‘The devil is in the details’: Ensuring participation and ownership of development programmes for persons with disabilities in Mozambique

1 Introduction

One of the guiding principles in international cooperation is the ownership of development programmes.6 However, in practice, international cooperation can produce perverse results. For instance, studies that assessed the participation of persons with disabilities in national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) suggest that their involvement was limited, and in general they remained invisible.7 While in theory the PRSP process aimed to enhance ownership participation and accountability, its design and implementation suggest that governments were more concerned with satisfying donor requirements and deadlines than genuinely committed to meaningful involvement and accountability towards their citizens.8 In this respect, international cooperation may contribute to the democratic deficit.9 Conversely, development agencies can leverage their influence by establishing bridges between civil society organisations construed more broadly, and the recipient government. The history of the PRSP process in Africa and Asia evinces examples of development agencies acting as facilitators, by bringing together government and local civil society organisations (CSOs) including OPDs to work alongside.10 As such, it is important to question the very nature of international development cooperation programmes and discuss explicitly the type of cooperation and conditions that support the development of a democratic culture. The present paper contributes to this important debate by examining the extent to which those programmes support dialogue between CSOs in general, and DPOs in particular, with state institutions.

This paper proceeds as follows. The first section presents the context of the emergence of ownership, emphasising its importance in ensuring aid effectiveness. Additionally, it discusses the centrality of participation in ensuring ownership. The second section, focusing on the General Comment 7 of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the Committee), articulates specific state party obligations to closely consult and actively involve persons with disabilities in decision-making processes related to the Convention, and clarifies the role of international cooperation. Critically, the section presents a framework for the inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities, which informs this paper. The third section presents and discusses the findings. The paper concludes by highlighting its contribution to the debate on aid effectiveness, ownership and participation within the field of disability and development.

2 Aid effectiveness: From Rome to Accra

Aid effectiveness has gained centre stage over the past 15 years since the adoption of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005. Preoccupation with aid effectiveness grew from the realisation that aid is heavily driven by donors, resulting in deficiencies in the way it is delivered. Chief among these hindrances is the fact that aid programmes were poorly designed for the local context, competing donor agendas in a single country, leading to limited impact of development efforts.11

At the turn of the millennium, in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), donor and recipient countries came together to address the issue of aid effectiveness, that is, how to maximise the impact of aid in recipient countries. For the first time in Rome in 2003, developing countries, donor countries, and the heads of multilateral and bilateral development institutions, came together in the framework of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to outline the principles of aid effectiveness.12 The Rome Declaration paved the way to the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. The Paris Declaration is built around five core principles, namely: Ownership, Alignment, Harmonisation, Managing for Development Results, and Mutual Accountability.13 Each principle is operationalised by a set of indicators (12 in total).14 Thus, the principle of Ownership, arguably the cardinal principle of aid effectiveness, states that:

OWNERSHIP ...

Partner Countries Exercise Effective Leadership over their Development Policies, and Strategies and Co-Ordinate Development Actions

14. Partner countries commit to:

• Exercise leadership in developing and implementing their national development strategies through broad consultative processes.
• Translate these national development strategies into prioritised results-oriented operational programmes as expressed in medium-term expenditure frameworks and annual budgets (Indicator 1).
• Take the lead in co-ordinating aid at all levels in conjunction with other development resources in dialogue with donors and encouraging the participation of civil society and the private sector.

15. Donors commit to:

• Respect partner country leadership and help strengthen their capacity to exercise it. 15

The Rome and Paris Declarations succeeded in galvanising both donors and recipient countries to introduce reforms aimed to make the aid industry more effective. For instance, recipient countries embarked on a process to draft national development plans or PRSPs, one of indicators of ownership according to the Paris Declaration. The PRSP was employed in low-income countries to operationalise the MDGs, constituting a condition for those countries to qualify for debt relief.16 The aim of PRSP was to foster local ownership of development programmes; participation of local actors, specifically groups in a vulnerable situation; and accountability and transparency, through a functional and capable governance system.17 Despite the new dynamics created by the new discourse on aid effectiveness, critics pointed out the excessive focus on procedures to promote ‘harmonization and alignment’ between donors and recipient countries.18 While acknowledging its importance, its critics maintain that the excessive focus on procedure may overlook the fact that ‘aid Effectiveness is a political issue’.19 In this connection, due prominence must be granted to ‘the factors on both sides of the aid relationship that can work against more effective delivery and put in place incentives that support it’.20

