Are European countries becoming a collective aid tease?

Ah the joys of debating international aid and its merits, or lack thereof. Is it right or wrong to give aid to corrupt governments? What's the best way of giving aid?  Should European countries be giving aid when they are in such dire financial straits themselves?

These are issues which have been debated exhaustively in development circles but in the last few months, they seem to be more prominent than usual in the mainstream media of many European countries. There's a number of contributing factors for this- the UN report leaked this summer detailing Rwanda's alleged involvement in rebel activity in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo which led to a number of countries suspending aid (and then reinstating it. and then suspending it again) reignited the whole thing. Then we had revelations of large scale fraud in Uganda, with approximately 16 million Euro of aid being misappropriated by the Office of the Prime Minister. The issue of giving aid to middle income countries was also prominent in the media with Britain's announcement early this month that it will stop aid to India after 2015.

Much media debate and public outrage and where has it gotten us? Well, things are how they used to be - foreign aid is dependent on politics. Britain initially suspended aid to Rwanda only to again reinstate it. Just today, it suspended it again. A rather excellent Channel 4 news report earlier this week detailed the uncomfortably close relationship between the British Conservative party and Rwandan President, Paul Kagame.

Last week, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs released its interim report into the Uganda/Irish Aid scandal. It found major collusion between Ugandan officials to commit fraud and also pointed out the failings of Irish Aid officials to pick up on the fraud. The report also suggested that the Irish Government would wait on the findings of the investigation by the Ugandan auditor general. The report is expected to be released next April.

There is little or no expectation however that the report and its recommendations will be implemented by Uganda's notoriously corrupt public officials. Should this fact alone not be a lesson to European governments giving aid to corrupt governments?

 There's a lot of problems with the way European governments currently give aid to the developing world but surely withdrawing it then reinstating it on a whim is not an improvement of any sort.

The point of this post is basically, the UK et al are being a bit of a prick tease with their aid budgets at the minute. For a more sophisticated, and much more knowledgeable, look at some of these issues have a look at this piece from the always excellent A View From the Cave.

What's been going on? Ireland, DRC and Sudan

It's been a busy two weeks or so. Last week was pretty much consumed by the story which emerged late Tuesday night of a young pregnant woman, Savita Halappanavar, who died in a Galway hospital having been denied a termination despite the fact that she was miscarrying. I don't think I've had a conversation since in which Savita's name hasn't come up. It's dominated everything- the media, everyday life. People have been organising/attending vigils and demonstrations across Ireland as well in London, Brussels and elsewhere.

There's been real anger and shame here in Ireland over this and quite rightly so. Our laws on abortion are archaic and although our Supreme Court ruled TWENTY YEARS ago that it is permissible to have a termination in Ireland if the life of the mother is at risk, legislation pertaining to this has still not been enacted.

This is not about abortion on demand. It is about saving women's lives.

I wrote a piece on this for A SafeWorld for Women which you can find here http://www.asafeworldforwomen.org/womens-rights/wr-europe/wr-ireland/3314-third-class-citizens.html

There's been a lot going on otherwise. I'm in the middle of preparing for exams but have been distracted by following events in the DRC- joining Twitter is probably the worst thing I have ever done, productivity wise. Goma fell to the M23 rebels earlier this week and it's unclear what will happen next. Will we see a repeat of the devastating 1998-2003 war?

Also reports emerged today of an attempted coup in Sudan. The Sudan Tribune has an early account here. It seems to be disgruntled NCP members, rather than any sort on continuation of Sudan Revolts, as some early reports claimed.

In the next few weeks, I will be publishing a feature on Sudanese female activists, interviewing journalists, bloggers, human rights activists and students. I'm really excited about this piece, profiling these women who face immense risks to carry out the work they do every day. Check back in a week or so to see more!

In the meantime, I've had to travel to Dublin twice this week as I, rather stupidly, mislaid my passport and am going to London this weekend. Dublin may be our capital city but I really am not a fan. I'm quite happy if the only way I cross the river Shannon is in an aeroplane.

But anyway, I'm looking forward to spending the next week or so in London, catching up with friends and celebrating The Kentishtowner's second birthday. I might squeeze in some study while I'm there too:)

Women Under Siege: Rape as a weapon of war

The Women Under Siege Project, an independent initiative of the Women's Media Centre, documents how rape and other forms of sexualised violence are used as tools of genocide and conflict in the 20th century and into the 21st. Less than a year old, Women Under Siege is a really original research site. It has original content, interesting blog posts and uses technology to document offences in real time- such as creating a live, crowd sourced map of rape in Syria (Disclaimer: I am a sometime contributor to their blog).

