BetterAid Announces Busan HLF4 CSO Participants

A global call to be accredited as a Civil Society Organization (CSO) participant at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) was made on April 8 via the BetterAid and Open Forum websites.
700 emails and more than 600 applications were submitted to the BetterAid secretariat. Networks and organizations represented in the BetterAid and Open Forum steering groups worked together in regional caucuses to lead the selection process for CSOs wanting to represent the region.

Now the Global Selection and Oversight Committee is pleased to announce regional lists of those CSOs who will be recommended to the OECD Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF) Core Group for accreditation.

Altogether 270 participants were selected plus a ten percent alternates/reserves list in case a person originally selected is unable to fulfill the requirements of active preparation or is unable to travel to Busan.
A letter from the Global CSO Selection and Oversight Committee provides more details on the selection process.

 See the list of selected participants and CSOs below:
-        Africa (Sub Saharan) -        Asia (including Pacific)
-        Latin America
-        Middle East and North Africa
-        Europe (including non EU member states and North America): this list is still being finalized.
-        Global CSOs (International CSOs, international networks etc…)

The Korean CSOs have their own selection process and are aiming at 30 participants.
The lists of reserve participants and CSOs is still being finalized and will be released imminently.

Lists of funded participants
The lists for those who will be funded will start with a list of 100 Southern CSOs that the Selection and Oversight Committee will submit to the OECD Trust Fund managed by Asian Development Bank, to be released imminently. A second list will be announced in mid July when the Committee has confirmed the first commitments from international donor agencies.

A third list will be announced in September.
Please contact Applicationhlf4@betteraid.org if you have any questions for the Global CSO Selection and Oversight Committee regarding the selection process.

Crossroads: Food security vs ethanol vs mining vs climate change

By MARY LOU O. MARIGZA
www.nordis.net

Food security and food sovereignty had always been related to the land problem. It is a pitiful state of affairs that those who till the land and provide food for our table have for the longest time been deprived of the right to own the land they till. Blood, sweat, tears, hunger, dispossession and ejection are the sorrowful realities they face.

In our hunger for clean energy and more production to feed a hungry world, our farmers have been the least of the concern of state planners and investors, especially foreign investors who have to keep their deep pockets full and their economies rolling. Poor Filipino farmers at the receiving end.

This is the problem faced by the farmers of San Mariano town in Isabela who are facing a rich giant conglomerate of Japanese investors and local sugarlords that needs the energy and the clean environment “pogi points” to turn sugarcane to bio-ethanol for electricity and transport fuel. Theoretically, the bio-ethanol enterprise will provide the necessary shift from fossil fuels to renewable resources for energy and transport that was mandated into law through the BioFuels Act.

However, what is hidden in the equation is the gargantuan shift from farming for food to farming for energy. To use the analogy of Ka Daning Ramos of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, the farmer who produces the chicken for the market will now be reduced to buying chicken cubes if he wants to eat chicken. The farmers who will be contracting with the bioethanol company will now be reduced to buying all their needs including rice since they will be forced to plant only “ethanol” to meet the company’s quota. Even their language has changed. The farmers of San Mariano no longer say they will plant sugarcane, no, they will plant “ethanol”.

The International Fact-finding Mission to San Mariano, Isabela last week of May was conducted by several experts on food security and land rights on the national and international level. This is a follow-up activity to an earlier national Fact-finding mission last February to probe into land grabbing vis a vis the biofuels project.

The IFFM documented cases already brought as early as 2005 to the municipal, provincial and national levels of the government and heard new cases of landgrabbing with the open knowledge of government agencies like the DENR, DAR, Land Bank and the like. The land problem is so massive and deep but the tillers of the soil stood their ground – “Laban kung laban” as they said it so eloquently. They had to confront a bureaucracy that was clearly washing its hands off the problem or outright sitting on the complaints while they “study the matter further” until the next fact-finding mission maybe. They gritted their teeth when a legal officer accused them of “nagpapaloko” even when they presented evidences of the scam and fraud in several barrios of San Mariano.

San Mariano has a history of land struggle that started when the logging of the forest region started. The first to be affected are the Agtas. They have been displaced by migrants who have heard of the land frontiers and the richness of the Isabela soil. The vast expanse of logged over areas that had water resources and roads however bad became home to communities of Ifugaos, Ilokanos and Ibanags and the Agtas who later realized they have to claim some piece of land with “paper” ownership and stay in one place if they have to show proof of their claim to these paper documents.

In one barangay, an Ifugao settler who has been a local official has been “resourceful” to title his ownership over hundreds of hectares. In Ilocos, he would have been a big landlord but in San Mariano, he is just one of the big guys. San Mariano is so big that a lot of people can easily settle and make the land productive. And therein lies the problem. The land in San Mariano is up for grabs even if it is knowledge that these lands have been occupied since the tillers can remember or were themselves born there.

In the midst of these land problems, a Japanese funded consortium is planning to lease/rent lands for sugarcane plantations for bio-ethanol. What will be left of the farmers then? Only the knowledge that once upon a morning they “own” a piece of land and in the afternoon, another has claimed it by paper documents? What will they put on their tables if all they will be planting are “ethanol”? After all, 11,000 hectares is not a small number. And would 11,000 hectares suffice if there is crop failure due to weather and pests? Where will the farmers now get their food (and it is knowledge also that most of the rice fields have been converted to yellow or animal corn fields)?