Furthermore, others have criticised the assumptions contained in the blueprint of the Paris Declaration. Faust argues that the ‘vision’ that supports the Paris Declaration ‘ignores the political, iterative [competitive] and experimental character of governance endogenous to democratic settings, which leave little room for encompassing ownership with regard to far-reaching policy reforms’.21 Instead, he argues, the focus must be on ‘procedural ownership - a consensus about core institutional features of democracy and individual rights regarding the basic institutions that guide the political process’.22 However, while stable democracies might be in better position to achieve ‘encompassing ownership’ - the ability to reach consensus of policy content - most emerging democracies (a description that characterises the bulk of recipient countries) are still struggling to set up and agree on the rules of the game.23

As ownership, participation in the design and implementation of development programmes has emerged as a crucial principle of aid effectiveness24 and process indicator of ownership. This stems from the belief that ‘aid will be most effective if its ultimate beneficiaries are consulted and engaged in defining its priorities’.25 Critics have pointed out that the process that led to the Paris Declaration was ‘state centric’, did not engage the ‘full range of stakeholders’, notably CSOs.26 Critically, they pointed out that the ownership indicator, ‘which requires countries to have “operational development strategies”’, was linked to the World Bank’s assessment of countries’ PRSPs, a process which ‘had been accused of taking a tokenistic approach to civil society engagement’.27

This lack of inclusiveness has reverberated at the national level, where CSOs grew increasingly sceptic about the process of drafting the national development plans. Accordingly, critics contend that the process was still primarily driven by donors, and less by a genuine motivation to meaningfully include the most marginalised groups.28 Empirical evidence corroborates the lack of facilitating conditions in recipient countries, namely, limited technical capacity among OPDs to influence the process, tight timelines for consultation, lack of coordination among government departments, and clarity about responsibilities to implement disability policy.29

The Accra Agenda for Action (2008) attempted to redress some of these critical issues in at least two ways. First, the Accra Agenda for Action sought to ‘broaden country-level policy dialogue on development’ by explicitly calling on recipient governments to work more closely with parliaments, local authorities and CSOs in preparing, implementing and monitoring national development policies and plans.30 Concertedly, the Accra Agenda called for donors’ commitment to support efforts to increase the capacity of development actors (mentioned above) including ‘research institutes, media and the private sector - to take an active role in fostering dialogue on development policy’.31 Second, the Accra Agenda for Action emphasised the need to create ‘strong institutions, systems, and local expertise’, as the necessary conditions to enable recipient countries to ‘fully own and manage their development processes’.32

The Accra Agenda for Action introduced several additional commitments. Crucially, it enjoined both recipient and donor’s countries to ‘ensure that their respective development policies and programmes are designed and implemented in ways consistent with their agreed international commitments on gender equality, human rights, disability and environmental sustainability’.33 The latter commitment provides the basis for mainstreaming disability issues in development cooperation programmes. In this connection, the CRPD provides further guidance in relation to the inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities in international cooperation programmes (article 32), as discussed in the next section.

3 Inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities in international cooperation

The present section articulates the obligations attached to specific state parties to closely consult and actively involve persons with disabilities in decision-making processes as related to the Convention, and clarifies the role of international cooperation. Outlined below is the relevant framework, formulated on the basis of General Comment 7 of the Committee (GC7),34 to ensure that persons with disabilities are meaningfully consulted and actively participate in public decision-making process.

