UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 168-iiiHouse of COMMONSMINUTES OF EVIDENCETAKEN BEFOREINTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
DFID'S PROGRAMME IN
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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament: W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, Telephone Number: 020 7233 1935
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the International Development Committee
on
Members present
Malcolm Bruce, in the Chair
Hugh Bayley
Andrew Stunell
________________
Memorandum submitted by the Department for International Development
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Michael Foster MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, and Ms Sarah Sanyahumbi, Head, DFID Nepal, Department for International Development, gave evidence.
Q103 Chairman: Good morning. Just for the record, we know who you are, but could you introduce yourself.
Mr Foster: Mike Foster, Minister for
International Development, and Sarah Sanyahumbi, the Head of DFID
Q104 Chairman:
Can I
welcome you, and it is nice to see you again, Sarah, as obviously we did have a
very interesting visit. Just to go
straight to it, one of the interesting things about Nepal, and actually it is one
of the reasons we went there and it has been raised a number of times in
evidence beforehand, is that it is one of those key states on which DFID is
focusing as a fragile state, as evidenced in the White Paper. The simple question is: what is it about
Mr Foster: I think, Mr Chairman, there
are strong historic links between the
Q105 Chairman:
Those
answers though are specific to
Mr Foster: I do not think they are unique, but I do think it is a niche area in development that the Department has taken on board, as witnessed in White Paper 4 last July. We recognise that conflict and poverty go hand in hand and you need the secure environment in which to be able to have good development work to operate, and some of the mechanisms that we have in place as a Government, let us say, the Conflict Prevention Pool, the Stabilisation Unit, give us perhaps an edge over other international donors in terms of the work that they do, so we have perhaps a bit more flexibility in how we would operate compared to other donors that might be limited in terms of their engagement, let us say, with the military.
Q106 Chairman: That is fair enough, but just what I am really drawing out is that DFID is setting itself up as a bilateral donor with a specific focus on fragile states, and that is quite a high-risk and difficult area to do, so I am just trying to tease out the extent to which those lessons can be transferred. I will put it the other way round: is there anything which you have been able to bring to Nepal that you have got from other fragile states, or is this change of focus really too early to assess on that basis?
Mr Foster: I do not think we would have put that focus in the White Paper, Mr Chairman, if we did not think, as a Department, that we had learnt lessons from our experience on the ground, working in fragile states already and knowing that there was a niche there that had to be addressed by international donors. Without wishing to blow the trumpet of the Department too loudly, DFID is seen as the world leader in terms of international development, so to signal to other countries our intent about dealing with fragile states, albeit with the associated risk that goes with it because some of the work is, by nature, going to be risky, working in conflict areas, the lessons that we have learnt from earlier engagement in Africa, lessons from Iraq and lessons from Afghanistan will of course help inform processes that are currently ongoing and of course future ones. There will be future conflicts that are going to require engagement from a development arm and, the more we can learn, then clearly the better it is going to be for those people who are caught up in a conflict.
Q107 Hugh
Bayley: How much funding this year, 2009/10, from the
conflict unit has gone to
Mr Foster: It is just under £2 million, and Sarah, I know, has the details because we have been looking at some of the issues around how the Conflict Prevention Pool will work, and Sarah will go through some of the details of where it has been spent.
Ms Sanyahumbi: Just to underline the Minister's point, it is the tools like the Conflict Prevention Pool which give us the flexibility to operate in Nepal, and it is not a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but we have been able to respond quite quickly and when asked for support. For example, we are funding Safer World and a local organisation called NIPS to provide support to the Technical Committee and the Special Committee and to support the process of reintegration by giving them experiences and examples from other places in the world where this has also happened, army integration and the process of integrating the combatants. We are engaging with the security forces on professionalisation of the forces, we have done a workshop on civil and military relations, so trying to bring the army and the civil society closer together and support that dialogue, we have supported the International Crisis Group who have published a number of very influential and quite challenging reports on Nepal, and we are also supporting on the human rights side as well, so it is a mixture of things and it is very much demand-driven based on the discussions that we are having and the opportunities that we see within the peace process to try and drive things forward.
Q108 Hugh
Bayley: This sounds like important work, but it is a
fairly low level of funding, given that the Conflict Prevention Pool has now
£170 million in it. Why is relatively
little allocated to
Mr Foster: The two major commitments of the Conflict Prevention Pool are Iraq and Afghanistan where there is a greater engagement clearly with the military forces as well as clear development needs, but, as Sarah said, the use of the CPP in Nepal is demand-driven where we see opportunities to fund schemes that will engage with the peace process and hopefully take it that next step further forward. I do not think that we have had demands on the CPP that are above the allocation of the £2 million. If we did, then I think, Mr Bayley, you would have a very good point to raise.
Q109 Hugh
Bayley: In December, you announced the recruitment of
1,000 personnel to the Stabilisation Unit.
Can you explain to the Committee what the role of the Stabilisation Unit
is and whether any of those personnel will be going to
Mr Foster: This is the civilian
stabilisation cadre where we have been recruiting people with expertise in
civilian life, but could be used for post-conflict situations, fragile states,
and the purpose is that there will be a group of them, 1,000-strong, who are on
a database, their skills are listed so that, if situations arose where there was
a need for a civilian infill, these are people who have volunteered their
skills and services to help. I have not
seen at the moment any requirement for the cadre to be posted and allocated to
Q110 Hugh Bayley: Could I go back to the answer you gave on demobilisation and reintegration of the guerrilla fighters. I was on the part of the team that went to one of the Maoists' - I forget what they are called.
Mr Foster: Cantonments.
