Government funding for development

(Sept. 17, 2011)

In November 2009, Canada’s federal government rejected a funding request ban KAIROS, the ecumenical justice coalition comprised of Canadian church organisations.

Subsequent public debates about defence of the human rights of Palestinians, the shifting sands of CIDA priorities, and then about ethics in government—that infamous Bev Oda ^NOT—catapulted issues in relations between government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) onto the front pages. Funding to other NGOs and to the Canadian Council for International Cooperation also ended.

Despite budget cuts, the churches and non-governmental organizations among which I have worked over these past decades will likely keep on doing what they do well: accompanying partner organizations around the world to advance human rights, community development and social and ecological justice. As the t-shirt proclaims, KAIROS is ^NOT going away.

KAIROS supporters join the G8/G20 protests in Toronto, June 26, 2010

Obviously, partnership work is easier when backed with public funds. Since the 1960s, all governments—except the current one—saw the value of working with other groups and have funded NGO development programs. It’s not that we feel a sense of entitlement, much less think that the state should fund the church. But NGOs, together with CIDA staff and elected officials, form a sort of community of development practitioners. Our experiences inform each other’s practice in the complex world of development assistance.

Sharp disagreements, healthy collaboration

Even in the midst of sharp disagreement over the years about matters such as tied aid and the growth of bureaucracy that administered Official Development Assistance (ODA), it has been possible to maintain healthy collaboration with the government. We work with government programs in support of partner goals that are aimed at improving the well-being of people and the Earth.

At the same time, we maintain a lively critique of the use and misuse of power. We watch the impacts of what is done in the name of “development” that is carried out only for the sake of wealth creation. We uphold ethical principles in government, and we bring partner perspectives to bear on decisions in Canada that affect their interests. Over these past decades, we have been pretty noisy in the face of onerous foreign debt, structural adjustment programs, resource extraction, climate change, and free trade deals that weaken governments and harm farmers and workers.

But there are other debates about development. From the right and the left, aid is sometimes assailed as ineffective (or worse). Whatever happens in the Canadian debates over financing for development, we still have to ask what might be wrong with development aid programs and what might be done differently.

While I am convinced that work at the modest scale carried out by most Canadian NGOs and by church partners around the world is effective and accomplishes its goals, criticism of some of the large-scale efforts—such as those of the international financial institutions like the World Bank—has some justification.

Official development and a liberation agenda

(Sept. 15, 2011)

Political debate in Canada about the future of this country’s development assistance programs is what pushed me to start writing about development.

Canada’s aid program has its roots in the 1950s. Cold War competition and fruitful interaction with a generation of new leaders in the Commonwealth led Canada into new relationships with many newly independent “developing nations.”

In 1960, the External Aid Office was created. In 1968, near the end of a period when Canadian governments found new roles in social policy, health care, human rights and international development, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) was created to administer the bulk of Canada’s official development assistance (ODA) programs.

CIDA’s aim is“to manage Canada’s support and resources effectively and accountably to achieve meaningful, sustainable results and engage in policy development in Canada and internationally, enabling Canada’s effort to realize its development objectives. CIDA works in concert with its development partners, fragile states and countries in crisis, countries of focus, and the Canadian population and institutions.”

“God is Good,” says the broken-down water truck in Delmas, Port-au-Prince (2011)

Initially, CIDA administered the bulk of Canada’s ODA program in Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, and Asia. “In 1995, CIDA took on the responsibility of administering Canada’s official assistance (OA) programs in Central and Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union (countries in transition) by supporting democratic development and economic liberalization.”

A liberation agenda

Some in the north sought to participate in official development programs while maintaining both a lively critique of the programs and advancing a liberation agenda. As the Canadian Interchurch Fund for International Development (ICFID*—an ancestor of KAIROS) was formed in 1973, its member churches provided a definition of development that served the churches for the next 25 years or so:

“Development is a process of continuous change by which any country, any specific population, or sector of population in its natural, cultural, or social milieu and at a definite stage in history, within a framework of international relations, seeks liberation, both material and spiritual, by:

  • transforming its structures of production;
  • establishing new social relationships;
  • acquiring for itself adequate political and administrative institutions;
  • recreating or strengthening its own culture for the purpose of achieving a better quality of life.”

* ICFID: Robert Fugere, “The Interchurch Fund for International Development,” in Christopher Lind and Joe Mihevc, eds. (1994), Coalitions for Justice, Ottawa: Novalis, p. 220.

Development and Liberation

(Sept. 14, 2011)

Back in the 1960s, there was a kind of fervour to extend what had been learned from the post-war reconstruction of Europe to the so-called Third World. The United Nations declared successive “Decades of Development.”

Churches were part of the movement. In 1967, Pope Paul VI issued his development encyclical, Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples) with its famous affirmation: “Development is the new name for peace.” He rejected unequivocally the basic precepts of capitalism, including unrestricted private property, the profit motive, and reliance on free trade in a world economy. He emphasized the right of poorer nations to the aid of wealthier nations.

Protestant and Orthodox churches met in Geneva in 1966 for a World Conference on Church and Society. They identified the close relationship between peace and justice: threats to peace do not arise only from military power, but also from hunger, oppression and injustice.

Even as governments, churches and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) embraced development programs, it was already clear that there were divergent views of what was intended by “development.”

Development as an ideology

Leaders in the global South saw that their nations’ poverty was a consequence of the wealth of other nations. People from India to Mexico questioned the so-called “green revolution,” seeing that it damaged small farmers and the ecology. In Latin America, there were warnings about desarrollismo—development as an ideology that only furthered the interests of traditional elites. We do well to remember that the landmark book by Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation,* is a critique of what was wrong with development in Latin America in the 1960s.

In the face of “aseptic” development policies that gave “a false picture of a tragic and conflictual reality,” Gutiérrez insisted that development find its true place in “the more universal, profound, and radical perspective of liberation.”

Soldiers watch over water distribution near Bogotá (2007)

For him, theological reflection begins with the real context of people’s lives—the poverty experienced in the lives of most Latin Americans. Liberation expressed “the aspirations or oppressed peoples and social classes, emphasizing the conflictual aspect of the economic, social and political processes which puts them at odds with wealthy nations and oppressive classes.” The biblical paradigm is the Hebrew story of escape from slavery in Egypt (told in Exodus).

For Gutiérrez, as for liberation and other contextual theologians who have followed, liberation is both political and religious, or both historical and salvific. Our practice of liberation from oppression is also the practice of salvation: liberation and the growth of the Reign of God “are directed toward complete communion of [humanity] with God and of men [and women] among themselves.”

* Bibliography – Gutiérrez, Gustavo (1973). A Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis. (Ch. 2 and 9). Originally published in 1971 as Teología de la liberación, Perspectivas, by CEP, Lima.