And yet another specter is looming in San Mariano – mining companies have applied for permit to mine the areas for minerals. Where will the farmers of San Mariano get their food? # nordis.net

Philippine CSOs present position at multi-stakeholders forum on aid effectiveness

Last June 2, Philippine Civil Society Organizations represented by AidWatch Philippines and the Council for People's Development and Governance (CPDG) were able to present their statement for the Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness which will happen on November 29-December 1 this year, in the Multi-stakeholders forum on aid effectiveness.

The multi-stakeholders forum was facilitated by the Philippine Harmonization Committee on Aid Effectiveness and was attended by the National Economic Development Authority- Project Monitoring Staff (NEDA-PMS), Department of Finance, Representative Luzviminda Ilagan of Gabriela Partylist, a representative from the office of Kabataan Partylist Representative Raymond Palatino, donor agencies US Aid, World Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the German KFW Bankengruppe and the United Nations and CSOs.

In the statement presented by Jazminda Lumang of AidWatch, the CSOs calls were:

1. Fully evaluate and deepen the Paris and Accra commitments through ensuring reforms based on democratic ownership. This can be done through giving emphasis on the agency of citizens, communities and marginalized groups in constructing their own paths to development by giving more space for locally-defined goals and locally-led strategies that better reflect people’s aspiration, practices and knowledge and allow for greater democratic participation. We demand particularly the government for accountability mechanisms on ensuring that ODA and development programs reflect the interest and truly benefit the people especially the marginalized segments and in ensuring that ODA is free from corruption.

2. Strengthen Development Effectiveness through development cooperation practices that promote human rights and focus on the eradication of poverty and inequality. The government and development partners must commit to and implement rights-based approaches to development focusing their attention to the most marginalized people and people living in poverty; ensuring inclusive participation and empowerment and upholding of the right to development; promote and implement gender equality and women’s rights; and implement a decent work (and decent wage) agenda.

3. Affirm and ensure the participation of the full diversity of CSOs in the Philippines as independent development actors in their own right in development cooperation processes.

• Enact and support House Bill 3230 which provides for greater democratic ownership in the country’s official development assistance and ensuring the role of CSOs in development cooperation.
• Recognize the Istanbul Principles as basis for context-specific assessment of CSO contributions to development.
• Commit to creating an enabling environment for CSOs for them to reach their full potential as development actors. Basic enabling mechanisms for CSOs must be in place in keeping with international human rights guarantees, including freedom of association, freedom of expression, the right to operate free from unwarranted state interference, the right to communicate and cooperate, the right to seek and secure funding, and the state’s duty to protect its people.

4. Promote an equitable and just development cooperation architecture that is inclusive, rights-based and democratic.

• Work for an inclusive Busan Compact for Development Effectiveness at the HLF IV – consistent with human rights conventions and covenants involving all stakeholders – governments, donors, multi-lateral institutions, parliamentarians, local governments and civil society.
• Recognize CSOs especially women’s organizations, social partners and grass roots organizations as full members in the formal structures of a new development architecture, along with governments and other defined development stakeholders.
• Create an equitable and inclusive multi-stakeholders forum for policy dialogue enabling and supporting situations where people can exercise sovereignty over their own process of development, where the voice of the marginalized groups are given space and heard, supporting and ensuring economic, social, political and cultural institutions are accountable, inclusive, participatory and democratic.

(Please read the whole statement here.)

Aside from AidWatch, CPDG and the Reality of Aid, the CSOs present were  the Council for Health and Development, Health Alliance for Democracy, Community Medicine Development Foundation, Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research, Center for Women's Resources, Citizens Disaster Response Center, AGHAM (Advocates of Science and Technology for the People), Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KAMP), NARS ng Bayan, Med-herbal Pharmacy and the Center for Development Programs in the Cordillera.

Philippine CSOs Statement on the Road to Busan

We, members of AidWatch-Philippinesⁱ, Council for People’s Development and Governanceⁱⁱ along with the broad CSO community in the country join the global CSO efforts in bringing forward a comprehensive agenda – a meaningful and ambitious Busan Compact on Development Effectiveness.

We assert that aid and the overall aid system will only be developmental if it is consistent with the key principles of respect for human rights (economic, cultural, civil and political); democratic ownership of the development process; equity in growth and development; transparency and access to information; accountability for decisions and actions, and primacy of the people’s well-being and welfare.

We maintain that aid effectiveness as reflected through the Paris Declaration Principles is about the technical “efficient delivery and management of aid” and has not address the crucial issues of conditionality and tied aid; and of truly delivering real economic progress, better social services and enjoyment of human rights for the people.

We join the global call for a new development cooperation system built not just in reforming aid delivery and management but more importantly ensuring development effectiveness in recipient countries like the Philippines.