Q111 Hugh Bayley: Exactly. Although the command structure appeared to exercise military discipline, potentially, it seemed to me, having tens of thousands of testosterone-filled young men who have had an irregular military background and who have access to weapons, as they have the weapons they guard the camp with, with which they could open the arsenal of weapons under UN control, and the UN made it clear to us they had no way of stopping it, there are huge inherent risks if the political process breaks down, particularly if the Maoist military commanders think that the political process is breaking down, or if the young men themselves think that they do not have a civilian future in Nepal, so when do you expect there to be large-scale civilianisation and demobilisation of these guerrillas? When is it going to start?
Mr Foster: Well, obviously Sarah has flown in this week, so she will have the up-to-date position on this, and I suspect it is probably better news than had you had this hearing before Christmas in terms of the progress that has gone on.
Ms Sanyahumbi: It is, indeed. To start from the beginning, there are two sets of combatants. There are the disqualified, which is around about 4,000, which includes 3,000 of the minors who were underage when they were recruited and 1,000 of the late recruits, and then there are the 19,600 of the, if you like, fully-fledged ex-Maoist fighters that are in the camps. On the first one, the discharge of the minors, that process has already started and is actually going very well, so I think there have been about six or seven camps where the minors have already been discharged and about another two to go. It is a process that the UN has overseen and we have contributed funding to that of £2 million so that we can put together the packages, and so far, as I say, the process has been very good. Would you like me to tell you a little bit of how it works or is that too much detail for now?
Q112 Hugh Bayley: I think we would actually, yes, please.
Ms Sanyahumbi: They are discharged and there is a kind of official ceremony where the Maoist commanders, the UN and others are present, and they are officially discharged and told to go. They are given 10,000 rupees, of which 5,000 is a kind of allowance, 4,000 is for travel costs to take them back to their villages and 1,000 is a kind of per diem, a sort of subsistence allowance. They are also given a card which identifies them as an ex-combatant and on that card there is a telephone number which they can phone any time in the next six months to talk to a kind of careers counsellor on the packages which are available to help them reintegrate into civilian life, and we supported the UN putting together those packages. Those packages, there are four areas, so there are packages for health training, they can go back to school, they can do some kind of skills training/vocational training, or they can have support to set up their own business. Now, obviously it is too early to say what the uptake of those packages will be, but we are hopeful that there will be significant uptake which will help these people reintegrate. On the second part, the 19,600, again there has been positive progress because the Special Committee and the Technical Committee, when you were there, had not been formed and they have now been formed and they are actually meeting, and these are cross-party committees. The high-level political mechanism, which was a key requirement of the CPA, has also been formed and that involves the heads of the three main political parties plus the Prime Minister, and it is for them to really decide on how reintegration is going to happen and one of the critical things that they have got to decide is how many of the 19,600 who will be reintegrated will be integrated into the security forces, and we do not know that yet. However, they have launched a 112-day plan which takes us roughly until the middle of May, by which time integration is supposed to be complete, so by 15 May the Government is optimistic that 19,600 ex-combatants will be either integrated into the army or security forces or will be rehabilitated in the districts, so there has been some positive movement on that.
Q113 Andrew
Stunell: Can we move to DFID's own resources in
Mr Foster: Mr Stunell, I have to say, I
am disappointed to hear that comment.
That is certainly not the experience I have had in the two visits I have
done to
Q114 Andrew
Stunell: I wonder if I could just pause you there. I do not think that our witnesses were
criticising engagement with the political establishment in Kathmandu, but I
think linked to it was perhaps a view from them that that political
establishment in
Mr Foster: Part of the visit structure
that, I think, the Committee did and also that I did was not just limited to
Ms Sanyahumbi: It is at least three, and most people ask to extend.
Mr Foster: Certainly, the impression I
got on both visits was that working in
Ms Sanyahumbi: The question seems to be alluding to UK-based staff and, as the Minister said, a lot of staff do actually stay longer than their three years because it is such an interesting and challenging place to work, but we also have a number of very professional, very highly qualified local advisers there, so they also help us. They are an integral part of the team and help us understand the local context, so I think that is an important factor also to remember. With regard to our local knowledge, we do have it in people's objectives to actually get out of the office regularly, so they are definitely encouraged to get out. It is not always as easy to do as that, and last week I spent three hours at the airport trying to get one of the discharge processes and had to turn back because the helicopter could not fly. We did do 90 visits last year and we aim to do as many as we can that make sense, but we do also have intelligence coming to us at the local level through the risk management office that has field officers and also through our programmes, so through the CSP programme, which you saw, the Community Support Programme, where we have officers on the ground and through our roads programmes, so through our programmes, which are all over Nepal, we have also got intelligence coming back to us all the time on what the situation is on the ground. I would have to say, I am also a little bit disappointed, as the Minister said, to hear that quote, but I would hope that our local intelligence is pretty good.
Q115 Andrew Stunell: Perhaps to follow through from that, which you may have partly answered, maybe the institutional knowledge, how do you ensure that that is passed on as post-holders rotate and change?
Mr Foster: Well, obviously not every post-holder will have their three-year term of office end on the same day, so there is the overlap which will automatically be in place, and then there is the recruitment and employment of local staff who are not part of the three-year rotational cycle, so inbuilt into the system, I think, is a platform for a proper, professional handover, but engrained in that will be the base knowledge provided by locally employed staff.
Q116 Chairman:
One
of our witnesses said that they had rarely seen a country as corrupt as Nepal
and, by definition, I think some of us possibly have, and that that is part of
the problem of fragile states, but the point, nevertheless, is, when you are
engaging with a country which has endemic corruption, how do you follow your
own funding and ensure that it goes where it is supposed to go? Do you have to put in place especially robust
monitoring services to follow it through, and is that worse or better in
Mr Foster: Obviously, Sarah can go into the detail on the process that we use in Nepal to deal with corruption, but clearly, as part of the establishment of the country plan and the programmes that we have set out, there is that risk assessment that is undertaken because of the reputation that Nepal has of corruption, and we know that corruption actually poisons the whole atmosphere in which development takes place, but in terms of the detail of how DFID works to protect its programmes, Sarah, do you want to say a bit more?
