Apparently highest fashion and darling in MSiS-papers today is Advocacy and its subordinated henchman: Lobbying. Somehow forgotten in the dark seems to be Sustainability, Participatory Appraisals, Demand Responsive Approaches, and nobody any longer have the courage in public to be devoted to Appropriate Technology. Some turn up the nose on Production and Service Delivering Activities, though everything what donors do, should be of service to recipients.

The Physical Reality of the South. One should bear in mind that these words and the following activities are first of all defined in the North. Millions die unnecessarily year after year from lack of even the simplest form of health services. Thirty-five thousand Nepali die every year of water borne diseases. Furthermore probably 10.000 die from cancer after a long-term exposure of arsenic compounds in drinking water, and this number will inevitably rise in future up to at least 200.000 people in 30 years, but this number is not properly investigated at present. However, water is not even mentioned in any of the policy revisions from MS-Copenhagen.

The MSiS programme has for some years focussed on two equally prioritised concepts:

a) The Poverty Criterion.

b) The Intercultural Co-operation.

The MSiS definition of poverty in the paper is done negatively. Using an appreciative technique, a non-hierarchical and complementary strategy for the reduction of poverty, or better: Increasing well-being, could be defined positively to:

a) Promote Opportunity

b) Facilitate Empowerment

c) Enhance Security

Hence poverty is defined as consisting of the above, and furthermore divided and varied, giving possibility of a subtler and throughout definition by the addition of three new concepts to the vocabulary: Opportunity, Empowerment and Security. Another possibility is to incorporate the Human Rights and Human Development aspects - which by now is mentioned holistically in bits here and there - and could be addressed with cogency and conviction in one place in order to secure well-being, dignity and freedom:

1) From discrimination - by gender, race, ethnicity, national origin or religion

2) From want - to enjoy a decent standard of living

3) From fear - of threats to personal security, from torture, arbitrary arrest, and other violent acts.

4) From injustice and violations - of the rule of law.

5) Of thoughts and speech - to participate in decision-making and form associations.

6) To develop and realize one’s own human potential on the local perspective.

7) For decent work - without exploitation.

The subdivision of poverty in opportunity, empowerment and security seems to be superimposed to the above Human Rights and Development points. To secure e.g. opportunity all 1) to 7) is needed and likewise in b) and c). Despair and lack of dignity for example is a consequence of lack of Human Rights. Thus the objective in the poverty dimension of MSiS could be to facilitate empowerment, promote opportunity, and enhance security to support Human Rights and to optimise Human Development. Human Rights demands simply activity and participation, which is one reason behind empowerment in order to provide opportunities to fight for this.

The cultural exchange and specifically the co-operation is presently primarily only a one-way operation. This should not be misunderstood as a misprision of the efforts done in Denmark by returned DW’s, the staff in Denmark, and volunteers working for MS in Denmark. Their task is of outmost importance and should be supported. If we talk about true Cultural Exchange, part of a DW contract could advantageous be paid in Denmark to returned professionals on say a six month advocacy work or even plain fundraising activities for the benefit of the South. Directed towards innocent Danes, lolling in an easy chair, detached from reality, watching decadent truism on flimsy television screens - in a try to bring reality into the sleepy northern public.

Co-operation should be taken literally, giving e.g. equal possibilities for “DW’s” recruited in the South to spread - precisely in this context -one-eyed points of views to biased listeners in the North. People up there may decide whether they want to listen, just as people in the South should not listen with a wide-eyed innocence in a hope to receive conditional crumbs from the rich man’s table. Conditional - yes: The North defines and decides, and crumbs - yes: The average DAC development aid is 0.25 % of GNP, and lately showing a clear downward tendency. In a mutual effort - South and North - should we lobby in the North to raise this - not altruistic but merely ridiculous figure.

Admittedly the new policy paper vaguely, with few words discuss such thoughts of the priorities for the Intercultural Co-operation. Five years ago the policy paper did similarly and properly in the forties as well. This is obviously not enough since: Where are the Southern DWs ? And where is the South - South dialogue? Where is the “cultural exchange” from our Southern partners, spread directly over the common public in the North ? Where is the Southern cultural reality reflected in the papers ? When this “co-operation” clearly performs unintentionally, the policy paper should, based on definitions, in straightforward terms try to emphasize and operationalize.

Equal ways of thinking Different societies have different norms, different points of views. Intercultural Co-operation should not be a process where the North imposes points of views based on our financial success and random cultural background to other equal ways of thinking. We have other foul phrases for such “one way co-operation”, like indoctrination, neo-imperialism, system-export and the like and history have surely shown this not to be conducive to preserve and certainly not in a mutual try to preserve the diversity of thoughts and the following improvement of human life on our shared planet.

The definition of sustainability is vague and has a tendency to focus on the undefined term of sustainable livelihood. To guarantee that projects or programmes last over time, it is important to address and define this concept precisely, e.g. by using the numerous debates in the literature. Some divide into the operational and the environmental sustainability. The last term often refers to the global sustainability of all human activity. Sustainable development simply implies that the activities of the present human generation will not reduce the opportunities and choices of the generations that follow. The human being stands at the centre of the development process. However, a more precise definition of the sustainability of programmes in developing countries in order to comprehend the nature of the failure and how to improve such, will prove valuable. Sustainability can be classified as follows:

* Political

* Institutional

* Organisational

* Economical

* Social

* Cultural

* Environmental

* Ecological

* Technical

Admittedly, the sustainability of a project can be improved, when an “ownership feeling” is contrived in communities by requiring local economic contribution for all or part of the capital costs and later for usually all operation and maintenance expenses. However, this feeling can often better emerge by local participation in preferably all phases of a project cycle. Using a local workforce, who via an awareness campaign are committed through the whole project cycle often greatly increases the “ownership feeling” and thereby the overall sustainability. The policy of some donors to calculate the value of a local participating workforce as an economic contribution to the capital cost of a project, seems in good consonance with this principle of creating a local responsibility or “ownership feeling” of a e.g. Rural Water and Health System.

When MS in association with our partners are using advocacy tools - to convince, persuade, or negotiate particular points of view - by definition these are directed towards somebody higher up in the political hierarchy, or via networking-operations to other NGO’s. Advocating from partners downwards towards beneficiaries, are called awareness raising / empowerment etc. It is interesting to note that, using terms like “awareness raising” of the public in the North, would properly be considered as an offence and hence MS would “advocate” both ways in Denmark, which only seems to consolidate the above mentioned widespread “We know all” attitude of the North. Advocacy strategies used on behalf of beneficiaries should be of secondary importance to the empowerment seen from their reality. In the extreme case some advocating activities on the basis of principles and perspectives / premises defined on the Northern cultural backgrounds via capacity building practises, can be seen as in direct conflict to the above named receiver responsibility, a true investigation of the origin of the perspectives, or even Chambers: Who’s reality counts ? The same can be said, possibly even to a higher extent, about unobjectionable empowering practises. Therefore the adoption of such concepts in MS’s policy paper should be carefully defined and written with thought- and tactfulness.

Workshop in Nepal. Justified on grounds of the importance of the
issue - a work paper for the next five years - and in economic comparison to the number of reports and travels MS facilitates on assorted development aspects, I consequently propose to arrange a workshop at: