Comments

I found this analysis very useful. It's important for those of us in the IDA beneficiary countries to not be overly optimistic. The IDA members should nevertheless be proud of what they have achieved, and we are prepared to assist in conveying the fundraising message in whatever way it might help.

Thanks for this post and comments so far, this is indeed a very important issue and as has been highlighted further research will be needed. I would raise a couple of points which are intended to amplify the issues rather than counter anything that is here. The first is that prosecution is a function of the state not the victim. In relation to criminal offences the state takes prosecutorial action (on behalf of society as a whole), with the victim being a witness for the prosecution. In cases of sexual violence prosecutors encounter the difficulty of the main witness often being unwilling to testify in court for a whole host of reasons (family/community pressure, reluctance to face the attacker, lack of appropriate court facilities to account for special circumstances, e.g where the victim is a child). Some jursidictions have sought to mitigate this by providing dedicated witness support workers (expensive) or instigating a no-drop policy within prosecution offices (can result in victims being designated as hostile witnesses by virtue of the adversarial system used by courts in common law countries). Another more pragmatic response (not examined here and possibly not applicable but it would be good to know) is for prosecutors to negotiate a guilty plea to a lesser charge to save the victim having to testify. The figures here are illustrative but it would be good to see how they compare with other PNG centres and/or other countries. There is a wider issue around the political economy of law, justice and policing which I will mention briefly here (and hopefully expand upon later): there are no votes in these things as they tend to be issues that would normally be part of a national rather than a local conversation. Whenever we talk about 'service delivery' or the lack thereof in rural PNG or elsewhere we talk about health, education and infrastructure but the concept of 'law and justice' as a service is not entrenched on either the supply or demand side.

Stephen and Kamalini - thanks for this informative blog. It provides some hard facts on the sad state of sexual violence in Lae city. The real heroes, as you rightly point out, are the members of the public plus the NGOs such as MSF who provide care and support to the victims. Your data shows the pathetic rates of conviction, but what you miss is the fact that a large number, something like half when I last looked at the statistics, of those sent to jail escape confinement. May be it is time the people of PNG stood up to crime. The Indians have shown us that this can be done.

Stephen, Kamalini Such an important conversation to bring to light, though always such a shame that violence continues. As a White Ribbon Ambassador, standing up for the ending of violence against women, we need to maintain the conversation, the advocacy and work together, men and women, to effect change such that violence against women is never excused or ignored - let alone committed. Mel Dunn

Thanks Grant. Your article raises some very challenging queries. Maybe some of the questions that should also be asked are: Is the current education system in PNG providing the education the majority of school leavers need to gain the employment they wish? Are the employment opportunities on offer dovetailed into the education system? The majority of PNG people are still subsistence farmers. While the demographics are changing, they aren't keeping pace with the huge 'youth bulge' that is catapulting large numbers of graduating students into a very limited job market. The only alternatives are to return to the village and start gardening or become one of the urban 'underemployed'. Clearly these options don't appeal to many who then quite reasonably ask: 'Why did we attend school only to have no use for much of what we learnt?' The PNG PM has recently asked PNG graduates to stay in the country and help develop their own nation. The LNG project was held up as the 'great new hope' for absorbing unemployed skilled workers yet will this happen to the extent where there will be full employment? There are reports that some of those who gain employment must then be retrained in the skills required. For those who do gain employment, are the jobs where they live or must they travel to where the employment opportunities are and then worrying about accommodation, living expenses and their ethnicity? Fixing primary school education woes is only part of the holistic problem. Someone at senior government level must take a helicopter view of the whole education/employment situation in PNG and urgently address the detailed planning for tomorrow's students while coping with today's underemployed. Maybe that's just some of the reasons why the 'community engagement in local schools' is reportedly falling off? Many others may well involve the age old local problems of resource management and effective governance.

Wesley, Apologies for this delayed reply, and thanks for your useful account of past attempts to forge certain forms of bloc identity among small states, particularly small island developing states (SIDS). You are right that such attempts have never really succeeded, and have not been pursued very vigorously in recent years. The idea of a special, formal UN category of SIDS, analogous to the category of Least-Developed Countries (LDCs), came up again in 2010, when Maldives sought support for a General Assembly resolution on this point. This was in the context of (wait for it) the <a href="http://www.sidsnet.org/msi_5/index.shtml" rel="nofollow">five-year review of the Mauritius Strategy for Implementation</a> of the Barbados Programme of Action. There was little support outside the AOSIS grouping, though Australia's then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd, expressed general interest in the idea in one open forum. The paucity of support is in part explained by the fact that non-SIDS LDCs fear the dilution of any preferences they might enjoy by virtue of their LDC status, though in reality such preferences are not very significant. Another factor is the technical difficulty of defining any notion of vulnerability that is really unique to small states. It seems unlikely at this point that there will ever be general agreement on a criteria-based definition of "small and vulnerable states" for the purpose of conferring privileged and automatic access to resources or preferences. In that sense, and also because the primary focus was not on access to resources or preferences, the event in Dili probably cannot be said to have reinvigorated earlier discussions on small state identity. An alternative way to look at it is to see the relatively new g7+ group as similar in nature to the AOSIS group—a club of countries with broadly similar characteristics that band together to pursue common goals. The significance of the Dili conference, as I saw it, was that it created an initial connection between the g7+ group and an important subgroup of SIDS, such that each group now has a clearer appreciation of the other's particular interests and concerns, and both groups have identified a core set of common interests. The conference might have helped to form a coalition, if not a category. Robin

Interesting post - in particular I wonder about the factors that led to a decline in community participation over time.