Rape is often considered to be something which 'happens' during conflict as if it is somehow insignificant or less serious than other crimes. Rape is much more than that however- it is a weapon which can be deployed to devastating effect. The International Criminal Court has recognised in numerous indictments that rape can be used as a tool of genocide. Rape can be used to destroy the social fabric of communities and forced pregnancies are also a way of 'cleansing or diluting' a particular ethnic group.

There is growing awareness of the reality of the use of rape as tool of conflict. Although it is hardly a new phenomenon, the use of sexualised violence in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and Darfur in the early 2000s really brought the issue to attention.

There are a number of high level international initiatives aimed at combating the use of sexualised violence in conflict such as the UN's Stop Rape Now campaign. In May this year, the UK's Foreign Secretary William Hague launched the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative.

These initiatives may not seem like much - too theoretical perhaps- but they are highly significant. They signify a massive change in how sexual violence is viewed and are a massive step forward for the prevention of such crimes.  Hopefully concrete action will follow.

The Ugandan Affair: What it means for Irish Aid

Last week, Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore (the Irish Deputy Prime Minister) suspended all Irish aid channelled through  the Ugandan government and announced an immediate investigation into allegations of fraud. The unprecedented move was prompted by a draft report of a special investigation by the Auditor General of Uganda into the handling of aid funds by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).

The Auditor General found that significant amounts of donor funding from Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, earmarked for the Peace and Recovery and Development Programme in Northern Uganda had been transferred to an unauthorised account of the OPM. Up to 4 Million Euro of Irish Aid funding was misappropriated.

The reaction from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) appeared to be swift and decisive. The Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore released a statement in which he described being "deeply concerned by what I have learned today of the findings of the investigation by the Auditor General of Uganda into the management of aid funds by the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda." The statement concluded "The Government will not provide financial support under our development cooperation programme unless it is clear that Irish money is being spent for the purpose for which it was allocated. Pending the satisfactory resolution of this matter, I have instructed that no further aid funding should be provided through Ugandan government systems.”

The amount of Irish Aid due to be allocated through official channels this year totalled 17 million euro.

Three DFA officials were swiftly dispatched to Kampala to investigate the affair and the Irish media had a field day with the story. Responses were varied; some gave credit to the Ugandan officials who initially  highlighted the fraud; some called for Irish Aid to channel more of its aid through NGOs and charities as opposed to governments; many commenter's on social media called for the permanent suspension of Irish Aid.


To give or not to give?

The whole debacle has highlighted increasing tensions in Eurozone countries surrounding the issue of foreign aid. Ireland has a long, generally proud history of foreign aid. As I talk about in this post, given that we are a small, neutral country with a recent history of conflict ourselves, Irish Aid is generally respected as being non-partisan, not tied to conditions and genuinely concerned with conflict resolution and peacemaking around the world.

Irish people, in turn, have traditionally valued our foreign aid programme and taken a proud view of our commitment to the developing world. There's a lot of reasons behind this but basically: it wasn't too long ago that we were awful poor ourselves and the Irish education system beats you over the head with talk of the Famine from Primary level. So, we appreciate the importance of both charity and long term aid (We are sorry about inflicting Bono and Bob Geldof on the rest of the world though).

Now however, we're poor again- or we think we are anyway. The boom years of the Celtic Tiger are gone. Times are tough, taxes are increasing, benefits are being cut, unemployment is rising, emigration levels are soaring. This story broke as Ireland approaches what is expected to be the harshest national budget in decades. It isn't hard to see why it prompted some people to question the amount of money donated through Irish Aid.

The misappropriated funds in Uganda have increased the calls for a dramatic rethink of the amount of foreign aid, or at the very least the method in which, Ireland donates. This is not a bad thing. We all know that there are many issues with international aid, how it's used, etc. However, we also know it's very easy to point out the problems but much harder to come up with feasible, sensible solutions.

So do we need to justify giving aid in the first place? I often skip these endless discussions of the motivation behind aid, not because I think it's unimportant (far from it) but it's exhausting. Usually, I take foreign aid as a given and focus on ways of improving it but how can we assist development in countries such as Uganda which have corrupt political regimes?

