S4, E1 Book launch: Foreign Aid and its Unintended Consequences

Dirk-Jan Koch and Clare Short discuss Dirk-Jan Koch's new book 'Foreign aid and its unintended consequences' (Open access). 

Foreign aid and international development frequently bring with it a range of unintended consequences, both negative and positive. This book delves into these consequences, providing a fresh and comprehensive guide to understanding and addressing them.

Speaker: Dirk-Jan Koch, Chief Science Officer of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Discussant: Clare Short, British politician
Chair: James Putzel, LSE

What is Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice?

These podcasts are recordings from the Cutting Edge Issues in Development Thinking & Practice lecture series 2023/24, 2022/23, 2021/22 and 2020/21, a visiting lecture series coordinated by Professor of Development Studies, Professor James Putzel and Dr Laura Mann.

The Cutting Edge series provides students and guests with fascinating insights into the practical world of international development. Renowned guest lecturers share their expertise and invite discussion on an exciting range of issues, from climate change policy, to pressing humanitarian crises. In 2020, the series took place online, enabling us to host fantastic speakers from around the world and to stream the lectures on YouTube, opening them up to a global audience. Now we are back in person but still recording the sessions to share with our global audience.

SPEAKER 3
Welcome. Hello. Welcome to the first meeting of the cutting edge issues in development, thinking and practice for 2023/24. We have quite a stunning Line-Up for the series this term, so I won't go through them all. But I will announce next week how Ha-Joon Chung is coming to talk about the multiple crises facing us at this point in time. And we're trying an experiment and we're going to do this as a conversation between myself and Ha-Joon Chung so we can really we expect you there's a tradition in this series of the students bringing lots of difficult questions to the speakers. And we hope that you'll follow that tradition tonight following the presentation. So I have great pleasure to welcome back to the school professor Doctor, as they always do this in Germany, in the Netherlands, Professor Dr. Dirk Jan Koch, it's a pleasure to have you. As you know, he's launching his book, Foreign Aid and Its Unintended Consequences. And there will be copies up here afterwards. Any of you who want to, I guess, buy one at a discount. Dirk completed his MSC in development management with us 21 years ago. I was here at the time mid-career and he went on to complete his PhD at Radboud University in 2009. Dirk is today the chief science officer of the Netherlands Ministry for Foreign Affairs and he's special professor of International Trade and Development Cooperation. So this is proof to all of you who are here studying development that there's life after your MSC. Yeah. He was based for five years in the Democratic Republic of Congo and two years in Kenya, where he he worked, amongst other things, as regional director at Search for Common Ground, as a professor of the Catholic University in Kinshasa and as a diplomat of the Netherlands to the DRC. So this, you know, the DRC is quite a rough place. I think he has a lot of insights from that period. The book is a must read for people studying international development, not least because he criticises us right in the beginning of the book for all the things that we didn't teach him. Yeah. So the book is really about the both the negative and the positive unintended consequences of development aid and perhaps, you know, our lack of teaching soundly about aid is not quite what it was back then. We hope we've improved. But in any case, we're trying to rectify this by inviting them here to speak. Now, I'm also going to introduce right now are Discussant for tonight Clare Short, who was Secretary of State for International Development, and she had established the Department for International Development under the Labour Government of 1997. Under her leadership, Britain became very well known for its principled aid program that was focusing on issues of poverty reduction. And it marked that period of Clare's tenure over the Overseas Development Assistance Program marked a kind of high point after years of really problematic overseas development Administration under the Tory government. Clare hails from Birmingham. He's born of an Irish family that, like so many others, migrated from Ireland to England at the time of the famine. She studied political science at the universities of Keele and Leeds and graduated with a BA honours. She worked as a civil servant in the Home Office before winning a seat in Parliament in 1983. And she ran for that seat. She held the seat from her home turf in Birmingham. In opposition she was on the front bench, commanding the positions, first as shadow minister for women, then for transport, and finally for overseas development. That's when I first met Clare when she was preparing to take on the brief of of Development and the New Labour Government back in the 1997, Clare resigned from government in 2003 over opposition to the Iraq war in 2004. She published an honourable deception New Labour, Iraq and misuse of Power. She stood down as MP in 2010. And since then she's devoted her time to three big issues better management of urbanisation and improvement of the lives of slum dwellers, promoting transparency in the oil, gas and mining industries. She was chair of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and seeking a just settlement in the Palestinian Israeli conflict. So today she she's also chair of the of the Board of the Cities Alliance and remains an activist I understand no longer with within the Labour Party. I could think of no one better to offer a comment to Turkey on account of foreign aid. So without further ado, I invite you all to attend this whole series between now and Christmas, and we'll have five more of the cutting edge issues lectures, both in person and from afar in the New Year in January and February. Okay, so without further ado, let's welcome Derek.

SPEAKER 1
Yeah. James, you were talking about the books and that they are for sale, but it can also be downloaded for free. And I remember when I was a student 21 years ago here, I also had to choose between having a good meal in the evening or drinking beers. And in the end, I found a solution. James I drank Guinness and it fills your stomach as well. So don't feel obliged also to buy the books. But I just wanted to give the opportunity for those who might be interested.So I really love my master's in development studies. Yeah. But I found the authors that we had to read were often either too critical or too constructive about international aid efforts. So we had to read William Easterly. Elusive Quest for Growth. I found that he's still on the reading list for DV 431.

SPEAKER 4
Not DV 400.

SPEAKER 1
And or Jeffrey Sachs, who claims that if we just put enough money into development, all problems will go away. So I tried to write a book and up to you to decide whether I succeeded. The book that I wish I had been assigned to read when I was a student here. And the inspiration for the book I actually got when I was teaching at the Catholic University in Kinshasa for a couple of years. And let me just share this short clip about 30s about teaching in the Congo.

UNKNOWN
Sample size that. Applied for. I don't. You. So. Yeah. Okay. No.

