International Development Committee

Oral evidence: Sustainable Development Goals, HC 337
Tuesday 1 December 2015

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 1 December 2015.

Written evidence from witnesses:

–       BOND

–       United Nations Development Programme

–       Gender and Development Network

Watch the meeting – Tuesday 1 December 

Members present: Stephen Twigg (Chair); Fiona Bruce; Dr Lisa Cameron; Mr Nigel Evans;  Fabian Hamilton; Pauline Latham; Jeremy Lefroy; Wendy Morton; Albert Owen

Questions 114-151

Witnesses: Ben Jackson, Chief Executive, Bond, and Nik Sekhran, Chief of Profession, Sustainable Development, United Nations Development Programme, gave evidence. 

Q114   Chair: Good morning, everyone, and welcome.  Can I welcome our first two witnesses, Ben and Nik?  We have a one‑and‑a‑half‑hour session with two panels.  The first panel will run for 45 minutes and the second, the same.  As is usual, we have a number of questions that we will put to witnesses.

Wendy Morton: Can I just declare an interest?  I am the co‑chair of the APPG on SDGs, which I know Ben Jackson through.

Chair: Thank you very much.  Do we have any other declarations of interest?  Okay, we will move straight into questioning. 

Q115   Albert Owen: The first question is about Goal 17, which commits governments to revitalise the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.  Can you just tell us what that means in practice and what you envisage as the role of civil society organisations and multilateral agencies?

Ben Jackson: It underlines the fact that, to achieve the scale and scope of what is in the goals, we need a different approach.  In civil society and among my members, we recognise that.  It is two things.  One is that the goals themselves recognise a very changing environment, in terms of international development.  In a sense, it is the transition from the unfinished business of the MDGs, which is the focus on poverty and so on, but also the changing context. 

For us, it has two implications.  One is that civil society itself needs to work in different ways.  We as northern NGOs need to work in different ways.  We have been doing a lot of thinking around what that means in practice.  Also in terms of the partnerships, it means that we as NGOs need to work better together, but we also need to work together better with other stakeholders.  We think, in terms particularly of the Civil Society Partnership Review that DFID is undertaking at the moment, this has been a big theme.  Part of the conversation that we have been having with them, and we think we have been having a constructive conversation—obviously we wait to see what the review comes out with—is that there should be a much stronger emphasis on partnership. 

There is also a pragmatic efficiency argument for that as well, which is that, if you can get the right strategic coalitions and those can be funded over long periods, bringing together small and large NGOs, business and others, when that works it is a really great model.  We also need to invest in the infrastructure and support to make partnerships work.  It is what I do every day, so I can tell you that it is not easy.

Q116   Albert Owen: If you want to strengthen this, what were the weaknesses before?  Do you feel you have been fully consulted on the way forward?

Ben Jackson: Yes, definitely on the Civil Society Partnership Review, we have had an excellent process of consultation and have also been involved in helping to facilitate that conversation with our members over much of this year, so before the election and after.  We could talk about some other documents in a minute, but certainly on that front we have had a lot of consultation.  As I say, on the partnership piece, we are hoping to see that in the review as one of the key pillars in which DFID is prepared to invest. 

One of the things that funders need to understand is that, to make partnerships of that kind work, you need to invest in the central costs and capacity.  They do not just happen.  That is worthwhile, if you can get all these diverse partners working together.  That is one of the things we are hoping to see, alongside the other piece that we are hoping to see in there, which is a much stronger commitment to overhead and central costs, such as USAID has now adopted.  We are hoping that in the UK Civil Society Partnership Review we will see some other things.

Q117   Albert Owen: Nik, would you like to come in, and also what do you think the role of DFID should be?

Nik Sekhran: I would concur with what you just said, Ben.  The agenda is transformative—with radical transformation.  No single actor has all the knowhow to do it alone, so you are going to need partnerships—partnerships with the private sector, partnerships with civil society, partnerships with coalitions of nations.  Goal 17 has a very broad remit; it focuses on finance, technology and capacity building.  It looks at data, among other things.  To do any of that, you are going to need to have strong coalitions. 

Speaking to civil society, we in the UN, working with Richard Curtis, have been running the MY World campaign.  So far, we have reached out to 8.5 million people around the world, asking them to vote in terms of what they saw, first and foremost, as being the most important SDGs, but we want to galvanise them and more in the implementation phase. 

The role of DFID, in our view, should be to work with others to identify partnerships around big‑picture issues, for instance partnership with the private sector to get them engaged.  Many companies are reviewing their policies at the moment, looking to see how best they can make a contribution, but they cannot do it alone.  They are going to need to work collectively.  With UK support, we have been running a programme called Business Call to Action.  We have 130 members, and members commit—in their business operations, in the products they make, in the wages they pay to their employees and in how they deal with suppliers—to improve the lot of people earning less than $8 a day, which is half the global population.  It is that constituency, those companies, that is asking, “What next?” and “What can we do?”  DFID can play a key role in working with the private sector in a constructive way to do just that.  This is just one example. 

Q118   Albert Owen: You mentioned the private sector.  Do you think the balance is about right?  Do you think the department is concentrating enough on the private sector or on the public sector and NGOs? 

Nik Sekhran: I would hope so. There is a new strategy and we will have to wait to see how that pans out.  The devil is very much in the detail, in terms of interpretation.  Clearly the agenda on prosperity cannot be achieved without the private sector, and I would warrant that we are not going to eradicate poverty without a strong private sector.

Albert Owen: It is particularly the balance that I am talking about.  There is a concern that there is too much emphasis, going forward, on the private sector. 

Nik Sekhran: There needs to be a balance and we strongly support a very solid civil society role within the UN, whether it is with indigenous groups, in the south or in the north.  This is particularly important in terms of the new strategy, with its focus on crisis and fragile states.  If you just look at the situation in countries like Yemen, Syria, etc., we depend on civil society to deliver.  We in UNDP are present in the multilateral system.  We are present in Syria; we are present in Yemen and the Central African Republic, but we depend on civil society to deliver.  As the agenda is about leaving no one behind, we have to have an agenda for the SDGs that applies to crisis countries, insofar as it applies to the UK, middle‑income countries and others.

Q119   Fabian Hamilton: Really this is addressed to you, Nik, because it is about UNDP.  UNDP’s written evidence to our Committee suggests that DFID may wish to “consider further deepening its engagement with multilateral entities to implement the SDGs”.  This follows on from my colleague Albert’s question.  What do you think a multilateral agency can achieve that DFID might struggle to achieve through its own bilateral programmes?

Nik Sekhran: There are a couple of things.  One is that we are present where bilaterals are not.  We are present in Syria at this time, working where we can to help reconstruct and to build resilience in host communities, dealing with displacement, working through NGOs.  We have very large networks.  We have access to government, which is different from what bilaterals have.  We are able to talk to governments in a way that is different from how bilaterals can.  I would warrant we are effective. 

Recently an AidData report, a small laboratory in the College of William and Mary in the US, paired with inputs from the University of Chicago, looked at the impacts.  It was based on interviews with decision makers in LICs and MICs of different actors, bilateral and multilateral, firstly in terms of communicating with government in different spheres of development, but also in terms of impacting policy.  It reviewed agencies and ranked them, based on whether they punched above their weight relative to spend in the context of impact.  I am glad to say that, in the top 10, eight were multilaterals, including funds such as the Global Environment Facility and the Global Fund, my own organisation, UNDP, but of course the World Bank, the IMF and others as well.  In that regard, if you take that particular review into account, there is some evidence that multilaterals are a good investment.

Chair: DFID came quite low down that list.  We have heard DFID’s defence of that.  Sorry, Fabian.

Q120   Fabian Hamilton: Not at all.  What is it you would like to see from the multilateral aid review when it reports in the spring?

Nik Sekhran: We have been taking the MAR very seriously and I am sure that all the other agencies in the multilateral world have been doing so as well.  It has been a very thorough process.  We have made a lot of contributions.  Internally, there has been a big conversation in terms of what some of the issues imply and we have made our submission.  We would like to see multilateral commitments and contributions reflected positively in the MAR report, and to see a continued UK investment in the multilateral world and in the UN, in terms of delivery.  The UK is spending quite significant sums of money through multilaterals.  We acknowledge that.  It does give the UK quite a lot of leverage in terms of multilateral policy. 

In my own organisation, UNDP, we received some 4% of your total multilateral spend, but a large part of it goes towards our core, which runs the architecture of UNDP and allows us to co-ordinate the UN and do many other things that you could not do just through specific projects and, because of that, you have huge leverage in terms of what we do.  We take very seriously the UK ask, in terms of value for money, reform, and so on and so forth.  The MAR has focused quite predominantly on issues such as that, as well as our contributions to governance, peace building and particular development agendas.

Q121   Fabian Hamilton: Thank you, Nik, but you know we have heard criticisms that DFID has failed to hold the multilateral agencies to account on the outcomes of their work.  Are there any plans for the UNDP, for example to report formally to donors on the progress and expenditure against SDGs?

Nik Sekhran: Yes.  Firstly, speaking selfishly to our own agenda, I suppose, UNDP is ranked number one in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) ranking of agencies, so we do make all our information public, including all our procurement and project data.  Now we are expanding that and getting down to the sub‑national level, all our audits are in the public domain.

Looking forward, we have already restructured UNDP in anticipation of the SDGs and also to reduce our footprint in New York and to improve our value proposition.  That has been quite a lengthy process but, in so doing, we reduced our footprint in New York by 30%.  Let me just say that our restructuring was really around allowing us to join the dots around issues relevant to the SDGs.  I had the sustainable development cluster.  That was created by joining our poverty work and environment work into one.  We have a separate group dealing with governance and another dealing with resilience and climate change, and so on.  We will be reporting against those and we will play a particular role in the UN family in ensuring the sanctity of the SDGs—the envelope of 17—and helping countries to report against them.  Of course, we are committed to do the same. 

Q122   Fabian Hamilton: There is a difference between making sure everything is in the public domain and making a formal report to your donors.  Will you be doing that?

Nik Sekhran: Yes, that is certainly the intention.  We have done that in the context of the MDG world and we will continue to do that.  Of course, it is governed by what our executive board asks and there is a continued conversation with our donors regarding what they expect out of the SDGs.  It is early days so far, but we are fully committed to reporting to our donors and certainly on the SDGs.

Q123   Pauline Latham: This is primarily to Ben, I suppose.  How can DFID work most effectively with civil society organisations towards the achievement of the SDGs?

Ben Jackson: The first big question, and perhaps we will come back to that, is the centrality of the SDGs within DFID’s overall strategy.  I would definitely like to say a bit about that, the new aid strategy that has just come through and where we now stand. 

