Nora Lester Murad - The View From My Window in Palestine

Rights-based aid goes beyond the transparency of data

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This article first appeared in Al-Adab in Arabic and on Aid Watch Palestine’s blog in English.

“Transparency” has become a key element of the global aid discourse, but is this new rallying cry really revolutionary? Aid transparency advocates argue that effective development requires better aid data. They have started a veritable movement complete with databases, dedicated blogs, specialized NGOs, annual global reports and meetings, grant schemes and training opportunities – all dedicated to improving the transparency of aid.

As a result of these efforts, donors and other aid actors have committed to providing updated aid data that is easy to access, use and understand. Once these commitments are implemented, transparency of aid information should facilitate coordination, hinder corruption and mismanagement, and also expose over-spending and self-interest in aid policies. This could be revolutionary, especially if transparency places information in the hands of the people and upends power relations.

Of course aid information should be public. After all, Official Development Assistance (ODA) is generated from public tax money in donor countries and most of it is transferred to developing country partner governments (either directly as bilateral aid or through multilateral agencies like the World Bank or United Nations) where it goes to public budgets. In democratic countries, information about public funds should be, well, public.

But until now, information about international aid has been incomprehensible and unusable for many reasons: lack of disclosure by some donors, uneven disclosure across donors, lack of common reporting standards, late reporting, confusing layers of contracted relationships between donors and end beneficiaries leading to double counting. All this makes it essentially impossible for beneficiaries of aid or taxpayers in donor countries to build a full and accurate picture of what money comes in, where it goes, and what it achieves.

Some proponents of aid data transparency emphasize the technical objective of greater efficiency. They anticipate that standardized data will help eliminate gaps in knowledge due to missing data and duplication that can lead to double counting. They also argue that improved monitoring by donors and recipient governments will enable better decision-making. However, aid transparency is also frequently framed in terms of a more radical concept: accountability. The notion that aid information should be publicly available directly challenges the neo-colonial attitude embedded in many traditional development approaches: the civilized Western powers benevolently “doing something for” the unfortunate and incapable people of the Third World. Theoretically, if aid recipients have genuine access to useful information about aid, they can demand better policies or even refuse to work with certain donors.

Transparency of aid is not only fundamental to good aid practice, but is enshrined in international humanitarian law. The concept of Freedom of Information, which enshrines the legal right of citizens to access information, is also relevant. Many countries have national laws that guarantee transparency of certain information. In Palestine, however, the Palestinian Access to Information law, drafted in 2005, has been stalled for a decade.

Already, citizens of aid-dependent societies can demand information from their own national representatives using the concept of a “social contract” between citizens and their representatives. Also, recipient governments can already demand information from donors using the concepts of “mutual accountability” that are built into standards for development cooperation. What may be new is this: If new transparency commitments are implemented, citizens in aid-recipient societies will have a stronger basis from which to demand information directly from international donors.

Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, Busan, Korea
Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, Busan, Korea

This year, 2015, is the culmination of ten years of intensive aid transparency advocacy. The Paris Declaration, the outcome document of the 2nd High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2005, committed donors to “provide timely, transparent and comprehensive information on aid flows so as to enable partner authorities to present comprehensive budget reports to their legislatures and citizens.” Pressure from civil society and recipient governments in the run up to and during the 3rd High Level Forum in Accra in 2008 led to at least four clear commitments to greater transparency (p. 38). It also led to the launch of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), designed, in part, to support donors to meet their political commitments on transparency laid out in the Accra Agenda for Action. Three years later, in 2011, all the major development actors met at the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea and committed to “implement a common open standard for electronic publication of timely, comprehensive and forward-looking information on resources provided through development cooperation.” Endorsers of the Busan Outcome Document committed to publishing to the common IATI standard by the end of 2015.

Transparency is also integrated into the Sustainable Development Goals process, the successor to the Millennium Development Goals. In September 2015, all major donors signed the Joint Declaration on Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes a recommitment to the principles of transparency in the context of international development cooperation and “…citizen participation in the implementation of all the goals and targets in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including decision-making, policy formulation, follow up and evaluation processes.”

The commitment to participation goes beyond the mere common data standard envisaged by IATI. The bundling of transparency with participation might suggest a new phase for aid transparency. If citizens are to engage genuinely in their own development, they need more than access to aid data; they will also need access to strategies, project plans, budgets, procurement policies, monitoring reports, evaluations, and more. They will need access to these materials in their own languages and before decisions are made to enable them to participate effectively. This fact was mentioned in the IATI feasibility study conducted in October 2010, but, notably, there is no mention of translation of key documents in the monitoring framework for transparency that is open for public consultation until February 2016.

In Palestine, the allocation of resources and agreement on policies is almost always made on the basis of documents that are not available in Arabic and through coordination mechanisms that do not share information in Arabic or in a timely way. For example, the UN and World Bank both present quarterly reports to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, the donor coordination mechanism for Palestine on the global level. Neither body regularly translates these reports into Arabic despite the significant impact these reports have on the daily lives of Palestinians. Another example is the 300-page, consultant-written “Detailed Needs Assessment and Recovery Framework for Gaza Reconstruction” published by the State of Palestine’s Ministerial Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza in August 2015. It is only available in English and only on the website of the Local Development Forum — the donor coordination structure. Given that most documents related to aid in Palestine are in English, it is not surprising that the majority of Palestinians are excluded from effective participation in development cooperation.

It can be argued that providing timely information in Arabic is a huge undertaking fraught with expense and complications. Yet, is there any way to have real accountability or genuine participation if “transparent” materials are not available in Arabic? Why are all these materials produced in English in the first place? If Palestinians really led their own development agenda, strategies, plans, budgets, and evaluation reports would be first produced in Arabic — by Palestinians. The challenge would be translating them selectively into English so that international aid actors would know how to lend their support.

Clearly, while the concept of transparency is potentially revolutionary, aid actors will need to do much more than publish aid budgets and expenditures based on a standard format. The signing of new declarations and commitments is unlikely to spur the changes required. Aid recipients will probably need to make repeated demands for transparency of information they deem essential until donors and other aid actors realign their priorities, establish new work patterns, and make real beneficiary participation a priority. Of course, this will also require fundamental changes in Palestinian civil society as community members become aware of their rights and the responsibility that accompanies them.

In Solidarity with Ashraf Fayadh

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Read about Ashraf Fayadh, Palestinian poet sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia here:

Newly Translated: Poems to Read for Ashraf Fayadh on January 14

In solidarity with Ashraf and all cultural workers and activists facing threats to their freedom to speak, I am joining the global reading of Ashraf’s poetry with “The Melancholy of Dough” translated by Tariq al-Haydar.

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Update! The death sentence has been removed. Read the story in The Guardian!

Palestine today offers a “perfect storm” of possibility

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This article first appeared on Counterpunch.

Fluorescent lights burn in the homes of Palestinian activists 24 hours a day now. Ambiguity is evaporating. Options lie on the rock-strewn tarmac near the physical and figurative checkpoints – more stark, more risky, yet more promising than in the last 20 years.

“Is this good?” some ask, motioning to the TV.

“Is this bad?” others ask, pointing at the smartphone.

“We don’t know yet.”

1936-1948-1967-1973-1982-1987-1993-2000-2008-2012-2014

Will 2015 also have a section in undergraduate Middle East textbooks? Will the sub-title read: “End of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”?

The status quo was temporary—that was understood. So why are newscasters surprised that the rubble it was built on has shifted, eroded, dissolved? Although the world knew the status quo was unsustainable, a viable Plan B never coalesced. So now, after decades of evidence that Palestinians would not surrender, it is happening. Label it whatever you wish.

Between the stabbing and lynching and stoning and demolishing, some people are appealing for calm. But sadly, when things are calm the most we can hope for is more talk about more talk. Death and injury are tragic, but they have propelled us to this crossroads. Now, good people who have for decades signed petitions for peace have to commit more. We have to run forward through the metaphorical tear gas to reach the future that awaits us on the other side – even if we have not yet envisaged it. If we hesitate we may miss this moment of possibility.

Possibility? Yes, for it may be, I contend, a “perfect storm” of possibility.

  • Never before has Israel made itself so difficult to defend in the court of popular opinion by people who claim to represent the civilized world.
  • Never before has the Palestinian Authority been more exposed as an obstacle to Palestinian liberation, catering to foreign and Israeli interests at the expense of its own people, and thoroughly despised for it.
  • Never before has the global solidarity community been more organized and empowered, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists and anti-Zionist US Jews.
  • Never before have international donors been more tired, more over-stretched and more anxious for a viable alternative to the “peace process” charade and the financial and political costs of going along with it.

None of this would matter, though, without the youth. As in the first Intifada, young Palestinians acting out of conscience and desperation are not waiting for political parties or responding to wrinkled leadership. They leave home, school and work and flock to flashpoints to taunt soldiers, an ostensibly doomed strategy, and yet, it has impact. For now, again, the world is looking at Palestine and Israel, and more than ever before, they are seeing the truth: The Israeli occupation must end.

But what will happen if the Israeli occupation ends? Do we—Palestinians and global allies—know what we are fighting for? Or do we only know what we are fighting against?

In Egypt, Algeria, Iran and other places where inspiration turned into disappointment, smart and fearless heroes and sheroes sought to reclaim history for the people. But good did not come from bad, just more bad. How can we learn from the past, avoid a power vacuum, and finally (finally!) enable Palestinians to unite their people on their land and build a society with dignity?

It depends:

  • Will local leaders emerge to harness these disparate possibilities into a strategy?
  • Will local thinkers formulate a bold vision for a just settlement that captures the hearts of decent Palestinians, Israelis and global justice advocates?
  • Will the movement be diverse, inclusive, geographically integrated and democratic?
  • Will global solidarity expand beyond the usual suspects in response to local calls against Israeli impunity, thus cracking the long-standing global complicity?