SPEAKER 1
Because she was actually the source of inspiration for the book. Her name is Irene. And after 15 lectures about the effectiveness of Aids, I asked the group a group of students. And do you think that international development support. Does it work for the DRC? Does it help or hinder your country? And after a while, the lady who arrived a bit late said, Yes, professor, I think it works. I said, okay, please tell me, how does it work? He said, Well, my cousin is working for this international NGO, Caritas, and with his salary, which is really good salary, he's paying the tuition fees for my university and now I'm already accepted to get a job, and without his support, I would have never gotten this job at this nice bank. So yes, definitely international NGOs are working because yeah, I am here because of that. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. I've been teaching about that relief about randomised control trials and how to measure the impact. And then she came up with this very specific results effects outside of all the log frames and theories of change that that I had been teaching. So I decided ever since to focus more on everything that is outside of the intended objectives of the intervention. And the first reason is really that it can stop preventable damage to human lives. We've heard all about the scandals in the international sector of sexual exploitation and abuse, for instance. And I'm just thinking and wondering if we would have taken this issue, the side effect of international aid much more seriously right from the start. Maybe we could have prevented that. It also helps to disentangle dilemmas and pull the emergency brake when needed. You've all heard about the stories about the problems of volunteerism, right? The gap year experience going to Africa and going to an orphanage. And I think if right from the start we would have paid more attention to those side effects and integrated that into our decision making. We could have pulled the emergency brake much earlier. Now, there's all these campaigns like, don't do this, but maybe we should have done that 25 or 30 years ago. And lastly, why I think it's important that we all pay more attention to is that it will facilitate a more honest discussion on aid effectiveness and efficiency. Often we see that we want to reduce overhead costs. We want to make sure that everything is done in a very cheap way. But I think in order to really make sure that you do all the proper checks and balances, when you're doing an intervention, you need to make sure that you invest enough resources into that and you can have a good discussion on that. So that's why I think we should focus more on it. We will have an interactive presentation. That's what we're going to try. I'm not sure if we're going to succeed because we couldn't get the PowerPoint started in the first place, but I still have hope. So after some discussing five minutes of international development, support and understanding the facts, we focus on the top ten of unintended effects because that's what the book is basically about. It provides a typology of of side effects, but we cannot cover all ten of them. So there will be a voting procedure if it works. And then we will discuss two of them. And then we're going to look at solutions, because at the end, the challenges that we face as humanity are so big that I don't think it's an option just to stop with foreign aid or international solidarity. I just think that we need to to make it better. Is it okay? Can we move on? Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Well, let's continue then. And then let's focus on the. Yeah, the main definition. Of course, you are a master student, so you need to have a definition. So what is the definition that is that non-standard effect is an action which differs a consequence of an action which differs from the consequence that was aimed for when starting it sounds very logical, but still some myths have emerged. It sounds like almost that the effects can be anticipated. But think, for instance, when you are a doctor or and you have to prescribe chemotherapy, do you know what are the side effects of chemotherapy? Yeah. You lose your hair, right? Indeed. We know that now. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't give this treatment, but it does mean that you should try to find ways how you can minimise that risk so it can be anticipated. Sometimes the effects are unavoidable, but sometimes they might be more avoidable. We'll get into that later today. I think it's important. The third one is important to me because I often thought that unintended effects were often downplayed because international aid agencies and donors are not that interested to show what is going wrong. But actually, we see also that those who oppose international solidarity, international development like to exaggerate unintended effects. If there is a small scandal, something small going wrong, they like to blow it out of proportions to so to show that they are those progressive people, they're so naive and they cannot be trusted with taxpayers money. The fourth myth is that they are always negative. And we find actually in our research, there's at least as many positive side effects of aid, the negative side effects. So no matter what, you're going to vote today on which ones you want to be more about, I will end with the positive side effects. Do not leave you with a sad feeling leaving this room that it's not going to work. And then I think this last one is particularly important. And intended effects are actually not an objective phenomenon. What might be an unintended effect? Negative side effects for one person might be actually the intended objective for another person. I think many of you are, for instance, familiar with the discussion on the sitting fees and the per diem paid in the international aid sectors. For many agencies in the global north. They want to reduce this and say, no, this is not good. We should try to minimise it because it's providing the wrong incentives. But for many local government officials who have very meagre salaries, actually these burdens are actually the reason that they participate in the program, because this is for them really a way to to get some access to some funds. So for them, it's not unintended at all. So are you ready for the top ten? Yeah. And please be attention, because I'm going to spend one minute not even 30s per unintended effect, and then at the end you have to vote and you can select one. Some of you, I think, can cheat the system and they will try to vote 2 or 3 times. I think it might work, but we'll see. So let's start with the first one. And I started with this one because in all evaluations that we analysed, we didn't find it big, but we know it exists. It is the backlash effect against international aid. Here you see it happening. For instance, we saw it with the Ebola clinics which were being funded from the global North. We saw that in quite some countries those clinics were being burned down and so many of the aid actors were totally surprised by that. How did that happen? Well, if you would like to know more about that, how that works, please vote for this one. The second one relates to the conflict effects that by being active in a country, you can inadvertently stimulate conflict. Here you see, for instance, what's happening more and more often, unfortunately, is the kidnapping of aid workers, which is really providing resources for the rebel groups to continue with their fights. So this is the conflict effect. Just one example then migration and resettlement effects, whether you agree with it or not, increasing the aid is being used to make sure that the refugees are migrants are being catered for in the region where they are uprooted from. And we think that providing the theory of changes that are providing education, they will are more likely to stay in the region and not migrate to Europe or to the United States. But now evidence also shows that actually with this education that they received, they are like, Yeah, this is nice and I have a good diploma. Why not try it in the labour market in the EU? So if you would like to know more about that, someone vote for this one. The price effects. Here you see a very localised inflation example. So cash transfers is the new game in town in international development. I think I'm also support of it. But you see happening is that if lots of people in the community get it and you measure the results, you see that yeah, the people who are getting the cash transfers are they are doing much better. But now if you also analyse the effects for the non target population, you see that for them often the prices increase. So if you really want to have a true image of the impact, don't only look at your target group, but especially also look at the non target group. Okay, the marginalisation effects. I think we touched upon this briefly. I think the orphanage tourism as they call it, is a clear example of that. But there's many more different forms. You can vote for this one to the behavioural effects we see the more and more, for instance, in the microcredit programs that the men in the household sometimes get jealous if suddenly all the attention, all the extra resources in the microcredit goes to the women, he becomes a bit insecure. So there is examples. There's evidence that in some instances this also lead to increased domestic violence to them. So if you only look at the outputs on whether the productivity and income has increased, you might not get the total image of the impact of the intervention. The governance effect really relate to the social contract and how foreign aid impacts the social contract, which is the relationship between the population and the state. And with all those foreign resources being poured in, is actually the government accountable to those donors or to the population itself? And you see an example that the donor, of course, is very much interested in migration management programs, and then the government recipient government might follow suit. But hey, what does this mean for the priorities of the local population who actually more interested in work and then migration management programs? We're almost there. Three more to go. The negative spill-over effects. We see that donors often display irrational behaviour. They suddenly all focus on one theme the hot new idea. And you see that local resources are drawn into that direction because they need to provide the nurses or they need to provide the doctors for that specific disease that suddenly the new game in town and then other diseases like sleeping sickness, disease get not the attention that they deserve. Environmental effects. I think they are plane. You understand that you focus on the bridge. You build the bridge or the road. But hey, what does it mean for biodiversity? What does it mean for the Co two emissions? And then the last one, I promise you the positive one as well and the ripple effects. So you see that, for instance, in agricultural extension programs, there is a program which focuses on stimulating the productivity for a certain group of farmers in a certain region. Then the farmers, they are very smart people. They say look at their neighbour and they say, Hey, this works for the neighbour, let's copy that behaviour. And then you get this positive spill-over effects. So I cannot go into detail for all ten of them. So now we're going to try something, you're going to grab your phone and I think that's something that you are all very much capable of, but I'm not sure if the code is working. If all goes well, you get a screen in which you can select one of those ten side effects. Is that correct? Can you pull your thumbs up if you get it? Oh, great. If it doesn't work with the QR code because you have a different type of phone, you can also go to com and type in that event code. Okay. I see that everybody has done it. Then it's up to me. I'll go back. It gives me the time to get a bit of water. Yes. What time do I have? I can't speak until five. Yep.

SPEAKER 3
Can you do it? Even. Five, five, five.

SPEAKER 1
Can I go to the next slide? No more protests. Only one way to find out. Okay, good. Excellent. So I see that there's a lot of people interested in the behavioural effects, so let me write that down. Hang on. So that's the number one. And then the backlash effects. Yeah. And for those who are now disappointed, you can still download or buy the play. So I'm going to deal with the backlash effects and the behavioural effects, and then we're going to go to the ripple effects, the positive ones to send you off with positive vibes. Yeah. Well, let's get started with the backlash effects. A backlash effect occurs when the external action leads to an opposite micro-level reaction that affects the achievement of the unintended effect. Okay, this sounds maybe a bit abstract. Let me start with a concrete example of Francois. So we tried to come up in the book with testimonies of people who have undergone, who have experienced the side effect. And Francois is an LGBTQ plus activist in Senegal. He has now fled to Sweden. And you wanted to share the story with the world, why he had to go out of the country. He was working for a local NGO, active for gay rights, and they were working a bit under the radar, but it was working fine. Then. An international NGO, Oxfam in this case can happen. Sorry, Duncan. They sent a letter out from their HQ to all staff members. We have a new code of conduct in our organisation and we expect all our staff members to stick to this code, which means we have to respect gay rights. Queer rights. There was a couple of conservative politicians who really like this. They found this letter and they spread it on the web. Say, you see this foreign? Those foreign people, they are trying to influence our traditional society and our family values. And there was a backlash generated against all organisations which were active in this field of gay rights. So they they put his name on the net. Articles were being written in the newspapers. He was no longer safe, so he decided to flee the country. So this nice idea of promoting gay rights actually backfired for him. And this is just one example of the of the backlash effects. It was difficult to kind of come up with subtypes, but there's two subtypes that we found is one is the anti backlash. This occurs when external intervention is met with suspicion about ulterior motives of the aid actor. And often the suspicion has often historical origins. So I gave you the example of the Ebola treatment centres which were being burned down. Of course, this is related to the historical practice of white people testing also new medication on local populations, often not with the safeguards in place. So they were afraid that those Ebola people who were treating who came there to treat the Ebola disease were actually testing new medication where maybe even spreading the disease. So this is the backlash can also be the anti foreign value backlash. And I think the example of Francois shows it. And I think a very important element is that often local leaders tend to use this to strengthen their own position. Now we see this in that in Uganda, for instance, where local leaders who are often not elected or not democratically elected are only too happy if there's an actor doing some clear advocacy of an advocacy so they can show, no, we are actually your real leaders. We don't allow this foreign interference so you can trust us and they can make sure that all the attention goes to this instead of to the real problems facing the country. You can ask questions on this backlash effect moving later on when we get to the Q&A section. Now we're going to move to the behavioural side effects. And we speak of this type of side effect when recipients are affected, persons respond to an external intervention in unexpected ways due to psychological factors that were not taken enough into consideration when designing and rolling out the program. Okay. Let me start with another testimony by Mason.

SPEAKER 5
My son, but.

