Local Governance in Afghanistan: A View from the Ground

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Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit 2011 Both state and non-state institutions have responded to this situation by facilitating and conducting trainings for civil servants and elected representatives. Trainings in management skills, IT and English have been provided to civil servants by ministries in association with a range of agencies and NGOs. Provincial council members have been trained in good governance, liaison, administration and planning skills under the Afghanistan Subnational Governance Program and the USAID-funded Afghanistan Local Governance Assistance Project. The National Democratic Institute has also provided training to provincial councillors to help develop their capacity to participate in provincial development planning exercises, respond to their constituencies, and oversee activities of the provincial administration. However, a sizeable number of provincial council members are unable to read and write to adequate standards, let alone deal with development terminology and a whole new realm of conceptual complexity related to their mandate. It was observed that some had problems engaging with the technical support provided by government, finding it hard to assimilate concepts often widely removed from their own life experience. This is compounded by the fact that documents explaining local government policy are largely composed by Western-trained minds with little apparent understanding of cultural context. Difficulties of accurately translating legalistic English into Dari or Pashto present a further challenge. There thus remains a pressing need to maintain training momentum, address issues of language and re-evaluate training design and delivery to ensure that the way it is being provided is in line with the needs of the trainee. As one IDLG official suggested, greater effort must be devoted to communicating concepts in ways that can be more easily understood and applied. The establishment of the Provincial Affairs Directorate (PAD) within IARCSC to recruit and train civil servants in all 34 provinces is a positive step. The PAD has already identified training requirements of civil servants in a pilot conducted in Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman, and plans to extend training based on its results to a further eight provinces by 2012-13. 152 This second phase will focus on mentoring as a training method, prepare standardised training modules according to ministries and grades of employees, and link capacity building initiatives to performance assessment. Policy Issues: There is an identified need to make more funds available to meet the training needs of civil servants and provincial council members. However, above all, there needs to be a coordinated approach to training, and the different techniques used by the many organisations involved need to be consolidated into a unified approach. The types of training on offer also need to be reassessed, and could be more focused on providing mentoring models that deliver on a regular little-and-often basis. Provincial training facilities run by IARCSC would benefit from further development, and conducting training in provincial centres would help foster a stronger sense of provincial identity among districtlevel officials. Mentoring needs to be encouraged within provincial and district offices to enable recruits to learn from those with longer service. Capacity building initiatives could also be linked to performance assessment mechanisms and salary upgrades. Given their relatively small numbers and the nature of their tasks, customised training needs to be developed for provincial councillors. This should be developed in line with their capacity, paying adequate attention to training materials, concepts used and issues of translation. 7.12 Summary of policy options The Centralised State • Modify the 2010 Draft Legislation on Local Government to provide meaningful powers to provincial and district representative bodies that give them clear authority to exercise scrutiny and sanction the executive, and identified powers to act within the Provincial Development Committee. • Define in the draft legislation the autonomy of the provincial council and its freedom to report directly to the Wolesi Jirga. 152 “An Organizational Capacity Development Needs Assessment Tool for Subnational Government,” http://www.csc.gov. af/pad/pad-overview-program-%20ocdna.pdf (accessed 20 April 2011). Local Governance in Afghanistan: A View from the Ground 67
Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit 2011 Responsibility for Local Government • Allocate responsibility to a single executive authority for the administration of all tiers of local government. Planning • Increase the powers of Provincial Development Committees. • Provide each province with an allocation from the central budget to be used by the Provincial Development Committee to meet locally defined needs. • Draft legislation that will allow provincial authorities to raise and retain local taxes. The District • Consolidate all authority for district representation in a single body. • Use consultative mechanisms to select district councillors using DDP mechanisms—preferably those developed in Helmand—until appropriate mechanisms exist and there are sufficient resources for district elections. • Create and formalise an appropriate linkage with the provincial council regarding planning and administrative matters. The Village • Modify the draft law on village councils to allow for their selection in the traditional manner by consultation. • Consolidate administrative functions in a single village body, but reduce its statutory obligations. Justice delivery • Remove the obligations for justice delivery from the draft laws for provincial, district and village councils. • Encourage the registration of locally-made judgements. • Reduce the number of non-state actors involved in justice delivery. The Voting System • Establish a joint government and international community commission to review the effectiveness of SNTV. • Avoid any further extension of the use of SNTV. • Allow civil society actors and international counterparts to join the government in a public debate on alternative voting systems. Corruption • Place HOO representatives within provincial administrations to improve the redress of grievances. • Give provincial and district councils sufficient and meaningful powers to hold provincial and district administrations and line ministries to account over implementation and resource application. • Establish policies that will permit and encourage the involvement of civil society actors in processes of scrutiny and social audit. Local Governance in Afghanistan: A View from the Ground 68
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