Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 75)
TUESDAY 20 OCTOBER 2009
PROFESSOR ANTHONY
COSTELLO, MS
SANDRA KABIR
AND MR
BEN HOBBS
Q60 Chairman: We know what you mean
but can you be more specific about "gender sensitive"?
Ms Kabir: I would say that, for
instance, if you look at the budget for maternal health it is
only one small part of the overall health budget. The overall
health budget is looking at many different components, but maternal
health, although there are vast numbers of women dying in Bangladesh
from pregnancy or at the time of birth, the proportion of the
budget that is allocated for that is not the right ratio. It is
budget allocation, and it is not just money, it is efficiency.
It is no use pouring loads of money into a programme if the efficiency
levels are not good, and it is something everyone needs to address,
for example the capacity building of the people who work in health.
The infrastructure was mentioned in the previous session. If you
do not have good roads, if you do not have electricity, you cannot
run a hospital without electricity and you cannot get patients
to the hospital if there are not decent roads. It is all interconnected.
I would like to see DFID playing a much bigger role in supporting
the Government of Bangladesh in its vision for changing the status
of health in Bangladesh. It is not just looking at hospitals and
clinics—in fact, that is the smallest part of it—it
is looking at gender issues and a lot more things.
Mr Hobbs: Just back on women in
politics again. You were asking about why you have a prime minister
who is a woman and yet there is lack of empowerment. Sheikh Hasina
and some of the other leading women in politics were elected in
the contested seats, so they were not in these reserved seats
that I was talking about. That process of competitive election
is really important because women are standing face-to-face with
candidates who are male and there is that sort of equalling of
the genders, if you like.
Q61 Chairman: They are immediately
second-class MPs if they are in reserved seats as opposed to having
one in their own right.
Ms Kabir: Directly elected.
Mr Hobbs: Yes, directly elected.
At local level there are some quite encouraging developments because
at the Union Parishad level and the Upazila Parishad level you
do have competitive elections for women to take positions on those
two tiers of local government. It is a third of the seats in the
Union Parishads reserved for women, but there is a competitive
process for those elections.
Q62 Mr Sharma: Should DFID include
specific targets to ensure participation of and benefits for women
and girls in its own programmes? What other measures could DFID
put in place to help to improve the position of women in Bangladeshi
society?
Professor Costello: Coming back
to the power of a women's group, because it reaches right down
to village level and involves very poor women, one of the findings
from a study that we in Women and Children First were involved
in, in tribal India, was not only the effect on mortality rates
but we measured postnatal depression rates. There was a 60% reduction
in postnatal depression in the areas where the women's groups
were going on, which is very interesting. It may be a marker of
this kind of solidarity effect. In Nepal, where there has been
a Maoist civil insurgency going on until very recently, we stopped
visiting women's groups for a couple of years because of the difficulties.
They all kept going and they all talked about the value of being
part of this solidarity movement through the stress of the war.
We withdrew funding from that whole programme two years ago, and
I was rather of the opinion that rather like all other development
interventions everything would collapse, but 80% of all the women's
groups set up in a large area of Nepal are carrying on without
any financial support. You go out and say, "Gosh, our groups
are still running!" and they say, "They are not your
groups, they are our groups!" There is a tremendous amount
of hidden benefit in regard to gender and empowerment in the broader
sense that comes about with this kind of community mobilisation
and could be built into all DFID programmes.
Q63 John Battle: On education, one
of the things that strikes me is that the enrolment at primary
school is good but the drop-out rate is very high. What specifically
could DFID do to encourage longer participation in schools so
they are not just signing on and leaving? Specifically what measures
to ensure that girls stay on at school longer because obviously
the drop-out rate for girls is much higher and that goes through
the system?
Professor Costello: It is not
really my area.
Ms Kabir: That is changing. More
and more girls are going into primary school and completing primary
school, but it is still not as good as we would like it to be.
It is improving. It is the style of education also. Africa has
a similar problem. For instance, do the schools have toilets that
the girls can use? If you do not have toilets girls are not going
to go to school, things like that. It is changing, and we have
to continue to keep our eye on the ball with regard to girls'
education, not just primary but also higher education, and that
could involve vocational training, not necessarily only sitting
the classroom but vocational training which would then lead to
employment.
Mr Hobbs: You need to look at
issues around quality of the schools and quality of teaching,
but then also some of the issues such as why it is easier for
girls to be pulled out of school than it is for boys. That is
linked again to the cultural issue I mentioned earlier. There
is the cost of schooling as well, which is, I am sure, another
important barrier for poor families.
Q64 John Battle: And the reverse
of that which might mean that the young person contributes to
the family income when family incomes are falling so goes back
home to help.
Mr Hobbs: Yes, in times of crisis.
On the question of what DFID could do, we have suggested they
should aim for 50% of their programmes having disaggregated data
on gender in, say, the next five years. That is one specific proposal.
