Written evidence submitted by the Parliamentary
Network on the World Bank (PNoWB)
SUMMARY
1. Good governance is paramount to achieving
lasting poverty reduction in the developing world. As the largest
multilateral funder of development cooperation, via both loans
and grants, the World Bank Group must reinforce the principles
of good governance at every turn in order to achieve its goal
of "a world free of poverty." Key among these principles
is parliamentary and civil society engagement. The Parliamentary
Network on the World Bank (PNoWB) works to open the Bank up to
the democratically elected representatives and citizens of countries
in which it works, and to bridge the gap between World Bank rhetoric
and reality on stakeholder engagement.
2. PNoWB finds that many of the recommendations
emerging from the House of Commons International Development Committee
May 2008 special report on DFID and the World Bank have not been
addressed by the Bank. In sharing its on-the-ground reality of
dealings with the Bank measured against the yardstick of previous
IDC recommendations, PNoWB hopes that the information and recommendations
here-within will feature prominently during the Committee's visit
to Washington in November andthat the Committee will make, in
its subsequent report, similar recommendations to the UK Government.
3. Summary of PNoWB recommendations to the
Committee:
— PNoWB recommends that the U.K. push the
Bank to open itself up to external peer review mechanisms and
that the results of these peer reviews be publicly available.
— PNoWB recommends that the U.K. advocate
for systematic follow-up of World Bank Independent Evaluation
Group (IEG) reports two years after their issuance to know if
the Bank has learned from its identified challenges and is responding
accordingly.
— PNoWB recommends that the U.K. advocate
for the involvement of parliamentarians and civil society actors
in the planning, evaluation and follow-up of World Bank-funded
programmes at the country level and in global thematic evaluations.
This would necessitate a parliamentary/civil society engagement
strategy that is written and agreed to in total partnership with
all three entities, as a reflection of good governance principles.
— PNoWB recommends that the U.K. request
follow-up reports from the World Bank on how the above recommendation
is being implemented in regular two-year intervals.
— PNoWB recommends that the U.K. reiterate
to the World Bank Group the centrality of strong parliamentary
and civil society institutions to good governance and meeting
its poverty-reduction goals, and that the U.K. initiate an open
discussion with Bank leadership on how it can reliably and sustainably
fund parliamentary and civil society capacity-building programmes
at the country level throughout IDA 16 and beyond.
INTRODUCTION TO
PNOWB
4. The Parliamentary Network on the World
Bank (PNoWB) strives to increase transparency and accountability
in the development cooperation process by fostering the "watchdog"
oversight role of parliaments and civil society. PNoWB has a specific
focus on the work and modus operandi of the World Bank Group,
the world's largest multilateral funder.
5. Founded in 2000, the Network is an independent,
non-governmental organization that provides a platform for parliamentarians
from over 110 countries in the South and the North to advocate
for increased accountability and transparency in World Bank-funded
development programs. PNoWB—via its international secretariat,
regional chapters and country chapters—reaches over 2,000
parliamentarians in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. PNoWB
also engages with hundreds of civil society organisations (CSOs)
in its members' countries, many of them advocating for increased
transparency and accountability from their national governments
and its partners.
6. PNoWB has direct dealings with the World
Bank group on a daily basis at both the country and global level
through its local chapters and international secretariat. For
more information on the Network and its activities, see http://www.pnowb.org/.
FACTUAL INFORMATION
FOR THE
COMMITTEE
7. A House of Commons International Development
Committee in a May 2008 special report titled "DFID and the
World Bank: Government Response to the Committee's Sixth Report
of Session 2007-08," contains the following committee conclusions
and recommendations regarding the World Bank's engagement with
parliamentarians, with a special focus on borrowing countries:
[There are no short-cuts in development. World
Bank diktat is no substitute for thorough debate and engagement
of parliaments and other stakeholders by the borrower country
government. It is only by this latter means that a resilient development
programme with broad domestic support can be achieved. We recommend
that the UK Government develop, with like-minded countries including
borrower nations, a proposal for independent monitoring of World
Bank conditionality to ensure that all the Good Practice Principles,
especially ownership, and dialogue with parliaments are fully
reflected in World Bank practice.] Paragraph 42, page 4
8. The level of World Bank engagement with
parliamentarians varies widely from country to country as there
is no world-wide Bank strategy, standard or baseline requirement
for engaging a country's legislature or civil society. There is
also no consistent monitoring of the World Bank's engagement with
parliaments.