Ms Sanyahumbi: We are doing a lot of work on
that, as I think we touched on during your visit as well. On corruption, we have very extensive
monitoring plans for our programmes, so regular monitoring where we go to the
field and we do actually look through the financial reports and check
those. We are working with the Government
very closely on public financial management reforms and how to strengthen the
government systems. We have had a lot of
difficult discussions also on procurement, which is obviously one of the areas
most vulnerable to corruption, and through our sector support in health and in
education we have very much strengthened our procurement plans, which we are
confident will safeguard the
Q117 Chairman: But have you had problems? Have you had to terminate programmes or take steps to recover money?
Ms Sanyahumbi: We have seen it as very necessary to strengthen procurement arrangements, particularly in the health sector, and that has been an area of very serious debate as we move towards the next phase of our sector budget support for health. We are in fact proposing taking out the procurement component of that sector budget support so that it can be managed externally until we have strengthened the systems sufficiently that we could allow the health procurement, the drugs procurement, to be done through government systems, so we do change our programmes and adapt them, as necessary. I am not aware of any case where we have actually stopped funding, but there might be and through our IDIF or our ESP there may be instances there.
Q118 Chairman:
You
will be aware obviously that the PAC has occasionally investigated it and I
think it has just produced a report on
Mr Foster: We share the concerns, Mr Chairman, in that, at the very time when public sector settlements are tight and people are looking at how the Government is generally using its money, we have to be seen in terms of development to make sure that the money does exactly get to people on the ground for whom it is intended, and that is why, as a Department, we take seriously the concerns about fraud and corruption. As Sarah said, we have the zero tolerance approach and internally we have the systems that are there to kick in, and I have seen sometimes anonymous and sometimes non-anonymous complaints come in that I have put through the system to say, "I want this checked", and some weeks later it will come back and there has been the investigation that reassures me that the allegation that had been made had no grounds behind it. In effect, I have tested the system out along those lines and it is important for us, as a Department, that we are seen to be whiter than white when it comes to tackling corruption.
Q119 Chairman: Is corruption or other reasons part of the reason why you have difficulty in reaching the poorer sections? The evidence suggests that in a lot of these schemes it is not the well-off, but the ones who are a little better organised who take advantage of them and that the really poor, one way or another, do not. Is part of that finding people who can actually deliver honestly to the poor, or is it just a lack of access because they live in such remote areas and, therefore, it makes it hard to reach them?
Mr Foster: If I were making a more general point, Mr Chairman, I would say that probably in most countries in the world the very poorest were the ones who did not always access the provision of services made available, and I think in the UK we suffer from the same blight in that services are set up, but sometimes it is getting the very poorest to gain access, so there are always challenges about the fact that people are poor and are not educated to a level that enables them to gain access to a service. Clearly, in places like Nepal there are geographical access problems as much as there are educational access challenges, but I do not think the inability to reach these groups is because of a lack of intent and certainly I would not say it was a lack of concern over the risk involved with it, but I think there are more challenges out there than those two.
Q120 Andrew
Stunell: If we could just take a look at the National
Adaptation Plan of Action and the whole climate change issue, clearly the IPCC
has had a very embarrassing couple of weeks with the recognition that some of
their proclamations were not right. Is
that making any difference to the approach to this, as far as DFID is
concerned, or the programme in
Mr Foster: I think, Mr Stunell, the
science generally is very clear about climate change and about the need for us
all to tackle it. The disappointment was
clearly at
Ms Sanyahumbi: Just to say something about
the
Q121 Andrew
Stunell: Can I just pick up that point about it being
Government-owned because perhaps the impression I got mistakenly when we visited
was that it was rather a donor-driven process, but you are saying there is
definite ownership by the political classes, if I can put it that way, in
Ms Sanyahumbi: Absolutely, and the Prime
Minister himself heads a climate change commission - I have forgotten the exact
name - and he actually has made this one of his top priorities and it is one of
the top priorities of the entire Government.
You will know that there was just before Christmas a Nepal Cabinet
meeting held at Base Camp to highlight the issues of climate change in
Mr Foster: I think it is part of that evolving process from the end of the civil war that, just coming out of a civil war, perhaps climate change is not the first thing on the minds of the political leadership, but the sense of direction and impetus that is there now, I think, Sarah has described very well. Certainly, in the meetings which I held with the former Minister of the Environment at the time, he was an activist in every sense of the word, not just in terms of his interest in the environment and knowing that this is what Nepal had to do, but he was out in the community, engaging with them and campaigning with them to make climate change something that ordinary Nepalis took to their hearts as well, not just for the clear benefits for the development of their economic prosperity that it brings, but actually the contribution to the wider world, and they are in the unique position in the world to take this forward.
Q122 Chairman:
Just
as a supplementary to that, our brief tells us that the total budget for the
Ms Sanyahumbi: That is right, yes, £1/2 million which is roughly $875,000.
Q123 Chairman: Is that just for 2008?
Ms Sanyahumbi: That is for this financial
year. That does not include the funding
that we have set aside to then pick up some of the priority actions that come
out of the
Q124 Chairman: Is it possible perhaps to get a note of what additional funding you are planning or you are proposing?
Ms Sanyahumbi: Okay.