Although article 4(3) and the GC7 deal primarily with the inclusion of persons with disabilities at the national level, I argue that their remit extends to the context of international cooperation (see article 32). In this respect, the focus is on the extent to which international cooperation supports the given framework, and ultimately the realisation of objectives of the Convention (article 32(1)). Accordingly, in reading GC7, four main pillars can be identified.35

First, state parties must create an enabling legal framework, conducive to the inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities. As such, state parties must draft and approve laws that enable persons with disabilities to create, register and run their own association; moreover, the legal framework must safeguard the rights of associations to represent their constituency, in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and laws. The relevant laws must also ensure that organisations of persons with disabilities have access to funding from different sources, without compromising their autonomy in deciding their advocacy agenda.36 Moreover, the laws must bind state authorities to consult and actively involve persons with disabilities, including women, girls and children with disabilities. Lastly, the law must grant persons with disabilities seats in institutionalised bodies, including temporary ones, at the local and national level.37

Second, state parties are enjoined to prohibit practices likely to discriminate against the rights of persons with disabilities to be closely consulted and actively involved in the decision-making processes related to the Convention.38 State parties must adopt and implement legal and regulatory frameworks and procedures to ensure full and equal involvement of persons with disabilities, through their representative organisations, in public decision-making processes;39 and must put in place measures (through policy and other legal means) ensuring that persons with disabilities are not deterred from participating, and are adequately consulted by third parties (family members, service providers, etc).40 The latter requirement entails, among other consequences, the raising of awareness in the general public concerning the rights and capabilities of persons with disabilities to participate. It also entails that OPDs must be trained to increase their advocacy competences and human rights knowledge.41 Moreover, state parties must provide necessary accommodation and support to ensure all persons with disabilities, including women, girls and children with disabilities, are able to participate in the design and implementation of laws and policies and other decision-making processes that affect their lives. This includes, for instance, the provision of sign language and braille for those with hearing and visual impairment, as well as disability and age assistance. At the heart of this dimension is the concept of inclusive equality elaborated by the CRPD Committee in its General Comment 6. Accordingly, inclusive equality embraces a substantive model of equality, which ‘seeks to address structural and indirect discrimination and takes into account power relations’.42 The concept of inclusive equality encompasses:

(a) a fair redistributive dimension to address socioeconomic disadvantages; (b) a recognition dimension to combat stigma, stereotyping, prejudice and violence and to recognize the dignity of human beings and their intersectionality; (c) a participative dimension to reaffirm the social nature of people as members of social groups and the full recognition of humanity through inclusion in society; and (d) an accommodating dimension to make space for difference as a matter of human dignity.43

Third, state parties must ensure that the venues where consultation processes take place are inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities. As mentioned above, the consultation process must enable meaningful engagement with established groups, as well as marginalised groups who might not be formally organised. Therefore, state parties must adopt creative strategies to reach out to diverse constituencies of persons with disabilities, including marginalised groups, not merely relying on traditional generic and online consultations. In circumstances where the unavailability of transport might prevent persons with disabilities from participating, state parties must provide financial support to cover those and other consultation expenses.44 Moreover, state parties must provide ‘meeting assistance and support’ to persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities to be able to participate substantially.45 Finally, state parties must ensure access to information (CRPD article 9 and 21, as a pre-condition for participation) in accessible formats, including through Information and Communication Technology for persons with disabilities.46

Fourth, it is important to ensure the transparency and accountability of consultation processes. The first requirement includes the allocation of sufficient time for consultation, considering that many of the organisations of persons with disabilities have limited human, material and financial capacities. Moreover, state parties are exhorted to engage in good faith with organisations of persons with disabilities, according to the demands of mutual respect and giving due weight to their contribution.47 Critically, public consultations with OPDs should ‘aim to reach collective agreement’ [that] ‘respond[s] to the diversity of persons with disabilities’.48 Finally, it is important to ensure proper accountability. As such, the law must create mechanisms that enable persons with disabilities to seek redress and challenge decisions adopted without their meaningful involvement. This includes both administrative and judicial mechanisms, which must be embedded in ‘the legal frameworks governing the consultation and involvement of organisations of persons with disabilities, and national anti-discrimination legislation, at all levels of decision-making’.49 Moreover, these mechanisms must also compel state parties and other entities to explain the rationale of certain decisions, and the extent to which the views of person with disabilities were considered. 50

The figure presented below sums up the framework from a CRPD perspective. In this framework, the role of international cooperation is construed more broadly, according to the extent to which it supports the goals and purposes of the Convention. On a narrower construal, it shows the extent to which the different dimensions are enabled to operate independently, highlighting their articulation into a system intended to ensure the meaningful participation of persons with disabilities in development programmes.