9. Currently, the Bank offers a manual of
examples of best practices in parliamentary engagement to its
country offices—ranging from sponsoring lunches or dinners
to including parliamentarians in the Country Strategic Plan (CSP)
planning process—but it does not require a minimum amount
of consultation and engagement with parliament or civil society
during key stages in programme planning and evaluation from its
country offices. In the introductory section of the manual (which
is not available on the Bank's online bookstore), Bank staff is
reminded that a country's executive branch is the institution's
principle counterpart.
[The World Bank argues that its founding articles
restrict its ability to engage with political actors beyond governments.
The Bank has, however, made some efforts to engage with and consult
parliaments and civil society on some policy and operational matters
with mixed success. We believe such engagement is particularly
important in borrower nations where it has the potential to bring
about national debate and ownership, which could significantly
enhance World Bank performance as well as strengthening accountability
in those countries. We recommend that DFID encourage the World
Bank to adopt outreach strategies with parliaments and civil society
consistently across its programmes, especially with borrower countries.]
Paragraph 81, page 8
10. As stated above, the World Bank has
thus far not adopted any consistent outreach strategy to legislators
or civil society; rather, this is done on an ad-hoc basis according
to individual country directors. There are no organisational standards
or requirements to engage parliamentarians and civil society at
the country level. There are, however, suggestions and examples
of what has worked well for individual Bank country offices in
the past.
11. Many World Bank country offices have
made efforts to include parliamentarians and civil society actors
in the CSP process, which is a step in the right direction. However,
there is often very little effort to include these two key stakeholder
groups in subsequent stages, including CSP implementation, evaluation
and reporting.
[The Parliamentary Network of [sic] the World
Bank plays an important role in the Bank's relations with parliamentarians.
It receives help in cash and kind from the World Bank but we believe
that it would be more effective and more independent if it had
a larger secretariat of its own. We ask DFID to consider how it
and other donors could provide funding for a larger PNoWB secretariat
and for its outreach activities with parliamentarians, especially
in developing countries.] Paragraph 83, page 8
12. PNoWB since 2008 has succeeded in becoming
completely independent from the World Bank Group after receiving
an initial tranche of funding from DFID and the Dutch government
to staff an independent international secretariat. Previously,
PNoWB was run by World Bank staff and later by consultants paid
by the Bank, thus compromising its ability to cast an independent,
critical eye on World Bank relations with parliamentarians and
civil society. PNoWB is the only organization of its kind, providing
parliamentarians with direct access to senior leadership of the
Bretton Woods Institutions, acting as a global-level platform
for legislators to advocate for increased transparency and accountability
from the Bank, and reinforcing the key partnership between parliamentarians
and civil society.
13. PNoWB's independence has allowed parliamentarians'
voices to rise to the forefront of World Bank-Parliamentary relations
and critical appraisals of the Bank's performance record in parliamentary
and civil society relations to be heard. Equally important, the
Network has provided a platform for exchange of best practices
in World Bank/Parliamentary relations. Where there has been positive
collaboration (for example, in Uganda, the World Bank country
office and PNoWB Uganda cooperated to bring together parliamentarians,
civil society actors, researchers and experts in the field of
extractive industries revenue management to advocate for legislation
that will ensure transparency in Uganda's rapidly growing oil
extraction industry), this is captured as a best practice case
study and disseminated to other PNoWB chapters in the region and
globally. Thus, organizations like PNoWB help the Bank to fulfill
its knowledge-exchange role, while also providing a more neutral
account of how the World Bank Group works on the ground.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
INCLUSION IN
THE COMMITTEE'S
REPORT
(a) Effectiveness of the World Bank
Group
14. The effectiveness of the World Bank
Group both at the global and country level is still largely measured
by the World Bank Group, via its Independent Evaluation Group
(IEG). Although IEG reports directly to the Bank's Board of Executive
Directors and its findings are often critical of the Bank's programmes,
it is no replacement for proper external peer review. Peer review
is universally recognised as a powerful external evaluation tool
and as a way to increase accountability and transparency, which
in turn leads to greater credibility. Peer review allows partner
agencies, governments, legislators and civil society organisations
to better understand how an organisation functions and to play
a recognised role in the evaluation process. This is especially
important at the country level, where programmes are being rolled
out.