Q125 Chairman: Some of us went to look at forestry, and obviously we only got a bit of the community forestry flavour and the rest of it was what we were told or heard rather than anything else, but on the downside apparently there has been an awful lot of deforestation across Nepal, and it is not unusual in development and it happened in this country after all, but the implication we have is that it has been above average and serious for a variety of reasons. Although some of our witnesses have said that some of the forestry or reforestation programmes have been successful, and it was put to us by one witness that there are trees now where there never were trees, however, there is illegal deforestation, ownership disputes and corruption or whatever. What is the key problem, and is the deforestation accelerating, decelerating, or where are we with it?
Mr Foster: I think there is a
recognition now within the Government of the importance of forests, not just for
their aesthetic qualities, but actually as a way of enhancing development, and
programmes like the one that the Committee saw and I have seen, the community
livelihood programme, it was very clearly demonstrated there how communities
can not only earn income themselves, but actually can bring about some
regeneration in their community as a result of surpluses that they gather, so
there is a development opportunity which I think the Government have now
recognised. In terms of the stats that I
have got on it, the forestry sector contributes about 10% to
Ms Sanyahumbi: Yes, land tenure is obviously
one of the tricky issues in forestry.
The communities manage the land through our forestry programme which, I
would say, is a great programme and has really benefited large numbers of
people in
Q126 Chairman: That almost implies though that deforestation will go on in places like the Terai, if that is where the land is valuable, and then you have the community forest programme planting trees elsewhere, so it is kind of shifting around, which probably explains the trees being where they were not before. If DFID is putting a substantial amount of money into forestry, how can you be sure that what you are doing is not just moving it around rather than actually delivering real change?
Ms Sanyahumbi: Well, on the Terai we are
gradually expanding our forestry programme into new areas. We do not have evidence that we are just kind
of moving things around, as you say, because where the communities are already
operating they continue to operate, and I have met communities that have
60-year community management plans and they are there for the long term. Moving into the highly contested Terai area,
that will be a challenge and that is why it is so clear that we need to have
the land entitlement issues sorted out in the constitution as there needs to be
legal entitlement for the communities, and there is quite a lobby actually
pushing for this in
Q127 Chairman: The forest community that we visited looked like a model community, and we were shown the women's committee and the school which was being extended, the water supply and the Dalit work programme and so forth. Some of our witnesses have suggested that they are not all quite like that and in quite a lot of cases the Dalits, the women and so forth are not given the same degree of engagement, so to what extent do you feel that is typical, or to what extent do you accept that there is a problem in trying to ensure that it is not just community people?
Ms Sanyahumbi: That is not the experience
that I have had or that I am aware of.
It is not a criticism that I have heard before because the communities
that I have visited and that I am aware of are very inclusive, and actually it
has been that all the different ethnic groups and caste groups that happen to
be in that area are fully involved in the forest management. Certainly, some of the most impressive women's
groups that I have met who are talking about health issues and they have set up
their own micro-credit schemes are a kind of by-product of the
Chairman: I accept that, but it was just as a challenge and you have answered the question.
The Committee suspended from
Chairman: Apologies for that hiatus and
appreciation for your co-operation, but, as I have informally established that
Sarah is flying back to
Q128 Andrew
Stunell: Hydropower is obviously one of the great
unexploited resources of
Mr Foster: First of all, your analysis,
Mr Stunell, is absolutely right. It is
described as 'Nepal's oil' and neighbouring
Q129 Andrew Stunell: You have focused on large schemes and water storage, but small hydro possibly running schemes might have quite a lot more immediate and practical application. Is that something DFID has taken a look at?
Mr Foster: I agree totally, that micro-hydro generation is something that is there and it is already proving its value in terms of development. It is not an area, I have to say, of expertise that DFID has. The Norwegians are certainly better-placed with their expertise at micro-hydro, so I think there is certainly the scope there to benefit the people of Nepal, but not necessarily from DFID doing it directly because other donors are better-placed.
Ms Sanyahumbi: It is not an actual project area for us, as such, but within the LFP programme communities have taken it upon themselves to build small micro-hydro schemes. Similarly, within our roads programmes, where there is a bit of funding set aside for small-scale infrastructure, some of the communities have taken it on themselves to actually set up micro-hydro, so there is a little bit of, if you like, indirect DFID support for it, but we would also anticipate some of the NAPA pilot funding to go towards micro-hydro and possibly some of the Fast Start funding also to go towards micro-hydro.
Q130 Andrew Stunell: In terms of community development and engagement with smaller schemes, would it, first of all, be quicker and, secondly, perhaps more sympathetic to them without the displacement and so on of larger projects? Are you looking at that broader societal impact of the different schemes?
Ms Sanyahumbi: Micro-hydro certainly, when it is community-managed, is sustainable and it is something that the communities put a lot of store by, but micro-hydro, unless it is on an absolutely massive scale, will not solve Nepal's power shortages and, when you are talking about up to 20 hours a day in the dry season with no power, then you really do need the big schemes as well, so I think that actually both complement each other.
Q131 Hugh Bayley: This is a country where development is held hostage by political instability. What is your assessment of the consequences of the Maoists being out of Government, and will the recently established high-level political process help to move the peace process forward?
Mr Foster: Undoubtedly, the process will be moved forward by having all of the major parties engaged in the high-level committee. As I say, Sarah flew in this week, so she can perhaps explain on the ground a more up-to-date analysis of what that means in terms of the process.
Ms Sanyahumbi: The high-level mechanism is really focusing on the sort of top-line areas of disagreement that need to be sorted with the CPA, so it is talking about integration. Development, as the Prime Minister himself ----
Q132 Chairman: Meaning military integration?
