International DevelopmentWritten evidence submitted by Oxfam
1. Oxfam first supported projects in Afghanistan in 1964 and has been operating directly in the country for three decades. Our country programme work includes disaster response and preparedness, food security and livelihoods, peace-building, women’s rights, support for civil society, as well as national and international advocacy especially on women’s rights, security sector reform, humanitarian issues, and aid effectiveness.
2. This submission focuses on three issues highlighted by the enquiry:
2.1
2.2
2.3
3. The economic consequences of the military drawdown and how this can be mitigated.
4. The economic consequences of the military drawdown are not precisely clear. However, there are obvious risks for one of the world’s poorest countries. The World Bank estimates that 97% of Afghanistan’s official GDP is derived from spending related to the international military and donor community presence. Local businesses that have relied on foreign military expenditure are likely to suffer directly from the military drawdown. Some businesspeople, sceptical of the ability of Afghan security forces to maintain law and order in areas vacated by foreign troops, are likely to close or relocate their operations.
5. Such direct consequences are likely to be exacerbated by a concomitant cut in aid. Several troop-contributing countries—such as Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and the US—have already begun cutting aid to Afghanistan. The World Bank warned in November 2011 that any abrupt cut in foreign aid to Afghanistan in the coming years could destabilize the country and prevent the government from providing basic services. Such developments would compound the economic effects of the military drawdown.
6. A key mitigation tactic, therefore, would be for the UK and its allies collectively to maintain adequate aid levels while increasing measures to optimize the impact of that aid in order to cushion the Afghan economy. Indications that the UK intends to maintain substantial aid levels and encourage greater aid effectiveness, as well as recent efforts by DFID to encourage other donor governments to follow suit, are therefore very welcome. Widely recognised measures to improve aid effectiveness include strengthening efforts to combat corruption, ensuring aid projects prioritise the needs of both men and women, and greater transparency of aid and public spending. Moreover, the UK should develop and sustain its support for Afghan civil society to monitor aid and major public contracts, thereby promoting accountability, good governance and value for money. Additionally, the UK and its allies should intensify efforts to ensure that Afghan national security forces can uphold law and order and protect the rights of men and women to pursue their livelihoods. Efforts to promote greater employment and income generation should also be stepped up to counter the economic effects of the military drawdown. Oxfam’s global experience shows that support for smallholder farmers is more likely to promote jobs and social justice than large scale rural development projects.
7. The UK and other donor governments see revenue from the extractives industry as a key future driver of the Afghan economy. However, it will be many years before revenues from the extractive sector come on line and so the sector is highly unlikely to offer a timely mitigating factor for the military drawdown.
8. Various challenges such as weak state capacity, insecurity, poor infrastructure, and rampant corruption must first be addressed; otherwise, the growth of the extractive industry will be hindered, delaying the generation of revenue. Moreover, the sector risks fuelling corruption, crime, and conflict. A failure to properly regulate the industry could also stir local grievances over land, water and livelihoods. As 2014 approaches, however, major concessions in the extractive sector are being distributed with insufficient oversight or transparency to ensure that the contracts in question are the most appropriate for the Afghan people and benefit the population as a whole.
9. Governance and security: Whether DFID can “tackle the root causes of instability and the effects of insecurity” and the scope for building bridges with opposition and insurgent groups to do this.
10. The root causes of instability in Afghanistan are complex and often interrelated, including a range of grievances at local community levels, weak rule of law and access to justice, domestic political conflicts, the ideology of resistance to foreign occupation, and wider regional and international strategic disputes.
11. Certain Western practices have increased the risk of instability even when the stated objective is the opposite. These include the reliance in some areas on untrained, unaccountable Afghan militias and commanders with poor human rights records, and the transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan police and troops who are often inadequately trained and unresponsive to Afghan men and women.
12. Moreover, although women and girls suffer most from the effects of insecurity—such as restrictions on their movements, a loss of access to basic services and livelihood opportunities—solutions that address their needs have received insufficient attention.
13. Tackling the root and underlying causes of instability represents an extremely difficult challenge for a single institution such as DFID. It requires a holistic complementary approach by various political, diplomatic and aid actors that addresses local grievances, strengthens state governance and accountability, reforms the security and justice sector, and addresses wider regional political concerns and interests. This contrasts with years of inadequate donor coordination collectively despite the creation of the Joint Coordination Monitoring Board. The UK should build on its positive steps to improve coordination in recent years.
