Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

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is a straightforward donation? Who should be in the discussion – those that
are contracting the loan on behalf of their government or those that will be
paying the loan in future years? Should it be those that are negotiating the
funds and credits, or those that will be using them or those for whom the
funds will be used? Who should be able to give their opinion about donations
and about technical support; who gets to be able to use the consultants?
What, indeed is the limit here? How do we bring in the other voices
that are part of this broader process of dialogue? In some cases this can be
done actively, by creating forums and workshops to debate programs and
projects, to discuss evaluation of activities; but in other cases it will have to
be done through field studies, documents and other outreach activities.
However do we allow for this? How do we move towards greater transparency
as a constituent feature of building dialogue?
These are all very real questions in public sector management projects
and ones that cause me many moments of doubt. Administrative reform
activities tend to use a lot of money, mobilize a lot of consultants and take
a long time. Such resources could build a lot of wells and help a lot of
original peoples; yet decisions are taken – albeit with tremendous love and
care – between donors’ representatives, their technical advisors, government
officials and their technical advisors. Is this dialogue enough? How can information
be provided about what is being discussed to those that in various
ways are involved or affected by the decisions. This question has already
begun to make its presence felt in settings in which original or minority
peoples are in different ways excluded from the ongoing political process
and its institutions, but also applies in most if not all settings of social, political
and cultural inequality. At present the concerns of some of these different
actors are brought in through evaluation and impact studies or through
questions raised in liaison meetings. But it is one thing to ask about the
effects on gender relations, or ethnic minorities, or the elderly, but something
very different to develop mechanisms to ensure that these same actors
are actively present in discussion both before and during the activities
being supported, as well as after. To take an example, how many of the
international community’s efforts and how much of its support to activities
in the Amazon basin are discussed and debated beforehand with the many
different original peoples of the region? Many documents that donors prepare
for the partner country governments are restricted and are not made
public unless the partner country government so wishes; most aid relationships
are government to government or, in practice, executive branch to
executive branch. How might donors work more closely with parliaments
and national assemblies? Or, where local government work is taking place,
with local councils and neighborhood assemblies. How much communication
of what is taking place is effectively going on; how wide are the catchment’s
areas for opinions and views; how many different knowledges are
being drawn in and debated?