Hajiya Bilkisu
6 September 2007
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Abuja — The participants at the networking and experience sharing meeting which was held at the London office of the International Planned Parenthood Federation arrived at the venue of the meeting with great expectations.
Coming from warm countries, they had a surprise awaiting them.
British weather was at its most unpredictable level that week. What was so supposed to be a hot, sunny and bright summer turned into a cold, grey and wet one. Weather experts said it was the coldest summer in two decades!!
As British residents and tourists bemoaned their fate, the task ahead of participants was too important for them to get distracted by the weather. They ignored it as they began their meeting which brought together partners from the four countries implementing a new reproductive health advocacy project. They include Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria and Tanzania. Others are the technical partners from John Hopkins University School of Public Health at Bloomberg, and the staff of IPPF London, the coordinating organisation.
In her welcome address, Valerie Defillipo, gave a brief overview of the Country Global Pathways (CGP) concept which is a two-level advocacy project. The first level is about getting countries to increase their commitment to Reproductive Health (RH) with emphasis on increased funding. The second level of advocacy was concerned with countries mobilising support for RH at the global level such as bilateral donors, foundations, the Global Fund, etc.
After her speech, there were presentations from resource persons Pierre LaRamee and Sarah Shaw on various components of the CGP ranging from regional spotlight to theory and practice of country level advocacy. The presentations identified the major factors that shape political priority. Among these are Domestic Advocacy whereby advocates in developing countries design initiatives that make their issue, which is reduction of maternal deaths, a political priority. Others are Transnational Influence which is mainly efforts by international agencies such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) to push governments to prioritise the issue and the National Political Environment which takes cognisance of the factors relating to the context in which advocates work within their countries.
In Nigeria where a new regime has just taken over, political changes that positively or adversely affect prospects for safe motherhood practices are listed under the political environment. Jeremy Shifman of the Centre for Global Development said political scientists who study how political agenda are set by policymakers outline the three factors that are indicators of political priority. One is when political leaders publicly and privately express sustained concern for the issue.
The initiator of the CGP advocacy idea, Dr Duff Gillespie, presented a paper titled Hurdles to the Achievement of the Country Global Objectives. He noted that the African Union (AU) is the relevant body to engage with on the African scene and cited a research conducted before the Maputo plan of action. That research provided the key finding that fed into the Maputo plan of action which is a comprehensive framework for addressing RH issues in Africa. Dr Gillespie said Maputo was an African plan designed by the people who know what they needed to advance the RH agenda. He challenged the advocates from Africa to use Maputo for advocacy and leverage resources. They could develop country specific plans of action for implementing Maputo which donors would be willing to fund from state to the local level.
The next session was about Pathway Experiences of Working in a Coalition and various countries then made presentations on their implementation of the CGP. The coordinator of the project in Mexico, Esperanza Delgado, made a presentation on how they were able to establish a coalition in Mexico which is housed within MEXFAM which is the IPPF member association in the country. The coalition began its implementation of the project by developing a political mapping tool and had since found working with parliamentarians vital for achieving results. The coalition had been organising-awareness raising activities and making in put into policies.
The Nigerian presentation was made by my humble self and highlighted the work AdvocacyNigeria network of advocates established in the seven project states of Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, and Sokoto states to conduct advocacy activities for the reduction of maternal mortality and morbidity. The major focus of the network was advocacy activities to ensure budget increase for RH, provision of free maternal and child healthcare services at federal, state and local government levels and promoting enactment of a law in all states to ensure that the policy is properly funded and sustained.
There were country spotlights which featured presentations from Egypt and Tanzania. The Egyptian coalition was just being established at the time of the meeting and was represented by participants from the official from the Arab world region of the IPPF. In her presentation, Rym Esseghairi said the process for the establishment of the coalition was gathering momentum and she was interested in learning from those that had established their own. The Tanzanian group was represented by two participants Felister Bwana and Arthur Jason Mtafya. They reported that progress had been made in mobilising the relevant civil society organisations in Tanzania to form the coalition and a framework for the engagement with policymakers had been developed. Some of the agencies earmarked for advocacy are the National Assembly, the Finance and Economic committees and relevant central ministries.
The second day of the meeting was devoted to capacity building for effective advocacy and an update on upcoming events at the global level. The key issues for global action were discussed to enable participants to prepare for participation and/or engage with the government officials that would be representing their country.
The sessions included Presentation and Training on Advocacy Around National Budgets by Dia Timmermans from UNFPA office in New York, Working with Parliamentarians by Antonieta Alcade, Operationalising Regional Agreements-Putting Maputo into Action by Josephine Mutungi. Other presentations were on the MDGs and the New Target, the Children's Summit and the World Bank's HNP Strategy. The session I found most interesting was the one on training and advocacy around national budget presented by Dia. She began with probing why we need to reform the way aid is administered and identified the problems with project modality.
They include distortion of sectoral policies and budgets, minimal national ownership, undermining of existing national systems, huge burden of recipient governments, particularly the debt burden and its debilitating effect on the highly indebted poor countries, high operating cost and transaction cost which make aid less beneficial to recipient governments, inflexibility of projects funded with aid money which makes it impracticable in countries with different needs since no two countries are identical and varying standards of service provision.
To correct these anomalies, the aid environment is being reformed to make it more beneficial to recipients, promote ownership and ensure that it has wider favourable impact on the effectiveness of the implementing government agencies in the recipient countries. The step taken to reform and harmonise aid include the Paris Declaration on Harmonisation and Alignment (2005), Focus on MDG goal 3, on gender mainstreaming, MDG goal 4 on reduction of infant mortality and MDG goal 5 on reduction of maternal mortality. Others are poverty reduction strategies (PRS), Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks (MTEF) which can increase predictability of resource flow, improve accountability and raise consciousness about outcome-focused approaches.
The characteristics of a sectoral MTEF that it are comprehensive, realistic and clear. On comprehensiveness, the framework would identify and include all sources of financing to the sector and all proposed spending. This is designed to plug all loopholes for unbudgeted expenditure and prevent leakages.
On realistic aspect of the MTEF, it ensures that financing projections are not overestimated and costs are not underestimated. On clarity, the MTEF is specific about how resource would be utilised and what the desired results to be monitored are. It also ensures that framework is endorsed at senior political levels.
The meeting also generated a lot of informal discussions over tea break, the working lunch was served at the venue of the meeting and the dinner for participants at the Blueprint Café by the Tower Bridge overlooking the River Thames. The tight meeting schedule and the unfriendly weather kept me indoors and away from the usual visit to friends in and around London.
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