Memorandum submitted by World Vision

June 2008

 

Introduction

 

1.1 World Vision is a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation, dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. Motivated by our Christian faith, World Vision is dedicated to working with the world's most vulnerable people. World Vision serves all people, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender.

 

1.2 World Vision welcomes the opportunity to give evidence to the International Development Select Committee enquiry into the Department for International Development's Departmental Report 2008. World Vision recognises DFID's substantial contribution to global poverty reduction efforts during 2007/08. However, this submission will focus on the department's need to place much greater emphasis on the 'doubly-disadvantaged' in the poorest countries, including girl children, disabled people, children affected by AIDS and other marginalised groups. The Millennium Development Goals cannot be met unless DFID, with governments and other donors, adopts specific strategies to address the poverty traps faced by these groups. In our view, this issue should be a central focus of the forthcoming MDG 'call to action' meeting in New York on September 25^th.

 

 

Achieving the MDGs

 

Child focused

 

2.1 Children's experiences of poverty are different from those of adults and need targeted

strategies if they are to realize their rights. This cannot be achieved while children remain invisible within an adult focused approach to development. Moreover, as a Department of Her Majesty's Government, DFID is bound by its obligations and commitments to children as expressed in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international and regional instruments. At present, however, DFID does not adopt a child rights approach to its work, the understanding of child rights is uneven and it needs greater capacity to develop analysis, policy and programming that puts the needs and priorities of children front and centre.

 

2.2 World Vision is concerned that this gap is reflected in the annual report, especially regarding children. We welcome the acknowledgment within the annual report of the specific ways in which poverty impacts on women, but a more disaggregated poverty analysis is needed that recognizes the multiple barriers to social and economic empowerment faced by poor people. In particular, we believe that MDG 4 - on child mortality - is a valuable barometer of progress on a range of indicators of wellbeing, from health, nutrition and clean water to education. Yet on current trends, this goal will not be met until 2045. We encourage DFID to place particular policy focus on accelerating progress on MDG 4 in the context of a coherent effort to achieve all eight of the goals.

 

2.3 World Vision is also concerned that DFID is not meeting its education commitments of MDG 2 and 3. Although progress has been made towards ensuring the right of every child to quality primary education, with enrolment growing particularly rapidly in both South and West Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, there were still 72 million primary age children, one in nine of the world's children, out of school in 2005. Completion of the primary education cycle - the actual measure of progress in MDGs 2 and 3 - lags far behind enrolment rates, with only 63% completion in sub-Saharan Africa and 79% in South and West Asia. The quality of education also needs to be improved. International, regional and national assessments all indicate weak learning outcomes, particularly for pupils from poorer and other disadvantaged groups, in most developing countries.

 

 

2.4 As the education challenge shifts from enrolment to completion, efforts will need increasingly to focus on hard to reach groups, including girls, the disabled, pastoralists and ethnic and linguistic minorities. For example, there are still 18 million primary-age girls not in school in sub-Saharan Africa - 2.6 million more than the number of boys - while it has been estimated that one third of out-of-school children are disabled. Education's Missing Millions, published by World Vision UK last year, highlights the need to mainstream disability through education. Nearly half of all the children who live in conflict-affected fragile states still have no access to education. Other groups of excluded children include working children, street children, and orphans and other children made vulnerable due to the impact of HIV and AIDS. In this respect, it is surprising that chapter 2 of the annual report - Reducing poverty in Africa - makes no mention of the more than 12 million children orphaned by HIV & AIDS in Africa.

 

2.5 While DFID has increased it's total spending on education since 2000, and is committing its 'fair share' of funding for the education Fast Track Initiative, it must triple its funding disbursements to education in the next two years in order to meet the Prime Minister's pledge of spending £1bn p/a by 2010. It's essential that this spending is directed to where the needs are greatest: countries that are lagging on MDGs 2 and 3, including Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen are currently under-aided in the education sector. DFID also needs to adopt explicit strategies at the country level, with governments and other donors, to address the particular needs of hard-to-reach groups.

 

 

Questions DFID

 

What is the department doing to meet the PM's pledge to spend £1bn of aid annually by 2010 on education, and ensure that this money goes to countries that are currently under-aided, and to support hard-to-reach groups?

 

What is the department doing - especially in the context of the MDG 'call to action' meeting on September 25^th - to ensure that political attention and financial resources are committed to addressing the development needs of children, reflected in progress on MDG 4?

 

Disability mainstreaming

 

3.1 Of the 650 million disabled people worldwide, 80% live in developing countries. Disabled people globally face marginalisation, lack of opportunity and often severe and chronic poverty as a result of stigma, prejudice and other societal barriers to their inclusion. As a recent IFPRI report stated: "Poverty-reduction efforts have been successful at targeting those just below the dollar-a-day line, but ultra-poverty rates have stagnated. The poorest are more likely to belong to socially excluded groups, such as... those suffering from ill-health and disability."[i]

 

3.2 World Vision encourages the Department to heed its own call and implement plans for disability mainstreaming across all its activities as well as requiring the same from its strategic partners and recipients. By not mentioning the signature of the UN Convention on Disability at any point within the report, its commitment in addressing disability as a cross-cutting issue in the MDGs and the department as a whole has not been emphasized. The report suggests that there is little or no notable progress or commitment to disability occurred during 2007. This point is misleading, as DFID have launched their 'how to' paper and verbalized a commitment to disability research and data gathering on disability. However DFID seem to be avoiding a public recognition and commitment to the importance of this work.

 

3.3 Without significant political, policy and operational focus on disability, progress on the MDGs will be slowed. World Vision hopes that, with the ratification of the UN Convention, DFID can make some real progress in their mainstreaming agenda by adopting specific disability-related targets against each goal.

 

Questions for DFID

What is the department doing to ensure that the disability is addressed effectively in the context of efforts to achieve the MDGs, especially when there is very little mention of this issue within the report?

 

The effectiveness of DFID's mechanisms for evaluating the impact of its aid

 

DFID staff cuts

4.1 World Vision continues to be concerned about DFID headcount reductions in UK and field offices, and its potential impact on programme quality. Partly because of cuts in staff, DFID's capacity to engage in policy dialogue is constrained at a time when their budget is increasing by 11% each year. In our view, DFID's spend will be most effective where it is informed by extensive dialogue with recipient governments, civil society and other donors. This is especially the case in conflict-affected and 'fragile' states where DFID is not providing budget support and aid is projectised and requires labour-intensive design, planning and management. Yet it also arises where DFID is giving DBS, and where policy dialogue risks being confined to macro-level discussions with Finance and Planning Ministries. One example of these capacity constraints is that DFID field staff did not have the capacity to launch the recent AIDS strategy at meetings with key stakeholders at the country level.

 

 

Questions for DFID

 

Are the current efficiencies truly sustainable and is DFID going to be effective in delivering an increased level of aid with fewer staff?

 

---

[i] Ahmed, A. and R. Vargas Hill. 2007. 'The World's Most Deprived: Characteristics and Causes of Extreme Poverty and Hunger'. IFPRI: Washington, D.C.