Myanmar's Long Road to National Reconciliation (42 page)

4.   On-going technical follow-up has been provided by Burnet staff to each of the participating organizations to enable them to complete their between-workshops tasks and provide input into their respective programs.

An end-of-year-one review of the program found some encouraging results. All organizations indicated that their capacity had grown substantially as a result of the program. Although only one agency (the Myanmar Red Cross Society) was directly funded through the FHAM, the Burnet Institute, which also applied, was given additional resources in order to fund the remaining organizations, on the condition that on-going supervision and capacity-building was given to each organization. Burnet Institute has agreed to undertake this.

A second round of local NGOs has recently been accepted into the next intake of the program, and the Burnet Institute is just beginning to undertake a similar process with the Department of Railways. This approach, while focusing on HIV, enables participants to develop knowledge and skills that have far broader application. Research skills encourage local NGO staff to listen rather than to instruct; developing community-based responses to HIV means that community members become involved in decision-making about matters that affect them; monitoring plans encourages transparency and accountability, while management encourages participative processes.

These few examples, though limited in their reach, are a beginning. World Vision Myanmar now has over 1,500 active community volunteers, has trained many more, and has community committees in over twenty-five townships. After little more than a year, the Child Focussed Network as at mid-2004 has an influence over almost 5,000 children and their guardians. The organizations with which the Burnet Institute works interact
with over fifteen townships. These results suggest that investment in community capacity is achievable, and that interaction with certain government departments is both necessary and possible. The following section of this paper will reflect on some of the lessons of these examples and suggest ways in which they could be further developed.

As we have already seen, civil society is not an easy concept to define, and in the context of the intrigue within present-day Burma/Myanmar, every definition is made more complex. Civil society exists in many ways to fill the gap that government and state bureaucracies have been unable to.

... because governments and state bureaucracies have not been able to deal adequately with the needs and aspirations of large segments of the population in many societies, small and large, local and national organizations outside the framework of the state have risen in an attempt to address these unfulfilled and unaddressed needs.
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While this seems to have been the case in Burma/Myanmar in a substantial way (indeed, one wonders how people have been able to survive for so long without credible government support structures), civil society organizations, apart from having to undertake a government registration process that is essentially flawed, are subject to few controls and do not have to adhere by law to any particular standards or quality control measures (apart, of course, from those that are self-imposed). The programs mentioned above focus very strongly on the quality of local partners, but very few of the listed local NGOs in Burma/Myanmar have access to international NGO partners. The challenge, therefore, is the creation of what could be called an “enabling framework” for civil society which must include dealing with more esoteric concepts such as trust, transparency, openness, and accountability, as well as with the more practical, and obviously related, issues of standards and modes of operation. If this is not done, the exponential growth in local organizations will mean there is a distinct risk of these organizations recreating hierarchical power-structures that mirror the very official environment which civil society, by nature, seeks to confront. Developing this enabling framework, I would argue, should become a primary aim of international NGOs in Burma/Myanmar.

The recent history of international NGOs involvement in Burma/ Myanmar could be divided into three distinct phases. We have passed through the “Pioneer Stage”, which saw a handful of international NGOs come to terms with the anti-engagement lobby and enter the country. Their activities were highly controversial at home, and among donor communities and, as a result, were generally localized and low-key. In many ways, their approach has been vindicated. While there are still political risks associated with working in Myanmar, in essence international NGOs have shown that they can deliver aid where it is needed, without using flawed or corrupt systems and services, and without inadvertently sanctioning the regime. This pioneering phase, however, saw some international NGOs creating more-or-less parallel systems of aid delivery that involved very little interaction with government counterparts and resulted in only limited development of the capacity of communities (apart from a handful of volunteers who saw themselves as volunteering for an international NGO project as distinct from being volunteers for their own community).

The second phase, which could be termed the “Establishment Phase”, has been operational for at least five years, since late 1998–99, and this has been characterized by a number of factors including:

1.   An increasing number and variety of international NGOs;

2.   More clearly-defined areas of work, both by sector and by geographical location;

3.   The creation of networks such as the NGO Consortium on AIDS;

4.   Partnerships with the international community, as well as with national entities, around specific development issues, particularly HIV, which has resulted in the development of the Joint Program (involving the Ministry of Health, United Nations agencies, international NGOs and local NGOs), and the submission of a joint proposal to the Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria;

5.   The increasing interest of international donors and their recognition of the humanitarian urgency within the country.

In addition to the increase in number of international NGOs working inside Burma/Myanmar, a corresponding increase in local organizations that seek to meet local needs has occurred. Although there has been relatively little communication between these two groups, there is great
potential, and arguably an increasing urgency, for this to happen. However, these local NGOs are facing their own problems.

1.   First, local NGOs are often seen primarily as religious groups, and the authorities are suspicious of all religious groups to some extent — Christian groups are seen to be proselytizers; Buddhist monks are sometimes too involved in domestic politics; Islamic groups are seen as fundamentalists; and so on.

