Bond Advocacy Capacity Building Group Meeting
Wednesday 4 th March 2009 2-5pm
Attendee
Carol Ballantine
Beverley Jones
Clare Palmer
Gweneth Barry
Nadine Lusi
Samira Yussuf
Claire Grant
Menka Jha
Naved Chowdhury
Alec Leggat
Alex Day
Joanna Watson
Jo Khinmaung
Jordan Clifford
Sue Yardley
Organisation
Independent (Speaker / Facilitator)
Independent (Speaker / Facilitator)
BOND
CAFOD
CBM
CODA International
MRDF
MRDF
Hosted by Tearfund
Oxfam International
The Salvation Army
Samaritan’s Purse
Tearfund
Tearfund
Tearfund
Tearfund
Jessica Faleiro
Emma Aston
Rose Longhurst
Ruth Duebbert
Imran Janmohamed
Introductions
Tearfund
Tearfund
Womankind
Women and Children First
The World Federation of KSIMC
Joanna welcomed people to Tearfund. Everyone introduced themselves – names, roles, organisations.
Beverley and Carol introduced themselves:
Beverley Jones was the Joint Country Representative for the joint programme of CAFOD,
Trocaire and SCIAF in Ethiopia for 4 years. During that time she was heavily involved in discussions between the donor community, government and civil society. She left Ethiopia in 2008 but has worked for DFID and the World Bank on a consultancy basis. She is currently a consultant for CAFOD and before her work in Ethiopia was CAFOD's International Director.
Carol Ballantine is Trocaire's Programme Officer for Human Rights and Governance since 2007.
She supports Trocaire's programmes around the world, particularly focusing on participatory governance. Within this work, she promotes policy and budget monitoring, and she monitors the enabling environment for a dynamic civil society. Before this she oversaw a civil society programme in Honduras, Central America.
Carol explained that the meeting would explore the mechanisms that governments around the world are using to prevent civil society from doing advocacy work.
Bev outlined a scenario, based on the Ethiopian legislative situation, and posed a series of questions for group discussion outlined below. This was designed to stimulate thinking, ahead of the presentation of her paper.
Group Activity 1
What assumptions would you make about a government who makes a law where all development work is possible for a national charity, but charities can only be classified as national if they receive no more than 10% of their income from outside the country, and where non-national

charities are not allowed to engage in work relating to human rights, advocacy and governance issues?
The small groups gave the following suggestions by way of feedback, saying that they would assume this government was:
 Trying to limit interference and influence from outside the country
 Isolationist
 Controlling
 Restrictive
 Imposing censorship
 Sensitive
 Paranoid
 Demonstrating a limited respect for human rights
 Scared
 Concerned for service delivery but not policy
 Ill-informed
 Eliminating space for advocacy
 Desperate
 Planned and strategic
 Possibly trying to force multilateral / bilateral aid to go through government
 Reactive
Group Activity 2
Imagine that you are working for the Home Office of the UK government. You suddenly experience an influx of advocacy NGOs funded from the Middle East / Soviet Union. How would you react? What would you do?
The group fed back the following suggestions:
 Not have any dialogue. Instead, allow for war and sovereign invasion!
 Work with existing structures (e.g. ministry for capacity building)
 Build alliances with different stakeholders
 Engage with civil society donors
 Political dialogue but not development
 Crackdown on civil society
 Take up an entrenched position
After the group activities, Beverley Jones introduced her paper, ‘Leading Civil Society up the
Governance Path ’.
She particularly focused on the following:
 Explanation of the paper, the title, how it came about, the purpose
 Outline of the situation in Ethiopia in light of the NGOs and CSOs Proclamation that recently became law
 The background situation in Ethiopia
 The political environment in which the paper was created
 Questions that the paper raises
 Recognition of NGO responsibility
 Contradictions within and between ideological perspectives
 What can be done by NGOs and CSOs to move forward, to regain trust?
Beverley went on to facilitate a group discussion, in light of the paper.
Group Discussion
What are your responses to the paper? What reflections do you have? What were the roles and responsibilities played out by the different actors? How could or should things have been done differently, it at all?

