Articles questioning and challenging ROL practices

I have been doing development work for long enough to start to ask the hard questions. Starting with HIV/AIDs rights in Thailand, then moving on to China, and Kosovo before settling down in Seattle over the last few years, I've experienced an array of development practices. Especially with my work with the NGO Leaders Conference in recent years that brings together top NGO leaders to talk, I am now seeing the development world for the industry that it is.

Anyway, this prelude is to say that I understand the debates (or at least the necessity of debates) in the field. In particular, with law and development, the revival of the field (if it is in fact one) in the last decade has emphasized the concept of 'Rule of Law' (ROL). This seemed to have resulted in aid agencies focusing on legal reform and governance work, as part of the popular "institutional building"/New Development Economics paradigm.

I recently questioned in this post if ROL programs, as practiced, are really just a resurrection of the Law and Development Movement (which I also blogged about here). My reaction was pragmatic one: While I am interested in these debates and intend to continue to follow them, my belief is that there will not be one true solution, and I seek solace in the practical differences I make to people. Still, from my humble bottom-up grassroots beginnings in the development world, in recent years I find myself focusing increasingly on strategic and institutional issues, governance and legal/judicial reform work, and high level policy and law. Definitely top-down. And at the 1000 foot level it is sometimes different to see if we do make any impact at all. 

In fact, the ROL practice have been increasingly questioned on effectiveness, and as in the post I mentioned above, challenged on not being different than in the 1960s. There seems to be increasingly more voice in academia abut ROL, such as in the following two articles:

• In Mythmaking in the Rule of Law Orthodoxy, by Frank Upham is professor of law at New York University School of Law, the criticism of the ROL practice sounds suspiciously like that of the Law and Development Movement of the 1960s: 

Summary: As governments and donor agencies struggle over questions of aid and international development, a growing consensus is emerging that there is an explicit link between rule of law reform and sustainable growth. However, this new rule of law orthodoxy ignores evidence that the formalist rule of law advocated by the World Bank and other donors does not necessarily exist in the developed world. Moreover, attempting to transplant a common template of institutions and legal rules into developing countries without attention to indigenous contexts harms preexisting mechanisms for dealing with issues such as property ownership and conflict resolution.As governments and donor agencies struggle over questions of aid and international development, a growing consensus is emerging that there is an explicit link between rule of law reform and sustainable growth. However, this new rule of law orthodoxy ignores evidence that the formalist rule of law advocated by the World Bank and other donors does not necessarily exist in the developed world. Moreover, attempting to transplant a common template of institutions and legal rules into developing countries without attention to indigenous contexts harms preexisting mechanisms for dealing with issues such as property ownership and conflict resolution.

• Also, as a follow up to his previous research work which I blogged about earlier this year, my colleague Stephen Golub (officiated with the Asia Foundation) recently published a paper not only challenging the current ROL practice, but proposing a bottom-up alternative focusing on marginal groups, an approach he calls 'Legal Empowerment'. This concept, in the last few years, seems to have made its appearance in many development circles as well. Not that it is a 'new' concept, as Stephen pointed out, because many local NGOs have been practicing it for years. It is a 'new' concept only in relative to the dominant top-down, ROL  reforms practiced today by big aid agencies. In Beyond Rule of Law Orthodoxy: The Legal Empowerment Alternative:

Summary: The international aid field of law and development focuses too much on law, lawyers and state institutions, and too little on development, the poor and civil society. In fact, it is doubtful whether "rule of law orthodoxy," the dominant paradigm pursued by many international agencies, should be the central means for integrating law and development. This working paper examines legal empowerment—the use of legal services and related development activities to increase disadvantaged populations' control over their lives—as an alternative.

Maybe I can hope: Might the big aid agencies go where the smaller grassroots have gone with the 'Rights Based'?approach? 

WSIS Geneva PLan of Action

Action Lines

There are 11 Actions Lines in the Geneva Plan of Action, which constitute the implementation framework for the post WSIS phase.