4 Programme characterisation

This paper is subsumed under my ongoing PhD research project focusing on the inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities in international cooperation development programmes. Primarily, the research focuses on two EU funded development projects in the domain of gender-based violence (the Spotlight Initiative) and social protection in Mozambique.

The Spotlight Initiative is a multiyear programme covering 28 countries across five regions of the globe.52 Mozambique is one of the beneficiary countries in the African region. The African programme focuses on ‘sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), early marriage (with linkages to the eradication of harmful practices) and sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR)’.53 The programme is implemented by five UN Agencies54 in collaboration with government agencies and CSOs. In Mozambique, the programme covers three provinces, namely Gaza, Nampula and Manica. It is also implemented at central level (capital), covering, principally, related legislative work. With EU seed funding totalling 500 million euros for a period of four years (2019-2022), the Spotlight Initiative is thought to be the ‘largest global effort to end all forms of violence against women and girls’.55

The second project, Monitoria Comunitária Independente (MCI) ao Programa de Subsidio Social Básico (PSSB) is a five-year project (2018-2023), implemented by a consortium led by Plataforma da Sociedade Civil Moçambicana para Proteção Social (PSCM-PS).56 The project’s objective is to improve the quality and impact of social protection programmes, and promote their transparency through awareness raising, access to information, and active citizen participation in the accountability of social protection programmes, with emphasis on the PSSB. The project has three interrelated components: a Citizen Report, where beneficiaries of PSSB express their views of how the programme is being implemented; Focal Groups, where the main concerns raised by citizens are discussed; and an Action plan, which consists of discussion forums where citizens’ concerns are presented to local leaders and service providers. With funding of 2.5 million euros from the EU through the Support Programme of Non-State Actors (PANNE II), the project is implemented in six provinces and a total of ten districts.57

These projects have an explicit commitment to the foundational principle of ‘leaving no one behind’ (LNOB) in common, meaning ‘ending extreme poverty in all its forms, and reducing inequalities among both individuals and groups’.58 To operationalise this commitment, ‘explicit and pro-active attempts are needed to ensure populations at risk of being left behind are included from the start’. 59

5 Research approach and methodology

As indicated above, the present paper is part of an on-going PhD research project. The preliminary data in this article was collected through semi-structured interviews. Purposive sampling was used to recruit research participants. Stakeholders involved in the implementation of programmes under review were recruited through email invitation to participate in the study. Those include EU Delegation representatives in Mozambique, UN agencies, a network of local CSOs implementing the projects, and government officials. In addition, representative of OPDs were also recruited to participate as research informants (the table below shows in detail the demographic of research informants). Stakeholders were asked to reflect on the strengths and challenges of the programmes under review, including factors affecting the inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities, and the extent to which those programmes contribute to support dialogue between CSOs in general (and DPOs in particular) with state institutions. By ‘state institutions’, we mean all parts of the executive, legislature and judiciary. In total, 24 interviews were reviewed for this paper. All research informants where anonymised, to deter immediate or potential risks. The quotations appearing in this paper reflect patterns emerging from data, rather than individual responses. In addition to interviews, this paper draws from CRPD jurisprudence, as well as documents pertaining to the programmes under review (programme reports, budget reports, etc).

6 Findings

The data analysed to date reveals several factors that limit the participation of people with disabilities, preventing them from owning the policies and laws that development cooperation programmes aim to influence. These obstacles are clustered around two major themes; to which I now turn.

7 Discussion

Both projects achieved impressive results. Over the past three years (except for 2020), the MCI project contributed to consecutive increases of subsidies to PSSB, raising the share of GDP, from 0.3 in 2015 to 0.7 in

2019, and increasing the number of beneficiaries with disabilities from 4 per cent in 2014 to 5.3 per cent in 2019.72 Moreover, the project established local and national forums where government, donors and CSOs came together to discuss social protection issues. Likewise, the Spotlight Initiative, ‘strengthened partnerships with civil society government institutions and the EU Delegation, bringing these diverse stakeholders together’ at provincial and national level, as well as facilitated ‘consultations that led to the passage of key legislation such as law on child marriage’.73