SPEAKER 1
He couldn't give the testimony himself because he died. But we know his story very well because a documentary was made about his life and he he was convicted of rape. And why was he convicted of rape? He didn't commit it. That was clear. That has become clear from even the people who accused him of rape. But there was this entire aid industry. I think I can call it in the eastern DRC who was fighting sexual violence. And I am all in favour of fighting sexual violence. But there were so many actors involved and there were so many incentives created for judges to convict people that even people who didn't do anything wrong and end up behind bars. Judges will be flown into helicopters to do mobile courts. And when they would come back from those mobile courts, of course, they had to fill in the reports. How many people did you convict? Yeah, that, of course, creates incentives for those judges to not do due processes, unfortunately. Well, he stayed for ten years in prison. He got to be in prison after he was released one year later. He passed away. So this just shows how important behavioural responses can be. And nobody thought about that enough when they were giving. Although when they put in this pressure on those judges to come to convictions, there's many behavioural responses. Subtypes. We're just going to focus on three in this lecture, the rebound effect, an increase in activity that was suppressed or prevented before the external intervention removed or relax restrictions on it. Wow, It's a long sentence for the Friday afternoon. But think about, for instance, the deforestation programs. Of course we want to put a value on everything. We think forests are better protected if we reward the title holders of those forests for not cutting down the trees. And actually, we see it works during the intervention. We see that the title holders protect the forest better when they get subsidies from the World Bank to not cut it down. But we also find that actually the motivation, intrinsic motivation of the title holders, often, sometimes businessmen, sometimes local population, community organisations. Yeah, they, they, they lose the the intrinsic motivation to protect it. My apologies. This is the motivational crowding out effect that I'm describing now to you. Okay. So this is the the motivational crowding out effect is exactly this, that you were already protecting the forest to a certain degree. You get the financial support. But then in the end, if the financial support stops, you're no longer that interested or less interested to protect the forest. So that's a behavioural response that we have often overlooked the backfire effect. We have seen the example of of the microcredit and the extra domestic violence and the rebound effect we see often with innovations that are supposed to reduce environmental pressure, for instance the quick stoves. The idea was that it would lead to a reduction in deforestation because people don't need to cut down anymore the trees for firewood or less at least. But strangely enough, and they borrow. For instance, they found that it led to an increase of deforestation. So that's why we call it a rebound, because it was not so easy to cook. It was getting much cheaper to cook. And that's why they saw this increase in deforestation. Well, I think it's important to take to make the bridge between development studies and psychology to take these effects more into consideration. Okay. Well, let's move to the positive. Is that okay? Yeah, I see that some are ready for that. So this is what happens when there's a spill-over from the target population to the non target population or from the intervention area to the non-intervention area or from one theme to a different theme. Let me start with the story of Georgette. She's a married Dutch development worker and her father was Dutch and her mother was Mauritanian, as you can see in the pictures. And he was working in Mauritania in the 1970s for an international NGO. And there he met her and he met the mother of Georgette. They fell in love and they got an eight baby. And Georgette is the eight baby. And interestingly enough, she she finds it herself. Is that that she can really be a bridge between different nations, between different cultures, between different religions. Her father being Christian, her mother being Muslim. And she says but she finds striking is that in the international development sectors, we kind of take out the human factor, even though there's hundreds, thousands or even counted half a million people working in the international development sector. And we pretend that those people don't exist actually, while they fall in love, they start relationships. And let's also factor in that end. So that's what we call the human interaction effects. And because of all this moving around, of all those people in the development sector, new ties are being created, luckily, often very positive. Well.

SPEAKER 5
Thematic synergy.

SPEAKER 1
Strategic effects, I think, are extremely important. We see that often when we design an intervention, we really tend to focus on the thematic area that we get our funds from or the thematic area that our organisation specialises in. But then we forget that actually our intervention also has spill-over effects to other themes. I think the most well-known example is the example of the deworming initiatives which were really starting to get healthier kids. But then they tried. They found out that actually when those kids, once those kids are healthier, they also go to school longer and they get better grades. And actually it started as a health intervention, but it had lots of educational impacts. And if you only focus on your own silo, you don't see that, Well, then we're going to move to the catalytic effects. We often forget about what we call mobilisation or demonstration effects, that the external intervention contributes to additional development impacts in the same thematic area, because Development Bank, for instance, is active in a certain topic or in a certain region, the other banks are like, Oh, that's interesting. We can also start working there and other investments go to the same region or the same theme. So unfortunately, often we stop measuring impacts at the end of a program, at the end of a project. But we see that most of the catalytic effects take place after you end the project. Okay. Shall we move to the solutions? After all the different side effects. Are you ready for that? Yeah. Up there. Also. You're fine. Okay, cool. Well, let's continue then. So I think what not to do, and I think Claire will also expand a bit on that later. Don't do international development if you're actually objective is not international development. And we see that, of course, unfortunately, historically that has happened. Often it was used for geopolitical purposes or it has been used to stop migration. But if your objective is not really development, then all the side effects that happen, there's a higher risk that you turn a blind eye to that we only have to think about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know that the millions were being squandered. But yeah, it continued. It continue because there was actually more about geopolitical interests than about true development. So I think that's a kind of disclaimer, you know.

SPEAKER 3
But okay, assume.

SPEAKER 1
That we are now in development for development. Then there's a couple of do's and one is to really move away from linear thinking into complexity, thinking we see that in many different disciplines is now much more normal to think in systems thinking, to see the body, for instance, as a whole. But I find it striking that in many donor agencies and also in my ministry, actually this really linear way of thinking is still very predominant. So I think we need to really try to overcome that. And secondly, we need to try to overcome the boundaries to learning. And I think that's really surprising to me that that I see that and this is how I was also trained. I don't blame James, but I was I had neither the idea that if we had evidence and we would get it out there, then organisations would take it up and we would have very effective assistance. But I now find that there's actually quite we found in this research, there's quite a lot of boundaries to learning and I'm going to highlight three. One is the ideological boundary to learning that you are you have such deep held beliefs about how the world is or should be that anything that contradicts this idea, you kind of discard. For instance, we had this idea of motivational crowding out that we are now paying organisations and title holders to not cut down the forests and we think that by paying them it's very neoliberal idea we will protect the forests. But if you're really stuck in the neoliberal mindset, you, you kind of forget that maybe there's also non financial aspects, reasons why people protect the forest. And yeah, if you're not open to that, you don't, you don't you have this ideological filter and you won't pick up the evidence that goes against that. So I suggest just a minor suggestion to free our minds of that. In the book you will see plenty of examples that I had my own ideological boundaries as well. The second one, and I think that's particularly important for you when you're starting your career or restarting your career in international development. Is the institutional or organisational boundaries to learning. There's a lot of pressure in your organisation to to show results and to show that the intervention works. And then if you come with all your difficult stories about how about this side effect or how about that thing that's happening as well, and there's a big pressure on you to maybe not even explicit, but implicitly you yeah, you are afraid to speak out or especially not publicly, but for organisations to learn, you really need to show actually that what's going wrong and how it can be improved. And lastly, and that's actually the easiest boundaries to learn, especially with all the technological progress we have, is to overcome the technical boundaries to learning. You know, So a lot of measurements which are possible now because of satellite data, for instance, where possible, 25 years ago. So yeah, you can much more easily overcome these these days. Okay. Let me slowly come to the conclusion. Let me first get a sip of water. So I really started by saying that I don't believe in that aid. I think there should be there's a role for international development, especially with the huge global challenges that we face. But I do feel that our sector is in crisis here in the UK. I think more than 25% of the budget is now being used in the UK. So actually the biggest recipient of UK aid is the United Kingdom for reception of refugees. I think instead of more sustainable long term programmes in the countries where where we operate. And we're also in a defence mode. And yeah, I was wondering, you know, is there is there any choice between between giving up, saying, okay, times have changed, let's just give up on international development or should you be building more safeguards, you know, for every unintended effect that we have mentioned? We've just discussed three, but there's many more even. But there's also risk if you get so many and so many extra safeguards because the risks need to be related to returns and maybe it's worth to take the risk. So I don't think that the problems won't go. I don't think the problems will go away if we just look the other way and say, forget about all the idealistic development interventions. But I also don't think that we should make it so tough to do any interventions. I think that a doctor also talked about the chemo cure chemo treatment. The doctor still continues with that. He just weighs the pros and cons. And is it? Does the return relate to the risk? So that's what I think what we should do. A third option, which is a bit more nuanced, which is a humble one I think, which yeah, which proposes actually calculated risk taking and that we defend that as well. And that's allowed to make mistakes as long as you learn from it. And I think it's all up to us in the sector and I count you to be in the sector to really transform it and address, make it fit to address the global challenges. So I don't think that we should and I think that many of your organisations will push you to do that, to pretend that aid will solve all the problems. And I also don't think that we should we should be very vigilant if a small mistake is made and the conservative media is exaggerating that. So I think that we really should take a headlong rush forward, as I call it, into a third way with confidence, nuance and humility, and which means, of course, we should go away from the top down colonial 20th century way of working, the linear practices and really focus more on one that's ready for the 21st century based on complexity thinking, Evidence-Based decision making and equal partnership. So that's my main argument. I didn't write the book all by myself. I did it with a lot of support and a very important with the feedforward group of people from all across the globe who were different in many aspects than I. So we tried to come up with a yeah, a balanced book, not just a book from a white man's perspective, working for a donor agency and up to you to see if we succeeded. So I would like to leave it at that, James, if that's okay. Thank you.

SPEAKER 3
So now Claire is going to offer some response after having also looked through the book, I think. Welcome Claire Short.

SPEAKER 6
Thank you. It's good to see you all here in person. Those funny years of lockdown seem 100 years ago somehow. But it was a whole different life, wasn't it? Different world. Well, you were probably all quite young, but now.Can you hear me?