Bill, Thanks for your comment. Our survey, which we completed late last year, had two important aims. One was to look back over the last ten years, where revenues have tripled, and see what impact this has had on service delivery. This sort of benchmarking is critical for every country. Going back to the same schools and health centres which were surveyed 10 years ago is a great opportunity to identify areas of progress and regress. The other aim of the survey was precisely to examine the impact of recent government reforms, such as the central government support in place of school fees. Is that support reaching schools, and how are they using it? It would be a grave mistake to assume that DSIP and other forms of devolved funding will solve the problems of lack of maintenance and understaffing at the front line of service delivery. DSIP and similar funds are invariably spent on projects. This means new roads and new buildings, or perhaps rehabilitated roads and buildings. Even if these are useful investments, there is no guarantee that the roads will be maintained, or the new facilities staffed. Our analysis shows that recurrent funding is being squeezed at the expense of the huge boom in devolved development spending. Finally, even if you think DSIP is the solution to PNG's development problems, then you will be interested in our research, because our analysis of schools and health centres reveals a lot about how DSIP is being used. We found lots of unfinished DSIP projects, and also examples of projects which were completed but are not being utilized due to lack of staff. If you're interested, please check out the <a href="http://devpolicy.anu.edu.au/png-budget-project/budget-fora/" rel="nofollow">project website</a> and especially the presentations made at the February budget forum. We plan to release the results of our analysis in the second half of the year. You can also find a really good video of the budget forum which EMTV has just released <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUR0Oqa6FTQ" rel="nofollow">here</a>.

Dear Robin, Many thanks for the update from Dili. It is a great overview. I'm wondering if you can give a bit more of a sense of how the discussions of ‘fragile states’ were linked (or not) to earlier discussions about the unique development challenges facing small states (particularly small island developing states) and earlier attempts at forging a 'bloc identity' for small and vulnerable states. Putting aside discussions about technical definition of membership for a moment (there has been a long debate about what constitutes a 'small state' or a 'small and vulnerable state') the unique challenges and concerns of small states have long been of concern to multilateral agencies like UNCTAD and the Commonwealth Secretariat. The particular challenges faced by small island states led to a global UN conference in Barbados in 1994, which drew up a ‘Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States’. A key challenge was to identify exactly what made small states (which were often island states) unique. Key concerns were around exposure to ecological disasters and economic shocks, as well as a number of unavoidable constraints associated with small size. The concept of ‘vulnerability’ emerged as a defining feature of small island developing states (and small states more generally). Subsequent to the Barbados meeting, in 1998, the Commonwealth Secretariat drew up a ‘Commonwealth Vulnerability Index for Developing Countries’, and perhaps unsurprisingly most states on the index were small states or small island states. In the late 1990s a concern also emerged that small states faced economic marginalisation as a result of global trade liberalisation (as many small states in the Pacific, the Caribbean and Africa relied on postcolonial trade preferences for key exports). In this context, it was seen as imperative that specific work programs be developed for small and vulnerable states at a range of multilateral agencies. In 1998 the Commonwealth Secretariat and the World Bank established a ‘Joint Task Force on Small States’ which sought to identify ways that multilateral and regional donor institutions might better meet the needs of small states. A report was produced in 2000 that included ‘development frameworks towards small states’ from: the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Inter-American Development bank, the IMF, the UN (including UNDP and UNCTAD), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. Early in the new millennium there was even discussion of a new category of states at the WTO – which would allow for special and differential treatment, and new aid for trade for small and vulnerable economies. At the launch of the Doha Round in 2001 the WTO established a work programme specifically intended frame responses to challenges faced by small vulnerable economies in the international trading system. However this programme has, to date, achieved relatively few outcomes for small states. With regard to ecological challenges, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) at the UN has of course been very important from the early 1990s; advocating for strong multilateral action on climate change. Climate change is, ultimately, an existential threat for some small states in the Pacific and elsewhere. In recent times AOSIS has also led campaigns for ‘Loss and Damage’ measures to be considered as part of the global climate change negotiations. AOSIS is now calling for ‘an international solidarity fund that would compensate countries for economic and non-economic losses stemming from slow-onset climate impacts’. Outside of the climate talks, and here I may well be wrong, it seems momentum for a ‘bloc identity’ for small states in international fora has slowed somewhat in recent years. To return to the Dili Meeting then, is it accurate to suggest that this new alliance of ‘fragile states’ – which seems to link previous groupings of small and vulnerable states with ‘conflict affected’ states – might reinvigorate the search for a ‘bloc identity’ for vulnerable states in international fora, specifically through the attempt to negotiate and frame ‘post-MDG’ goals tailored to their unique needs? I too have tended to avoid ‘the smokestacks of the post-2015 industry’ but if these talks among ‘fragile states’ allow for discussion to move on to the unique policy measures and international partnerships that are needed for encouraging inclusive development in states like those of the Pacific region, perhaps the post-2015 discussion will be very useful after all. Regards Wesley