Ms Sanyahumbi: Yes, military integration, so that is one of the big areas that they need to pay attention to and sort out. The Prime Minister himself told you that development is actually not really a priority for his Government, unfortunately, but that is the reality that we are facing and, quite rightly in some ways, they are focused on the peace process and drawing that to a successful conclusion. Our ability to deliver development with the Government, that is the reason that we have the kind of programme that we have got in Nepal, and we have got a programme that is with the Government, through the Government and it is around the Government, so, even if you have a Government that is not functioning properly and Parliament is not able to meet, as has been the case for many months, although now, you will be pleased to hear, the Maoists have lifted their blockade on Parliament and since December it is now functioning properly, but, even if we have that dysfunctional political context, we can, because we have different kinds of programmes, still deliver development. We have programmes, like the Community Support Programme, the CSP, which you saw, which are direct implementation and which will deliver anyway, and we have programmes with the Government that we deliver, whether it is roads or whether it is health or education, where we think we can, whatever the political context, continue to deliver on those.
Q133 Hugh Bayley: Is there any prospect of the Maoists re-entering Government on a power-sharing basis?
Ms Sanyahumbi: Who knows? The 112-day plan says that the integration should be completed by May and then UNMIN will leave and then the constitution should be written by 28 May, and they are still sticking to that timetable, although it is getting even more ambitious because the timing has now been squeezed and certainly the timing for community consultation has been squeezed very much. Once the constitution has been written at the end of May, then you start preparation for the elections. What will happen in the interim is not clear at the moment, and there are a lot of discussions going on at the moment. It is one of the heartening things to see that those discussions are now happening formally through the high-level mechanism, and through the Special Committee and Technical Committee they are happening formally with all the parties, but what kind of agreement they will come to after 28 May is not yet clear.
Q134 Chairman: You have partially answered the question I have next about the constitution. You say they are on course in their own minds for May. How likely is that, and what would be the consequences if it were not finalised by the end of May?
Ms Sanyahumbi: If the constitution is not finalised by 28 May, there is a provision to extend by six months, so the process can continue for another six months.
Q135 Chairman: Elections presumably cannot take place until the constitution has been cleared, which was something which was raised with us, and local elections would not take place either. Is the constitution addressing the context for local elections?
Ms Sanyahumbi: One of the kind of sticking points of the constitution is that, of the numbers of papers that have been presented, one of the ones that has obviously been most discussed is the one on federalism and the one on what the State will possibly look like. I think that, until that has been sorted, it is very difficult to then know how we are going to take this process forward.
Q136 Chairman: I will certainly press that a little bit harder because the constitution requires the Maoists' support because of the two-thirds majority rule.
Ms Sanyahumbi: Yes.
Q137 Chairman: Clearly, creating the space for an election while the Maoists are popular is motivation for them, but this sort of federal thing, I did not quite understand it, but I got the impression that it was almost as if the Maoists were carving out the pieces of the country where they knew they would have control and wanting maximum autonomy, which does not sound like a good recipe for long-term unity. That is a tension for them and they want to defend their strongholds, but, on the other hand, they want to have national elections and they have got to get a constitution agreement to do it, so how does that all play out?
Ms Sanyahumbi: The process that is coming up
with the papers which will ultimately form the constitution, they are
cross-party, so all the parties are represented in those, hence why perhaps the
discussions are taking so long because they are trying to thrash out some of
these critical issues in those discussions.
There is a proposal on the table which is now being openly discussed for
14 states, and that is a cross-party paper which has now been put forward. There is already a reaction from various
minority and ethnic groups who are saying, "We don't agree with it", because
that does not give them their ethnic state that they were obviously hoping
for. I think it would be very difficult
for any plan for federalism to actually satisfy the wishes of all the different
groups. You have got 108 different
ethnic and minority groups in
Q138 Hugh Bayley: What might the deal on military integration look like? That is question one. Question two: I know DFID believes, and I believe, that it is important to establish more clearly civilian control of the military, but what progress has been made on that front and what help is DFID giving?
Ms Sanyahumbi: What might it look like? That is really partly what the High Level mechanism has been set up to do and what the Special Committee and Technical Committee are talking about. They are talking about the detail of how that will happen. One of the key things that need to happen is to agree on a number of how many of the 19,000 actually will go into the security forces. Once we have that then there can be a discussion about what happens to the others. There is an expectation that they would be offered a similar package to what is being offered to the minors. Until we have that number it is difficult for the process to move forward much from where we are now.
Q139 Hugh Bayley: It is not just a question of numbers, is it, it is whether you set up a separate brigade or unit, whether the Maoists maintain their command and control structure of their soldiers or whether you distribute the former Maoist combatants throughout the armed forces, and whether there are officer posts available.
Mr Foster: That is the discussion we have been having about how integrated the agreement will be. Will it be corps commanders, then an officer cadre and then foot soldiers integrated into the army? That is how we understand integration will take place. It is part of the discussions and negotiations that are ongoing.
Ms Sanyahumbi: It has to be something that the Maoists are happy with because promises have been made. That is why it is such a sensitive area for discussion at the moment.
Q140 Hugh Bayley: And on the civilian control?
Ms Sanyahumbi: You are aware of the reason why the former Maoist prime minister resigned?
Q141 Hugh Bayley: Yes.
Ms Sanyahumbi: That issue still has not been
resolved, so that is outstanding. We
would like to discuss with the government and the army of
Q142 Andrew Stunell: The evidence that we had from witnesses was very much that a large challenge is the impunity that the security forces have. I would just say in parenthesis that when we met the very well spoken and literate military officer you introduced us to we did not really get any impression of that, but nevertheless it seems about the last thing on earth the senior officers want is the integration of the Maoists into their army and, at the same time, on both sides there seems to be almost an acceptance that the abuses of the past are going to go unpunished. I wonder if you would like to comment on that.