SPEAKER 3
Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER 6
Good. This is a useful book, and you should, I think, all read it. And there's lots of arrogance in the aid industry, and it needs correcting and challenging. And this certainly does that. But I have some worries about the book, too. It seems to me that social and economic policy in OECD countries domestically also has the unintended effects. I mean, this isn't just a development issue, it's a policy makers being open minded and learning what's what, the effects of what they do. And so it's a much broader question. The other. Thing we should always remember in development. It's not always good intent. In fact, I mean, historically, it was predominantly bad intent. Sir John Walker, the former permanent secretary at the Department for International Development, who worked in development, you know, all his career, talked about all the ridiculous there was he had to give aid money for a band because Princess Anne was going to visit. You know, that's one little example. But, you know, there were lots and lots of things like that. So, I mean, for example, thinking that you're using aid to prevent migration is not development. It's an ulterior motive. Of course you're going to have bad effects because you're not thinking about the development of the country for the benefit of the people. If you're simply thinking about preventing people from moving. So that's a distortion. The other thing that's really important is that development isn't just aid aid. I mean, there's some money is needed. Money can be spent well or badly. But what are the trade terms? What are the taxation arrangements? What are the international environmental agreements? We mustn't ever get trapped into thinking about development. That's just the distribution of aid, because that's we're losing it. Then we've got to make a more just and sustainable world order. And that requires a whole series of interventions, Some investment. Yes, but that's not the only question. And remember, money can always be spent, be spent badly for ulterior motives. I mean, for example, in the UK, after we were seen to have done quite well on development and the budget increased then because they were imposing cuts on other departments which actually meant the increase in the development budget was a bad thing because it created such hostility across Whitehall and in the country when everything else was being cut. But then all the other departments were jealous. So then development money was spread across Whitehall into lots of different pockets as a sort of consolation prize for well, of course it's then ineffectively spent. So, I mean, I want to widen the questions. It's not just did you do a programme and did it have some unintended effects? These are bigger questions of unintended effects. And some of the unintended effects are built into the contradictions and problems of the approach to international development. My second point is, and this is an issue in in this country and I think in OECD countries as well as in development, I'm very hostile to micro targets for everything I think in the health service and teaching in this country. It's it's meant it's all about jumping through hoops. The creativity of working in the sector is diminished. There's less effectiveness. I mean, you see young teachers are leaving teaching and young medics are leaving the health service. So as well as strains in finance, there's also a lack of satisfaction in the job. You need some big objectives, but I think lots of micro-targeting has very destructive consequences. This is a very serious issue that's beginning to be talked about. But so some of the assumptions in this book are as though everyone's doing log frames and having very specific objectives for policy, and then it might have an unintended effect. What I really want to challenge the narrow targets, micro targets, and the way in which they distort behaviour. Charles Goodhart says as soon as a a an objective becomes a target, you get distortion, you get people gaming the system and so on. So. Thinking that development is just money and it's got to be all micro planned to control it. And if any bad effects needs to be taken into accounts like people who are getting educated, choosing to migrate, well, why not? Is that a is that a bad effect? So I think we should be cautious about thinking we can control everything and target everything. And now in my time in government, which now here's the old lady talking, the analysis that we came with was this. Development shouldn't be lots and lots and lots and lots of micro progress projects and lots of NGO projects. It should be working with government systems to strengthen the systems so that the country can deliver improvements in education in a sustainable system that will go on indefinitely. And it's not just then getting the kids into school. It's who trains the teachers. Where do the books come from? You know, how do you get more secondary schools when they've all come through primary? But the both the money and the support for system building should go into building the country systems rather than projects with targets to report back to donors. And so that means getting rid of all the flags of the of the donors of the money needs to be pulled. There are too many actors. They use up all the energy of the ministers and bureaucrats in the country that's supposed to be getting help because they have to account for all these different programs to all these different visiting ministers and visiting bureaucrats and lots and lots of different bank accounts. It was a big study. I mean, this is a serious matter. All the activities I'm talking about, unintended effects, this is undermining the capacity of the country instead of strengthening its systems. So I think we need to get back to that argument rather than improving and improving our targeting and so on. There's another thing I'd say about evaluation. I mean, in development, there's evaluation, evaluation, evaluation, lots of money, lots of expense. I think there's too much evaluation. Personally, you need some. And I think we could use evaluation in our own countries too. On some of the ineffective government initiatives and programs. Look at how do you know evaluation isn't just a thing for development, is it? And let me say about the chemo effect. I mean, please. It's a very crude treatment for cancer, but it's one of the things that works. What's losing your hair if your life is at risk? And the NHS gives people wigs. So, I mean, you don't say, Oh dear, should I treat this person and try and prevent cancer because they might lose their hair? So I mean, there are some effects, but you will absorb them because the effect is much less damaging than the thing that's trying to be cured. I mean, that's just a. And if you take the example of Pdms and they might help people stay in the public services, how much better? And there were lots of programs of helping countries reform their public services, sometimes having to get rid of some of the staff. But you can do that in a generous way if they're older and they get some kind of finance and set up little businesses, and then you improve the salaries and it helps with governance, corruption and so on. So that's better than podiums. I mean, that's again, part of building systems and getting a system that will work. And then I would say the backlash on Ebola is just Ebola was so terrifying and it seemed to come from nowhere and no one had heard of it. And people with traditional practices of washing bodies when somebody died, of course, that was spreading it. And then you get these foreigners and people from the World Health Organisation wearing these space outfits. I mean, it's not surprising that people were suspicious, but that was part of the reality of Ebola. I mean, that's not an unintended effect. That's just harsh reality of a dreadful disease, which actually collaboratively, there was some success in rolling back. I know it pops up again, but I think one can give a tick to that one. I've said already the theory that if you educate people, they're more likely to migrate and therefore you shouldn't educate them. Please. It's a distortion of the use of development to want to prevent people from migrating if they want to migrate and if being educated makes them more ambitious and more curious. Also, the good we can't say let's not educate anyone because they might migrate cash transfers. I think they're very interesting. We need to study more. But the fact that those who didn't get them were angry or jealous, You know, the post-war Labour government improved the income and rights of the poorest third of the population and the middle class. The upper middle class hated it. So sometimes when you achieve a reduction of inequality or a lifting up of the life of the poor, there's another group who don't like it. Well, you know what's development for? I don't mind that. I mean, I just want to point out again, this isn't just a development question. This is an inequality who's getting advantages. People who thought they were superior and richer feel a bit annoyed when people they thought were poor and inferior are suddenly getting stroppy and knowing what they're doing and getting their kids educated. Well, that's progress, isn't it? And we shouldn't. Microcredit and the man becoming violent. Domestic violence is an issue all over the world. I mean, it's the most depressing issue when you look at the quantities of it. But certainly in this country, in my mother's generation, people in very unhappy marriages couldn't leave because the women had no financial possibilities and they might be oppressive, violent, anything. I can remember there was a little girl in the street in Birmingham, people saying, Oh, he beats her up when he's been to the pub, and it was just chat in the street. No one did anything because in those days women could not have an independent life. So when microcredit makes women be more independent, of course, if there's something you can attach to the program to help them cope with some kickback. But that's life. These are very oppressed women, and then they get a bit more freedom and a bit more autonomy. And the man gets hungry. Well, maybe she should leave him. Um. The governance effect and the accountability to donors is a serious issue. The distraction of accountability. And I'm back to my first point that we should be working with governments, building systems. And of course, in my day we had the agreement on the Millennium Development Goals. So then it wasn't a question of donors telling governments what to do. We'd all agree that these were our objectives. So then you can sit with a government and say, How can we support you in aiming to achieve the education goal or the health goal or whatever. And it's it's an agreed objective. It's not a donor driven objective. And if we were taking the Sustainable Development Goals seriously, they would provide the same platform. Um, on the question of gay rights, it's not just a development issue. David Cameron went around the world hectoring people about gay rights. Nothing to do with giving them money. And I think it probably created a setback. And that's a big issue about the hectoring Northern agenda. And of course we want everyone to be treated with respect. But there are ways to be more subtle and more supportive and less hectoring. And that's a general lesson on foreign policy and development policy. I couldn't help but think when this terrible wrongful conviction for rape is a man in this country. I don't know how long you been here. And recently released from prison after 17 years for being wrongly convicted of rape. And they're having a row about his compensation because apparently you have to have money taken off for all that time you spent in prison when you weren't having to pay for your living costs. So wrongful convictions is more than development. I mean, it's terrible. And if you're creating incentives, yes, but it happens here. I'm sure it happens in the Netherlands. So the conclusion they have an open mind learn listen to people you're working with, Don't think you know everything. Don't bring only your own prejudices, which we all do. But you've got to know that you must listen and be open and thinking and reading. But the suggestion that developments in trouble, yes, we've seen cuts and slashing all over the place, but we also have an existential crisis for the world and for all of us. And if we don't make the world more sustainable and more just, we're all in desperate trouble. So development is either going to come back into fashion as the only way for all of us to survive, not as a charity for the poor, or we're going to have a kind of fascistic, ugly world. So development must become about the building of that sustainable, more equitable world. And as the new director of the World Bank said, it's not poverty or renewable energy. It all goes together. Climate change and giving people the chance of a better life. So I'm sorry if I'm being a bit harsh, but these are my responses.