1. The role of public governance authorities and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development
2. Information and communication infrastructure
3. Access to information and knowledge
4. Capacity building
5. Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs
6. Enabling environment
7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life
   
   • E-government
   • E-business
   • E-learning
   • E-health
   • E-Employment
   • E-environment
   • E-agriculture
   • E-science
8. Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content
9. Media
10. Ethical dimensions of the Information Society
11. International and regional cooperation

Themes

In addition to Action Lines, WSIS outcome documents have also focused on themes including Internet Governance, Financing ICT for Development and Measuring the Information Society.

1. Internet Governance Forum
2. Financing ICT for Development
3. Measuring the Information Society

Click here to view actual official documents. 

WSIS- end of Phase 1 Geneva Meeting 2003

WSIS, as fairly typical of a UN Conference of a relatively non-contentious topic, closed on happy tension. I'm just hoping that, in these early days of ICT in Development, that it is not just tech hype, and that technology is used as a relevant tool (vs an ends) to reach goals that will reduce poverty. 

Brief facts:

• The three-day Summit is the first multi-stakeholder global effort to discuss "the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for a better world". 
• 175 countries came together in Geneva 
• Documents: 
• a Declaration of Principles — or a common vision of an information society’s values – and 
• a Plan of Action which sets forth a road map to build on that vision and to bring the benefits of ICTs to underserved economies. The plan sets out an ambitious goal of bringing 50 percent of the world's population online by 2015 but does not spell out any specifics of how this might be achieved. (see next blog post for the summary plan of action)
• Other groups also created "unofficial documents", including a document by NGOs called a document called "Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs" that brought together a wide range of issues under a human rights and communication rights umbrella." 
• Go to:http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/listing-all-en-s|1.asp for the actual documents. See http://www.worldsummit2003.de/en/web/586.htm for a list of official and 'unofficial' documents). 
• An issue that emerged was Internet governance and the dominant role that the USA in policy making. The most radical ideas about devolving this authority were those supporting a civil society approach to Internet governance.
• The Geneva summit also left unresolved more controversial issues, including the question of Internet governance and funding.

Press Release:

Global Information Society Summit Spurs Solidarity, Alliances But Hard Work, Action Ahead

Geneva, 12 December 2003 — The World Summit on the Information Society closed on an optimistic note of consensus and commitment, but Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union and Summit cautioned that the meeting was only the start of a long and complex process. 

"Telephones will not feed the poor, and computers will not replace textbooks. But ICTs can be used effectively as part of the toolbox for addressing global problems. The Summit’s successes now give us the necessary momentum to achieve this," he said.

"Building the inclusive information society requires a multi-stakeholder approach. The challenges raised — in areas like Internet governance, access, investment, security, the development of applications, intellectual property rights and privacy — require a new commitment to work together if we are to realize the benefits of the information society.

"Seeing the fruits of today’s powerful knowledge-based tools in the most impoverished economies will be the true test of an engaged, empowered and egalitarian information society, he added.

44 Heads of State, Prime Ministers, Presidents, Vice-Presidents and 83 ministers and vice-ministers from 175 countries came together in Geneva to endorse a Declaration of Principles — or a common vision of an information society’s values – and a Plan of Action which sets forth a road map to build on that vision and to bring the benefits of ICTs to underserved economies.

The three-day Summit is the first multi-stakeholder global effort to share and shape the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for a better world.

But the Summit was groundbreaking in other ways too. It offered a genuine "venue of opportunity" in a unique meeting of leaders, policy-makers, ICT business people, voluntary and non-governmental organizations of every possible kind, and top-level thinkers and speakers. Alongside the three-days of Plenary meetings and high-level roundtables, nearly 300 side-events helped bring the dream of an inclusive information society one-step closer to becoming reality.