The group fed back the following:
 The situation in Ethiopia calls INGOs to reflect on their practices, especially where they are implicated as being partially responsible for causing such a law to come into being.
 We need to consider how we can work in countries like Ethiopia but come across as less threatening.
 Should we be funding these processes? What are the implications for aid effectiveness?
 It seems wrong that INGOs were able to stand for civil society places in connection with the Ethiopian government election in 2005. INGOs should be demonstrating good practice. Otherwise civil society will become ‘NGO-ised’.
 We need to encourage civil society to speak out before a law like this is imposed, so that they express disagreement with the government. It was a mistake in this case that too many people stayed silent.
 There needs to be a balance between governments promoting fundamentalist democracy on the one hand, while promoting securitisation of development on the other hand.
 We need to consider using alternat ive terminology, thereby avoiding ‘advocacy’, ‘human rights’, ‘governance’, etc.
 We need to developing appropriate mechanisms for engagement.
 What about advocacy on funding regulations and restrictions?
 How can we use this information to prevent these types of restrictions occurring in other countries?
A soft copy of Bev’s paper will be made available on the BOND website.
Break for refreshments and networking
Reflections on feedback from Group Activity 1
Carol facilitated a session that sought to look at the Ethiopian context and to see whether any participants now had a fresh perspective on their understanding of why the government has acted as it has in bringing in this new law.
The group suggested the following:
 Whether we agree or not, we can understand the rationale behind why the Ethiopian government brought in this law, and this helps us know how best to respond to it and how to find solutions to working with it.
 The issue of being ill-informed is not just limited to the government. It also applies to donors, NGOs and civil society. Misinformation is apparent on all sides.
 Civil society is not one homogenous mass. Distinctions need to be made. Taking a narrow view is wrong on all sides.
 Governments can change with elections which means legislation can also change.
 In the Ethiopian context, the government is looking for submission, which means that a
‘win/win’ situation is impossible.
 There is a lack of trust in the Ethiopian government and ‘opponents’ are viewed as
‘enemies’.
Government restrictions in other countries
Carol invited participants to share their experiences of similar government restrictions in other countries. These were as follows:
 Nicaragua – The government is developing a manual regulating civil society action. They are limiting foreign funding for NGOs. Some NGOs are being deemed illegal so they cannot receive foreign funds.
 Niger – MSF was forced to leave because they spoke out on malnutrition. ACF was

suspended for releasing statistics about malnutrition, which the government took to be implicit criticism.
 Zimbabwe – Foreign NGOs have had their movements restricted, particularly in relation to humanitarian response work.
 Zambia – Foreign NGOs are being viewed as tools of foreign interference in the government’s national agenda.
 Uganda – The government has imposed restrictive regulations requiring stringent registration requirements. Foreign NGOS have to go through government before working with communities.
 Myanmar
 Afghanistan
 Sri Lanka
 Cambodia – A new law is pending relating to reporting on funding, with the intention that it should be channelled through the government. The aim is to try and prevent terrorists bring money into the country through the use of NGOs.
 Sierra Leona – The government has brought in a new law that restricts registration of foreign NGOs.
 Bangladesh – Civil society challenged the government about their lack of service provision and they objected because it was confrontational.
Factors contributing to government restrictions
Carol encouraged participants to work out whether any common themes or trends present themselves from these various countries, or whether in fact each government is making its decisions based on unique factors that are specific to the country / context. Some of the most common factors identified included:
 Opportunistic use of the ‘War on Terror’ discourse
 The threat (whether real or perceived) of terrorist groups infiltrating society through NGOs and CSOs
 Misperceptions about funding for terrorist activities being channelled through NGOs and
CSOs
 INGOs hiding and/or protecting citizens from governments
 Direct budget support going to government (e.g. for clinics, schools, etc) so NGOs and
CSOs are using advocacy in an increasingly militant way to influence government spending policies.
 Backlash against foreign NGOs ‘interfering’ in what are considered by government to be national affairs.
If in-depth studies were conducted of these situations, patterns would be identified, but we would probably also see great differences in responses from different countries.
Carol challenged the participants to conduct and share in-depth studies from other countries, to complement the paper produced by Beverley.
Proposal for joint meeting of all BOND working groups
Naved presented a proposal for a joint meeting of all the BOND working groups. This would build synergy between BOND groups. The workshop would be two days. It would aim to develop a holistic view of the considerations for development in the next ten years or so. BOND would need to get ‘buy in’ from other groups and then take the lead with logistics, funding, etc.
Feedback was as follows
 Great idea in theory, but please check that this is not duplicating other forums, e.g. NCVO
 Fear of homogenisation and too much bias towards a UK NGO perspective, which would not be representative for all regions
 Unrealistic expectations for two days

 Potential goal of soliciting funding
 Balance between ‘dead aid’ and moral response to suffering
 Making the case for ‘development’
 Fluctuation of attendance by participants at the BOND Advocacy Capacity Building Group meetings is currently hindering the ability of the group to form a coherent identity, which would impact what the group could contribute collectively towards the workshop
 Do not want to lose contextual foundation
 Opportunity to influence thinking on ‘development’
 Dates. When? Will they be related to a particular event? If so, which one and on what basis?
 Audience. Who is the workshop targeting? Why?
 Not aimed at justification of ‘development’
 Identification of gaps
Proposed actions
1. Inter-organisational discussion as to how to learn from each other regarding supporting advocacy work in Ethiopia – Clare Palmer (BOND) to coordinate and to investigate the potential for an online discussion forum via the BOND website.
2. Drafting and sharing of in-depth studies from countries other than Ethiopia.
3. Beverley’s paper to be put on the BOND website.
4. Naved Chowdhury to create a 2 page proposal about the joint workshop and to ask BOND to circulate it to all members of the group
Next Meeting
The next meeting will be at CAFOD on Wednesday 17 th June, 2-5pm.
There will no facilitators or speakers.
The format will be very different. Members of the group will be encouraged to bring and share a story or example of advocacy capacity building. It could be about integrating policy into programmatic work, or a success story, or a story of failure, or a problem that needs solving and which other members could give input and advice about, etc.
BOND will circulate an email to group members confirming details.