14. Despite welcome efforts by the UK, its allies and the Afghan government to improve the quality of the Afghan national security forces, serious concerns remain about their conduct and the lack of adequate accountability mechanisms.1 Failure to address these rapidly and adequately is likely to fuel resentment and social tensions, thereby undermining efforts to achieve stability and development in Afghanistan as well as peace and security in the wider region and internationally.
15. Much greater attention should be paid to the needs and roles of women when addressing the effects of insecurity. Women and girls remain particularly vulnerable to insecurity and weak rule of law. Women make up less than one percent of the Afghan security forces and have limited access to justice. There is low awareness of laws and policies aimed at protecting women, such as the Elimination of Violence Against Women Law (EVAW), and implementation remains poor. However, where violence against women is endemic and women are unable to realise their rights, prospects for durable peace and stability are substantially reduced.
16. Effective, impartial development that meets the socio-economic needs of Afghan men, women and children and strengthens governance and rule of law can also play a part in promoting social cohesion and stability. Donors should increase support for Afghan civil society actors to hold authorities to account and ensure that aid is accounted for, development projects meet Afghan men and women’s needs, corruption is reduced, and donors and tax-payers get value for money. The Tawanmandi programme, backed by the UK and other donor governments, is a welcome step in this regard. However, greater collective and sustained efforts will be needed. There is a five-year funding cycle for the Tawanmandi programme but strengthening and consolidating Afghan civil society will take much longer.
17. With respect to reaching out to opposition fighters, the UK is one of the main funders of the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Programme (APRP). It has developed its own National Action Plan and is engaged in the process to develop an Afghanistan National Action Plan on UNSCR1325, which calls for women to be meaningfully represented in peace processes. However, women currently play a minimal role in the APRP and little or no role in initial talks with the Taliban. Yet the integral involvement of women in peace processes, from local to national level, can help promote a just and lasting peace that enjoys the support of the Afghan majority.
18. How DFID will ensure progress towards development goals, and that progress made since 2001 is not reversed, after the departure of combat troops, and how it will monitor such progress.
19. UK aid, alongside assistance from other international donors, has contributed to significant gains for Afghan men, women and children in various fields. More than seven million children are enrolled in school: the highest number in Afghanistan’s history. The number of girls enrolled in school has soared from less than 10,000 in 2001 to 2.7 million in 2011. Afghanistan has doubled its agricultural output over the last five years while approximately 85% of districts now have at least one basic health facility.
20. However, many of these gains are fragile and, although more than $60 billion in aid has flowed into Afghanistan since 2001, there has been too little progress in many crucial areas. Government and civil service institutions are generally weak, hampered by corruption and unable to deliver basic services. The participation of women in public life remains limited. Most Afghans still have little or no access to medical care. As a result, one out of every five Afghan children will not live to see their fifth birthday and one out of eight women will die in childbirth. In the meantime, Afghanistan’s economy remains too small and fragile to meet the needs of its people.
21. For years to come, therefore, Afghanistan will need substantial amounts of international aid to keep its recovery on course and continue progress towards development goals. In this context, UK pledges to maintain its aid levels are very welcome, showing responsiveness to the context and positive donor leadership. Cutting aid too soon will put hard won progress at risk and undermine efforts to foster peace and stability.
22. At the same time, however, the UK and other donors should redouble efforts to maximise the impact and sustainability of their aid. In the decade after the fall of the Taliban regime, aid generally has been driven by donor priorities rather than responding to Afghan needs and preferences. Many projects have been designed to deliver rapid, visible results, rather than achieve sustainable poverty reduction or capacity-building objectives. In the design or execution of projects, consideration of women’s capabilities, conditions and rights has been limited or absent. Most international aid has been directed to urban areas, rather than to rural areas where more than three-quarters of Afghans live. Critical areas such as agriculture have been under-resourced.
23. In its role both as a progressive donor and effective aid advocate, DFID can help consolidate existing gains and promote further progress by working with other donors and the Afghan government to ensure aid is spent impartially on meeting the needs of all poor women, men and children. There must be more effective collective action by donors and the Afghan government to tackle corruption, improved official systems of accountability, and more transparency regarding where aid goes and how major contracts are awarded.
