Graduation and Social Protection conference kicks off in Kigali

The second in the Graduation and Social Protection blog series 

On 6-8 May 2014, more than 150 people will gather in Kigali, Rwanda to discuss graduation and social protection programmes across the world. Why?

The promise of ‘graduation’ out of social protection is seductive. By delivering an integrated and sequenced package of assistance that includes consumption support (usually regular cash transfers), asset transfers (to generate streams of income), access to financial services (savings and/or credit), training or coaching and mentoring, poor people get both social protection and the possibility of escaping from extreme poverty into sustainable livelihoods and self-reliance. Governments can report progress on their poverty reduction targets, and donor agencies can demonstrate value for money to their electorates.

Early indicators of success with the ‘graduation model’ in Bangladesh prompted replicate pilot projects in other countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The governments of Ethiopia and Rwanda have adapted elements of the model in their graduation-oriented national safety net programmes. But there have been few opportunities to compare experiences across these diverse contexts. This conference offers a space for policy-makers, practitioners and researchers to share and reflect on the lessons learned from their engagement with graduation.

The conference aims to critically assess different conceptual and operational approaches to graduation – how graduation is understood and how it is implemented – across countries and programmes. It aims to review the small but growing evidence base from evaluations of graduation projects and programmes across the world. And it aims to identify the key factors that are associated with success as well as the factors that prevent achievement of graduation targets – the ‘enablers and constrainers’ of sustainable graduation outcomes.

There are also several challenging questions and unresolved debates that presenters at the conference will address. For example:

• Should graduation be conceptualised differently – not as ‘exiting’ from social protection programmes (from ‘eligible’ to ‘ineligible’) but as moving from one form of social protection to another (e.g. from non-contributory social assistance to contributory social security), or as a transformative process of gradually accumulating assets and building resilience?
• Is the vision of a smooth linear pathway out of extreme poverty too simplistic, especially in contexts where harsh agro-ecologies and climate variability mean that the livelihood protection function is more urgent than the livelihood promotion objective?
• Is two years or even five years of support too short – should graduation be conceptualised across generations? Are children the key to sustainable graduation?
• How can women and female-headed households, who are often left behind because of their constrained resources, benefit more from graduation-oriented programmes?

These are among the issues that will be debated in Kigali, as participants share their experiences and reflections, and learn from the insights and ideas of others. This is very much a policy-maker and practitioner-focused event. Our hope is that the conference will contribute to improved policy and practice in future social protection and graduation-oriented programming, leading to better lives and more secure livelihoods for poor and vulnerable people.

About the author

Stephen Devereux is Co-Director of the international conference on ‘Graduation and Social Protection’, which is co-hosted by the Government and Rwanda and the Centre for Social Protection from the UK Institute of Development Studies, with financial support from Irish Aid, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF.

This blog post is part of a series. The content of this blog series reflects the opinions of each individual author, and not necessarily those of IDS, UNICEF, DFID, IRISHAID or the Government of Rwanda.

Follow the activity of the Graduation and Social Protection Conference on Twitter @Graduation_Conf #SocialProtectionGraduation

Introducing the ‘Graduation and Social Protection’ blog series

The first in Graduation and Social Protection Conference blog series

Next week over 150 people will gather in Kigali for a 3-day international conference to discuss graduation and social protection. This blog series, hosted on the IDS Povertics site, will run alongside the conference. The series aims to enliven the debate, promote wider engagement from policy-makers and practitioners and prompt the community of practice to act in the interest of the people who are most affected by the practical and theoretical questions that will be addressed at the conference.

I recently returned from a field visit in North West Bangladesh to a riverine island district where people live on islands made of silt that erode, evolve and migrate with the rains. We were visiting the long-running Chars Livelihood Programme (CLP) that targets the so-called ‘extreme-poor’ and provides an integrated package of livelihood support, cash transfers and plinth-raising to lift people above both the water and the extreme poverty line.

