Global norms, organisational change: framing the rights-based approach at ActionAid

This article examines the adoption of the rights-based approach (RBA) to development at ActionAid International, focusing in particular on its Education Theme. Although there has been a considerable volume of work that examines the rise of RBA, including in the pages of Third World Quarterly, the power dynamics and conflict involved in shifting to RBA have largely gone unnoticed and explored. Using the methodological tools of discourse analysis and social movement theory on strategic issue framing, I examine how ActionAid leadership worked to ‘sell’ RBA to somewhat-resistant staff and partners. I argue that ActionAid struggled to reconcile its commitment to global rights norms with the ongoing needs-based programming at country-level. This raises important questions about the power dynamics involved when an NGO undergoes a process of organisational change, even when, as is the case with RBA, this is widely seen as a progressive and desirable transition

Redistributing Care Work for Gender Equality and Justice – a Training Curriculum

People contribute to the economy through their work in many different ways; such as small-scale trading in the local market or as casual labourers in commercial farms. Others are factory workers, miners, teachers, and domestic workers etc. Through their work women and men contribute to the productive economy by producing goods and services that people use every day. It is this work that is counted and measured by governments. Yet, the work of social reproduction – which refers to the activities needed to ensure the reproduction of the labour force – is not counted. Social reproduction includes activities such as child bearing, rearing, and caring for household members (such as children, the elderly and workers). These tasks are completed mostly by women and girls and support all the activities in the productive economy. Unpaid care work is a component of social reproduction relating specifically to all the activities that go towards caring for people within a household or community. This work is not paid, requires time and energy, and is done out of social obligation and/or love and affection. However, this is an essential component of the economy – care work sustains all other human activity. We know that care is critical in our lives – it has a widespread, long term, positive impact on well-being and development. However, prevalent gender norms – the ways in which women and men are expected to behave – and class inequalities lead to an imbalance in care work with women and girls living in poverty taking on a far greater share of unpaid and paid care work under difficult working conditions.UK Department for International Developmen

How can power discourses be changed? - Contrasting the ‘daughter deficit’ policy of the Delhi government with Gandhi and King’s transformational reframing

Social policy impact is partly determined by how policy is articulated and advocated, including which values are highlighted and how. In this paper, we examine the influence of policy framing and reframing on outcomes, with particular reference to the policies of the Delhi state government in India that target the practices of female feticide, infanticide and neglect that underlie the ‘daughter deficit’. Using Snow and Benford’s categories for understanding reframing processes, the paper outlines and applies a ‘model’ of reframing disputed issues derived from looking at two famous campaigns – Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March in the struggle for Indian freedom from British rule and the African-American civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. It argues that ‘carrot and stick’ policy measures, such as financial incentives and legal prohibitions, to counteract the ‘daughter deficit’ must be complemented by well crafted discursive interventions

Annual analysis of Rwanda’s agriculture budget expenditure 2015-2016

ActionAid International Rwand

Robert Chambers

Professor Robert Chambers is a Research Associate at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex (Brighton, UK), where he has been based for the last 40 years, including as Professorial Research Fellow. He became involved in the field of development management in the 1970s, writing, editing and co-editing several books on land settlement schemes in Africa and on rural development management more broadly. This drew on a dozen years of experience as an administrator, trainer and researcher in Africa (mostly Kenya). Later he worked in India as a researcher and networker during three periods in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Over the years his focus and work moved on to irrigation management, and then to approaches and methods in research and for participatory development and practice, both writing about these and acting as a leading figure in the associated global knowledge networks and communities of practice. Chambers has worked in and with training institutes (Kenya Institute of Administration, East African Staff College, Administrative Staff College of India), research organizations (IIED), universities (IDS Sussex and IDS Nairobi), civil society (ActionAid and the Ford Foundation) and governmental and intergovernmental organizations (Government of Kenya and UNHCR). He has himself or with others written or edited sixteen books and numerous articles on development management, participatory approaches and methods, and critical reflections on development practice and development studies. The book that made him famous is entitled Rural Development: Putting the Last First (published in 1983). In his latest book, Provocations for Development (2012) he again aims to disturb some conventional development ideas and practices, and to put forward his own ideas to be tested and improved. Overall, his career is marked by a spirit of innovation and collaboration, listening and self-criticism. He has received three honorary doctorates in the United Kingdom, and will be receiving a Doctor Honoris Causa from Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) at its centennial celebration in 2013

Conflict and Astroturfing in Niyamgiri: The Importance of National Advocacy Networks in Anti-Corporate Social Movements