Mr Foster: We would recognise that there
is a culture of impunity in
Q143 Andrew Stunell: Yes. That is good to hear, but what do you see as DFID's role or the donor community's role in actually moving that process forward? The evidence we have taken is that it is really undermining the people's sense of personal security, it is damaging their chances of access to services and impacts on the whole of society.
Mr Foster: Certainly the engagement that we have is to encourage movement to make the schemes work more rapidly than they are and to give some degree of sense of justice to ordinary members of the community. Sarah, in terms of the community you might want to say a little bit more.
Ms Sanyahumbi: On the general human rights and impunity issue, it is regrettable that no action has been taken. The embassy, diplomatic community and, indeed, development partners have raised this time and time again with the government and pushed for action. We have publicly said that it is regrettable that some of the high profile cases have not been resolved and in our view have not been taken to a satisfactory conclusion. We are supporting OHCHR - the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights - and are very strongly lobbying for the extension of OHCHR beyond June, because its current mandate comes to an end in June. We think one of the important roles we can play is to keep this very high on the agenda and to continue the international pressure for the human rights cases on all sides to be taken seriously and to be resolved.
Q144 Andrew
Stunell: It was put to us that far away from
Ms Sanyahumbi: This is a constant issue in
Q145 Andrew Stunell: At the lowest level in the community the evidence we were given was that it is very difficult to access justice to get wrongs put right or to have any trust or reliance in the formal systems of justice. Can you say something about the paralegal help and the mediation service, how effective you think that is and whether that could be replicated more widely?
Ms Sanyahumbi: I am very pleased you have
mentioned the paralegal committees because we are actually scaling up the work
of the paralegal committees as part of our strengthening of local governance
but also as part of our programme on violence against women. We have recently agreed that we will scale up
paralegal committees from 500 currently operational in 23 districts to 1,300 in
all 75 districts because we think that paralegal committees have shown they are
a useful tool for mediation and resolving some of the issues at the local
level. You will appreciate from your
visit that if you talk about local government in
Q146 Hugh
Bayley: Although
Mr Foster: First of all, we recognise
your assessment in terms of the inequalities in
Ms Sanyahumbi: Yes. Both through the pooled health and education
programmes we have worked with other donors to make sure that the next phases
of those programmes will really focus on the excluded and those who are more
difficult to access. That will be a
specific target area more so than it has in the current programmes. We are keeping the emphasis on that. With the current education programme we have
ensured that more than 1.4 million socially excluded children, including over
750,000 girls, have received primary education scholarships. We have also created over 100,000 additional
jobs for women from minority groups, from excluded groups, in our livelihoods
programme who have been specifically targeted.
Also, you will be aware that the Constituent Assembly we have at the
moment is the most representative Constituent Assembly that
Q147 Hugh Bayley: I remember going to visit a school in a Muslim village and it struck me as a very good place to make an intervention because this was a poor and excluded religious group. It has been suggested to us that by working through civil society organisations you are more likely to have civil society organisations amongst the better educated, the more prosperous and elite groups of society and, therefore, likely to reinforce inequality. I was interested to hear Sarah saying there is not an attempt to target resources on excluded groups, on Dalits, on minority religious or ethnic groups, but should not special efforts be made to provide resources for these groups? If you do not do it through targeting, how do you do it?
Mr Foster: Some of the work that has
gone on on the maternal health programmes, let us say, is geared towards some
of the most disadvantaged groups within
Ms Sanyahumbi: There are so many minority and excluded groups and that is why we try to take the approach of inclusion. On your point that civil society organisations tend to be the better educated because they write better proposals, we try and mitigate that. We encourage proposals for our Rights, Democracy and Inclusion Fund and also ESP from any group that comes to see us and asks for assistance and the quality of the proposal, as in terms of the quality of the writing of the proposal, is not what we are looking for. We are looking for whether it will actually address a particular need for that group. We do encourage minority groups to put forward proposals and we have funded quite a number of those proposals.
Mr Foster: The basis of going through government systems, through sector budget support, is to give universality of opportunity for people to gain access to better services, strengthening health systems in this case, but also making sure there is the opportunity for people particularly from disadvantaged groups to gain access to what we are putting forward.
Q148 Hugh Bayley: I was very interested to hear that eight per cent of the Constituent Assembly is now Dalit deputies. If one were to re-establish local government on the basis of universal franchise you would be likely to be giving a voice locally to more representatives of excluded and disadvantaged groups and they would be operating at a level where they would have much more leverage over the nature and provision of local services. Does that not make re-establishing local government an important governance priority?
Ms Sanyahumbi: Yes, absolutely. Yes, it does. We have the LGCDP programme which we want to strengthen because, as I say, we want to strengthen the local government mechanisms which exist and particularly on the financing of community activities and how that will be channelled, but we also need to have a decision on how federalism will actually operate in Nepal for them to decide how they want to structure the country and then we can work with the government on that as well.
Q149 Andrew Stunell: I just wanted to follow up on this about making sure that we are giving help to the poorest. What evaluation have you made of pro-poor elements of the retired Gurkha Welfare Programme? It is a clean water and sanitation programme, has got some very positive effects and probably fulfils a number of other policy objectives of the UK Government. Have you done an evaluation of its pro-poor impact bearing in mind that the Gurkhas themselves are recruited in quite a selective way?
Mr Foster: The figures that we have, Mr Stunell, are 33 per cent of the user committees are women and 60 per cent are from excluded groups working with the Gurkha welfare system. The figures would suggest that we are reaching out to the members of society that you are concerned with. I do not know about specific evaluation that has been done.
Ms Sanyahumbi: There have been evaluations of the scheme in terms of is it achieving its objectives in terms of eradicating waterborne diseases, providing safe and clean water to the communities, but on your specific point I am not sure, I would have to check that.