Image: Feet above the water line. Source: Sarah Barns

It was there I met Salma*. Salma self-identified as a ‘graduate’ from the CLP. Her two year stipend and programme of integrated support ended seven years ago. Although she was still relatively better off than non-beneficiary households, her assets were evidently depleted. The heifer she had bought with the original asset transfer had been sold and in its place a less fruitful bull, which she intended to sell one day for meat. Our brief visit prompted questions about the sustainability of graduation for Salma and other beneficiaries, the possibility of graduating from extreme poverty into moderate poverty and the difficulties of measuring graduation beyond the programme’s boundaries.

Throughout the course of this blog series, our authors will explore some of these questions and many of their own. The debate will be kick-started by Stephen Devereux, co-director of the conference, who will introduce some key questions and outline his hopes for the week ahead. On Monday, Mat Pritchard from the CLP will delve deeper into the challenging questions surrounding graduation in Bangladesh. Olabanji Akinola will argue that the development community must do more to avoid the unfortunate reality of premature graduation he witnessed in his recent research into the ‘In Care of the People’ (COPE) Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme in Nigeria. Aude De Montesquiou looks through the lens of the CGAP-Ford Foundation Graduation Programme’s graduation pilots currently being evaluated, and Mark Davies asks what graduation means from an agricultural perspective.

We hope that you will all contribute and shape this debate online and at the conference. Let us know what you (really) think in the comments section below…

*Salma is a pseudonym.

Bridget Holtom is a social protection policy officer at DFID and is the Communications Coordinator for the international conference on ‘Graduation and Social Protection’ which is co-hosted by the Government and Rwanda and the Centre for Social Protection from the UK Institute of Development Studies, with financial support from Irish Aid, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF.

This blog post is part of a series. The content of this blog series reflects the opinions of each individual author, and not necessarily those of IDS, UNICEF, DFID, IRISHAID or the Government of Rwanda.

Follow us on Twitter

To follow the activity on Twitter @Graduation_Conf #SocialProtectionGraduation

Why do we pretend there is 'Community'? Problems of Community Based-Adaptation (CBA) and Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR)

As people prepare for the 8th International Community Based Adaptation conference in Kathmandu (24-30 April), Terry Cannon challenges some of the assumptions involved in our use of the term “community”, suggesting that we must ditch the idea that it is fluffy, warm and cuddly and can cure all ills.

The idea that a “community” is a valid category for beneficial climate adaptation processes (or any other type of development intervention, or for example “community-based disaster risk reduction”) is deeply flawed. It must not be taken for granted (as it often is currently in much CBA discussion) as a positive basis for any type of intervention unless it is also grounded in the conflicts and contradictions that are involved. These include especially gender and class (e.g. land tenure systems, differential access to other assets), ethnicity, age groups. “Community-based” has simply become a badge of honour to assert that we are working with poor and vulnerable people and doing the right thing. Is there any problem that being “community-based” cannot cure? (1)

The literature on the problem of “community” dates back at least to the 1950s in sociology (Cannon 2008 for an introductory review) and has been paralleled more recently by debates about the validity of “participation” (e.g. “the new tyranny” critique), which is linked because participatory approaches are almost always inherent in the idea of working at community scale, including CBA (for a basic review of the two main books see Christens and Speer 2006). The related literature on “elite capture” (e.g. the capturing of development benefits at the local level by powerful groups or individuals) is also well-known in development circles but seems to be ignored in CBA (for a literature review on elite capture, see Dutta 2009). Therefore much of an enormous literature and practice in development studies (on the problem of community, on rural class and other power systems, on participatory work and on elite capture), is largely being ignored in the rush by climate change practitioners to be involved in CBA. This absence of a huge area of knowledge from development studies is a serious barrier to success in adaptation, and also reinforces the uncritical use of the concept of “community”, which is difficult to sustain when all this knowledge is accepted.

The desire for outside agencies to work at community scale is driven by an admirable commitment to supporting change for people (i.e. people-centred) who are usually defined as the most vulnerable/ poorest. This shift to a bottom-up approach in the past 40 years or so (along with participatory rapid/ rural appraisal (PRA) methods and participatory assessments etc.) is a well-meaning effort to deliver real change to the most needy. But it normally operates on the basis of trying to achieve this change without dealing with the fundamental root causes (the transformation required) as to why people are poor or vulnerable in the first place. In other words, a great deal of “community-based” activity (by NGOs, supported by donors and international development banks etc.) fails to take into account the power relations that lead to division and conflict within communities, and are often precisely the cause of the problems that the outside organisation is trying to address.