Great article Kate and Marianne. It clearly points out the advantages of women’s economic empowerment and how it can be enhanced and in turn, enhance development. But we still have a long way to go. While women and girls health and education in developing countries have improved, women continue to trail men in formal labour force participation, access to credit, entrepreneurship0 rates, income levels and inheritance and ownership rights. The World Bank says it’s smart economics to invest in women. Underinvesting in women limits development, slows down poverty reduction and economic growth. The Bank produces papers and facts and figures to support this. But even they say that if they couldn’t show that it enhanced economic development, they wouldn’t be interested. So what about women’s rights and the improvement of women’s lives as an end it itself, as opposed to how useful women in speeding up development. The OECD DAC Paper on Women’s Economic Empowerment mentioned in the blog spells it out. It says women’s economic empowerment is a prerequisite for sustainable development, pro-poor growth and the achievement of all the MDGs. At the same time it is about rights and equitable societies. It also points out that women experience barriers in almost every aspect of work. At the same time women perform the bulk of unpaid care work. This latter never seems to receive much attention and is an area for much greater attention by donors through increased recognition and valuing of the ways in which care work supports thriving economies. Indeed, it also need to be addressed in developed countries. And why is there so much attention to microcredit rather than macrocredit for women. I’ve had women in Timor-Leste ask me why the men always get the big things like cattle and they always get the small things like chickens. The men can make $100a month out of the cattle while the women only make about $10 from the chickens. And little attention seems to be paid to the possible adverse effects of microcredit loans. The DAC paper points out that often the loans are inflexible, have an exorbitantly high interest rate attached to them and repayment starts immediately putting enormous psychological pressure on the workers, affecting productivity and output. It is repeatedly heard that people prefer not to enter into a microcredit loan as they fear that they will lose everything. In Bangladesh, for instance, women do better when they band together in a co-operative structure and both their economic and social standing in the household improve. Women’s social standing, i.e. their status, both in the family and the community is crucial to their welfare and those of their children. In West Africa, when cash cropping was introduced back in the 1960s, all the new technology and money was directed to the men and the women lost their control over family finances through loss of earnings from the excesses from their vegetable gardens that they would normally sell in the markets and use the income for their children’s education and general welfare. Recent World Bank studies in four African countries show that providing women farmers with the same quantity and quality of inputs that men typically receive, and improving their access to agricultural education, could increase national agricultural output and incomes by an estimated 10 to 20 per cent. Why has it taken us so long – over 50 years – to learn this lesson. In fact it hasn’t taken us 50 years to learn this lesson. Most of us working in the world of gender equality have always known it. What has taken so long is for decision makers to listen. Why do women have to fight for equality in everything? Why do so few people in influential positions support them? A few years ago, the DAC pointed out that amongst donors, it was mostly relatively junior level staff who pushed for attention to gender equality and that it be included in project designs, monitoring, etc. It appears that women’s rights and gender equality become less and less visible they higher you go up the donors’ ladders. Why is this? Where is the logic in it, especially if the evidence shows that assisting women leads to development? Why is there still so much actual resistance to women’s equality – from extreme cases like the Taliban shooting a 14 year old girl because she wanted to go to school, to persistent structural and cultural discrimination and endemic, so called domestic, violence against women and girls. Even in the developed Western world, women still do more of the housework and child care than men, not to mention almost all the unpaid care work. How much of the world’s women’s talents and contributions to development have been wasted over the centuries and are still being wasted today. So, a great blog about the ECF and what it’s achieving for women’s economic empowerment but on this International Women’s Day, let’s try and do even more.

Robin, thank you for taking the time to provide such a lengthy and detailed response - it is good to get this sense of what the discussions covered over and above what was captured in the final consensus document

It is too bad that the FSM's delegate to this convention, Senator Peter Christian, had to cancel out because of domestic commitments. We would have liked to participate. In any event Robin's report is excellent and thought provoking. My concern in reading the report is I am not sure what a how goal is and how it can be better than a what goal. I hope it does not become a ready made excuse. Churchill said :"sometimes it's not good enough to do your best, you have to do what it takes." I also am a little ambivalent about this newfound bloc identity. For this bloc, the measure of success for any member is to be able to leave the bloc behind.