2.   A second problem relates to the inherent risk, mentioned previously, of replicating in the organization the hierarchical structures that people are most used to (that is, top-down autonomous rule that lacks transparency and accountability); even the most progressive of groups (including international NGOs!) seem to suffer from this dilemma.

3.   Third, there is a particular and significant lack of capacity among many, if not all, local NGOs in terms of human resources, both in terms of numbers as well as of skills and education.

4.   A fourth problem facing local NGOs is the difficulty of obtaining official registration with the authorities. Without registration the local NGOs risk not being able to operate freely, or at all. This has been particularly difficult for some religious-based NGOs, though the problem is by no means confined to them.

5.   A fifth issue relates to the nature of government interaction. While some local NGOs seem to maintain a low profile and deal with government in a low-key manner, others are like the Myanmar Women’s Entrepreneurs Association, which was essentially co-opted by the government not long after it began in 1995.

6.   A sixth issue relates to the lack of accountability mechanisms. Many local NGOs revolve around the charisma and leadership of a particular person or group. While this pattern is not very different from what happens in many countries, it does seem to engender a form of decision-making that defies consensus and lacks transparency.

7.   Most local NGOs have only limited operational ability. Many of them lack capital resources and therefore lack the ability to develop more than merely local responses. While there exist some countrywide local NGOs, such as the Myanmar Nurses Association, they too lack the financial and technical resources to enable them to
give effective support to their members and to develop sustainable programs.

8.   Finally, there is a lack of inter-agency support. Local NGOs could benefit from interaction with each other, but for a myriad of reasons this does not happen in a structured or coordinated manner.

These issues were the same issues that concerned Aung San Suu Kyi when she spoke to a number of international NGOs in Yangon during 2002–03. Most of the international NGOs experienced in working in Myanmar indicated at that time that they endeavoured to take these factors into account in determining their working arrangements with local NGOs, while maintaining the integrity of their programs. But the issues do, nevertheless, pose ongoing problems for effective activities in Myanmar.

In addition, alarm bells are beginning to ring in relation to another matter. International NGOs require well-trained staff. Initially, during the pioneer phase, the expectation was that resources needed to be invested in developing the capacity of locally-engaged staff. Now, however, with the increasing number of international NGOs and the increasing demands to meet targets and deadlines that are placed on them by donors and mechanisms such as the Fund For HIV in Myanmar, the focus has moved away from this kind of capacity-building. Employment with international NGOs that pay good salaries in US dollars is seen as being both lucrative and of high-status, so the few available staff who have some of the skills that the international NGOs are looking for are drawn away from lower-paying local groups. In turn, staff from international NGOs, once trained, are drawn to positions with UN agencies.

The result is that a vacuum is being created at the community project management level. Added to this is the exponential growth of donor funding, particularly following the sudden impact that HIV has had on the country. The large budgets of international NGOs create certain needs which are becoming increasingly difficult to meet. This in turn brings about situations that may indeed work against the development of local capacity and begin to undermine the progress in community development that has already been achieved. For example, it was recently reported to me that in some areas villagers are managing to have themselves certified as HIV-positive, in order to enable them to take advantage of the comparatively lucrative benefits (school fees for children, food, and income
assistance) that are provided by international NGO programs for HIVpositive people.

With the increasing number of international NGOs, their increased funding, and the related difficulty of absorption of this funding, the development community in Burma/Myanmar faces an interesting dilemma — it could be argued that there is too much money available (at least, in certain areas) but insufficient capacity for implementation to use it effectively. If more international NGOs were to come into the country, the problems would become clearly evident.

On the other hand, given the mounting number of local NGOs and community-based organizations, there is increasing potential for international organizations to begin to engage more seriously with local counterparts. This could be seen as the third phase of international NGO involvement — let us call it the “Consolidation Stage”. In a sense this is a mixture of the third and fourth-generation NGO strategies outlined by Korten and related in Marc Purcell’s paper on international NGOs and civil society building mentioned previously.
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This would significantly enhance the capacity of international NGOs collectively to influence the policy responses of both the Myanmar authorities and the UN agencies.

In order for this to happen, though, a number of specific steps need to be taken.

1.   First, it is important to recognize that the raw material is there. The
Directory of Local Non-Governmental Organizations in Myanmar
listed only groups with offices in Yangon, but many more are functioning around the country. However, as most of these groups (apart from some of the more established religious organizations) have grown up around a charismatic leader, they are not beholden to registration standards or public accountability. The Myanmar authorities need to articulate standards and develop systems of registration that are not overly bureaucratic and that provide some form of support, to enable groups to understand why such requirements are made and how they might be implemented. As an example, a recent initiative of the Child Focussed Network is that organizations wishing to join the network must agree to attend a child rights training program and maintain certain rights-based standards in their operations, and must accept that these will be audited. Ideally, this kind of registration process would be undertaken by the
government, and indeed the government does have its own system of registration for local associations. However, it would not stop the formation of local associations such as the CFN that require further standards to be enforced; rather, it both provides support for this to happen as well as accountability mechanisms that are necessary criteria for membership. These mechanisms must be transparent and seek to build democratic decision-making processes within organizations. This takes time and commitment.