Traditional models of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and stakeholder management do not capture the nuance and dynamics of (counter-)organising processes around anti-corporate mobilisation. Based on the case of a resistance movement against a planned bauxite mine on tribal land in India, we develop a process theory of interactions between local, national and international actors within transnational advocacy networks. These encounters are not always friendly and are often characterised by conflict between actors with disparate goals and interests. We highlight the importance of national advocacy networks (NANs) in anti-corporate social movements and describe the conflicts and disruptions that result from ignoring them. Our findings also point to the role of corporate counter-mobilisation strategies in shaping resistance movements. Our narrative revolves around a particular focal actor in the anti-mining campaign: a young tribal man who emerged as a passionate spokesperson of the movement, but later became a supporter of the controversial mine. Our findings contribute to a richer understanding of the processes underlying transnational and national anti-corporate mobilisation

Measuring Political Commitment to Reducing Hunger and Under?nutrition: Can it be Done and Will it Help?

Food justice in India requires stronger governance and greater political commitment. This article introduces the Hunger Reduction Commitment Index (HRCI): a novel approach to assess governments' political commitment to reduce hunger and malnutrition. Cross?country comparisons and within?country analyses aim to demystify what such commitment may look like, in order to foster accountability and to provide practical policy directions for civil society, donors and governments. Unlike other hunger indices that typically compare outcomes, the HRCI ranks government efforts. It uses secondary data on three dimensions: policies and programmes; public expenditures; and legal frameworks. In addition, expert perception surveys conducted in Bangladesh and Zambia provide indications on what aspects of political commitment these governments do well, or less well. The HRCI 2011 is topped by Malawi. India takes thirteenth spot out of 21 developing countries, with a medium level of political commitment

Cosmopolitanism, Self-Interest and World Government

Cosmopolitans, if they are interested in seeing their principles realised, must hope that persons worldwide can become motivated to act in accordance with what those principles demand. But although it is important that genuinely moral motives are developed, we should not ignore the potential pragmatic value of self-interested motives to the realisation of cosmopolitan ends. This article considers three such motives: economic self-interest, prudent self-interest and democratic self-interest. I argue that in each case, usefully harnessing these motivations implies or requires global political integration that amounts to ‘world government’. This argument has the effect of reinforcing the already popular view that realising cosmopolitan principles entails global political integration. For those who already endorse that view, my argument will act as supporting evidence; by contrast it represents a challenge to those cosmopolitans who have remained ambivalent about, or indeed have explicitly rejected, the need for global political integration

Governing precarious lives: Land grabs, geopolitics, and 'food security'

This paper has a two-part structure. The first part of the paper explores contemporary land grabs and shows how they both reflect and constitute a new neo-liberal governance structure over land and land-based resources. In this sense what is noteworthy about land grabs is their world-making capacity: the deals structure and make possible new relations of power in the global food economy. For this very reason it is crucial to understand how land grabs affect both the pace and direction of agrarian change. The second part of the paper examines the discursive strategies that align ‘food security’ concerns with land grabbing practices. Here I suggest that ‘food security’ supplies a moral sanction for land grabs. By mustering public empathy around a desire to ‘feed the future’, food security discourse – to borrow an idea from Fassin (2012) – converts a relationship of dominance (the governance of precarious lives) into a relationship of assistance (the provision of a remedy).This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/geoj.1206

Securitization and Community-Based Protection Among Chin Refugees in Kuala Lumpur

This article examines refugee-led community organizations among Chin refugees from Myanmar in Kuala Lumpur. It uses a structuration analysis that recognizes refugee-led organizations as complex governance entities engaged in a dynamic relationship with (among others) national policies of securitization of forced migration and international humanitarian governance. This approach expands the existing literature on the securitization of forced migration by exploring refugees’ lived experiences in a context of south–south migration. It expands the literature on community-based protection by going beyond recognizing the existence of refugee-led organizations to analyse their construction, constitution and consequences. Three primary areas of work by Chin refugee groups are analysed in relation to their immediate activity and longer term effects: organization (‘building ethnic unity in adversity’), documentation (‘asserting a bureaucratic identity’) and socialization (‘learning to be illegal’). These long-term effects indicate the possible impact of local protection activities on macrostructural processes such as identity construction and migration choices.construction, constitution and consequences. Three primary areas of work by Chin refugee groups are analysed in relation to their immediate activity and longer term effects: organization (‘building ethnic unity in adversity’), documentation (‘asserting a bureaucratic identity’) and socialization (‘learning to be illegal’). These long-term effects indicate the possible impact of local protection activities on macrostructural processes such as identity construction and migration choices