24. UK aid has been a major support for development activity in Helmand province, which receives approximately 20% of British aid to Afghanistan. As the UK Provincial Reconstruction Team in Helmand transfers activities to Afghan hands and withdraws, it is vital that the UK takes proactive steps to ensure sustainability and further progress while mitigating economic and security risks to local communities.
25. Aid in general should be made to work much better for women. Since 2001, donor aid in general has not prioritised and effectively targeted women and girls, missing opportunities to consolidate and expand important gains.2 Gender mainstreaming is a necessary but insufficient approach as it often means gender suffers from a lack of attention and dedicated resources. There is also a lack of gender-disaggregated targets or data within aid projects generally. It is therefore difficult to assess how much aid has been spent to assist women, how it has been spent, and the impact it has had. Encouraging greater use of gender disaggregated data and targets is one way of improving the monitoring of progress. UK support for such initiatives—such as plans to improve gender reporting and analysis through the World Bank-managed Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund—is welcome but effective follow up action is required to ensure such plans work in practice.
26. The Afghan government states that its National Priority Programmes have gender as a cross-cutting component. One NPP, aimed at improving the implementation of the National Action Plan for Women of Afghanistan (NAPWA), is specifically targeted at women’s rights. However, gender does not feature prominently in most NPPs and there is a lack of detail as to how they will incorporate women. DFID can build on its positive role in supporting the Afghan government to improve the gender sensitivity of its NPPs.
27. Better monitoring of development progress can also be achieved through specific measures to improve the transparency of aid and economic assistance, including systematic information sharing with civil society. This should be accompanied by increased donor support for civil society organisations to promote aid effectiveness, anti-corruption and needs-based development (including in the extractive industry). Moves by the UK and other donors to develop a mutual accountability framework for aid to Afghanistan are welcome. It is essential that any such framework supports the role of Afghan civil society. This role would be particularly valuable in insecure areas where donors’ access to where projects are implemented is extremely limited.
28. Recommendations.
29. The UK should keep encouraging other donors to follow its positive example in maintaining aid levels, while adopting measures to optimize the effectiveness of that aid. Such measures include greater efforts to combat corruption, ensuring aid projects prioritise the needs of both men and women and involve recipient communities, greater transparency of aid and public spending, and increased support for Afghan civil society to monitor aid and major public contracts. Additionally, aid should focus on long-term development programming rather than short-term projects.
30. The UK should step up efforts with its NATO allies and the Afghan government to improve the conduct, responsiveness, and accountability of the Afghan National Security Forces. Necessary reforms include better training and awareness regarding human rights and women’s rights, accelerated recruitment of female security personnel, and much greater attention to women’s needs such as increased awareness and enforcement of laws addressing violence against women. A well-publicised, transparent and independent complaints review mechanisms for the Afghan National Security Forces, accessible to both men and women should also be established.
31. The UK should continue to press the Afghan government to make the peace process more inclusive, with specific measures targeted at women, including quotas for women in official bodies and delegations; training for female members of peace councils, including negotiation skills; effective implementation of the gender strategy developed by the Joint Secretariat of the High Peace Council, and awareness-raising campaigns about the APRP at the community level.
32. DFID should build on its positive recent efforts to support civil society development by providing adequate long-term funding and training to Afghan civil society groups. Accompanied by greater collective transparency and information sharing by donors and the Afghan government, this support should enable civil society organisations to monitor how aid is spent and major contracts are awarded, scrutinise development progress, hold Afghan authorities accountable, and promote good governance and rule of law.
33. Working with other donors and donors and the Afghan government, DFID should build on efforts to ensure that aid prioritises women, including through projects that promote economic empowerment and access to services, and ensure that women are involved in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes. DFID should help the Afghan government ensure that gender indicators, gender budgeting and gender auditing are a required component of all of the National Priority Programmes.
References
1 For more information, see No Time to Lose: promoting the accountability of the Afghan national security forces published in May 2011 by Oxfam and other organisations.
2 For more information, see Tokyo Briefing Paper: Women’s Rights published in July 2012 by Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) with support from Oxfam.
July 2012