15. To date, there has been a distinct lack
of external peer review of World Bank projects at the country
and global level. In addition, often, when programmes are found
to be underperforming (as was the case with a large number of
World Bank-funded population, health and nutrition programmes
in Africa from 1997 until 2008, according to the Bank's own IEG
report), no one is held to account for this poor performance.
Although a management response is issued to each IEG evaluation
report, there is no corresponding action plan addressing how these
recommendations will be implemented, and there is no follow-up
report on whether recommendations and proposed management responses
have been operationalized.
— PNoWB recommends that the U.K. push the
Bank to open itself up to external peer review mechanisms and
that the results of these peer reviews be made publicly available.
— PNoWB also recommends that the U.K. advocate
for systematic follow-up of IEG reports two years after their
issuance to know if the Bank has learned from its identified challenges
and responded accordingly.
(b) The 16th replenishment of the International
Development Association, which will set the IDA's priorities for
the future
16. PNoWB, in partnership with European
Parliamentarians with Africa (AWEPA), has called for a sustained
focus on aid effectiveness throughout IDA 16 replenishment and
implementation by recommending that the Bank deepen its engagement
with parliamentarians and civil society in four key areas: country
ownership; strengthening statistical/results measurement systems;
adding peer review mechanisms to CAS progress reports; and strengthening
health, nutrition and population programmes, which were identified
by the IEG as an institutional weakness. For more details on PNoWB's
IDA 16 and aid effectiveness campaign and to read a detailed brief
on each of the above-listed four key areas, access the campaign
page.[62]
— PNoWB recommends that the U.K. reiterate
to the World Bank Group the centrality of good governance to its
poverty-reduction mission and to meeting the MDGs by 2015. Strong
parliamentary and civil society institutions are the building
blocks of good governance and are key to realising country ownership
of the development cooperation process, as agreed to in the Paris
Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005).
— PNoWB recommends that in contributing
to the IDA 16 replenishment, the U.K. initiates an open discussion
with Bank leadership on how it can reliably and sustainably fund
parliamentary and civil society capacity-building programmes at
the country level throughout IDA 16 and beyond. This could include
working with the World Bank Institute, UNDP's Parliamentary strengthening
programme, the National Democratic Institute, the UK-based Westminster
Foundation for Democracy, and others. [The Overseas Development
Institute in 2006-07 conducted a review of parliamentary strengthening
programmes in developing countries and DFID's experience.[63]]
(c) The way the World Bank involves
parliamentarians and others in developing countries
17. In the experience of PNoWB at both the
global and country level, World Bank dialogue and engagement with
parliamentarians remains largely tokenistic and comes at the "fait
accompli" stages of projects and programmes, as opposed to
throughout planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation
processes. Often, the Bank sites the fact that it cannot and should
not meddle in internal country politics as the reason for keeping
legislators at arm's length. Whatever the reason, the end result
is an undermining of good governance and participative democracy,
which in-turn slows progress towards poverty reduction.
18. The way in which the World Bank involves
parliamentarians and civil society actors in developing countries
varies from country to country. Engagement can range from nil,
to one or two informal hosted luncheons and an annual briefing
session, to more consistent, deeper involvement in CSP planning.
However, parliamentarians and civil society are often completely
absent during key stages of CSP and programme evaluation, results
measurement, reporting and follow-up on World Bank-funded programmes
in a country, and during global-level thematic evaluations.
— PNoWB recommends that the U.K. advocate
for required, World-Bank wide, systematized, meaningful involvement
of parliamentarians and civil society actors in the planning,
evaluation and follow-up of World Bank-funded programmes—most
importantly at the country level, but also in global thematic
evaluations. This would necessitate a parliamentary/civil society
engagement strategy that is written and agreed to in total partnership
with all three entities, as a reflection of good governance principles.
— PNoWB also recommends that the U.K. request
a follow-up report on how this is being implemented in regular
two-year intervals.
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