Just leaving that obviously fundamental question to the side for the moment, there is a lot that civil society wants and can help DFID to do, in terms of delivering the SDGs.  There are two or three key areas, particularly in the review, that we would like to see in there to enable that to happen.  There is this piece around continuity of what civil society organisations are already very good at doing and helping—delivering humanitarian aid, development and so on—but shifting that as well.  We have already talked a little bit about partnership.  There are a couple of other areas I would like to flag up. 

We need to be doing new and better things.  Innovation and strategic development for the NGO sector, as for business and for government, are crucial.  We think that is a crucial area.  It is true that DFID has been flagging up this area.  Just recently, they were part of a group of donors saying that we need to do more on innovation.  There is the Global Innovation Fund and so on, but we think there are some key bits that are missing from that picture. 

A lot of that work that is happening at the moment is based on scaling up innovation that is happening.  We are talking about social innovation here, and we think we, here in the UK, humbly, politely, in a British kind of way, are pretty good at this.  We have a remarkable civil society on development in this country, but we want to work with DFID in finding that innovation, bringing it out and developing it, with the networks of people and capacity to make that happen.  The Department for Business does this, quite rightly, with business, with for example the Catapult initiatives and so on.  We are not necessarily saying on the same scale, but we think DFID could do something in this style, which could be super‑exciting: collaborations between academia and others.  Innovation is definitely one of the critical areas, as well as partnerships.

We think that another crucial area is support for civil society in the global south.  Again, it is not that DFID does not do this at the moment.  Most of that support is through in‑country programmes.  We think the time has come to shift the gear on that now, both to support and incentivise Bond members, for example, in the work that they do with partners, but to support the work that they are doing to build capacity.  We all recognise that the long term is all about empowering developing countries, whether that is governments or civil society.  Civil society is going to be crucial in this because, at the end of the day, it is at the national level that this great opportunity and project that we have of the SDGs will fall or succeed, and civil society plays a crucial role in galvanising government on that.  We think more could be done there and at a strategic level.

Now, we recognise the practical difficulties: funding hundreds of southern NGOs in a department that has just been told it has to save whatever it is, £400 million or whatever, and there are going to be fewer people.  But there are creative ways of doing it.  For example, one way would be by providing support and funding for some of the international and regional networks that are working with those.  That would be something.  We definitely think there should be a gearshift in support for civil society in the south.  We have talked about collaboration and partnership already; we think that is crucial.

Another piece is that we think we need some revised and creative thinking around the role of civil society in engaging and mobilising the public here.  We have slightly lost our way on this one, to be honest, and civil society itself is to be blamed.  Some of the ideas of the past we need to leave in the past, but there is a huge piece.  I do not need to tell you as Members of Parliament about all those myriad energies and things that happen up and down the country, fair-trade fairs and all of this sort of stuff—that energy.  If we are to have the political backing—I do not mean that in a narrow sense but in terms of public support, engagement and mobilisation—DFID needs to look at that again.  It is very fractious at the moment.  We do not do the old‑style development education.  Fair enough, but what do we do?  That is crucial and another thing we would like to see in terms of what civil society can bring in the UK and internationally: mobilising people.

Q124   Pauline Latham: Given that DFID spends a fifth of its money on civil society, how do you think they can get better value for money?

Ben Jackson: We have already talked about a couple of those areas.  Partnership is crucial.  Bringing groups together, if we do that right, is one way of doing that.  There is a big piece around how we measure value for money.  We are encouraged by the trajectory on that to a slightly broader based understanding, but how we track the value for money is crucial.  If you are doing immunisation programmes, it is very important, valuable work.  You can count numbers and what have you.  What happens if you are doing work like disaster preparedness?  We can all understand that surely it is always better to prevent than respond afterwards.  The work that NGOs and Government are doing in places like Nepal is textbook on this, and we can see that is value for money. 

The problem they have at the moment is that the metrics and so on we have make it very difficult to count the value of that.  There is a slight insanity about that.  It is obviously better in general if we can help equip people so, when an earthquake happens, they can respond, rather than only relying on the aid that comes afterwards, but we do not measure at the moment.  There is a big piece about measurement and how we value that in order to get to the piece about value for money, but there is also a lot we can do as NGOs around thinking about how we work smarter and more efficiently.  We totally get that and are very up for that as well.

Q125   Pauline Latham: There are lots of small and non‑traditional NGOs, but DFID cannot really interact with them, because they are not geared up for dealing with the small ones.  How do you think they could better organise themselves so that they could gear up to that?

Ben Jackson: It is possible that, and as I understand it this is under some consideration, there could be a window of funding that helps support that and is geared up for that.  Again, people like Comic Relief and others do that.  Obviously they are on a different scale, but they do that through creative ways in which they help their donees.  We have been involved in that work around how we help smaller organisations to put in place the metrics, measurements, evaluations and everything that is needed for accountability.  It is partly about the will.  One way that can definitely happen is through consortiums and partnerships.

We also need to think and look again, as they do in the business sphere.  Clearly we need rules and regulations, and we need accountability and so on, but some of the mechanisms we use for that, which are designed for large organisations, are prohibitive and unnecessary.  There needs to be a grown‑up balance between monitoring everything every time someone sneezes through to allowing people to get on with the job.  That is part of the thing.  A 14‑page logframe is going to be a big problem for a small NGO.  There is a lot that can be done there, in terms of diaspora‑led organisations and others, which can unleash very particular energies that are really worth it.  If DFID can add to the pot, it brings a lot of other resource with it. 

Q126   Fiona Bruce: I am delighted to hear what you are saying.  The question is: is there the will to translate it into action?  Is there a way in which small NGOs can access very small amounts of money, perhaps at the discretion of in‑country directors?  There is clearly a need.  This Committee, and I was on it in the last Parliament, constantly hears about very good projects that only need tiny amounts of money, from your perspective.  The Committee heard recently of a medic who wanted £15,000 to help prevent the potential spread of Ebola in his area in Sierra Leone.  He could not get hold of it.  That is just one example.  Unless DFID is really willing to grasp this through its Civil Society Partnership Review, we are going to go on for several more years with these wonderful opportunities being missed.  I am very keen to know how, through that review, you are going to tackle it.

I have a second question that relates to faith‑based groups.  Again, how are you going to ensure that they are supported and connected with?  Again, just an example from the Ebola inquiry is that Tearfund tells us that, if there had been closer co-operation between DFID, them and other faith‑based groups in the communities when the outbreak occurred, there could have been better practice in terms of the cultural obstacles—burying the dead and so forth.  That was a trick that was missed.  Could you tell me if you are going to address the faith‑based issues and the connection with them in the Civil Society Partnership Review?  The Faith Partnership Principles of 2012, in my personal view, need a refresher urgently.

Ben Jackson: Absolutely.  Nik may have some stuff about what happens in-country.  On the question of the “hows”, I know we have mentioned some ideas already.  Another one that is not particularly revolutionary, but DFID does not seem to make great use of it, is just a re‑granting scheme.  You can have a kind of intermediary organisation, which does not have to be a flash management consultancy, by the way.  We offer great services at much better rates and there are others that do that.  The grant is made to a body that then can distribute out.  In Denmark for example, they have done this for years.  There is a very good system by which a committee comes together to oversee this.  The problem that obviously DFID would point out is that, if I am handling dozens and dozens of £15,000 grants, they can see the need to do it.  To be fair to DFID, they see the need to do it.  It is connecting.  Re‑granting might well be a way.  I am definitely quite happy to send something to the Committee about what happens in Denmark, where they have done this for ages.

Chair: Please could you, Ben?

Ben Jackson: Yes.  That is one mechanism.  On the faith‑based piece, I completely agree.  Obviously many Bond members come from faith communities, the Churches and the burgeoning area of Muslim‑based organisations.  There is a huge growth in money coming through those organisations.  There are two things that need to happen there. 

One is that I would say that there is supposed to be a faith strategy somewhere in DFID.  It is rather on the back back‑burner, if the Committee wanted to push to see that revised.  Obviously it varies; there are very big faith‑based NGOs, but some of them are similar.  The two come together is really what I am saying.  Many of them are small, so both the faith‑based organisations and the diaspora‑based organisations, which obviously are not necessarily the same thing, although there is some overlap, need to have treatment there in terms of building that capacity.  Building capacity is one crucial thing on which we have been doing an enormous amount of work. 

For example on the issue around monitoring and evaluation, and everybody trying to develop their own systems, if you are a big organisation, you can do that.  We have done a lot of work, supported by DFID over the last few years, to develop collective mechanisms of measuring. 

Nik Sekhran: I would just make a point in terms of bang for the buck.  It is really critical that civil society has a connection to government and that civic space.  Under the governance arena, there is need for investment to create that civic space where it does not currently exist.  It is something we are working on in the UN but others are working on too.  Without it, there is no voice.  We need a strong civil society voice to hold countries accountable for the SDGs. 

On the issue of funding through small grants, there are a number of mechanisms available.  We have a small grants programme in UNDP, which provides funding of up to $50,000, but it is generally in the order of $20,000.  We do that and it is cost‑effective because we bundle, so it is at scale, but there are numerous other mechanisms.  There is $60 billion worth of philanthropy flowing from the north to the south.  Large chunks of philanthropy are delivered through small grants as well, so there are avenues on granting that DFID could potentially look at.

Fiona Bruce: Just a comment: where there are grant schemes available, there needs to be active promotion.  These small organisations do not even have the capacity to search and enquire. 

Ben Jackson: As an example of that, we are now building an online tool to help make that happen.  Part of the piece is transparency.

Nik Sekhran: It is about helping them prepare the proposals.

Q127   Wendy Morton: I just wanted to follow on in the sense of the country context.  We have received written evidence to this inquiry that highlights the need for DFID to adapt its work to a country context.  With that in mind, how do you think—and I am happy for both of you to reply—DFID can best support developing country governments to achieve the SDGs whilst ensuring alignment with national priorities?

Nik Sekhran: It is a critical question.  Looking at the aid strategy that the UK published last week, the devil is in the detail but, on face value, it looks quite well aligned with the SDGs.  It has a focus on poverty; so do the SDGs.  In order to address poverty, you are going to need growth.  That is going to require prosperity, so that is there.  We are going to need governance and we are going to need peaceful societies, otherwise there cannot be development.  We are going to need to insure our development by looking at risk, so the whole resilience agenda is key. 

Of course, we need to look at issues around inequality, which is also critical to growth.  The OECD has shown that countries with large inequality tend to retard growth, but what is missing is the environment.  Climate change is in there under resilience, but the oceans and life on land appear to be missing.  Perhaps that is just on first reading. 

At country level, countries are basically doing two things at the moment.  First of all, they are looking at their current policies to see how well they are aligned against the SDGs.  That is quite complicated.  There are 169 targets, but countries have done it.  Colombia has done it.  They show 91 of the targets are aligned with their national strategy.  I was in Bhutan recently, which has similarly done it.  They have 133 out of 144 eligible, because they do not have an ocean and we excluded Goal 17. 

From that, they will define what we are calling catalysts.  It is impossible to move the agenda one by one through 169 targets, so the idea is to identify areas that, if you are successful, lift up a number of targets all at once.  In Bhutan for instance, a key one would be subsistence agriculture, because 70% of the population is involved in low‑productivity subsistence agriculture, particularly women.  If you could improve productivity, you improve returns and improve the lot of women.  You can contribute to growth, you can contribute to poverty and food security, and so on.  That is the effort the country needs to go through to identify its priorities.

The issue is how we match those priorities against the UK Government’s strategy.  I do not think that the UK Government strategy is to do all things for all people.  It is a sovereign responsibility of countries to ensure that they apply the SDG agenda, and of course the UK and other donors are making a contribution, but it is important that we listen, that we understand the country context and that we do not do things that distort policy at the national level.  If money is available for certain things, it means that other things that might be a national priority do not get done.  That is going to require careful policy dialogue and aid co-ordination with other partners, but also with the Government itself, because the bulk of the funding is going to have to come from domestic resources.  I guess my key point is to listen and look at the context.  Understand it along the lines that I have just described.  There is a process that will define what countries will do, and then align yourself as much as possible with them and do not distort.

Q128   Jeremy Lefroy: If I may just follow up on what my colleague Fiona was talking about, which is grants to smaller organisations, particularly in developing countries, it is interesting that you talk about re‑granting, which sounds to me a very promising line.  If you look in the UK, you will find that organisations such as local enterprise partnerships and indeed chambers of commerce, in my case in Staffordshire, have been used as vehicles for re‑granting small capital grants to businesses without having to go through massive procedures.  We are talking about £10,000, £20,000 or £30,000 here, so why can it not be done in the case of DFID, if it can be done in the case of BIS? 

The second thing I would add is that I came across an organisation recently in Tanzania that works at accrediting local CSOs, and looks at their governance and accounting.  If they come up to fairly stringent standards, it gives them a trademark or a mark a bit like the Fair Trade mark for fair trade.  That enables people to have confidence in the structure.  Have you come across anything like that?

Ben Jackson: Absolutely.  In fact, there are national networks of our kind working on this with other partners.  Absolutely there is a network working on accountability and exactly that model, trying to build that internationally.  The ideal would be that it is not only true in Tanzania, Australia or wherever, and obviously it would need to be different in different places, but there would be some alignment between some of those ultimately.  That is a kind of painful process, but that is absolutely right.  You are spot on in the piece around re‑granting.

The other piece is equipping organisations to apply, as you were suggesting, and the mechanics that are needed.  The problem about this, though—and it would be great if the Committee made this argument strongly to DFID—is that in today’s media environment that is seen as not directly helping people.  If you are helping on criteria, the mechanisms and the capacity to do stuff, it is not frontline.  This is one of the shifts that we need to see: a much more grown‑up approach.  This is not at all a bid for saying that NGOs should not be accountable, but we need to invest in some of that infrastructure on innovation, ability and metrics.  Bringing that together is a much more rational way of doing it and, as I say on some of that stuff on monitoring and evaluations, what we have been doing.  We would love to see that shift.

Q129   Jeremy Lefroy: If I may just go further now on the actual SDGs, some people have suggested, and in fact UNDP’s evidence suggests, that multi‑stakeholder partnerships have promise as a way of addressing SDGs on quite a substantial scale, such as the example given of scaling up nutrition or Every Woman Every Child, which could provide lessons.  Obviously the UNDP sees that as a way forward; would Bond as well?

Ben Jackson: Absolutely that is right.  Our members are already involved in those multi‑stakeholder partnerships, so we would welcome more investment in those, but again we need to look at the detail there.  Going back to the small organisations, there are small and niche organisations that could play a very important part in those partnerships.  Being part of the partnership can help carry some of the overall costs.  As things exist at the moment, they find it very difficult to do that.  There is a lot of investment needed, even in the bid process for contracts and so on, and the big players, whether NGOs or some of the big commercial entities, are the ones that really call the shots.  People have come up with this phrase of having a few little friendly NGOs as your bid candy, so that it looks very grassroots, but they are not really playing a role, and that needs to change.

Q130   Jeremy Lefroy: Nik, one question I have about this multi‑stakeholder partnership idea, which seems very reasonable, is that as Committee members we are often approached about supporting a particular campaign that appears and is wonderful, with lots of publicity around it, but seems to fizzle out or fade away after two or three months sometimes.  How can we ensure that these types of campaigns are really for the long term?  We are talking here about 15‑year goals.  We are not talking about trying to get people’s attention for six months. 

Nik Sekhran: It is a good point.  First of all, ensure that the partnership is meaningful.  There are all sorts of partnerships out there.  Some of them are meaningful and others not so.  It is understanding what it is you are going after.  The partnerships are likely to be sustainable if you are bringing in a group of actors who want to be engaged but have no other means to do so, like the private sector but also civil society at national level and so on.  Already galvanised is the private sector Business Call to Action in UNDP, but we have the World Economic Forum, and so on and so forth, as other mechanisms to get them engaged.  They do not have a mechanism for organising and connecting to the policy space.  The key is in the design, looking at who is there at the table, how committed they are and if it is a good idea.  Is it something that is likely to see the light at the end of the tunnel?  That is really key. 

Q131   Jeremy Lefroy: Ben, are we seeing NGOs, for instance, committed to a 15‑year programme over the course of the SDGs, saying, “We will focus on this.  We are not going to go for six‑month campaigns or one‑year campaigns.  We are going to try to make a real difference in this particular goal or target.”

Ben Jackson: That is where we need to get to.  Many organisations have a mandate for a particular area that relates to a goal, and that is long term.  It would be not dishonest but it would be misleading to say everyone has these 15‑year plans.  That is what we need to get towards.  It is possible for us to aspire—and some of what DFID is supporting has done this—to five‑year, long‑term strategic partnerships. 

Also on the strategic funding piece, we know that the PPA scheme is going to be going, but what is critical is that we replace that with some of the essence of what is needed, in terms of strategic funding, so that it could be remodelled or whatever.  It would be a real tragedy, putting the PPAs in the past, if we did not continue with some of that strategic funding for key organisations that can demonstrate—and this is the quid pro quo we can understand—either critical innovation, commitment to certain particular strategic parts of the goal or strategic transformation, so that in a sense you are investing like investors do in a business.  Very rarely do they invest in product X or Y.  They invest in the company that does things.  You need a business plan that is convincing and is accountable, but that is one of the shifts we need to move closer towards, because at the moment the bulk is still programmes and projects.  We need to do that.  That is realistic, whether it is a 15‑year time horizon.  Five would be great.  I think we can do that and we have examples of that.

Q132   Dr Cameron: The Global Goals were only mentioned four times in the new UK aid strategy document.  Should there be more focus on them or more of an overarching strategy?

Ben Jackson: This is a very important issue and we are regrouping and understanding what has happened in civil society, but I would say that it is a very strong cause for concern.  We were all in the business, broadly speaking, of saying we had worked hard for these goals.  Britain has played an incredibly important role.  Our Prime Minister has played a very important role in shaping that. 

The issue now is how we implement it.  This puts a question mark that this Committee should challenge and clarify with this Government.  Where do the SDGs now fit in our overall strategy?  They get a very passing mention, and it is a slightly strange framing, as if it is the unfinished business of the MDGs—but that is what people were saying five years ago.  It seems very strange.  It is crucial that we get to that clarity and we will be searching for that generally, but that is why the Bilateral and Multilateral Aid Reviews also take on additional significance, in that context. 

In addition, we need to look at the money that is going through other Government departments.  I am not saying that is a bad thing in itself.  We are looking at a more than doubling, over the next five years, of money going through other government departments.  Some of that, as we understand from this document, is accountable to the National Security Council.  I am not quite clear on what the accountability of the National Security Council is to this House and to Parliament.  There are a lot of questions around accountability and so on. 

I do not want a hysterical response.  The fact that it is cross‑government and relates to security in the broadest sense of the word absolutely are things that we have been saying for a long time, but there is a real concern.  If I can just quote one sentence from the thing: “We want to meet our promises to the world’s poor and put international development at the heart of our national security and foreign policy.”  Fair enough.  I would say there are strong fears among many NGOs, which we are hoping will get clarified and our fears will be misplaced, that what we are talking about is putting a national security and foreign policy at the heart of international development strategy, and that poses some massive questions about where the SDGs fit.  It is a huge issue. 

Nik Sekhran: I would say that the whole world is looking to the UK, in some shape or form, to make a contribution, because the Prime Minister was on the High Level Panel, which preceded the creation of the Open Working Group and the agreement to the SDGs.  We have a sort of obligation, if you like, but the question is how. 

I would make one point.  A key question is how the SDGs will be implemented in the UK itself.  We are focused here on development, but it is a universal agenda that is supposed to apply to England, Wales and Scotland, as it is anywhere else.  I guess that is not a question you are looking at in this Committee, but it is a wider question, which is relevant in terms of the global discourse.  Some clarity on that might help throw some clarity, in terms of the UK’s relationships elsewhere.  Ultimately, we see a lot of the SDG implementation taking place at a decentralised level.  We see cities taking on the agenda.  We see sub‑national governments and so on.  We even start to see twinning arrangements and so on at different levels of government.  It is not just national government’s responsibility or DFID’s responsibility to move the agenda.  Capacity, knowhow and software, if you like, is as important as money, and so we hope that happens, and that will require energising Britain in support of the SDGs domestically.

Dr Cameron: It is an overarching cross‑governmental strategy.

Ben Jackson: Absolutely.

Q133   Chair: Ben, when we met you in New York, you had not published some proposals on how the domestic implementation could work here.  Has there been any progress with Government in terms of that agenda?

Ben Jackson: We have had some interesting conversations, but there is nothing we have heard back from Government about the machinery of government and how that is going to happen.  That is why this Treasury‑led document is potentially so significant.  We are not quite sure how to read it.  This is a crucial period when the Committee is going to be completing its report, when the reviews are coming through.  We are all hoping there will be clarity around how all of this adds up. 

One of the issues is just geography.  As you know, and as we sent to this Committee, we had doubts about everything in the previous narrative focusing more on more on the lowest income countries.  That is what we are doing.  This strategy clearly says something very different.  You are talking about Jordan, Egypt, and so on and so forth.  That is fine.  On the prosperity front, does that mean we are going back into India and on what terms?  There are a lot of big questions.  I would say that the devil is in the detail, but it is not just detail.  There are massive questions to be clarified.  Hopefully, they will be clarified, but we await that at the moment.

Chair: To reinforce your point, in her question Lisa referred to the four mentions of the Global Goals in the document.  There were 12 mentions of the national interest in the same document, which does reinforce the point you made, not that there should be any clash between the two, but there is certainly a contrast in terms of those two numbers.  We will have to draw this part of the evidence session today to a close.  Many thanks to both of you.  Certainly, Ben, the Committee will be taking forward the challenge that you just set out in terms of how the aid strategy fits with the Global Goals.  Nik, the issue of how domestic implementation works, which you raised, is one that we will be taking forward as part of this inquiry.  Thank you very much indeed.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Dr Andrew Norton, Director, International Institute for Environment and Development, Jessica Woodroffe, Director, Gender and Development Network, and Thomas Wheeler, Conflict and Security Advisor, Saferworld, gave evidence.

Chair: Good morning and welcome to our three witnesses.  This is the second panel of witnesses this morning.  We have just 45 minutes and we have eight questions, if that can be borne in mind as both questions are asked and answered.  Whilst sometimes it may be appropriate for all three witnesses to answer a question, sometimes it may only be necessary for one or two to answer.

Q134   Fabian Hamilton: My first question is a rather wide‑ranging one, so please decide whether you all want to answer or only one or two.  The SDG agenda, as you will be well aware, is absolutely vast.  I wondered how you think that DFID can best focus its resources to achieve progress on the goals and ensure that no one is left behind.

Chair: Let us try a minute each on that. 

Thomas Wheeler: I can go ahead with that.  One of the issues that has been prioritised as one of five priorities in the SDGs, and one of four in the new aid strategy, is peace.  It is important that we think about peace in a positive way, not just as the absence of violence but as a developmental approach to conflict prevention, so dealing with some of the root drivers of conflict.  A lot of that exists in Goal 16, for example corruption and governance issues, but we really need to think across the framework.  It is thinking, for example, how gender equality links up to peaceful societies.  How does dealing with climate change build up resilience from conflict? 

The focus is on leaving no one behind.  That focus on peace, resilience and conflict, particularly in fragile states, is going to be key.  We know at the moment that about 43% of people living in extreme poverty in the world are in fragile states.  That is estimated to go up to about 62% by 2030.  Other estimates are higher.  We also know on the MDGs that the countries that fell furthest behind were those fragile and conflict‑affected states, and we are also seeing countries that are making good development progress being completely knocked off by conflict, so Syria for example. 

If we want to focus on sustainable development, if we want to look at conflict prevention, we are going to have to engage in fragile states.  That does not mean reinventing the wheel.  Twenty-one out of 28 of the countries that DFID currently works in are fragile states.  As the ICAI report mentioned, there are lessons to be learned and there is a lot to be built on.  I am happy to go into more detail on that.

Jessica Woodroffe: In general, we are looking for an approach that addresses the underlying causes, which looks at inequality, which takes an integrated approach, but also can specialise.  That is one of the things that I have seen coming up in previous hearings: that there is a difference between the two.  It is perfectly possible for DFID to take an integrated approach while also specialising for example in cross-cutting issues.   

To come on to my area—not to say that DFID should only work on gender equality—there is a very strong argument for DFID to focus on gender equality, partly because it is clearly a cross‑cutting issue.  In every single one of the goals, we could see how promoting gender equality would not only ensure that women and girls benefited under that goal but could be a driver of achieving that goal for everybody.

The next thing is needs.  Obviously over half the population are women.  Women’s rights have been recognised under the SDGs as crucial to development.  Also, two-thirds of the people living in extreme poverty are women.  If we are looking at the “leave no one behind” agenda, we need to look at women and girls.  Quite a lot of the keys that will unlock progress in other areas are related to reducing gender inequality. 

The third area is solutions.  There are solutions to a lot of the problems around gender equality, and that should be a criterion as to what DFID should look for.  I would suggest that there are a number of relatively cheap things that could be done in relation to gender inequality, which would have a transformative impact.  That should be one of the criteria across the board.  The fourth one is comparative advantage.  I know other people have mentioned this, but DFID clearly does have a comparative advantage in relation to work on women and girls, and gender equality.

Dr Norton: I agree with what the other panellists have said.  One thing I would like to say is, with the new aid strategy’s focus on fragile countries and regions, it is important not to lose track of the focus on the least developed countries in that.  DFID has a very good record, better than the average, of directing aid, particularly climate finance, towards the least developed countries.  We would hope to see that continue.  Obviously in the area I am speaking about, it is vital that DFID has the capacity to look at how climate change impacts across the full range of SDGs.  This involves looking at climate risk and how that impacts on a wide range of programmes.  We expect climate change to have dramatic impacts over time, across the full range of attainment—virtually every SDG.

Finally, it is important, in looking at resources, to keep an eye on DFID’s own capacity to deliver too, particularly in terms of the country teams, which have been one of the really strong aspects of DFID down the years.  As well as what is spent on operations, it is also important to look at the resources to tackle these particularly important and complex issues, like fragility, gender and climate.

Q135   Wendy Morton: Just to go back very quickly on what you were saying, Jessica, about women and inequality, you indicated that there are simple cheap things that could be done that would make a big difference.  Could you share those with us?

