Memorandum submitted by World Vision
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 25 September.
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
£1 billion per annum 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 for DFID
— What is the department doing to meet
the PM's pledge to spend £1 billion 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
25 September—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".[35]
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.
Question 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.
Question 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?
June 2008
35 Ahmed, A and R Vargas Hill. 2007. "The World's
Most Deprived: Characteristics and Causes of Extreme Poverty and
Hunger". IFPRI: Washington, D.C. Back
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