SPEAKER 3
Okay. I'm going to. I can see people better from here. And just while you think of your questions and this is the time to put hard questions, follow Claire's example. Put hard questions to your to to the alumnus of our department. And just while people are getting their questions together, I want to ask one. Okay. Or maybe. Maybe it's actually a double A double question. It follows on what Claire said. And that's the. One of the things that bothers me is situating this assessment of the unintended consequences of aid in without putting more emphasis. So you kind of alluded to it that one of the biggest consequences of our interventions in recent years have been overthrowing states exactly the opposite of what Claire was talking about, working with systems to build up systems that can function and endure over time. But in Iraq and in Libya, we have created gigantic problems. And then so much of the aid is also directed towards and connected with that. In 2015, there was a conscious move by donors advocated by the UK and the Netherlands at the OECD, DAC, to to actually change the definition, the hard one definitions of aid. Claire was alluding to this so that money it became okay now to define aid as money that's going to pay for our OECD country military operations. You know that that had been strictly excluded before. So mod budget here. ET cetera. It was picked up by a this was what Claire was saying was the sharing around Whitehall of aid resources. And also there had been a strict determination that aid should not go to promote British commercial interests in 2015. That was relaxed so that OECD A could provide a lot of subsidies to European companies, Western companies, etcetera, to to invest in developing countries. And aid money was spent on doing that. So and that's you know, then added upon by spending a huge amount of aid on refugees here in our own country. So I think those much bigger consequences. And are they unintended? I think they're not necessarily unintended.

SPEAKER 6
These one intended. Britain pressed for this. So you can look after refugees with aid money which cut spent, you know, so poor people in the world paid for the Ukrainian and Hong Kong and Afghan refugees here. But as they're going to be more punitive and lock people up, if people are locked up, you can't put the money against the aid budget. And I don't think they thought of that. So that's a nice unintended consequence.

SPEAKER 3
Okay. Very good. All right. I'll let you you can chew over those. And let's take a couple of questions already from the audience. It has keep your questions really brief, short, you know, so that we can and difficult.

SPEAKER 6
Get this guy first. All right.

SPEAKER 3
So, yes, go ahead. But very brief.

SPEAKER 7
Yes.

SPEAKER 1
It's three.

SPEAKER 3
Short ones.

SPEAKER 1
First and in.

SPEAKER 8
When you was abroad, what were you, a personnel or own techniques to deal or manage with the stakeholders abroad making a developing development policies. Second. Tell us about some the biggest challenge in the last years and how to deal with this challenge. And three, do you believe in the convergence, the low income countries to rich countries, in the convergence in the development? Thank you.

SPEAKER 3
Convergence. Could you get that? That last one? Yeah. Okay. And let me collect a few a few other questions. Interventions. Yes. There we go.

SPEAKER 1
You can say their names, right? We can?

SPEAKER 3
Yes. Please say your name. Sure.

SPEAKER 9
So my name is Yasmin. I'm from the country of Georgia. And in context, like Georgia and many other places, lots of sectors, specifically with gender equity, the funding is provided by less than ideal institutions such as foreign missionary groups or very divisive oligarchs. So in your work and your experience, when you encounter situations like that, how do you prioritise between the ethical of the process or perhaps the funding mechanism and the potential result of the programs? Thank you.

SPEAKER 3
Okay, great.

SPEAKER 6
Was that Georgia?

SPEAKER 9
Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER 3
Okay. Very good.

SPEAKER 6
Beautiful country.

SPEAKER 3
And here in front.

SPEAKER 9
Hi, I'm Mahavira from Pakistan. So my question.

S11
Basically is that with foreign aid, foreign aid happens when a country like UK gives aid to a country like Pakistan and you'll often find that language is a barrier. So do you think that it often creates a class like the girl that you were talking about, an uncle where the people who can speak in English are the ones who are going to distribute the money and sort of become tyrants of their own while dealing with the local population because they don't know the language. The advocates of the local population who can't speak in English, but they're also in charge of all the money. Okay. So your opinions on that.

SPEAKER 3
Very practical question. Why don't we take these three and then I'll cook some more.

SPEAKER 1
Thank you for the questions and thank you for the critique. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Yeah, Thank you. And that's why you were here. So I so from the the gentleman in the back. So how do you engage with stakeholders? I had my first job after I graduated from LSC is that I went to Nigeria to work as a trainee for the European Commission. There I had a wonderful boss and he says, I don't want to mingle too much in your personal life, but I forbid you to spend more than one night with other people from Europe. I'm like, okay, Wow. He says, Yeah, you can do that always. But if you really want to understand the context where you're operating, if you really want to be effective with your stakeholders, spend as little time as possible with your own type of people and try to maximise the time with other people. You can really learn from those perspectives. And I think that really helped me because in the more social informal context, you get to know much better what people actually think about the development efforts. Because if you're sitting with them in an office, of course they will say that everything is doing fine and more is needed. But yeah, it really. A view behind the facade. So that's what I really always try to do, to mingle as much as possible with the areas where I'm working and leaking a bit. To your point on language, you know, if you don't pay attention, if you don't know the local languages and all the communication with donors and aid agencies goes in French or in English or Spanish, you risk contributing actually to this inequality. So to all of us, I think it's really we should try to work as much as possible in local languages how how complicated they can be. So the other questions are very big and that you ask about will there be convergence in the world? So what are the biggest challenges? Well, I think the biggest challenge when we talk about convergence, it's a bit less about will poor countries catch up with the rest of the world? Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But I think what we see is increasing divergence within countries. And I think that's actually if we talk about big challenges facing us, is really the rampant rising levels of inequality in countries. And and that we don't there doesn't seem to be enough connection actually between higher and middle classes and lower classes, not in our own societies, but also in other societies. Then the last question by Yasmin, the ethical question like, okay, I was working. Let me make it very practical. And she is asking the question, Should you take money from organisations which have different objectives than your own? Basically? And when I was working for Search for Common Ground is international NGO and peace building. We had one CEO who really wanted to take money from Chevron and excellent mobile to work on conflicts in the Niger Delta. And I was like, Yeah, I don't think that's ethical, actually. You know, they are behind so much of the issues there. And even though you can do your nice peacebuilding activities, you do kind of provide legitimacy for those actors. So yeah, in the end, the next CEO said it was lucky he said it was a bad idea, so we cut it. But I think it's very important to to always look at what are the real intentions of those of those funding You.

SPEAKER 3
Claire, do you want to well.

SPEAKER 6
Is climate change ecological collapse? Africa, the poorest continent, massive projected growth of population? If there isn't big development, my goodness, we forget about worrying about migration now. There'll be massive movements of population and much more conflict. I mean, this is very, very serious. So the challenge is enormous. And as you say, I believe that we're only going to survive in any you know, everyone talks about saving the planet. The planet will survive. It's us. That is the question. And there might be a few little trails of us, but there might be catastrophic death and destruction. And that's where we're heading. Unless we change. And so we all have to change to live sustainably. And some of the poorest countries will find it easier than we will. So it's not they converge with our messy, useless model that's destroying the world. We have to converge. I mean, if we do get to catastrophe, there's lots of poor people in the world who know how to grow food, build their houses, give birth to their children without great institutions supporting them, that will be in a better position than a lot of us will be if we're going to get a collapse. Questionable donors. I mean, there's always been questionable donors. I mean, colonialism had lots of religious people running around, you know, pretending they were superior and then da da da da. So I think we've got to be careful here about who we're talking about. When we talk about development actors. I think we've got to get the public sector institutions and the national institutions and the multinational development banks working right. And some of these other dubious actors will be dubious and you then decide to engage with them or not. But if we lump it all into one thing and say we can reform it, we can't control some of them, and some of them are very odd people and always have been. But then you decide whether to engage with them or not, or the country has to decide whether to allow them. But you understand what I'm saying? The big development questions are, aren't them? Yes, language. But you know, if you speak only to the ones who in the country who speak English, you've got a class question because they're all be well educated and in a quite different position than the poorest people who really need an improvement in their lives. And I'm back really to my point of working with government systems. And of course, if you work with government systems, then. You get local speakers automatically and it isn't an issue. But I realised, I mean in my day we were moving to that and into budgetary aid. So the big quantities of money going into government systems and of course you get a governance benefit because then you say, can we work with you to improve the management of the money so I can account to my taxpayers. But you're getting a sustainable improvement in the management of money belonging to the country, too. But I know we've moved a long way from that, and a lot of you are going to have to live in this imperfect world we're in. And I do understand that, you know, dealing with lots of programs et cetera. But you've got to do your best and remember all these lessons. But also remember, we should improve the model of development partnerships anyway to get this strengthening of local systems.