Mr Foster: If we have got it then we will submit that to you.
Andrew Stunell: That would be useful. Thank you.
Q150 Chairman: We have previously done a report on co-ordinating aid and aid effectiveness and we see that you are working with other donors, especially the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and with DFID that is 70 per cent of the programme. Correct me if I am wrong but that is what we are advised. You have done some specialisation on division of labour which means that you have withdrawn from certain sectors, and in principle that is fine, and you have answered one of the questions about how you have handed over education to the European Commission, but I just wonder if you are fully satisfied about that. Let me be specific. On the issue of withdrawal from water, you will probably be aware that WaterAid have been particularly critical. They have said that DFID adopted a "cut and run" approach with no lesson sharing, without taking responsibility for setting up a sector-wide approach to replace the DFID programme and they say this led to a "collapse" in the discussions between the World Bank and the ADB and a "haemorrhaging of the process". That is pretty strong criticism. What do you have to say first of all about why, if you were doing so well, you decided to withdraw from that sector and the process by which you did it?
Mr Foster: I do not necessarily agree that we have withdrawn from the water sector given our support through the Gurkha Welfare Scheme, which has a large water component to it. In terms of overall aid effectiveness the decision was one that we had got in place certain back-ups with other donors and we informed other donors well ahead of the decision being made. Sarah can perhaps explain more detail on that.
Ms Sanyahumbi: Before the decision was taken there was a sector review carried out with other development partners in the sector and the review concluded that there were five major donors and over 20 NGOs providing support, so it is a very well supported sector. Both the World Bank and Asian Development Bank are very well placed to take a leading role. It is not just that DFID has to be there in order to take a leading role.
Q151 Chairman: Was there something you did to WaterAid that specifically upset them?
Mr Foster: Clearly there was from the nature of their comments.
Ms Sanyahumbi: I have no idea. In terms of whether the water sector in
Q152 Chairman: Do you reject their criticism when they say that not enough was done to secure the transition to pass on the experience?
Mr Foster: I think it would be wrong to suggest that we cut and run given the timetable and the chronology of events from the sector review and engaging with the other major donors, like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. It would be wrong to say that we cut and run.
Q153 Chairman: Perhaps looking at another sector, HIV/AIDS, which you are passing over to the World Bank. I appreciate you do an evaluation and decide who is best to lead, but in the process of handing over how do you ensure that where DFID has been leading and is handing over the lead to somebody else that transition is done in an orderly way, it is the right decision and you can ensure whatever DFID was doing is continued even if the programme changes thereafter?
Mr Foster: In terms of the principle of
the decision, it was on the basis that the World Bank and the Global Fund were
looking to expand their work within
Ms Sanyahumbi: As the Minister has said, when we took that decision the expectation was that World Bank funding would be coming on-stream and the application to the Global Fund would be successful. World Bank funding has not come on-stream as quickly as we thought so we have extended our support by a year to HIV/AIDS and, unfortunately, the application to the Global Fund has been rejected. It may be that in a year's time we need to revisit that decision and that is something we are open to.
Q154 Chairman: That raises the question, and I do not expect you to be undiplomatic, given that you are a bilateral donor and the other two are multilaterals, are there problems sometimes? In other words, you have an agreement, you have decided who is going to lead in principle but then it does not quite work out. Are there practical problems about ensuring that what you have agreed actually happens? Is there a problem dealing with the international agencies in this context?
Mr Foster: I would not say that there is
a structural problem dealing with the agencies.
Clearly in terms of individual decisions on a country-by-country basis
or scheme-by-scheme basis there is an issue regarding the HIV/AIDS programme
which is why in terms of the overall programme that we have in Nepal we have
that flexibility. It is a feature of
working in a fragile state in particular that we have to that flexibility to be
able to move at relatively short notice.
It is something that we accept is a feature of life working in an
environment like
Q155 Chairman: Are you satisfied that the water and sanitation programme is in reasonably good hands given the criticisms that have been made?
Mr Foster: Yes.
Ms Sanyahumbi: Yes.
Chairman: You mentioned maternal health and obviously both groups did have a look at maternity hospitals.
Q156 Andrew Stunell: Perhaps I could just ask you to fill in a little bit of the detail - we have already touched on it a few times - about what specific strategies DFID is planning to improve maternal health and then perhaps go on to one or two more detailed points.
Ms Sanyahumbi: At the moment for health we have got the Nepal Health Sector Programme, which is our budget support, and then we have a separate Maternal Health Programme which has been very successful, as you know, and maternal mortality has declined by half in the past ten years despite a conflict, which is quite a significant achievement. Our plan for the future with the next Health Sector Programme that we have got, which we hope to start in the middle of this year, is we are looking to wrap up maternal health within that programme as well, so it will be a focus of the overall Health Sector Programme which we will support through the government. It is bringing it into the government systems but we will still ensure that there is a specific targeting on maternal health so we do not lose that focus. Rather than doing it separately outside government systems, our preference is to bring it into the whole government system.
Q157 Andrew Stunell: Can you tell us something about the Safe Delivery Incentive Programme and whether that is actually working? We also gather that the government is abolishing health charges. We were a little bit unclear in the evidence we got about how thoroughgoing that was. Can you talk us through that?
Mr Foster: Anecdotally, I went to visit a maternity hospital that was probably the same one the Committee went to see and the evidence was clear that there were women who had given birth who were getting care who, had they given birth in the villages or communities where they lived, would have died. The evidence was literally in front of you in terms of a live mother and baby. It is there that the programme works. Talking to the women, part of the benefit of the scheme for them was bearing the cost of the transportation to the hospital actually made it a functioning system so that people went along to get that care. In terms of the statistics about the scheme, Sarah, have we got anything?
Ms Sanyahumbi: Over 400,000 women have had the safe delivery cash incentive in the last four years and since January 2009 about 90,000 women have had free delivery care from DFID supported programmes. The data is that the incentive scheme is working. As the Minister has said, they are paying the travel costs. We have done an evaluation in the last couple of months which suggests there is a limit to how far that incentive scheme will go and women in the very, very remote areas, even if you pay them 1,500 rupees to travel four days to the nearest health centre to give birth, are probably not going to do it. There are limits to that and it is something we need to look at and will be looking at it in the next Health Sector Programme as to other ways we can ensure those women also have access to good quality care.
Q158 Andrew Stunell: A skilled birth attendant service or something like that?
Ms Sanyahumbi: Skilled birth attendants
certainly. One of the big challenges
that the health sector has got is how do you encourage doctors, skilled birth
attendants and nurses to go and work in really remote areas. There are big personnel, human resource
issues that we are hoping we can come up with some solutions to in the health
sector plan. For example, with doctors
and nurses who have been trained, if they had financial assistance with their
training part of the quid pro quo on that is they then have to go and work in a
remote area for a couple of years or so to pay that off. Those are the kinds of issues that we are
looking at. The remoteness of many of
the areas in
Q159 Andrew Stunell: Are there some cultural issues too about women actually accessing the service and not being stuck at home?
Ms Sanyahumbi: There are certainly cultural
issues that are very difficult to tackle and this brings us on to the broader
question of the position of women in
Q160 Andrew Stunell: Is the government sympathetic or an advocate for that line of action, or are they just letting you get on with it?
Ms Sanyahumbi: They are not just letting us
get on with it. When I paid my formal
call on the prime minister he told me that violence against women was one of
his top priorities. We took that opportunity
to say we would work with him to try and help him take that forward. We used the visit of Geri Halliwell to
Q161 Chairman: On a point of clarification, have user fees been abolished generally or are there still charges?
Ms Sanyahumbi: I would need to check that. I know that women have received free deliveries. I think they have been abolished generally in government hospitals, not in all the private hospitals.
Q162 Chairman:
We
have done quite a bit on health so I do not want to take much longer on that,
but the suggestion is you are supporting the Department of Health, which is
based in
Mr Foster: We recognise the capacity issue about delivery of healthcare and, Chairman, you had the same experiences I have had of going to individual clinics and the quota of skilled medics that should be there compared to what was there in reality. As Sarah explained, one of the areas that we are working with the government on is to incentivise healthcare in more geographically remote areas through payment of training costs and then the repayment is a year, two years, three years, working in a remote area, not unlike schemes that have operated in the UK in terms of the Local Government Training Support Scheme.
Q163 Chairman: That is with DFID's partnership?
Mr Foster: That is one of the areas where we are working with the government, yes.
Q164 Chairman:
You
have explained on education how you handed it over to the European Commission
and how you did it, but what about the actual success on that. There are two points that have been raised
with us. One is that delivery of
universal education by 2015 now appears to be enrolment in education by
2015. Even on that, the figures we are
getting is that it is likely to be 98 per cent and not 100 per cent. All of that raises the question of who knows
anyway. In other words, how effective is
the monitoring of the information? In a
country like
Mr Foster: One of the challenges that we have put to the pooled programme of education funding is to change some of the emphasis of where our support should go. We recognise there has been real achievement in terms of enrolments at primary school up to 92 per cent in 2008 and the next stage for us in terms of where we want part of the support to go is for better national monitoring so that we get a more accurate feel for the delivery towards the target of the Millennium Development Goals of universal education. That is one of the key points about our continued support.
Q165 Chairman: I am not nitpicking but your evidence says that Nepal is on track to meet the MDG 2 target of universal primary education, which is completion of primary education by all children, by 2015 and yet the Autumn Performance Report says that it will not achieve that until 2021 and will not even achieve 100 per cent enrolment by 2015 but 98 per cent. As I say, I am not nitpicking but if you are refining the definition of the MDGs then we should know, should we not?
Mr Foster: Chairman, we will look at whether there might be a discrepancy between the assessments we have given and we will look at where that lies. Certainly the work that we have done up-to-date was based on being on track in terms of universal primary education. We will go and look at the details of that and dig down a bit deeper.
Q166 Andrew Stunell: This question comes back to some of the earliest questions. If you want private investment you have got to have a secure business environment and a secure security environment. Can you say something about DFID's approach to this and what reasonable measures can be taken?
Mr Foster: The discussion I certainly had was about the creation of employment zones, economic generation zones, where there is that focus on enterprise and drive towards private sector investment. Sarah, have you got any specific details on that?
Ms Sanyahumbi: We are working with the IFC
on investment climate reform and creating a better business environment. We are facilitating the dialogue between the
Nepali private sector and the government so that the government better
understands what kind of regulations need to be enforced in order to create the
confidence that people will then invest.
That is part of our overall programme.
We have the investment climate reform and also market development
programmes which are looking to stimulate the development of the market
particularly focusing on the agricultural and tourism sectors which we see as
two sectors where there is an awful lot of currently untapped potential. We have the skills training programme, which
you also visited. It is part of our
overall approach to trying to kick-start and support growth in
Q167 Andrew
Stunell: Relations with
Mr Foster: In terms of potential inward
investment into
Ms Sanyahumbi: Regional trade is obviously
something where if
Mr Foster: Infrastructure rebuilding in
terms of roads and bridges is clearly key to providing the ability to access
markets in some of the more rural areas of
Chairman: Thank you very much. Clearly it is a very complex situation where
you have got to operate on a lot of different fronts and co-ordinate with other
donors. We have had a very interesting
look at the different things that you have done and our visit was extremely
productive, interesting and informative.
The background politics is obviously something for