The problem of using an undifferentiated notion of community shows up when NGOs and others want “communities” to engage in CBA, without taking full account of power relations (including gender), especially those between economic groups – which we used to call classes. For instance, in most of rural Asia, parts of Africa and much of Latin America there are very significant unequal land tenure systems. Usually this involves a tiny minority owning most of the land, with some farmers in the middle. Then comes hundreds of millions of rural poor who are (even officially) regarded as landless (owning no land or only tiny plots). This affects 30-60% of rural people in India or Bangladesh. This single key fact means these huge numbers of people have almost no control at all over their prospects to adapt to climate change, and very little ability to relate to CBDRR.

The ability to cope or adapt is significantly constrained by land tenure, and yet there seems to be almost no research that looks at what adaptation means for landless people – who have little or no control over the primary assets (land and water) that are currently essential for adaptation. I have never heard anyone discuss land tenure issues in all the conferences and meetings I have attended on CBA and CBDRR, and there is hardly any mention of it in the literature. If we are supporters of CBA, we can no longer ignore these key facts of power: these problems are of primary importance in making adaptation in “communities” exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.

In effect, the definition of community that has now de facto emerged is that a community is “where we work”. It has become an externally-assigned location-based (i.e. geographically defined) justification for where the outside agency has decided that it wants to make its development / climate adaptation / DRR effort. Unless the inherent and integral power relations involved in the so-called “community” are actively understood and incorporated into the required process of transformation then it is highly unlikely there will be any significant impact. And it is not enough simply to say “we only work with the poor and vulnerable, we target them so that they benefit”: what happens when we leave? And in any case, can we be sure that the benefits are not being captured right under our noses?

If we accept the notion of community uncritically, problems will be built in to any CBA and CBDRR activity from the start. Is it possible to assume that there is some active agency possible for the “communities” that means “they” are unified, and understand and want to be involved in “adaptation”? Can we assume that there are prospects for “community” leadership and organization, or are these hoped-for possibilities dependent on a “warm and fluffy” community that is absent in most cases, being instead bound up in unequal power relations that pervade the grass roots.

The ability of people to adapt rather than merely cope (and suffer) is determined largely by access to, control of or ownership of assets that are almost always affected by power relations. Poor people cope (and deplete assets, e.g. by selling land / livestock, taking loans at high interest). Better-off people MAY have resources that enable them to engage in adaptation to current climate change or prepare to adapt for future climate change. There is a very significant literature on coping and its different types, and it is usually situated in the problems of power relations, access to assets, and notions of asset-depleting coping (that may for example lead to distress migration). What is crucial is to make clear distinctions between different economic and social groups and not pretend that they do not exist or are not significant factors in what we are trying to achieve.

(1) “Saint Community” seems to be able to cure all the following just by putting “community-based” in front of the problem: “community-based development”; Natural Resource Management; Health and Sanitation; Ecosystem management; Forestry… and more.

See also this video from 2013 Community Based Adaptation conference in Dhaka

About the author
Terry Cannon is Research Fellow for the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction team at IDS.

References

• Cannon, Terry (2008) Reducing People’s Vulnerability to Natural Hazards: Communitiesand Resilience, WIDER Working Paper 34
• Christens, Brian and Speer, Paul W. (2006) 'Tyranny/Transformation: Power and Paradox in Participatory Development', Forum: Qualitative Social Research 7.2
• Dutta, Diya (2009), Elite Capture and Corruption:Concepts and Definitions: Bibliography With an Overview of the Suggested Literature, National Council of Applied Economic Research

Clean up graft, promote transparency: Africa’s Development Road map

I recently came across an interview from 2005, with a Kenyan African Economics Expert James Shikwati titled “For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!". According to him, aid to Africa does more harm than good. He spoke about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem. This got me thinking about the age-long argument of the impact of foreign aid on African countries.

Another article on Why Foreign Aid is Hurting Africa stated that ‘Money from rich countries has trapped many African nations in a cycle of corruption, slower economic growth and poverty’ His panacea: ‘Cutting off the flow would be far more beneficial’.

