in 2006 following their
policy shift towards direct budgetary support or the routing of
aid primarily through the Government of Afghanistan. It is noteworthy
that at that time DFID discontinued funding a successful consortium
of four major NGOs (of which two, including Afghanaid, were British)
implementing an alternative livelihoods programme in the poppy
growing province of Badakhshan.
10. Afghanaid entered into a very constructive
partnership with the Swiss Government's development agency (SDC)
in 2006 which enabled the charity to continue and improve its
delivery of livelihood support in the province of Samangan. In
the much more remote provinces of Badakhshan and Ghor, however,
discontinuation of DFID and EC support for livelihoods threatens
development in 700 communities in nine districts. These districts
are located in provinces with extreme poverty indicators and continued
risk of food insecurity. These provinces also suffer from isolation
due to long periods of winter inaccessibility.
11. Afghanaid has obtained a few small grants
from disparate sources in order to continue some of the livelihoods
activities previously covered by the EC and DFID, but coverage
will be much reduced, and transaction costs to Afghanaid much
higher. Reduced coverage will inevitably threaten the gains many
rural villages were able to make in reducing the number of months
when families experienced real hunger, which came through Afghanaid's
training in improved agricultural techniques, animal husbandry,
kitchen gardens and food preservation, not to mention wheat banks
which served as a safety net for vulnerable groups. Communities
in these districts are well aware that there are no government
facilities yet in place that could take the place of the extremely
useful livelihoods support that Afghanaid has offered.
SPORADIC AND
UNPREDICTABLE AID
FLOWS
12. Afghanaid is a long standing and committed
partner of one of the most successful Government of Afghanistan
programmes—the National Solidarity Programme (NSP). A series
of evaluations have indicated that NSP is bringing significant
positive impact in local governance capacities (including women's
participation) as well as ownership and pride in the construction
of small scale infrastructure projects that were prioritised and
overseen by village level councils in over 15,000 rural locations.
Yet even this highly successful programme continues to be threatened
by failures to ensure consistent and adequate funding flows through
the pooled funding mechanisms established by donors for national
priority programmes. Less highly visible programmes have undoubtedly
suffered more.
13. Failure to achieve consistent funding
flows to NSP resulted in over 500 days in the past several years
when NSP had no funds to disburse for community block grant allocations—an
essential design component of the NSP. Delays in receiving block
grants were compounded in many cases by seasonal inaccessibility
constraints which meant thousands of communities waiting close
to a year to be able to implement projects that community members
had prioritised. Community members were understandably disillusioned
and angry. Credibility of the elected Community Development Council
members as well as the Government of Afghanistan and the NGOs
acting as facilitating partners suffered accordingly. In addition,
over the three years of NSP implementation, many of the NGOs delivering
the programme in the rural areas have had to advance their own
unrestricted funds (when possible) to keep NSP running. Because
an increasing percentage of project portfolios of those same NGOs
are resourced through sub-contracts with the Government of Afghanistan,
they are overly vulnerable to such payment delays. Afghanaid for
example was required to spend £600,000 in reserves between
April and September 2007 alone to keep NSP running. One more month
of payment delays of an already six month overdue invoice would
have required Afghanaid to shut down NSP activities.
14. Analysis of the source of the cash flow
interruptions reveals two primary causes which are: (1) inadequate
and late donor pledges, and (2) bottlenecks in funding request
and approval mechanisms. NSP continues to suffer a £125 million
funding deficit for its current phase, although the implementing
ministry and a group of donors are now working very hard and co-operatively
to prevent further cash flow interruptions. The lesson from this
experience seems to be that donors have a responsibility to ensure
that processing mechanisms are in place and functioning well and
staff adequately trained to access them. This lesson also highlights
the danger of dangers of routing all aid through a pooled funding
mechanism dependent on high capacity and co-ordination levels
until those attributes are fully in place.
POOR PUBLIC
SECTOR CO
-ORDINATION
15. Afghanaid's experiences with the donor-created
"Counter-Narcotics Trust Fund" (CNTF), for which the
British government took the lead bi-lateral role, may serve as
a useful example of the impact of poorly designed and executed
donor initiatives meant to be delivered through public sector
structures. Although the CNTF was originally presented to NGOs
as a funding source that could replace some of the discontinued
support for livelihoods development, the guidelines for the CNTF
approval processes were unclear and changed many times. A number
of NGOs submitted proposals to the CNTF in good faith, yet after
many months of waiting, and in spite of the fact that the proposals
were developed in consultation with line ministries that endorsed
them, they have not yet been approved. Unfortunately, there are
few other programmes that could cover rural (alternative) livelihoods
activities to turn to outside of the US-funded alternative livelihoods
programmes in the provinces of Nangarhar, Kandahar, and Badakhshan.
16. Afghanaid's application[5]
to the CNTF was submitted in April 2006, and over the past nearly
18 months, Afghanaid has been asked to submit revised proposal
texts/budgets five times, yet has received neither an approval
nor a rejection, because it has failed to reach the end of the
review labyrinth. This limbo continues in spite of endorsement
and advice from a number of donor representatives that have contributed
to the CNTF. This experience has been shared by other NGOs, and
the CNTF has tied up at least $40 million of aid that could have
gone to support rural livelihoods. There is now a widespread perception
that the few projects ever funded through CNTF were awarded on
the basis of personal connections with key ministry figures, rather
than more objective criteria.