Partnership announcements included a USD 400,000 grant by the US Government for ICT development in low-income countries. Cisco and ITU also signed a Memorandum of Understanding to open 20 more Internet Training Centres in developing countries. As well, Hewlett-Packard will provide low-cost products that will help overcome the illiteracy barrier to ICT. Handwritten texts for example will be recognized for e-mail transmission. Microsoft, working with UNDP, will provide a billion dollar programme over 5 years to bring ICT skills to underserved communities. One innovative initiative announced to bridge the digital divide is the Bhutan E-Post project. For faster, cheaper and more reliable communication to remote, mountainous areas of Bhutan, the Government of India will deliver e-post services to the Bhutanese Postal Service via a USD 400,000 a V-satellite network and solar panels power system. The partners include ITU, Bhutan Telecom and Post, Worldspace and Encore India. And at the very close of the Summit, the cities of Geneva and Lyon and the Government of Senegal have announced contributions totalling about 1 million euros to fund information technology in developing countries. The contributions will represent the first three payments towards the Digital Solidarity Fund, the creation of which is to be considered by a UN working group for the Tunis phase.


The second phase of the Summit takes place in Tunis in 2005 and will measure ambitious goals set this week. With WSIS phase I over, the hard work begins and hard work lies ahead in the two years before Tunis, to show that the information society is on the right path.


The overarching goal of the Summit has been to gain the will and commitment of policy-makers to make ICTs a top priority, and to bring together public and private sector players to forge an inclusive dialogue based on the interests of all. In these two respects, the Summit has been heralded a success.


United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan told delegates "technology has given birth to the information age. Now it is up to all of us to build an information society from trade to telemedicine, from education to environmental protection, we have in our hands, on our desktops and in the skies above, the ability to improve standards of living for millions upon millions of people.


Top Summit targets now remain to be achieved, including connecting all schools, villages, governments and hospitals, and bringing half the world’s population within ICT reach, all by the year 2015.


The Summit has clearly identified national e-strategies as the key vehicle to meet the targets. Connecting public places, revising school curricula, extending the reach of TV and radio broadcasting services and fostering rich multilingual content are all recognized as needing strong national-level governmental commitments. To encourage and assist national and local governments in this work, the Summit also foresees the development of international statistical indicators to provide yardsticks of progress; exchanges of experience to help develop "best practice" models, and the fostering of public-private partnerships internationally in the interests of sustainable ICT development.


Indeed, collaboration across the complex information society chain — from the scientists that create powerful ICT tools, to the governments that foster a culture of investment and rule of law, to the businesses that build infrastructure and supply services, to the media that create and disseminate content and — above all —human society which ultimately employs such tools and shapes their use —lays the foundation for an inclusive knowledge-based world on which the riches of an information society can flourish.


The Summit’s most notable achievement was across-the-board consensus earned for a Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action wording around several contentious issues, and the spirit of cooperation that permeated the Summit.


Internet governance, and financing ICT investments in underserved economies were two of the issues which called for long negotiations. On the issue of Internet management, the involvement of all stakeholders and intergovernmental organizations to address both technical and public policy issues has been underscored although global Internet governance is set to be the subject of deeper talks up to Tunis in 2005. An open and inclusive working group will be set up on the topic, in order to review and make proposals for action by the 2005 Summit.


Similarly on the issue of financing for underserved economies, a task force will be established to undertake a review of existing ICT funding mechanisms and will also study the feasibility of an international voluntary Digital Solidarity Fund.


On the areas of intellectual property rights and the need for enabling environments, universal access policies, and multilingual, diverse and culturally appropriate content to speed ICT adoption and use — particularly in the world’s most underserved economies — government-level commitment to follow a set of common values and principles has been attained.


Although these achievements fuel hope and may stoke further collaboration, Mr. Utsumi, together with many world leaders, appealed to all stakeholders keep the spirit of cooperation alive well beyond the two years to Tunis, and to back up universally agreed principles with concrete actions to spark more peace and prosperity across the planet.


"The realization of the Plan of Action is crucial to the long-term success of the Summit. We need imagination and creativity to develop projects and programmes that can really make a difference. We need commitment — on the part of governments, the private sector and civil society — to realistic targets and concrete actions. We need the mobilization of resources and investment," he said.


"With the unique occasion of a World Summit, we have the chance to scale up our ambitions to the global level, which is equal to the size of the challenge. Let us not miss this opportunity."

To access the Declaration and the Plan of Action go to:http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/listing-all-en-s|1.asp