Despite its good intentions, the developed world and its foreign aid have not made dramatic improvements in curbing corruption especially in Africa. Billions of dollars have been and is still being invested and given to these countries but unemployment, starvation, poor healthcare, under-development and corruption remain major problems in Africa.

While the region remains the poorest in the world, it also remains the most corrupt; corruption has been known to prevent foreign aid from achieving its intended goals in this region.

In the BBC article “Why Aid Doesn't Work”, Fredrik Erixon argues that “if nothing else, aid to Africa seems to have lowered rather than increased economic growth… the tragedy of aid, as been shown in numerous evaluations and by World Bank research is that donors are part of the problem of corruption; aid often underpins corruption and higher aid levels tend to erode the governance structure of poor countries.” (Wilkie, 2008)

In 1999, a paper from the US. House of Representative’s Joint Economic Committee Study Vice Chairman, Jim Saxton suggested that “minimizing IMF lending is one obvious way to prevent IMF assistance from promoting corruption”. (Wilkie, 2008)

Studies have shown that the negative impact of political corruption on investment predominantly affects economic growth. (Mauro 2004:16) notes, ‘there is a close association between corruption and slow growth, as well as between corruption and political instability’.

This view was supported by the World Bank according to (UNODC, 2005:81) which agrees that by distorting the rule of law and weakening the institutional foundation of economic growth, corruption is the single greatest obstacle to economic and social development; noting that the harmful effects of corruption are especially severe on the poor, who are hardest hit by economic decline, and are the most reliant on the provision of basic needs and public services.

A study on the Relationship between Poverty, Conflict and Development (2009) notes that there are certainly ‘corruption-related indicators of poverty’ in Africa that need to be adjusted (these include embezzlement, political patronage, money laundering, bribery, invoicing and over estimation of project and contract); this things impacts on governance negatively in Africa. Also, a Transparency International report has established a link between social conflict and corruption.

As noted by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in (UNODC, 2005: 92), ‘Corruption is found in all countries – big and small, rich and poor – but it is in the developing world that its effects are most destructive. Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a Government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality…. Corruption is a key element in economic under-performance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development.

Research on aid effectiveness has shown that foreign aid given to countries with poor governance and poor economic policy environments does not aid growth and development, and may actually do the reverse.

According to empirical consensus, foreign aid perpetuates poor governance and bad policies (with corruption being a symptom of both) in countries with these problems. As such it is presumed that foreign aid given to countries with high levels of corruption will fuel that corruption and over a period of time we will see an increase in the levels of corruption (Wilkie, 2008).

Therefore, if aid recipiency increases corruption in highly corrupt countries, it is only logical to expect that donors reconsider the continuous flow of aid to such countries but even now, is this really the case?

The Need for Domestic Reform

Many calls have been made for the need for domestic reform, foreign funds can help only those African countries that undertake political, economic, and institutional reform, but the commitment to reform has been and is still seriously lacking. (Ayodele and Cudjoe, et al., 2005). Without domestic reforms, African politicians will line their pockets, but Africa will remain desperately poor.

In conclusion therefore, my argument is that aid to African countries should be more about providing the support and framework to fight corruption and graft and fast track progressive development and not really the continuous flow of financial foreign aid. As evidence has shown this has led to increased corruption across many African countries, thus tackling the cycle of corruption especially political corruption should be the major focus if there is any hope for Africa to begin to enjoy sustainable development