17. Problems with CNTF proposal review procedures
have revolved around two key issues:
— Ministry involvement: There was widespread
confusion over the degree to which proposals submitted had to
actually be from Ministries. Early guidance indicated that it
would be sufficient to indicate a component of partnership with
a ministry or at a minimum endorsement from a ministry, yet this
later proved not to be the case.
— Procurement regulations: Six months
after the initiation of the CNTF, NGOs with pending proposals
were informed that their project designs and proposals would have
to be publicly tendered. Many of the requests for proposal revisions
after that date were for the purpose of ensuring proposals were
completely generic in nature so that any agency could bid for
them. Such an approach completely disregards the fact that NGOs
have built up unique histories and relationships with communities
and local leaders throughout rural Afghanistan, and the designs
arising from that unique background cannot be simply be transferred
to another implementer. Such tendering would also violate principles
of intellectual property rights that the creators of project designs
have a right to assume will be respected when submitting proposals
(unless they are specifically contracted to design a project for
public tendering).
18. Experienced ministries were also under
the impression that NGOs could submit proposals to CNTF and then
be awarded funds to implement them. This impression persisted
as late as September 2006 when the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation
and Development (MRRD) requested a number of NGOs to design and
submit cash for work infrastructure projects to the CNTF as part
of MRRD's co-ordination of drought relief, since CNTF was known
to have much needed un-programmed funding. MRRD later had to inform
the NGOs that complied with their request (including Afghanaid)
that their designs and proposals would have to be tendered to
other implementers.
19. Many hundreds of hours of skilled professionals'
time have been wasted in an extremely un-transparent CNTF review
and approval process. This could have been prevented if the CNTF
mechanisms had been designed to match realities on the ground,
and if they had been shared in a transparent fashion with all
stakeholders. Other ministries have managed to comply with procurement
regulations while still awarding contracts to NGOs that were based
on a competitive process that highlighted each applicant's strengths
and suitability and not necessarily because of lowest price. But
these Ministries have drawn on capacities to design a programme
framework under which proposals can be reviewed—a capacity
that CNTF does not seem to possess. Again, the lesson seems to
be that if donors create development funding structures, they
should accept responsibility to ensure that the institutions charged
with administering them have sufficient capacity, and to intervene
early on when it is clear they do not. If donors insist on routing
all aid via public sector structures, at least these structures
must be made to work to the point where implementing agencies
with capacity to deliver can access the necessary resources.
CONCLUSION
20. International donors clearly have immense
influence over the path to be taken in re-building Afghanistan
after 25 years of war. A balanced, needs-based approach that does
not neglect meeting basic needs is recommended. Unfortunately,
the principle that aid should reach the people who need it most
has become lost in the competing agendas for state building, market
development, poppy eradication, and counter-insurgency efforts.
Literature reviews of development in Afghanistan indicate that
attention to sustainable livelihoods development (particularly
for enterprise and job creation and training) for remote and vulnerable
populations would have an important stabilising effect and reduce
dependency on poppy cultivation, yet very few donors offer funding
for such activities anymore. NGOs continue to be the most experienced
and skilled organisations for working in the field of sustainable
livelihoods, yet there are very few resources allowing them to
contribute to this field.
21. Current funding mechanisms of most donors
reduce the potential of a valuable aid delivery resource—the
NGOs. In spite of decades of experience in Afghanistan and their
ability to pilot innovative ideas, NGOs find themselves increasingly
side-lined from aid programme design and meaningful partnership
implementation decisions, in spite of the fact that the cost of
their operations are a fraction of UN agencies or of consulting
firms. This is occurring even though NGOs can and do work in dangerous
parts of Afghanistan which government representatives and PRTs
consider too volatile to approach. Most NGOs work with minimal
security apparatus due to their reliance on community acceptance
as protection, yet many donors baulk at even the modest costs
of enhanced security related equipment requested by NGOs. In extreme
cases, current donor policies will hasten the financial ruin of
long-established and dependable NGOs of integrity unless those
NGOs are either willing to accept an almost entirely sub-contractor
role which erodes their independence and neutrality, or can quickly
develop non-statutory funding sources. Scandinavian, German, Irish,
Japanese, Canadian and American NGOs are able to count on their
governments reserving some component of their Afghanistan aid
portfolios for their national NGOs, but British NGOs are not able
to count on such support.
In an environment as volatile as Afghanistan,
the diminution of long standing non-governmental partners able
to address emergency relief needs as well as to develop rural
communities and fledgling civil society groups should be viewed
as risky in the long run. Putting all development resources through
not yet fully developed governmental structures is a dangerously
undiversified approach that has resulted in a regrettable neglect
of basic needs in rural areas. It risks resulting in overly controlling
central government structures with weak civil society counterparts
that will undermine democratic processes. It may also encourage
an undesirable expectation that government should provide all
development, thereby discouraging self-help initiatives and fuelling
frustration when those expectations are not met.
5 A chronology of Afghanaid's CNTF applications is
attached as an annex. Back
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