SPEAKER 1
So, yeah, I'm totally in favour of strengthening local systems and working with governments. But what we have unfortunately seen that there's really a decline in democracy across the globe and decline of governance quality in many of the countries, including our own, but also abroad, America. And yeah, so the risk is if you are giving budget support or if you are reading, working with the sectoral programs in countries, if it's South Sudan or Somalia or the DRC, you're really stimulating autocratic tendencies and and maybe even corruption. So I think, yeah, where possible we should work more with local systems and local governments, but often it's just not possible. Many of the poor people are trying to reach.

SPEAKER 6
This is a really we worked a lot with Rwanda. Now Rwanda's very authoritarian, but it's really reduced poverty and so on and came out of the genocide. And then people say you shouldn't. Well, if we've got to wait for perfect democracies, maybe we'll have an aid program with the Netherlands. I mean, in poor countries, you get imperfect democracy for obvious reasons that there isn't enough for everybody and you get some oppression. And if you if you have to wait to find countries that are working, you know as well as you'd ever hope, then you won't work anywhere. But then they say if if there isn't democracy, we can't work with government systems. But it seems to me and in an authoritarian country, you can still work to get a basic education system that all kids can get into school and have good books and have their buildings repaired. Even if the government is authoritarian, like Rwanda. Rwanda is a very good example of this question. And I'm not saying that everything Paul Kagame does is acceptable, but we've seen enormous achievements in development within a very authoritarian system and a country recovering from a terrible genocide. So were we right or wrong to engage and help them build? I mean, it's a very important question.

SPEAKER 3
Absolutely central question. I'm going to take some more questions from the floor now. First, in the back row there, I see a lot of people down there. Okay, go ahead.

S12
Right. I got it. Yeah, I've got two questions. The first one is your name. My name is Francisca. I have worked on with local NGOs and human rights NGOs for over a decade. So we we have filled lots of forms to get funding from international institutions. So my first question is, what's your take on the kind of conundrum or like how to prioritise the country where you work? Because, for instance, there are some countries in Latin America that are like hot spots like Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, like everyone wants to go there. They're like lots of funds available, like a very strong civil society. But what happens like in in countries such as, for instance, Paraguay, where funding is not going because there isn't enough evidence. There isn't enough evidence because nobody's going to take action on that. And I did an investigation there and some other organisations were like, Are you going to come for good? Because we really, really need more people here. But there were in this kind of cycle of no getting funding and no getting visibility and therefore nobody paying attention to what was going on there.

SPEAKER 3
Good question. That's a good.

S12
Question. And the second one, sorry, is like, yeah, I'm going to finish. The second one goes to how and what's your take on how the international institution in a way shape. Agenda like there are very long processes like strategic litigation that could take 20 years. Nobody wants to fund it. But then when it succeeds, everyone wants to be there. So how you take or from your role or your experience, what's your take on that kind of things like how to invest in long term processes?

SPEAKER 3
Very good. Good, Good question. Yeah.

SPEAKER 4
Great.

SPEAKER 3
Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay.

S13
Everyone, I think, is with us to ask some questions. My name is Rahul. I'm from Lebanon and I'm doing my master's currently in international development and humanitarian emergencies. I have a bit also some questions. My first one is about the behaviour. So we discussed about the behavioural change, but what about the dependency mentality that typically foreign aid creates? The creating of dependency, especially among local actors who are really in severe need of the funds. So they'd be much more inclined to say yes to whatever the international donors want or so on. So how do you respond to this? My second question is about also a bit of the unintended consequences. But I cannot but think about the malaria nets in Zambia, I believe, and how they created a huge issues locally. Initially they were distributed just for malaria, but people in the local context were using them for fishing. And this later on created a huge issue in the marine life because malaria has very small pores. So basically the fish could not like reproduce later on. So this is another unintended consequence of, I think, foreign aid, but it goes to much level about how are the programs designed for different countries, but how the context is actually not taken into consideration when it comes to local actors. Okay.

SPEAKER 3
That's good. Thank you. And here and then we'll go back to our speakers.

S14
Thank you very much. My name is Josiah Geary from Kenya. And I just wanted to get your take on the localisation that it's here at the front. Yeah, localisation of aid in this sense. I'm talking about the aid sector where the the, the human resource is developed, mostly donor countries sending workers to work in Africa. And there has been debates about how to localise this aid sector working with local based actors in those countries who understand the context. And I would like to hear your take about this because there are debates about how it should be done. At what level are there certain positions that perhaps should have human resources from the countries that are giving the aid, or where should the limit be? Just your thoughts on that. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER 3
Thank you. Okay. Do you want to take those briefly? So there's lots of questions.

SPEAKER 1
Okay. I will try to be brief. I thank you so much for all the questions. They are really very helpful for the for the debate. So Francesca indeed don't display often very irrational behaviour. So donor there's donor darlings. There's donor orphans. And you ask, yeah, what can be done about that? I think donors have an important role to make sure that aid agencies don't always go for the low hanging fruit. And unfortunately, the incentives we don't just create is that that you go to the cheapest country. So where you can meet the seven or the 8% overhead that you're allowed to spend. So I better go to Mexico where you can make use of existing structures instead of going to Paraguay, where you need to set up many things from scratch. So I think the international community needs to get stimulate cooperation and need to stimulate coordination, need to stimulate risk taking. So Lua so the dependency mentality. So I don't write a lot about it in the book, but I do write about the importance of trying to make sure that you create empowerment instead of this dependency. And it really what you often see is that beyond a certain level, if it goes to 50 or 60% of the budget being funded from the outside, yeah, it distorts priorities and distorts local activity. So I think we should try to to make sure that this dependency doesn't become too much. Lastly, your point on the malaria nets, just as an example that the context is not taking enough into consideration. Right. And I think that's what links up nicely with the comment from from Josiah. The importance of localisation. I think that if you put organisations much more in the driving seat and I think all of you agree, but it's easier said than done if you do that and then you can make sure that all those side effects that you have been describing, you have less chance of, of taking taking root there.

SPEAKER 6
I think we talk as though the only development work is either NGOs or direct country programs. Britain here, France, there, the Netherlands, 50% of the UK budget went through the multilateral, the World Bank, the African Development Bank or the the Inter-American Development Bank. So because it's it's the politics of the fashion of the moment that affects the countries programs. So we have to watch that. And I think we should put more money into the multilateral system just because then it's the duty of the multilateral system to make sure there's some work going on everywhere and not just the fashion at the moment. And they've got more capacity to do it. And that's important also there more long term in the nature. I mean, we should help them to be that. But but they're less driven by the fashion or the newspapers or the Daily Mail or whatever. The malaria nets. I heard about some people fishing with them. And of course, there was a problem of, you know, more middle class people getting them. But it was a massively successful program. And they were they were distributed through local shops and things very, very cheaply so people could buy them. So they're not just given out by aid workers and they became a norm across lots of countries with high malaria problems. And there was a big reduction in malaria. So nothing is perfect. And that's one of the problems with evaluation. You find something that went wrong and it's as though the whole thing didn't work. But if the incidence of kids getting malaria is reduced, that's a success. And you know, you try and control the fish people, but localisation. In our case, we decentralised our staff and then you can employ local staff much more on a sort of equal basis, but you have to have some of your own to account to your taxpayers. So it's got to be a partnership and people have got to work together. But I think if you instead of people flying in and out, if they live in the country and then you recruit a lot of locals and they all work together as a team, I think you can you can get a much better balance. But the sort of flying in and out and lots of bureaucratic systems of accountability squeezes out a sort of real creative input from the local staff. But you can't in the end say you will have no British staff because we've got the Daily Mail here and there's such a fabulous in in all countries and you've got to tighten it up enough to be able to answer all those people who are going to attack whatever you do.

S15
Yes.

SPEAKER 3
Very good. Okay. Let me take some more. There's a lot of questions here.

SPEAKER 6
Maybe take six.

SPEAKER 3
Okay. I'll take I'll take six. According to the our veteran, our veteran speaker has really good answers to things. So go ahead. First of all.

S14
Great. Thank you. My name is Edgar from Tanzania. So one of the unintended consequences that I've experienced from my work is the issue of lack of sustainability of some of the development programs. So you find that once the funds are pulled out or the program ends, these some of these intended outcomes not really happen and they create market distortions and things like that. So what are some of the ways to work around that? Once the programs have actually ended and so the local actors can take on from there moving forward. And the other question is around the intentional exclusion of some of the key populations in the design of some of these programs. For example, I was involved in a climate strengthening program that required members to have access to land. But again, you find that some women don't really have access to land. So again, unintentionally, this foreign program has excluded women as the key population of that particular area. So what are some of the key considerations to work in some of these? Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER 3
Excellent. Two really good questions. Shorter ones.

S16
Yeah. Hello. I'm Stephane. I'm from France. I have a very brief questions. How do you balance foreign aid objectives with. Look, when local values clash with our own? And the example I'm taking is this morning Le Monde just titled There is a witch hunt going on in Ethiopia right now against the homosexual, the sexual community. And I also know that Ethiopia is a big recipient of foreign aid. And in this situation, how do we balance our foreign aid with our values? Thank you.

