Development and advocacy

Maria Teresa Diokno-Pascual

In June 1999, while at the British Parliament to attend a panel discussion organised by Christian Aid on the World Bank/IMF Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative ('HIPC'), I had a brief exchange with the Secretary of State responsible for the Department for International Development, who was one of the speakers at this affair. I had been told that the minister, Clare Short, was most sympathetic to the NGOs who had been calling for improvements in the HIPC proposals. It therefore came as a shock to hear her tell the audience that it was useless to demand the de-linking of structural adjustment from HIPC. She added that countries in the Third World needed structural adjustment, and therefore it would be foolish to insist that debt reduction be undertaken in these poor countries without it.

Since I come from a country which has gone through ten structural adjustment loans from the World Bank and more than 30 years of IMF stabilisation lending without much success in achieving sustainable growth and in reducing poverty, I thought I should challenge this view. When the opportunity came for the audience to raise questions or comments, I asked the Secretary of State: what weight would she give to voices from the South, to the opinions of people like me from countries of the South, who say that we don't like structural adjustment and what it has done to our people? Would those voices matter?

I did not expect to get a tongue-lashing. The minister held firm to her position that structural adjustment was needed in countries like mine, adding words to the effect that since I had supported a corrupt dictatorship in my country (referring, I presume, to the Marcos dictatorship1), then I deserved structural adjustment. The format of the panel discussion did not allow me to respond. To be honest, had I been given the opportunity, I do not know what I would have said. This was the first time I had ever been told that structural adjustment was the answer to a corrupt and brutal dictatorship that I had never supported in the first place. Besides, history will attest that the World Bank and other international creditors had propped up the Marcos regime, particularly in its twilight years, knowing full well how corrupt it was. But it seemed to me that this spokeswoman of the British government was disturbed by my question and needed to invalidate it somehow. And her rejoinder carried a message that was far more disturbing: no, your voices don't matter.

Whose voices do matter when you are inside the rather imposing walls of the British Houses of Parliament, or, for that matter, any such venue in the developed world? How much importance should we give these places, considering the distance between them and the poor in our countries? I do not doubt the strategic value of being able to intervene at a level where major decisions are made which affect millions of nameless, faceless lives. But I tend to see these venues as part of a much broader terrain, in which many unceasing struggles take place simultaneously, involving a range of individuals and movements within a country and across borders of North and South. What is important to stress, however, is that no amount of power, influence, and effective advocacy can take the locus of the struggle away from those hardest hit by the decisions of the powerful. But very often it is these struggles that tend to be overlooked and forgotten in the world of development advocacy.

Don't get me wrong. It takes a lot of confidence and courage to speak up before government ministers of the North, in a language they understand and in a place more familiar to them than to oneself. It takes much more knowledge and imagination to present to them a reality that they are too privileged ever to experience for themselves. (I know this because, while I can hardly count myself among the rich in my country, I have been spared the kind of deprivation that can be very raw and violent to its victims among the poor.)

At the end of the day, the untiring work we have put in only makes sense if it has strengthened people's movements on the ground. This is where we must be honest with ourselves, sparing no criticism. How much of our advocacy work is based on the dehumanising experience of the poor? How much of our advocacy work is relevant and meaningful to their lives? Do we bother to make the connections, especially for advocacy issues that are not easy for ordinary people to relate to but which do have an impact upon them? How serious are we in our efforts constantly and consistently to enrich our knowledge and experience with what is happening in the communities of the poor, with what often gets least exposed to the public eye? How open are we to these realities? How relevant are we?

The group to which I belong, the Freedom from Debt Coalition, is one of the few radical bodies in the Philippines that have continued to thrive despite the recent factionalism in the movements of the Left. Its members not only come from a broad range of social sectors, but also span most of what we call the progressive forces in the country. Building unity on issues and strategies is a difficult task, especially in the midst of the re-defining and re-organising that accompanies a group's breaking away from former comrades. All of this is taking place at a time when the free-market ideology dominates mainstream thinking and economic policy. One can thus appreciate the demands on our member organisations in the context of a country which is being drawn very forcefully into the neo-liberal policies that come with World Bank and IMF structural adjustment and stabilisation programmes.

We must strengthen our unity on alternative policies and strategies. We had a relatively easy time uniting on a critique of the proposed reforms, but formulating concrete alternatives is always more difficult, particularly for a coalition. I am convinced, however, that alternatives do exist, and many of them are there simply waiting to be recognised,...