Oxfam in
Bangladesh

[pic]

Background of Oxfam International.

[pic]

Countries with Oxfam members in green and countries with Oxfam observer members in purple.

Oxfam International is a confederation of eleven non-governmental development agencies, which finances development initiatives in 52 of the poorest countries around the world and engages in strategic development funding partnerships with communal, local and regional Non-Governmental Organizations, whose development and advocacy projects Oxfam support and whose cause Oxfam try to champion in the North.

Background

Oxfam International (OI) is a confederation of 13 organizations working together with over 3,000 partner organizations in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty, suffering and injustice. Currently Ol, with an objective to ensure Economic Justice, has initiated a global campaign with national focuses. Bangladesh has been selected as one of the ten focus countries across the globe. This has resulted into the Campaign for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (CSRL) in Bangladesh with a view to seeing that more women and men living in poverty with vulnerable livelihoods in rural areas will realize their right to secure sustainable livelihoods. This will require Oxfam to contributing to equality with growth, the empowerment of women and men to demand their economic rights, and reducing the vulnerability of poor women and men. Under the framework- agriculture, climate change and trade policy have been identified as three major areas to address and work on to reduce rural poverty and vulnerability. Nearly 70 non-government organizations are now part of the campaign in Bangladesh. The Campaign’s goal and objective necessitate OI’s basic campaign activities like, research, advocacy, media works and popular mobilization (pop-mob) to advance the campaign. It is argued that despite being rewarded with different special and differential treatments under multilateral trading framework, LDCs like Bangladesh cannot enjoy rights to be enjoyed under multilateral framework due to conditionality imposed by international financial institutions (IFIs), donors and corporate dominance at their national level. It has been claimed that Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF)- a forum of donors, instead of state or people and politicians- is the influential policymaker in Bangladesh despite the fact that domestic policies evolved from Bangladesh’s constitution can uphold the rights of people. Consistent with the emerging trends of the market economy, Bangladesh has been pursuing a liberal trade policy, mainly due to the policy suggestions given by the BDF (formerly known as the Paris Consortium of donors, like World Bank, International Monetary Fund - IMF and Asian Development Bank - ADB). Although Bangladesh became the member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, prior to that, she has been pursuing a liberal trade policy that opened the economy to a great extent since the 1980s. The opening was most of the time more than Bangladesh’s commitment under the WTO framework. Extensive reform programmers in Bangladesh have dismantled both tariff and non-tariff barriers to a large extent. The prime objectives of the trade policy of Bangladesh is argued as to strengthen the economy of the country by sustaining the shocks of rapid changes in global trade regimes and trade liberalization and to promote export-based development strategy.

Regarding the agriculture sector, most important problems, although these could be argued and challenged, identified by the professionals are (i) crisis of agricultural inputs, (ii) lack of coherent agricultural policy, (iii) lack of farmer’s organization, (iv) lack of agricultural services, education and research, (v) lack of agricultural land, (vi) destruction of agro-ecology vis a vis bio-diversity, (vii) absence of fair price for farmers, (viii) corporate dominance in agriculture sector, and (ix) lack of finance. It is argued that there are around 17 national policies related to agriculture in Bangladesh, but those policies are not comprehensive and coordinated and are largely driven by IFIs, large corporations and some donor agencies.

The 17 policies are:

i. National Agriculture Policy (NAP), 1999 ii. New Agricultural Extension Policy (NAEP), 1996 iii. DAE Strategic Plan 1999-2002 iv. DAE Agricultural Extension Manual, 1999
v. National Seed Policy, 1993, and Seed Rules, 1998 vi. Plan of Action on NAP, 2003 vii. Actionable Policy Brief and Resource Implication (APB), 2004 viii. National Jute Policy, 2002 ix. National Livestock Policy, 2005
x. National Fishery Policy, 1998 xi. National Forestry Policy, 1994 xii. National Land Use Policy xiii. National Water Policy, 1998 xiv. Environment Policy, 1992 xv. National Food Policy, 2004 xvi. National Rural Development Policy, 2001 xvii. PRSP- Agriculture and Rural Development, 2005.
In this backdrop, after two decades, the World Bank has published the first World Development Report (WDR) on Agriculture, ‘Agriculture for Development’, since 1982. The publication has been seen as a reflection of IFIs’ interest in the agricultural sector’s potential to reduce rural poverty, vulnerability and inequality. Considering the context and past trend in policy formulation process of Bangladesh, it is argued that WDR 2008 would bring new policy doctrines for Bangladesh regarding its agriculture. Based on that, it became imperative to make an analysis of WDR 2008 from the perspective of agriculture in Bangladesh to assess the effects of new policy doctrines rising from WDR 2008 on sustainable rural livelihoods. In order to get a holistic Bangladesh perspective, it was also important to review other relevant documents.

Source of Oxfam’s Immense/partnership

Oxfam International’s NGO partners are private, non-profit, self-governing organizations that are geared toward improving the quality of life of disadvantaged people. The NGO scene has been growing remarkably in number and variety over the past 25 years. NGOs can be devoted to community mobilization, delivery of services, research, education, advocacy or, increasingly, in a combination of activities. But it is often their advocacy work that puts them at odds with governments and international institutions. NGOs are at the core of civil societies in many Asian countries, and there, where they are not permitted to exist as such by law, like in China and Burma, their functional equivalents are beginning to emerge.

Current activities of Oxfam Bangladesh

This paper reports results from one of the first large, nationally representative surveys of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in a developing country. The NGO sector in Bangladesh is highly organized and relatively homogeneous. Most NGOs utilize a branch and headquarters structure in which branches have limited autonomy from headquarters. At the branch level, most NGOs in the country, whether big or small, focus on credit services, derive more of their income from fees for services than from grants, rely on salaried rather than voluntary staff, keep detailed financial accounts that are externally audited, and hire middle-class college educated men as managers. The convergence to a modal institutional form probably is the result of the persuasive power of ideas, sociological pressures toward acculturation and conformity, as well as material incentives.

According to the Report of Commonwealth Foundation (1994), Oxfam’s activities can group under two headings. These are:

a) Care and Welfare

· Service and delivery · Mobilizing resources · Research and innovation · Human resource development · Public information

b) Change and Development

These organizations are structured on the following field of activities;

· Welfare organizations · Development organizations · Environmental organizations · Indigenous people’s organizations · Women’s organizations · Youth organizations · Human right organizations · Environmental groups · Income generating projects · Job creation programmer · Children organizations · Disabilities organizations · Workers organizations
Oxfam-GB in Bangladesh is involved in promoting community development initiatives and disaster relief programmers in the country, as part of Oxfam's global mandate of working with poor and vulnerable groups of people. Oxfam had also been supporting a few disability initiatives in Bangladesh since the last two decades, primarily through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working directly with disabled persons. In 1994, at a meeting of partner organizations involved in community development, the issue of including disability issues in development programmers was discussed. All the partners agreed that disability was not a welfare issue, and that it should be considered as part of the development agenda. It was also agreed that disabled people had the same right to participate in the development process, as others in the community. The partner organizations then decided that disabled people should be integrated into their on-going programmers. In order to do this successfully, there was the need to train all levels of workers from the partner organizations on disability issues.
Subsequently, in 1995, Oxfam organised three workshops for the partner organizations involved in community development activities, on the theme of 'integrating disability issues into on-going development activities without additional financial support'. In 1997, a training manual based on the proceedings of the workshops was developed, called "The Training of Trainers Manual on Integrating Disabilities into Development", and translated into the local language. At the beginning of 1998, two training courses were organised for trainers from the partner organizations, using the manual. After the training, 25 out of the 45 partner organizations started to integrate disabled persons into their activities. Some of the changes are a result of these efforts are briefly described below.
Most of the Oxfam partner organizations have primary health education programmers, and a few have clinical support facilities including mobile clinics. Due to lack of mobility, disabled people are unable to access clinical services. After identifying persons with disabilities and their location, the mobile clinics have been providing services to disabled persons at their door step. In this manner, primary health services have been provided to 1283 disabled people

Recent Project of Oxfam

River Basin Project (RBP) of Oxfam-GB, Bangladesh embarked upon an extensive programmer to improve food security of poor farmers in the char areas of Bangladesh. It has shown keen interest in conducting trials on the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in its RBP areas in northern Bangladesh during the 2005-06 winter rice production seasons.

The key findings of the SRI trials were:

Ten farmers from three districts, viz., Gaibandha, Kurigram, and Lalmonirhat, undertook SRI trials. Average SRI and non-SRI plot sizes were only 9.5 and 7 decimals. Six farmers used BRRI Dhan-28, three used BRRI Dhan-29, and one used Jogoroni (hybrid) variety. SRI farmers achieved substantial savings in seed and pesticide use. Non-SRI Farmers required 174% more seed, and incurred more than double the pesticide cost. However, differences in the cost of fertilizer, irrigation and labor were nominal between the two methods, although SRI required relatively less cost. Agronomic findings showed that proper spacing could not be maintained due to lack of experience in managing SRI plots. Seedling age was somewhat higher than recommended (due to cold injury). Nevertheless, effective tillers were 38% higher in SRI plots, and grains per panicle were also more than in non-SRI plots. The average age of SRI seedlings used was estimated to be 16 days. The average age of seedlings transplanted in non-SRI plots was 37.6 days. SRI farmers transplanted at 25x25cm spacing, whereas non-SRI farmers followed the more typical average spacing of 15x15cm. The average number of grains per panicle in SRI plots was 168 against 125 in the case of non-SRI plots. The number of grains per panicle was 34% higher for SRI plants. Average yield in SRI and non-SRI plots were 6.61 and 5.27 MTs/ ha respectively. SRI plots had thus 25% more yields. Production period was also shorter in the SRI plots. Analysis of results showed that net returns from SRI were 78% higher that from non-SRI plots. Benefit: cost ratios of SRI and non-SRI were 2.5:1 and 1.7:1, respectively, i.e., economic returns were 150% more than cost with SRI, compared with 70% more with standard practice. SRI was thus more than twice as profitable.

Based on results and discussions the following key recommendations were made to achieve better results in the upcoming rice seasons.
• Organize a ‘lessons learned’ workshop to evaluate performance of the first season’s trials, and to plan for the next trial
• Training of farmers, NGO and DAE field staff on SRI concepts and practices.
• Improved irrigation management through community-based and rights-based approaches.
• Farmers’ field days and cross-visits to disseminate the SRI approach.
• Strengthen the role of NGO and DAE field staff in SRI advocacy and promotion.

Criticism of Oxfam’s activities.

Oxfam's activities

During 2007–2012 Oxfam shall focus its resources on four Change Goals:
1. Economic Justice
• Make agriculture work for farmers and agricultural laborers living in poverty and vulnerable circumstances. Reaching the majority of people living in poverty will mean transforming agriculture so that they get a decent reward for their labor.
• Achieve fairer trade rules for poor countries. People living in poverty must get a fair share of the wealth and opportunities generated by world trade
• Reduce the impact of climate change and energy shocks by supporting vulnerable people and communities, particularly in agriculture, to adapt to climate change. We will tackle the injustice of climate change by promoting energy equity for developing countries
2. Essential Services
• Demand that national governments fulfill their responsibilities for equitable delivery of good quality health, education, water, and sanitation, especially for women and excluded groups
• Support civil society organizations and alliances to hold governments accountable for the delivery of these services
• Ensure better policies and more funding from rich countries and international institutions, as well as make sure they honor already existing commitments on aid and debt reduction

3. Rights in Crisis
• Improve our ability to deliver better protection and greater assistance, through improving our competencies and capacities, and becoming more accountable to the people we are assisting
• We will also increase work with and through local organizations, and particularly strengthen the role of women

• Change policies and practices of the international humanitarian system to deliver better protection and greater assistance. This will mean lifting the standards of disaster response by international agencies, implementing commitments by governments on the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ and pursuing an Arms Trade Treaty.
• Work within the framework of human security, with a greater focus on preventing conflict, peace-building, reconciliation and longer-term development
4. Gender Justice
• Support women’s leadership at all levels to achieve greater power in decision-making and greater control over their lives
• Increase the number of women receiving an education (two-thirds of all children denied school are girls), to acquire functional literacy skills so they can work.
• Work to end gender-based violence by changing ideas, attitudes and beliefs of men and women that permit violence against women.
• Strengthen Oxfam’s own learning and capacities on gender to ensure that gender justice is achieved in all our work.

Criticism

Political neutrality

Oxfam was strongly criticized by other NGOs in the country. Some time the government and the political organization and political people criticize the NGO.

Confrontation with the Population Matters

attempted to discredit the Pop Offsets initiative of Population Matters, (formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust), under which individuals can offset their carbon emissions by funding family planning services in the developing world. Green wrote in an op-ed in the New Statesman that assumptions such as those in the OPT report equating population growth and environmental degradation are a "gross oversimplification".

The Contribution of NGO’s Activities in National Total Development
As far as the development of the developing countries (DCs) and least developed countries (LDCs) is concerned, agriculture plays a pivotal role in determining the countries’ socio-economic condition, sustainable development, food security, and achieving self-sufficiency in food production. It is the main source of potential domestic surplus for investment in other sectors with higher value added that are crucial for human development.1Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of employment in LDCs and 30 percent in DCs2

Despite its presence for more than two decades in several countries, the IFIs’ support has so far not been able to help countries increase agricultural productivity sufficiently to address declining per capita food availability. The effect of trade liberalization and globalization has been that the richest countries have become more prosperous, but most of the poorest countries have been worse off than they were 20 years ago. In rural areas of the developing world, close to 900 million people live on less than US$1 a day. Some 96 percent of the world’s farmers – approximately 1.3 billion people – live in developing countries, but, in every aspect of agricultural trade, they face handicaps when compared with people in the industrialized world3. The result of import liberalization under WTO ends up with a decreased food production in DCs and LDCs. Between 1990 and 1997, 24
LDCs experienced a decline in per capita food production.4 Evidence based on 14 developing countries shows that the food import bill of most countries increased since the implementation of Uruguay Round. In Bangladesh alone, it grew by 50 percent.

The agriculture sector is vital for Bangladesh economy and it is expected to remain so in the near future too. In fiscal year 2003-04, its gross contribution to GDP was 22.8 percent, while 62 percent of labor force is employed in this sector6. However, the sector has remained largely traditional beset with vicious cycle of poverty, low productivity, low income and low investment. Most of the rural people in the country are engaged in agriculture and the scarcity of land leads them to the status of marginal farmers, tenant farmers including sharecroppers, landless agricultural labor, and wage labourers. Acute inequality in landownership among the rural households is also evident, which shows a rising trend. The share of population (also more or less equivalent to that of the households) who are absolute landless is 22 percent with no land while the largest owners’ group represents only 3.5 percent with 27.4 percent of land. Functional landless
(0.05-0.50 acres) and marginal farmers (0.50-2.50 acres) together constitute 61 percent of the households. Thus 83 percent population in lower three tiers and own only 33 percent of all land and the rest 18 percent representing upper-tier households own a high of 67 percent of total land. The declining share of ownership of land by the landless and marginal groups and the increasing share of land ownership by the few large-owner groups indicate the accumulation of resources, deprivation of the real producers- the poor and marginalized farmers. According to the Population Census 2001, as many as 45 percent of all households in Bangladesh do not own agricultural land, and this shows a rising trend.
The domestic policies of the Government for the agricultural sector are not conducive enough to ensure pro-poor development of the sector. Over the last two decades, due to donor conditionality and pressures, the country has undertaken a series of agricultural policy reforms including reduction of tariff rates and quantitative restrictions, and removal of agricultural subsidies. The un-weighted average tariff rate for import of all agricultural products declined to 15 percent in 2002-03 from 55 percent in 1991-92. Subsidies on irrigation and fertilizer declined from 2.5 percent of the value of unassisted output in 1988-89 to 0.45 percent in 2002-03. Moreover, there is a very low rate of subsidies on agricultural exports. However, the impact of trade liberalization policies was not favorable for the agricultural economy of Bangladesh. Total agricultural export increased by about 2 percent and agricultural import increased by 9 percent per year over the 1990s. The country became more dependent on commercial imports of food-grains and other agricultural commodities. The marginalization of farmers has been on rise due to liberalization and commercialization of agriculture and they are becoming more and more dependent on the transnational and multinational corporations who are the major suppliers of inputs.