S17
Thank you.

SPEAKER 3
Right here in front.

S18
Hi, my name is Philip. I am also Dutch, so I have a question. Hi, Hoy. I have a question actually specifically related more to your role in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, considering that that's something that's really been emphasised to us. So your book sounds very interesting, but how do you see it being implemented within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs specifically? For example, like you said, you should do international development to do international development, not, for example, to stop migration. But if you look at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands, that's something that's actually really emphasised still as a reason to practice international development. So how does this translate into practice?

SPEAKER 3
Okay. Excellent question. And right here...

S19
Hello, my name is Jared Rudd. Thank you very much. I was wondering if you had any considerations beyond the sliding scale of democracy to authoritarianism within countries when considering how to strengthen those governmental structures, how to be working with them. Do you always think that we should be working with these governmental structures? Are there examples where you are thinking about corruption within government or about contradictions of the aims of government and local people's, maybe indigenous communities when trying to think about improving their conditions?

SPEAKER 3
Great. That's a question that's getting right at some of the differences between Dirk and Claire. And how about up here?

S20
Hi.

S21
Sorry. Hi. I'm Alex. I just. I want to maybe push back on the notion of women who are receiving micro credits and experiencing domestic violence, just leaving their abusive partners. I kind of struggle with that because people who have been in abusive relationships know that it's much more complicated often than just leaving. And I just if the point of the program is to help women and one of the outcomes is that women are experiencing abuse. My question is just how do you propose that the development strategy change to keep them from being abused? Thank you.

SPEAKER 3
Very good. If I follow Claire's advice, we have one more. Where's your hands? Okay. Up here.

S22
Hi, my name is Motsi. And my question is, to what extent do you think that the backlash of aid is due to a lack of ontological security? And a question for all three of you, actually. So I'm a second year student and I've already done 400. Why do you not talk about the importance of ontological security and development when we can see that states like the Asian tigers were extremely ontologically secure and they were able to develop much better than states in Africa and South America that had to endure a large level of physical insecurity because of colonisation.

SPEAKER 6
So, yeah. What do you mean by ontological insecurity?

S22
It basically means that the idea of selfhood and colonisation destroyed that because of it stripped people of their culture and neo imperialism is also a factor of aid that makes people more unrealistically insecure. So if you don't have a sense of belonging because of the insecurity in your country and being stripped of your identity, yeah, that's kind of.

SPEAKER 3
Okay. Very good. So.

SPEAKER 1
Derrick, nice. It's so good to be back. Very good questions. Yeah, excellent. So, Edgar, we started with Edgar on the lack of sustainability and the market distortions, and actually, Claire said maybe we should have less evaluations. I think we should have better evaluations. And with that, I mean that we have evaluations which look at five years after the program ends to really see what's happened. And now, unfortunately, that's often is not possible because of funding constraints. So that would be a first step to really map better what are the long term effects and then we can strengthen it. You have a very good point about an intention margins and marginalisation of certain target audiences, and we call it regressive targeting. And I think that's something that really merits much more more attention. So that's a good point. Stefan, on the witch hunt against Gay in Ethiopia. So then of course, there's a request from the parliamentarians in France saying to the minister of development in France, now you have to cut the budget to Ethiopia. You have to make public statements denouncing what's happening. I think the experience shows and we already had the examples that Claire shared about Prime Minister Cameron that actually that doesn't help often the local gay rights activists. So what you should do before you ask your minister to cut all ties and publicly denounce, ask what do the local gay rights activists think? What do they want? What kind of response do they seek? So I think that should be actually guiding guiding the response. So my the question from my Dutch colleague. So thank you. There's also a Dutch person in the room. Great. So how do you think the ministry will respond? Yeah, that's a good question. I think what will happen is the following. They say, Oh, well, first of all, it's great that they allow me to write this book. I think it's nice. It shows that there's some level of academic freedom is possible, even though your civil servants. Having said that, I think that they will embrace the technical issues that we discussed, like, okay, let's do more evaluations after the end of the program. Yeah, let's look at the non beneficiaries. So the technical issues, they will probably say great, with all the political issues that I will raise, don't do only do development for development. Yeah, I think they will turn. I'm afraid that they will turn a blind eye to that. And I'm afraid that I'm not in a position to to change that. Then the tough or the toughest question from the first row, I think from the top row. Yeah. How bad has the governance situation to be before you decide to no longer work with that system? There's a sliding scale. And what do you accept? Accept? And I think I can go along a long way, actually, with Claire saying that it should be good enough. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it shouldn't get worse because of that. And I think a lot of dictators say, Oh, but you give money to a one guy, you can give it to us. And we also make sure that it's well spent. But we see that often dictators don't spend it as well. So I think that we really have to look at a case by case basis and see, yeah, the interaction between the donor money and the governance levels. Alex on the abusive relationships and getting out of that, I think actually the microcredit example is a very important example and it shows that the sector can learn. So if you look at the microcredit programs now as opposed to 20 years ago, they're totally different. And that's why I think maybe I haven't decided that enough. I'm not in favour of abolishing microcredit because there is some side effect, but I think we need to adapt the programming and what they have done. For instance, they have realised that if you engage the man of the women receiving the funds right from the start by explaining the program, by explaining that in the end you all benefit from this, there is really reduces the chance of additional domestic violence. And indeed it also helps if you train the women explaining that they can explain expect this kind of backlash and how they can deal with it. So instead of saying, okay, let's just stop the program because there's too many side effects, the malaria nets are being used for fishing and let's just stop it now. But let's look at do the unintended effects. How do they relate to the Internet effects and can we take away some of the most negative ones? So thank you for introducing to us the concept of ontological security and get one of those other things that they didn't teach me when I was at LSC, but I'm glad that now me. So thank you. And I think indeed the backlash effect I described as well as explained it is often because of this colonial defamation, this colonial colonial memories, you know, you see people from abroad and big White Land Cruisers coming by, staying in fancy hotels, explaining how you should live and not you should live. And this this creates kind of resentment. It creates a sense of relative deprivation. Even the donor community sticking together in a rich part of cities, creating even spatial segregation. You know, it really reminds a lot of colonial practices. So, yes, no, I think it is important indeed and important to take that into account as well.

SPEAKER 3
Thank you.

SPEAKER 6
Claire Edgar Sustainability. I mean, I'm back to my strength and local systems, but if you're getting one off NGO programs, then that's what they are. And everyone needs to understand that because then they're going to end and they should leave some beneficial effect. Otherwise they're pretty useless. And how anyone could do alone and leave out women when, you know, most of the small farmers in Africa are women. That is just a completely incompetent program, whatever that was, balancing aid with our values. I think hectoring is not the way to do it, and it's made things worse on the gay question, but part of it is how you operate, how you treat your local staff, how you treat your own gay staff. You can do it by behaving well rather than shouting. So it's a difficult question, but I think we haven't done it well because there's been too much hectoring and that's often made things worse for gay communities in the countries we're working in. It needs more discussion and thought, but that's my kind of general view. But, you know, if you're working and there are gay people working for your projects and they're treated with respect, people notice. And that's setting another example of how to behave properly. How do you deal with authoritarianism and corruption? I think you must always remember that if there's a bad government and you cut off aid, you're hurting the poorest people because of a bad government that's already hurting them. So you've always got to find a way round if you can and you get this screaming from your national media. If there's a bad government, you shouldn't have an aid program. So let's punish the poorest and most oppressed people in the world because they've got some bad governments. On the other hand, you can't do my sort of working with in partnership with a government that is really cruel and totally corrupt. In the case of Nigeria, when it was still a military government, what we did was work with some units of local government where you've got some good examples so you can find ways through and get in and do some decent work. But you know, if it's really bad, you have to find ways of not working with the government, but still staying in the country. And I think this is a very important battle and the media want you to. You know, things aren't right in Ethiopia and they certainly are not right. And it used to be a downer, darling, but there's people there who've lost their lives being in this horrendous war, all sorts of we shouldn't just turn our back and run away. But we have to. It's a difficult challenge then, to work well in those situations. Of course. Sorry, my joke, of course, microcredit having that effect. He's more he's more complicated than saying the women should leave. But you do need to have domestic violence, hostels and some of the things we've had to have in our country. So, yes, of course, you should talk to everybody, but there may well be some of that effect. And if you do everything you can, then if the women, some women who've I mean, early microcredit went to men in Bangladesh, you know, which is where it came from, and they spent it on booze and they're there and they change to give it to the women because that's how you got it into the food and the kids and so on. I mean, that was just a learning by experience. Then you have this other effect. Well, you have to see what you can do about it, but you mustn't stop because the women are becoming empowered. You must do everything to to ameliorate the worst effects. The ontological question. Yes. Thank you for that. I think it's doing quite well. I think in countries that were colonised and have been the recipients of development aid, there's more and more pride and not being willing to put up with that patronising hectoring. I think the mood is changing across the world. I don't know whether you would agree, but even in my lifetime I think you can see it and feel it and it's a wholly healthy and good thing. So clearly people have been listening to you on the ontological question.