Having spent some time in Uganda last year, I can see how desperately the country needs development. I also think it has one of the most ruthlessly corrupt political system I have ever seen- and coming from an Irish person, that's really saying something. So we come to the difficult questions; Do we refuse to hep the Ugandan people because of political corruption? Why don't we work through the third sector? But will the Ugandan government allow aid to be channelled through others? Is it permissible to turn a blind eye to small levels of corruption in order to get aid to people who really need it?


That's what she said. . .

Once Ireland suspended aid and the Scandinavian countries quickly followed suit. Although hardly an unjustified reaction, are these governments just trying to appear to act decisively on this issue? After all, if they had proper Monitoring and Evaluation procedures in place to start with, would such an instance of fraud have been allowed to occur?

Reports emerged yesterday that the UK had suspended aid chanelled through the OPM (although this decision will not affect the regular budgetry aid it provides to Uganda) back in August when allegations of fraud first emerged and had since launched an independent inquiry. This was even though no British money was taken.

The rapid reaction of the UK to such reports, even though it was not their money alleged to be misappropriated, reflects poorly on the Irish government's slow reaction.

A friend of mine pointed out that the Uganda fraud case appears to be similar to the recent incident in which European donors suspended aid to Rwanda over its connections to militias in neighbouring DRC. European governments were not so outraged by this fact that they cancelled aid. Rwanda's involvement in the DRC had long been an open secret. But with a leaked UN report explicitly spelling it out, many governments felt something must be seen to be done.

Is this the reasoning behind the deployment of the DFA officials to Kampala? A member of the political opposition  I spoke to questioned the decision to send three Irish officials to Kampala. Surely the very capable staff at Ireland's embassy in Kampala are better placed to investigate such an issue. How can the DFA justify the expense of sending three officials, considering the slight returns any such trip is likely to incur? Is it all merely for show?

There are also some nuances to the story which have been under reported in the Irish media . Firstly, the story first began to break in Uganda back in July, when an accountant attached to the OPM went missing. Secondly, it was Ugandan officials and media who forced the story out into the open. The Irish media only picked up on the story last week once aid to Uganda was suspended (although the Irish Times did give credit to the Ugandan whistle blowers). This is not insignificant as it raises serious questions about the M&E procedures employed by Irish Aid. Again, are the DFA now acting to cover up their own failures perhaps?

In the end, even if Irish Aid and the DFA are somewhat at fault, the fraud was committed by the Ugandan OPM and it is the people of Northern Uganda who will suffer, as well as other Ugandan citizens who are tired of the endemic corruption in their country. But there are questions on the Irish side which need to be answered.

So I'll just owe you one Ireland?

This incident however could prove to be a game changer. I don't think Irish Aid will be scraped. But I do think this incident will leave a terrible legacy. It's proving to be a massive headache for the Irish government. It's difficult to justify international aid when you are cutting vital services in your own country such as rural garda stations, special needs assistants in primary schools, hospital beds and home help for carers. It is especially difficult to make such justifications when the foreign aid is found to be misappropriated. This incident has unfortunately increased the likelihood of Irish Aid being cut in the upcoming budget. The Dail's taxpayer watchdog is due to launch a special investigation into the spending of the country's third world aid budget.

The Irish government is demanding repayment of the 4 million euro from its Ugandan counterparts. News reports that the Ugandan government is "considering" such a repayment prompted much amusement from online commentators with a basic sentiment of "yeah, good luck with that one,".

And so we wait the budget in December, to see the real impact this affair will have on Irish Aid.


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Opening Pandora's Box: Sinead Lally talks fashion and blogging

Entrepreneur, blogger and fashionista Sinead Lally is the creative force behind Cotton Face Vintage- an online vintage clothing boutique which has amassed a notable following since its launch a year ago. A beauty and fashion expert, Sinead is also responsible for setting up Pandora's Box, Galway's hippest pop up market. I caught up with Sinead to talk vintage fashion, blogging and Sunday mornings in Connemara.




A Galway girl at heart, Sinead loves living in Connemara as "it's just so quiet and peaceful and the scenery is amazing every morning," Although busy working part time in retail as well as running Cotton Face Vintage and Pandora's Box, Sinead also loves the cinema, going to markets and online shopping. "I love tea, cake, strawberries and my cat missy moo moo. I also love Sundays when I'm not hungover, which is often these days now as I much prefer to go to the early bird movies or for a drive and catch a Sunday roast and go for a walk and head home to curl up on the couch and read the Sunday papers,"



Sinead's beloved Missy Moo Moo

Down to earth and approachable, it's not hard to figure out why Sinead's ventures have been so successful given her easy going nature. But there's been a lot of hard work along the way too.