These developments have contributed to ownership of the law on child marriage by some groups, mainly women and feminist organisations who directly participate in the project implementation (in the case of the Spotlight Initiative). Conversely, because representative organisations of person with disabilities are not included in the project implementation, they are likely to be left out of ownership of the policies and laws that the projects seek to influence. Although there is no desegregated collected data on this phenomenon, both programmes include certain persons with disabilities mostly as beneficiaries.74 However, it seems that only those that require minimum or no accommodation are more likely to participate, as one informant put it:

Communication is a major obstacle to work with person with visual and hearing impairments ... We are working with the Ministry to develop some material in braille and sign language in the scope of GBV prevention ... now, people with albinism, [physical disability] in principle, are easy to communicate with ... whereas a person with intellectual disability is difficult to know how to interact with them.75

Three things need to be considered to ensure participation of persons with disabilities, and ultimately ownership of the very laws and policies that these programmes seek to influence. First, the findings highlight, on one hand, the centrality of a political economic analysis in development cooperation and ownership, as highlighted in relevant literature.76 For instance, the political economy analysis of the CSO is apt to single out the fact that given the history of exclusion of and stigma towards disability, the disability movement is still somehow disconnected from the mainstream CSOs. It is apt likewise to point to the heterogeneity and internal divergence within the disability movement, and to the fact that there are

groups that are more marginalised than others.77 This critical realisation might have led (in the contexts under discussion) to specific strategies and incentives to engage persons with disabilities through their representative organisations or other means. The lack of these crucial insights perpetuates the domination of mainstream groups who are more organised and claim to ‘speak for those without voice’.78 In this sense, development programmes perpetuate, rather than challenge, the status quo by not addressing power relations within CSOs and society more broadly.

Second, these findings highlight the centrality of data disaggregation if the development community is to take seriously the commitment to LNOB. LNOB needs to be more than a simple nominal commitment. There must be concrete activities and indicators on disability, and a system of monitoring and evaluation able to capture and make sense of the collected data.

Third, there is the need to move beyond awareness of disability to more concrete actions aiming to support disability inclusion in practice. This includes setting up mechanisms and tools to support disability inclusion. This may involve rethinking the typical framework of personnel working in traditional development agencies by including disability focal points, with the aim of bringing in the expertise needed on these issues. Typically, these professionals are ‘highly qualified ... trusted and valued by both international agencies and national authorities, and act as important interlocutors between international and national policy elites, and as gatekeepers to both’.79 More importantly, it is essential that development agencies and mainstream CSOs open themselves up to engage with persons with disabilities and their representative organisations, as they are the prime sources of knowledge on disability. Fortunately, the new EU Disability Strategy 2021-27 seems to be moving in the right direction, although the details are yet to be pinned down. For instance, through this Strategy, the EU commits ‘to support CSOs to ensure that representatives of persons with disabilities can participate in all relevant processes through specific and inclusive structured dialogues, at EU, partner countries and global level’.80 But as the age-old wisdom has it, the devil is in the details - as ever, something that in theory seems simple, might in reality be far more complex.

8 Conclusion

This paper seeks to examine the extent to which development cooperation programmes contribute to supporting the dialogue between CSOs in general, and DPOs in particular, with state institutions, as an indication of the level of ownership by persons with disabilities of these programmes, or the policies and laws they seek to influence. The findings suggest that the programmes under review do promote greater collaboration between CSOs and state institutions, therefore contributing to the ownership of those programmes, policies and laws that these programmes seek to influence. However, despite the existence of a commitment to LNOB, persons with disabilities continue to be excluded, mostly seen as mere beneficiaries, and not as active participants fully able to contribute to the public debate.

The preliminary analysis of the data enabled the identification of two sets of issues that place conditions on the participation of those with disabilities, preventing them of owning the very policies and laws that development cooperation programme aim to influence. This includes the lack of proper legal frameworks and the programme design, which is severely deficient from a disability rights perspective. The findings corroborate previous research that acknowledges the centrality of data and political economy analysis in the practice of participation and ownership. The interest and value of the present paper reside in its contribution of a theoretical framework, based on the CRPD, to understand inclusion and participation of person with disabilities - a key indicator of ownership of development programmes, and ultimately of aid effectiveness.