In spite its supposedly middle-income status, the Philippines remains hobbled with widespread poverty, severe inequality, chronic bureaucratic corruption and underdevelopment. It is in this context of development effectiveness that the country must seriously address the following fundamental concerns:

• Promotion of human rights and social justice
• Poverty reduction that focuses on uplifting the living condition of the majority of the peasant poor through thorough going agrarian reforms that addresses landlessness and tenancy issues; decent work and decent wage; and a nationally-owned and democratically-adopted comprehensive national economic development policies and plans that will truly benefit the people.
• Gender equality and women’s empowerment
• Environmental sustainability with focus on addressing the problem of climate change

In pursuit of these, the Philippines must strive to establish a development cooperation framework with development partners that resolve power in country relationships through mutual accountability, elimination of tied and donor-imposed conditionalities, increase aid transparency and predictability and the eventual elimination of dependency on foreign aid and technologies and external markets. This can be done through a multi-stakeholder approach, ensuring mutually-supportive policies in international aid, trade, investment and finance that uphold and advance the realization of the Right to Development.

We believe that as development actors in our own right, CSOs contribute in unique and important ways to development – we are human rights advocates, watchdogs/monitors, campaigners, organizers – we are innovative agents of change and social transformation.

Globally, CSOs have made significant progress in strengthening their own effectiveness in development via the Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness process. In September 2010, 170 CSOs from more than 70 countries (the Philippine CSOs included) gathered together in Istanbul, Turkey and agreed on the Istanbul Principles for CSO Development Effectiveness. The Istanbul Principles reflects the important roles that CSOs play, the principles and values that they live by.

In the same vein, the High Level Forum III via paragraph 20 of the Accra Agenda for Action recognizes CSOs as development actors in their own right, as it promised to “deepen engagement with CSOs as independent development actors in their own right whose efforts complement those of the governments and private sectors…”

However, despite the apparent official recognition, many CSOs in the Philippines are facing policies and practices that are undermining or severely limiting their roles as development actors. Besides the highly restricting environment for the recognition of CSOs, many members of our CSO network organizations experienced being harassed, illegally arrested and detained, tortured, extra-judicially killed and enforced disappeared. Militarization in many rural areas in the country, limits the effectiveness of many of our grassroots partner organizations.

Despite these challenges, Philippine CSOs especially those within the AidWatch and CPDG network will continue to push for and support national and local development agendas that benefit the people.

Thus, on the occasion of the High-Level Multi-stakeholders’ Forum involving government, development partners and NGOs/POs involved in the run-up towards the High Level Forum 4 in Busan, South Korea this November 2011, we call upon the government and its development partners to:

1. Fully evaluate and deepen the Paris and Accra commitments through ensuring reforms based on democratic ownership. This can be done through giving emphasis on the agency of citizens, communities and marginalized groups in constructing their own paths to development by giving more space for locally-defined goals and locally-led strategies that better reflect people’s aspiration, practices and knowledge and allow for greater democratic participation. We demand particularly the government for accountability mechanisms on ensuring that ODA and development programs reflect the interest and truly benefit the people especially the marginalized segments and in ensuring that ODA is free from corruption.

2. Strengthen Development Effectiveness through development cooperation practices that promote human rights and focus on the eradication of poverty and inequality. The government and development partners must commit to and implement rights-based approaches to development focusing their attention to the most marginalized people and people living in poverty; ensuring inclusive participation and empowerment and upholding of the right to development; promote and implement gender equality and women’s rights; and implement a decent work (and decent wage) agenda.

3. Affirm and ensure the participation of the full diversity of CSOs in the Philippines as independent development actors in their own right in development cooperation processes.

• Enact and support House Bill 3230 which provides for greater democratic ownership in the country’s official development assistance and ensuring the role of CSOs in development cooperation.
• Recognize the Istanbul Principles as basis for context-specific assessment of CSO contributions to development.
• Commit to creating an enabling environment for CSOs for them to reach their full potential as development actors. Basic enabling mechanisms for CSOs must be in place in keeping with international human rights guarantees, including freedom of association, freedom of expression, the right to operate free from unwarranted state interference, the right to communicate and cooperate, the right to seek and secure funding, and the state’s duty to protect its people.

4. Promote an equitable and just development cooperation architecture that is inclusive, rights-based and democratic.

• Work for an inclusive Busan Compact for Development Effectiveness at the HLF IV – consistent with human rights conventions and covenants involving all stakeholders – governments, donors, multi-lateral institutions, parliamentarians, local governments and civil society.
• Recognize CSOs especially women’s organizations, social partners and grass roots organizations as full members in the formal structures of a new development architecture, along with governments and other defined development stakeholders.
• Create an equitable and inclusive multi-stakeholders forum for policy dialogue enabling and supporting situations where people can exercise sovereignty over their own process of development, where the voice of the marginalized groups are given space and heard, supporting and ensuring economic, social, political and cultural institutions are accountable, inclusive, participatory and democratic.

i AidWatch Philippines is a broad network of 160 grassroots-based NGOs and civil society networks involve in the promotion of aid and development effectiveness in over 60 provinces in the Philippines.

ii The Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) is a broad and diverse national network based in the Philippines of national-sectoral and regional networks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs) engaged in development work. CPDG engages in the CSO development effectiveness process.