 "I started my first ever blog, Fashion House, in 2008 just after I got made redundant and I had a bit of time on my hands. It was a huge success and I loved it! I got invited to all sorts of events and started working /writing for the The hub online magazine from London and was asked to go to Glastonbury and cover it for them and interview the acts and the fashion.  As I grew up through the blogosphere and reading other amazing blogs, my taste started to change and I got more inspired to do and try new things. I changed the name of my blog to Her Style Diaries and continued blogging from there until I set up my business. Now my blog revolves around my business Cotton Face Vintage,"



A selection of vintage jewellery from Cotton Face Vintage

Sinead explains the motivation behind moving from fashion blogging to fashion retail "With my love for fashion and vintage, I decided I wanted to start a business selling vintage clothes but vintage clothes that my age would wear -something a little unique. So I bought the name and the domains, I went travelling for hand picked pieces and made a lot of connections.  I then set up an office upstairs in my attic room last year and that's where it started and hasn't stopped,"



Those of you (lucky enough to be) living in Galway may be familiar with Pandora's Box- the pop up event which began in Kelly's and is now resident upstairs in Electric Garden. It's chilled out, easy going and fun- the perfect place to have some tea, cake, do some shopping and spot some of the West's coolest kids hanging out.  Sinead explains, "I'm sooo proud of Pandora's box - its something I've wanted to do for a year now , when i first started CFV i used to go to all these events and the Dublin flea markets. I started to think maybe I could do something here in Galway as no one else was doing market style events. I contacted a friend who was working as an event manager Olive Byrne and put my idea to her and we both came up with Pandora's Box."




A fashionable customer browsing at Pandoras Box

"We wanted Pandoras Box to be a place with a chilled out vibe where you come and hang out drink tea and eat cake and listen to some tunes aswell as be able to shop through the stalls. We didnt want a jumble sale feel either, we wanted to show off young talent in galway. We wanted vintage sellers as vintage is just so unique and cool and if you buy something at pandoras box we want it to be a gem! Our venue, upstairs at Electric Garden is perfect as it's in the garden area and has an amazing rustic feel to it."

 

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So now you know all about the lovely Sinead, get your fashionable asses to www.cotton-face-vintage.com and check out her vintage wares..




An edited version of this piece (with some bonus tips on using social media to get ahead professionally) will be in this week's Sin- pick one up on campus at NUIG or check it out online at www.sin.ie

What the f**k is a logframe? The problem with development education

As I've mentioned before, I'm in my final year of a BA with Human Rights (I also study history and politics) at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway. It's one of the few- if not the only-  human rights undergraduate degrees in Europe. One of the best features of the degree is the fact that our entire third year was spent off campus, doing internships. I really cannot stress enough how amazing this is, allowing us to graduate with experience and excellent contacts already in the bag.

Our tiny class (less than twenty) managed to pack in quite a topical and geographical spread during our third year; working with legal firms, advocacy groups, orphanages, large and small NGOs in places like Nicaragua, Vietnam, South Africa, Cameroon, Spain and Ireland. The organisations we worked for covered a variety of topics- women's rights, education rights, the prohibition of torture and the death penalty, freedom of speech to name just a few.

Although still an undergrad and admittedly slightly wary when starting my first internship, I wasn't really that nervous. Our lovely lecturers at the Irish Centre for Human Rights had spent the previous two years telling us how lucky we were to be doing a BA in human rights, what an advantage it put us at. I wasn't cocky by any means but I was fairly sure I would know what I was doing.

I was wrong. I could quote the Universal Declaration for Human Rights but I was unaware of what 'donor reporting' entailed. I could wax lyrical about theoretical debates in human rights such as the divide between civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights but update a funding spreadsheet? Nope. Monitoring and evaluation? Never bloody hear of it. AND WHAT THE FUCK IS A LOGFRAME?! (To be fair, that is a bloody pointless invention so I don't feel so bad about that one).

So I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was. It was fine, I learned on the job (I'm a dab hand at the old wikipedia-ing, which helped). I also realised I wasn't alone; other interns with MAs in International Relations or BAs from SOAS, for example, were in the same boat. We had been taught an awful lot of theory but not one practical skill.