SPEAKER 3
Very good. Thank you. All right. If you're really disciplined and ask very briefly your question, then we can have another round. Give the speakers a chance to answer briefly. So very concise.

S23
Hi, my name is Etienne. Do you think that with development becoming more about actually doing development also if development is to become more about actually doing development? One of the conclusions and also to involve more system thinking, do you think it also needs to become more overtly political?

SPEAKER 6
More political, overtly.

SPEAKER 3
Did you get that?

SPEAKER 6
Does it need to be more overtly political, to be more really development?

SPEAKER 3
That's it. Okay. Very good up here.

S24
Hi, my name is Marina and my question will be also very concise. It's about EU supporting root causes of migration. So basically use pouring lots of money in order to deal with root causes of migration. And my question is whether you think this actually falls into the definition. One development is not used for its initial intention. And if so, like what could be the alternative approaches due to political repercussions that European Union is experiencing because of migration?

SPEAKER 3
And down here, could we go to the gentleman in the orange sweater?

S25
Go ahead and thank you. My name is Darryl said. And my question is, we always talk about development on something complex. Why? If we look for in history, many countries use to to to live peacefully and considered other rich countries. But the foreign interfere the political interfere in their countries, ruin their countries and make struggle. There there's a lot of examples. For example, India. India used to be one of the richest countries in the world. After that, after the interfere of other countries, it is divided to three countries. And there's a nuclear weapon. A lot of challenges people no more can live peacefully with with their. So. Okay, very.

SPEAKER 3
A very important and very sharp question. Yeah, go ahead.

S26
Hi, Tom Henry from Germany. I was wondering what's your perspective on collaborating with military juntas after a state overthrow?

SPEAKER 3
Thanks. Okay. All right. And down here, do I have hands still here?

S27
Hi, my name is Sabrina Salam. I'm also doing the Development Management Master's. My question is actually twofold, but I'll try to be as short as possible. The first is that oftentimes it's not spoken enough about the competition between development agents agencies in the same country. I've worked in the development sector in Jordan for a few years and literally the same program is repeated over and over because different countries want to have their name on what is happening for the same group of people. So if you can tell us more about that, what's your take on.

SPEAKER 3
That, all the different reporting people have to do?

S28
Yes, I.

S27
Had a second fold, but okay.

S29
Hello, my name is Miriam. So my question is, I feel like we've been hearing a lot about criticisms of the development sector and its ineffectiveness, primarily the its colonial past and how it's bleeding into the present. And so my question is, from your experiences on the ground, what are some changes or reforms that you would propose to kind of help address this challenge?

SPEAKER 3
What reforms would you have? I'm going to where's the microphone is here and there's somebody way back there. Can you give it to to that person? And in the meantime, did you have somebody that you picked up there?

SPEAKER 6
This is seven.

SPEAKER 3
This is. Yeah. Okay. We will wrap it up. Last question.

S30
Hi, I'm Max. I have a very quick question. What do you see the role of the private sector as being in development?

SPEAKER 3
Private sector. Okay. Go ahead and brief answers. I think we're going to do better.

SPEAKER 1
We have opted for the pragmatic approach. So I'll take a couple of questions and she'll take a couple of questions. So I think there's a progress being made in having more political ways of working at the thinking and working politically. It's an interesting community of practice which really tries to make sure that we take context more into consideration, especially the political context and development in the developments in those political context and adaptive programming as the political context changes. So if you're interested in that, you might want to follow this thinking and working political context. So the big question is, should we stop with all those programs which are linked to migration and addressing root causes, programming, types of programming? Well, you know, I have very ambivalent feelings about that. For instance, in the Sahel in the 1990s, there was a lot of employment programs being funded because we thought if there's enough employment in the Sahel, they will become real democracies. Then ten years later, the same employment programs were being sold to international donors, saying, If you fund our employment programs, it will be effective in against fight against terrorism. And then now we say, yeah, please continue our employment program because it will be effective in combating illegal immigration. So what I see is that in this development industry, people are very smart in changing the narratives, adapting the narratives to the latest. Yeah. And often the programs go on and on without really changes on the ground. So let's also have be aware that many of the agents are agencies are very smart in adapting their narratives and continue with the same practices on the ground. Yes, Sabina, you're not making our life easier by pointing out that there's indeed a high level of competition between the different agencies. I think that there's also, again, a role for the donors in that, you know, what we see is that donors often tend to promote competition instead of promoting this collaboration. So if you in your development management program could come up with incentive scheme, interesting schemes on how you can intend to incentivise promotion collaboration instead of competition, I think that would be very welcome because it's not easy. So some good news about reforms that have already been taking place to make it less colonial. Sorry, that's from the lady on the first row. On the top row. Miriam, I'm responding to your question. Yeah.

S15
You are listening.

S32
Yes.

SPEAKER 1
So it's about the change that I already see really relates to, for instance, the positions of local staff. 20 years ago, there would be many white people leading being a country director of UN agency or, or or international NGOs. And you see more and more Asians in Asia, Africa and Africa leading those organisations. And I think that's really a very important development. So let's, let's continue to stimulate these types of development. Max The role of the private sector. Yes. There you go. Yeah, I think, you know, we all say we need the private sector to move from millions to trillions because the global challenges are so big. And I agree with what we often see that unfortunately, the trillions don't go to the places where they are most needed. They go to the countries which are relatively well organised in sectors where they can relatively make relatively rapidly, make a good turnover, a return on investment. So yes, there is a role for private investment but cannot replace the role of the public sector in development.

SPEAKER 6
So does it need to be more political? What's politics if like I'm in government and I'm talking about what I've been talking to you about is what Britain's development should be, that's a different politics. But I'm not saying I hate the Tories. I'm saying this is effective development. And we got some popularity in the country. We measured it. People understood that, you know, getting kids to school is a really good thing, whereas they get irritated by big announcements of money that they think is all corrupt. So the answer to your question is what is politics? Properly talked about policy by politicians when they're in power in a way that makes sense to people is political. But you have to make it make sense to people. On the EMU migration thing, yes, it's a misuse of aid. They're desperate. What is the alternative? My own view, and I don't I disrespect enormously Carola Suliman, but we need to renegotiate the Geneva Convention. I think we need to give money to UNHCR to look after people who are refugees in need. And then all our countries need to give considerable numbers of commitment to. Accept refugees in an organised way coming with their family. I mean, we've got a system that is run by criminals and people who are trying to come are paying a lot of money to these criminals. I mean the question is couldn't we have a better system that treated people humanely? And in the meantime, I don't know if you've seen what's happening in Greece. They've been pushing refugees away. Now they're employing some of them because they've got labour shortages. So we need to square that circle and build them all civilised system and I think that's doable. But the discussion is so hysterical we can't have the discussion about a civilised system on the military junta. I did answer that in a way that you shouldn't abandon the people, but you can't work with such a government and then you find the most intelligent ways of engaging in the country without collaborating with the coup makers. The competition with development agency is one of the. In my time it was a big issue pool the resources if you're working in education that all the agencies should work together, pull the resources, have a program, share it and the monitoring. We need to get back to that. Competing with flags is just stupid, but it shows how development is not performing well. How can we improve? And I'm not telling you off. I think if you look at what happened with the MDGs, there was a big reduction in poverty. Some of it was China, but it wasn't all China. There was a big increase in girls getting to school. I think we could see, and that was countries working together with against agreed objectives. We need to get back to that with the SDGs. I mean, the principles of development and doing it well have been sort of thrown away and we need to get back to them and look at some of the examples that worked. And you know, Mia Mottley, this wonderful Barbadian prime minister, is talking about improvements and reforms to the World Bank. I think the because, you know, the World Bank president is always an American. The IMF president is always European and usually French. Is that president that just isn't good enough. I mean, these reforms have got to come. I think they will come because it's so bad. And despite Modi being not the most attractive leader, the G20 in India, I think did make some progress on these questions. There is a very important role of the private sector and there is also a dirty role of the private sector and we've seen it in the past. Aid used to benefit national companies in a bad way. But if we're going to get the investment in renewable energy across the world, then there have to be partnerships and you can use aid even in the poorest countries to reduce the risk and get the private sector in. There's programs like Pidge and I don't you know, you use some aid to lower the risk costs and then they bring in the big investment. So we need to be clever at that and do more of it and not just mean that we only go to middle income countries, but there's not enough money in even in the most generous ODA in the world to pay for what needs to be done, especially on renewables and all that investment in energy, water systems, transport systems and so on. There has to be partnerships with the private sector, both local and international. I mean, there's money in poor countries in their pension funds and so on that all needs to be mobilised well for development.

SPEAKER 4
Okay. Thank you.

SPEAKER 3
Aren't we lucky? Aren't you lucky? You have two generations of experience working, grappling with these problems of development. What a good way to start off our conversation. Come back next Friday for Hudson Young talking about the crises. And you know, welcome to the LSC. This is how it works.