In terms of other interventions, for example, specialised training
for women, for female decision-makers, would be one idea. Sponsorship
schemes for women becoming managers of NGOs or in the private
sector in management positions is another idea. The other thing
that should be mentioned is the way that DFID is set up in Bangladesh
is not really conducive to giving a lot of support to the smaller
NGOs. Often the money goes through these big management consortia
and large NGOs. I would say they should make sure there is sufficient
funding for grass roots initiatives and work by Bangladeshi grass
roots NGOs. It is interesting because in south Asia, actually
in India, DFID has quite a strong policy on social exclusion and
is funding various initiatives, including one that Christian Aid
is managing which is on caste-based discrimination. In Bangladesh
they have not been so vocal in developing a policy on social exclusion,
and that could be something they could develop in coming years.
We should look not just at the issue of women's roles and women's
rights but also at the position of Dalits in Bangladesh. Up to
5% of the population are Dalits, so from both the Hindu and Muslim
sections of the population; and look at indigenous peoples, the
hill tract peoples that were mentioned earlier, and the Bihari
communities. Having that social exclusion focus is another thing
that they could develop more strongly and we are noticing that
is quite absent at the moment.
Q65 Chairman: Professor Costello,
you have made a number of references to Nepal. You should be aware
that the Committee is also visiting Nepal on this visit, so if
you were able to give us some evidence on your experiences in
Nepal relevant to the terms of reference we have, it would be
helpful.
Professor Costello: Now?
Q66 Chairman: You have made a number
of references which suggest you could give us a little bit more
useful information. In writing, I mean, not now. Can you give
us a written response?
Professor Costello: Yes, with
Nepal actually I could do that rather better because I lived and
worked there for a long time.
Q67 Chairman: I do not want you to
talk us through lunch, but it would be very helpful.
Ms Kabir: If I could say two things.
I think that DFID could do a lot more with the British Bangladeshi
diaspora here in the UK. BRAC UK is working with them a lot. For
instance, we have a diaspora volunteering programme where we support
British Bangladeshi professionals to volunteer in Bangladesh,
and that is working out extremely well. They are coming back and
doing development awareness in the UK and becoming involved in
international development issues.
Q68 Chairman: Can you also help on
that because the Committee has decided it would like to have a
meeting with representatives of the diaspora, probably in Birmingham
we thought. You can probably give us some help.
Ms Kabir: No problem at all. The
other thing I wanted to say, and I do not want to promote BRAC
UK but it is just an idea I want to plant in your minds, is the
lessons that BRAC has learnt in Bangladesh and other countries
in Asia and Africa over the decades we are adapting to the diaspora
communities here in the UK. So far we have been concentrating
in Tower Hamlets. This is a reference to your comment, by the
way. We made a visit to Burnley with the Prince's Trust. It does
work. It is in terms of women health volunteers, money management,
voluntary work and things like that. There is a huge potential
which DFID and other parts of the British Government are not taking
advantage of in the diaspora communities.
Q69 John Battle: We could follow
that up after the visit perhaps by visiting Tower Hamlets.
Ms Kabir: Yes. I hope that you
will be visiting BRAC in Bangladesh! I can send you information
before you go.
Q70 Chairman: Yes, we are. That is
extremely helpful. We were discussing Birmingham and/or London
and I am beginning to think we need to do both. That would be
extremely helpful. It sounds as if we are on the right track.
Ms Kabir: One last comment. I
am sorry, I did say two but it is actually three. DFID in Bangladesh
is in a way doing itself a disservice; it does not talk about
itself enough. DFID has been investing in Bangladesh for many
years now and huge amounts, it is the biggest bilateral donor
to Bangladesh, but I do not think DFID and the British Government
are talking themselves up enough about what they are doing with
the Government of Bangladesh and NGOs and other things, because
there are lots of wonderful things happening. I think we should
shout it out a bit more.
Q71 Chairman: It is always DFID's
style, of course, but we take note of that. There are a couple
more other things we wanted to explore with you. One we have already
talked about with the previous witnesses, the Chars Programme
and the Committee has already looked at this. I wonder whether
you have anything to add to what we have already heard about its
benefits and shortcomings, and, more to the point, what happens
when the programme ends, in other words its continuity?
Mr Hobbs: I would like to have
the chance like you do to visit the Chars Livelihoods Programme,
but I have not unfortunately visited it. From my analysis of some
of the programme documents what I can say is that overall I think
what they are doing is pretty good. There are a lot of signs that
asset transfer is raising income levels of the poorest households
by as much as 100%, so the targeting of the very poor, and raising
the plinth will clearly help some of them with flooding. The veterinary
extension schemes and some of the other things are good. What
I would say though, and again I have not visited the programme
so you might be in a better position than me to make a strong
judgment on some of these things, is I do not really notice the
kind of longevity or sustainability of the programme being there
because it does strike me as essentially a welfare programme,
and what you do not see a lot of is the attempt to understand
why these people are in poverty and on these Chars in the first
place, and what improvements need to be made to their lives, what
actions the government needs to take to address some of the classic
issues such as lack of agricultural land, lack of access to health
and education services and lack of access to employment, because
there are huge employment shortages too amongst these communities.