I'm not trying to imply that theory is unimportant- far from it. Obviously, you need to know what the issues you're dealing with are, where they come from, the legal frameworks involved etc. But anyone who has worked for any sort of NGO knows about the endless paperwork- fundraising spreadsheets, donor proposals, logframes, monitoring and evaluating reports, strategic documents, etc. It's a major, inescapable feature of working for an NGO. So why aren't we being taught these things?

I also wish to make clear this is not a criticism of my own BA programme, but of development education in general. My degree is pretty awesome to be fair. The eminent Professor William Schabas taught us in first year for Christs sake (although I was they'd warned us what a big deal he was at the time. We may have shown up hungover for class a little less had we known). And I do accept the point that not everyone doing a BA in human rights is necessarily going to work for an NGO- they could be going into human rights law for example. Nonetheless, I think one class a semester devoted to the (admittedly boring) practicalities of development work would be invaluable to students.

Some might say it's unnecessary. After all, it is something you can learn on the job and I'm aware some NGOs do provide in-house training for these sort of things. But the vast majority don't. And think how much more efficient and effective the NGO sector could be if we were all learning and perfecting our proposal writing skills since we were undergrads. Not to get carried away, but these really are vital skills for the third sector so I find it baffling they are not taught to students of development and related topics.

This is based on my own experiences and entirely non-scientific canvassing of opinions of people I know, so I could be completely mistaken. Are there BA or MA programmes out there in this sort of field which focus on the practicalities? Please comment below if you know of any or have any thoughts on this.

Any comments in defence of logframes will be considered massively offensive however and immediately removed. They are actually the bane of my life.

The Importance of Digital Security for Human Rights Defenders

Last week, I attended a talk at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, hosted by Frontline Defenders. Frontline is an amazing organisation which provides support to human rights defenders worldwide through advocacy and the provision of grants, training, support and respite.

Frontline are one of the few NGOs which focuses on human rights defenders (HRDs) and I'm always impressed at the speed with which they provide emergency support- often within 24 hours of a request being made. When a HRD is at serious risk - if they are issued a death threat for instance- Frontline has mechanisms in place to send emergency money allowing the HRD funds for extra security or to relocate, if necessary.

Basically, Frontline are straight up, no bullshit, helping those who help others, when they need it most.

Introduced by founding director Mary Lawlor, the speakers were Olga Sadovskaya of the Nizhny Novograd Committee against Torture in Russia and Farai Maguwu, Director of the Zimbabwe Centre for Research and Development. They spoke of the work their NGOs carry out and the associated dangers. Much of the talk focused on the importance of digital security.



Digital security for HRDs is an area I'm particularly interested in, given its importance to the safety of many of the women in Sudan I've worked with this past year. We are all aware of the important role social media can play in modern life- Arab Spring activists used it extremely effectively in some cases to promote and publicise their actions. In Sudan this summer, twitter was often the only medium through which information could be sent to the outside world as the regime in Khartoum arrested and deported many international journalists. Activists can send a quick tweet or text to say they are being arrested and where once they may simply have disappeared, now the world instantly knows where they are and the powers that be can set about trying to free them.

Social media has revolutionised human rights activism. But activists do not always take into account the dangers of using social media for their work. Twitter and facebook accounts can be easily hacked; phone calls can be monitored, texts and emails intercepted. NGOs researching sensitive issues, such as instances of torture in a certain country, may not always have the data they have collected stored securely.

There are many online tools which activists can now access. Frontline has produced one of the best; their Security in -a- box online toolkit is excellent.  Global Voices Online has some good pointers on blogging anonymously and The Committee to Protect Journalists also provides some excellent tips on information security for journalists which are also relevant for HRDs.

All these resources are aimed at the non-technical user- i.e. your average computer dunce, like myself.



It was an excellent talk and I was impressed at some of the methods the speakers described using to improve the security of their staff- using GPS trackers when deploying lawyers to Chechnya on research trips for instance. Simple security measures like these really do save lives. If a HRD is apprehended, time is of the essence. If we know they have been taken, we can act to save them.

It doesn't have to be high tech either. I know some activists who have text messages saved in their draft folders with a code word or phrase, of which they have made their coworkers or family aware. If they find themselves in a dangerous situation, they simply send the message. It's not foolproof obviously as it makes the assumption they will have the time to send the text but as security measures go, it's a relatively simple one which all HRDs should employ.

Be creative with your codewords. Not necessarily for security reasons. Just for fun. My favourite one is 'London Calling,'. Which is simply an excuse for me to link to The Clash.

Stay safe