By Patience Bamidele, Masters Student of IDS

References

• Ayodele, T., Cudjoe,, F., Sunwabe, C. K. and Nolutshungu, T. A. 2005. African Perspectives on Aid: Foreign Assistance Will Not Pull Africa Out of Poverty. [online] Available at: http://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulletin/african-perspectives-aid-foreign-assistance-will-not-pull-africa-out-poverty  [Accessed: 19 Mar 2014].
• Mauro, P. (2004), The Persistence of Corruption and Slow Economic Growth, IMF staff papers Vol. 51, No1, 2004
• Moyo, D. 2009. Why Foreign Aid Is Hurting Africa. [online] Available at: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123758895999200083  [Accessed: 19 Mar 2014].
• SPIEGEL ONLINE, G. 2005. SPIEGEL Interview with African Economics Expert: "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" - SPIEGEL ONLINE. [online] Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-african-economics-expert-for-god-s-sake-please-stop-the-aid-a-363663.html  [Accessed: 19 Mar 2014].
• The Relationship between Poverty, Conflict and Development. 2009. Journal of Sustainable Development, Vol. 2 (1), p. 20. Available at: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jsd/article/download/231/191 (PDF) [Accessed: 19 Mar 2014].
• United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (2005), Crime and development in Africa (2005), UNODC: New York
• Wilkie, M. K. 2008. The Effect of foreign aid on perceptions of political corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa. Masters Dissertation. Florida State University. Available at: http://etd.fcla.edu/CF/CFE0002440/Wilkie_Margaret_K_200812_MA.pdf  (PDF) [Accessed: 19 Mar 2014].

Conditional Cash Transfers and child protection outcomes: sticks or carrots?

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have gained unprecedented popularity as a social protection intervention and are no longer exclusively found in Latin America but being implemented across the globe. Its appeal lies in the combination of poverty reduction through the provision of cash with behavioural change by tying the receipt of cash to specific conditions that aim to improve outcomes in other dimensions of wellbeing, most notably for children. Such conditions frequently include school attendance and health check-ups. Ideological and political considerations also come into play: many hold strong reservations about whether cash is spent on the ‘right’ things or are opposed to the idea of giving ‘something for nothing’. Making cash transfers conditional upon certain behaviour is a means of counteracting such concerns.

There is no doubt that CCTs can help reduce poverty and improve wellbeing outcomes that range from nutrition to education and health. The evidence base about those positive effects is substantial and steadily expanding. However, the current debate around CCTs is in danger of being romanticised. Apart from strong moral and ideological considerations denouncing the conditional element of CCTs, perverse incentives and unintended side-effects of CCTs can negatively influence children’s outcomes. A recently published paper in Child Abuse & Neglect assesses the potential impact of three elements of CCTs – conditions, cash and services – on child protection outcomes in particular.

Conditionality is the defining feature of CCTs, requiring participants to meet certain requirements in order to receive the transfers. It is considered part and parcel of CCTs’ great success: the aspect of conditionality induces behavioural change that leads to positive outcomes in the areas of education, health, amongst others. The extent to which positive impacts of CCTs can be attributed to the aspect of conditionality, however, is far from evident. At the same time, perverse incentives and negative side effects are often overlooked. Experiences in Brazil, Kenya and Nicaragua indicate that children were either kept underweight or being overfed in a bid to meet requirements and guarantee receipt of transfers. Programmes that are conditional upon work – public works programmes – have been found to lead to substitutability with children taking on more domestic work or increasing the numbers of hours spent on rearing livestock at the expense of going to school or enjoying leisure time.

The provision of cash has many positive effects: it reduces poverty, improves wellbeing outcomes and helps lifting barriers to access to services. In terms of child protection, it can improve care relationships due to ameliorated stress levels and support carers in providing better care for their children. The role of cash in supporting care for children is however not without its pitfalls. There is a danger of ‘commodification’ of children when carers are primarily motivated by financial incentives to provide foster care, for example.

Finally, CCTs are predicated on the assumption that services required for participants to meet conditions related to education, health and nutrition are available and that services are of high quality. The importance of this supply-side requirement, and the reality that indeed services may not be available to everyone or may not be of high quality, is often overlooked in ‘theories of change’ of CCTs. This particularly puts the most marginalised and vulnerable groups at a double disadvantage: not only do they experience lack of access to (high quality) services, they are also punished for such lack of access as the consequent inability to comply with conditions means they are no longer eligible for the programme.

This blog post does not aim to discredit the many positive effects of CCTs. That said, the current debate on CCTs and their appropriate role does need a more nuanced perspective and be more recognisant of the potential negative effects, particularly when it comes to children. The substantial evidence base on positive impacts makes it tempting to base future decisions on if, where and how to implement CCTs on assumptions rather than in-depth assessments of what works and doesn’t work for children. Stronger linkages between the social protection and child protection rhetoric could help bridging the divide. Without a more nuanced perspective, programmes risk doing as much harm as they do good.  

Written by Keetie Roelen, IDS Research Fellow