What I would like to see more of is a focus on advocacy towards
the government in those areas so that some of these structural
causes of poverty get addressed so that when this programme ends
some of this good work that has happened does not just peter out.
I do not feel that, even saying some NGOs can be in there and
helping out—I still think there is still an important task
to hold the government to account on some of these issues. The
other issue is around the impact that climate change will have
on the Chars, and actually the more basic point of whether you
can invest in the Chars, is it worth investing in the Chars if
they are getting washed away so frequently and then recreated
somewhere else? For me there is an important that I hope the programme
has looked at, whether it is worth making those investments on
the Chars in view of the temporary nature of the phenomenon, their
existence. What are the other strategies on resettlement elsewhere,
on the mainland or on stable land? What are those options? Coming
back to the climate change issue, we know that river flows will
increase with climate change, so in the monsoon season there will
be more flooding and heavier rainfall, so that is another thing
that would need to be thought about carefully.
Mr Singh: In your submission you were
saying—not critical—there was a concern that DFID's
approach to disaster risk reduction is focused on physical infrastructure
projects, and you think it should be more about raising awareness.
It occurred to me when I read that, that surely DFID is doing
the right thing in terms of doing infrastructure projects to try
and lessen the risk when disasters occur.
Q72 Chairman: They would describe
this as adaptation as opposed to mitigation.
Mr Hobbs: Yes. There is obviously
an issue around climate change funding and the fact that it should
be additional funding to existing ODA, and I would have a problem
with DFID labelling the Chars Livelihoods Programme as a climate
change programme because of that issue. There are international
conventions and the UK has entered commitments at the international
level that the climate change finance should be in addition to
ODA because it should not be taken away from these other important
sectors to do the climate change work. On the point you made,
I think it is more a question of us wanting DFID to continue some
of the good approach that it has had in the past where it has
recognised that it is not just structures that count. For example,
in the Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme there is that
recognition that it is about getting government policies to be
improved and getting communities to be working on the issues.
We had seen mention of infrastructure featuring heavily in the
Country Assistance Plan, and we were looking at that a little
bit warily and wanting to make clearly this point that just building
infrastructure is not the sole answer, you need to focus on maintenance
of existing infrastructure first but then also community ownership
of these assets and the way the disaster restructuring policies
work at a local level.
Professor Costello: On the evaluation
point, I reiterate again that there are tremendous links that
DFID and others have supported with indigenous universities, BRAC
University in Sussex, Manchester, UCL with BADAS and various things,
which do not get brought to bear on the evaluation of relevant
DFID programmes. They tend to use short-term consultants to do
that and we do our research, and I think they should be linked
up much more. On climate change, I met with Atik Rahman when I
was in Dhaka about two months ago, who is one of the top climate
people, and he showed me a lovely slide—I had it on my computer—showing
the one-metre sea level rise effect on Bangladesh. At the moment
sea level rise in Bangladesh is about double the global rate because
it is warmer and so water expands. That means that they will hit
one metre probably, on current projections—but it could
accelerate—between 2040 and 2050, so that is only 30 or
40 years away. A one-metre sea level rise brings the coastline
up to Dhaka. It is really terrifying. I think Bangladesh has done
fantastically well. There were 300,000 people who died in 1971
from a cyclone, it was 130,000 in 1991, and in the 2007 cyclone
it was only 3,000. That reflects their tremendous resilience to
climate change, but this is going to challenge them in ways that—
Q73 Chairman: Is the result the Dutch
solution or is it abandonment?
Professor Costello: I would not
know about that. I do not think it is abandonment, but it may
obviously be abandonment in certain parts. The grave concern is
salinisation of drinking water at the moment in the southern states
and what effect that might have on things like blood pressure
and pregnancy.
Q74 Chairman: The implication is
that there should be a lot of dykes, which are quite expensive
to build and operate?
Professor Costello: Yes, actually
Atik Rahman said that the problem is that when you find the Dutch
and the British experts they are used to very static scenarios,
and he said the whole point is that they do not understand that
Bangladesh is this phenomenal hydrological moving target, that
water comes down one way and then it all goes back the other way,
so you have to apply different principles. I am right out of my
field here!
Q75 Chairman: It is a big challenge.
Mr Hobbs: There is of course the
debate on what is the appropriate solution and are coastal defences
a way or other less interventionist approaches. The one thing
I did notice in the Chittagong area when I was there last year
was that there were sea walls that had been breached by cyclone
Sidr. I spoke yesterday to one of our local partners in that area
about the situation because the sea water was getting right in
onto the agricultural land and completely stopping farming there
and causing real havoc. The director of that parliament said the
sea wall had still not been repaired, and this is nearly two years
on from Sidr. That is an example of one of the problems. It is
about making existing infrastructure work well rather than suddenly
dreaming up these big new schemes that we know in the past, because
there have been some schemes that have been quite controversial
around infrastructure like the flood action plan. That was just
an additional point.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed,
and thank you for your offers of additional assistance, for example
on Nepal and communication with the diaspora, we certainly do
feel that will be valuable. It has been really helpful from our
point of view, and seeing these things on the ground will give
us a better idea. Thank you very much.
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