Surprisingly, I am hopeful. For we have tried every process and arrangement and mechanism and have learned that stopgap measures and temporary agreements are impotent. It will take guts to permanently end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but not more guts than we have shown in generations of fighting. It is time – right now – to try the only option not yet tried – true justice and genuine peace.

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Source: Hanini.org

‘Chief Complaint’: Vignettes from Village Palestine

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The article first appeared on Arabic Literature in English.

Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem welcomed the small crowd that came to the launch of Chief Complaint on October 8, 2015 and acknowledged that the event was almost canceled.

The current escalation of violence in Jerusalem and around Palestine makes it hard to know what to do. We respect those who have lost their lives or are injured, and we want to dissuade others from going out into unsafe circumstances, but we also feel there is a kind of resistance we express when we press forward with regular life. In this case, we decided to press forward and were pleased to have 20 or so others who also pressed forward to join us for the event.

What follows is an edited version of my introductory remarks:

“I’m not sure why Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh honored me with the invitation to introduce him and his recent book, Chief Complaint. I can say that I fell in love with the idea of the book from the table of contents: ‘Chapter One, High Fever’; ‘Chapter Two, Chills’; ‘Chapter Three’ (my personal favorite), ‘Hair Loss’; and so on.

Chief_Complaint_nonfinal__51468.1420580262.450.800“As far as the text, you will find a combination of fact and fiction that builds off the idea of a chief complaint — what a patient states as the reason for a visit to the doctor seems, in this book, never to be the real reason. Dr. Hatim, who spent his career as a physician in his home village of Arrabeh in the Galilee, consolidated the voices, appearances, dreams, and flaws of patients he treated over decades, added in political and cultural detail, imagined some amusing twists, and wrote it all down in what are, as he admits, more like vignettes than plotted stories.

“What I enjoyed was that, like in real life, I learned as much from how these vignettes were told as I did from their content. My own adopted village is Kufr Manda, also in the Galilee, quite close in both distance and spirit to Dr. Hatim’s village of Arrabeh.

“In Kufr Manda you’ll find my 78-year old father-in-law, who is so spry that we once couldn’t find him in his greenhouse. We discovered, instead, that he was scaling the metal bars that hold up the plastic roofing. He has a long room that is the family’s greeting area, so that during the day there are always people coming in and out to visit or get or share information or perhaps to feast on one of my mother-in-law’s meals. Not long ago, I was reading on the couch next to him when my sister-in-law’s husband came in and told the Haj that his grandmother had won her court case and would finally get her share of inherited land, denied her by her brothers. As his grandmother was no longer alive, he needed to figure out how the property would be divided among the living heirs.

“My father-in-law jumped up onto a chair and reached to the top of a bookshelf on which he kept daily things, like his comb and razor, and pulled down what looked like a small plastic wastebasket with rolls of paper sticking out. The old man and my brother-in-law rolled out the old blueprints and began discussing which plot had belonged to so-and-so, but was later divided among so-and-so and so-and so. It was very detailed.

“Later that night, I asked my husband why his father seemed to be in possession of the official blueprints showing land ownership in the village. It was a strange idea for me, a US citizen who generally assumes that official things should be in government institutions under the care of paid officials.

“‘Because people trust him,’ my husband explained, and the conversation was over.

“I tell this story as an example of the kinds of stories that Dr. Hatim relays in Chief Complaint. They are everyday stories of Palestinians who live in villages in the Galilee. They are the kinds of stories that are unremarkable to the people who live them but very rich to those of us who don’t.

“Dr. Hatim tells the stories in Chief Complaint with both an insider and outsider perspective. He not only brings you into a place where you could not otherwise go, but he also explains what you’re seeing and hearing. The explanations may be long or short, and even if you read them twice, you might not grasp all of it. But the prose is strong and beautiful even if you don’t understand all his references.

“When I told my father-in-law in Kufr Manda that I was reading a book by a doctor from Arrabeh, he said, ‘Humpf.’ I thought he hadn’t understood my poor Arabic so I told him again and asked if by chance he knew Dr. Hatim from Arrabeh and he replied with a straight face: ‘Twenty-five doctors graduated from Arrabeh this year alone. The percentage of doctors in Arrabeh is higher than anywhere else in the world.’

“‘Really?’ I asked.

“‘What do you think I’m doing? Eating seeds?’ which is his way of saying that although he only studied until fourth grade, he is no idiot and Dr. Hatim, book or not, is just another guy. I’ve often thought that someone should write down my father-in-law’s stories so they aren’t lost, and Dr. Hatim — despite not knowing my father-in-law — has done just that. By capturing the humanity and the humor, the wisdom and the parochialism, he has saved a vision of this generation of Palestinian village elders.

“If I have a criticism of the book, it’s that, when you finish reading this book about a village doctor and the characters he comes to know and love, you can be sure that you’ve only seen a part of what there is to know. This book begs for another to be written – not by a doctor but by a doctora. Dr. Hatim’s stories are rich and true and important, but so are those told among women. I look forward to reading that book, whoever may write it.

More:

A video interview with Dr. Hatim about his book, Chief Complaint.

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