Jessica Woodroffe: I could share lots of them in writing, but I will just give you a couple.  Having heard the previous session, it is really interesting that one of the key things that I think would make a difference is to have a fund specifically for women’s organisations.  Women’s organisations are some of the most transformative and cheapest ways of reaching the most marginalised people, both through service delivery and looking at the underlying causes, but also bringing women together so that, when we create the political spaces for civil society to have a voice, you then have groups of women who can take that up. 

What Ben was saying about re‑granting is crucial in relation to a women’s fund.  DFID could set up a women’s fund, perhaps similar to the one that the Dutch have, called the FLOW fund, where they re‑grant to women’s funds.  There is a fantastically named women’s fund called Mama Cash, for example.  They have really flexible reporting requirements.  For example, a grantee can just phone up and report over the phone.  They do not even have to write a long proposal.  They have long‑term funding and they have flexible core funding, so really quite small amounts of money could make quite a big difference.

Another thing is similarly around resources.  I know that asking for lots more money is not going to work, so what we are looking at is trying to improve the quality of resources.  Gender‑responsive budgeting is another suggestion—this is being done in Nepal at the moment and is working really well and I believe it is just starting to happen in Uganda, with support from DFID, I think—where you look at budget allocation and revenue allocation, and look at the differential impact on men and women, and its impact on gender equality.  That does not require any more funds.  It is just making sure that those funds that are being spent are worth more.  I could go on, but I will not. 

Q136   Albert Owen: UNDP’s evidence to this inquiry suggests tackling route bottlenecks to accelerate progress across the goals, while Christian Aid, on the other hand, suggests tackling cross‑cutting themes.  Is this useful advice for DFID and, if so, which should they prioritise?

Dr Norton: In terms of route bottlenecks, we need to look much more closely over coming years at the impacts of climate change on the risks that poor people face in various environments.  We are already seeing evidence of people having to move.  In Bangladesh in particular that is already showing up in the administrative data.  It makes sense to have a cross‑cutting analysis, at the country level, in the countries in which DFID operates, of the specific impacts of climate change across the full range of SDGs.  That would be effective, particularly looking at things like climate risk in relation to social transfers and social protection.  That is one example of an area where you need to build in an understanding of the ways in which poor people’s livelihoods are being impacted, even now, and will be impacted much more strongly in the future.

Thomas Wheeler: Adding something similar to that, again if we want to focus on leaving no one behind and really getting to the most extreme poor, engaging on peace building, conflict prevention and fragility will be really key.  That will be a cross‑cutting issue.  It cuts across all of the goals.  It does not necessarily mean just focusing on Goal 16, for example.  More importantly than that, the key issues that DFID might programme within a country may be very different in country A from country B, because the drivers of conflict may be very different.  It is really important, even if we do have a strong focus on peace and building resilience, that we also make sure that we are responding to local needs, doing our conflict analysis, being conflict sensitive and consulting locally.  That is what is creating the programme. 

Jessica Woodroffe: The Committee has got it right in terms of the three issues that you have picked as the cross‑cutting issues, if I may say so.  It is the three I would have picked, because we each represent a bottleneck.  The bottleneck and the cross‑cutting go together.  What you will find in all of our areas is that, whatever topic you are looking at, there will be something that can unlock progress.  Certainly in relation to gender equality, as I said, whether you are looking at employment and occupational segregation or whether you are looking at land use and the rights of women farmers—whatever area you are looking at—if you can tap into gender inequality and reduce gender inequality, you can unlock progress.

Q137   Albert Owen: Dr Norton, you mentioned climate change and there has been some concern by many NGOs and others about slow progress.  Obviously we have the Paris conference coming up.  What more can DFID do to be vocal in this and to really start setting the agenda?  Do you think it is working enough with DECC and other departments in UK Government? 

Dr Norton: I think that DFID is doing a lot of good and innovative work.  The BRACED programme on building resilience in poor countries is a good example of innovative work that DFID is carrying out.  In terms of areas to focus on in future, it makes sense to have strong capacity for policy advice in key areas.  Just to pick out three, I have already mentioned social protection, but also how are countries going to build urban and transport infrastructure that is both climate‑resilient but also helps to reduce emissions over the long run?  Finally, most countries now, as part of the Paris process, are developing their own climate action plans.  That will also start to feed back into discussions around growth, so that is important.

We also welcome that DFID has joined the new announcement to put $248 million into the least developed countries fund.  We think that prioritising the least developed countries in terms of public funding for climate risk in particular makes sense, so we were pleased to see that announcement and would like to see that trend continue.

Q138   Albert Owen: Can I push you on something about working across departments?  We hear announcements from each individual department, DECC for instance and also Transport.  This tends to be, “This is our job and we are doing it okay.  It is a matter for others.”  With the Paris conference coming up now, as we speak, do you think there is more that DFID can do?  This is my question to you.  Is there more that they can do to highlight these issues?  We know the great intentions it has and the good work it has done thus far, but how can it really focus the UK, so that we can be a main player in the world?

Dr Norton: The policy coherence issues are also important in terms of domestic policy.  The universality theme of the SDGs implies that you need to be a leader in your domestic space, as well as in the overseas space.  There are a number of ways in which that could be done, such as investment in research and development on clean technology.  Again, the UK has made an announcement on that lately, but it is also important that we continue to support innovation in the UK’s own domestic sphere, in terms of renewable energy.  There is also the fossil fuel subsidies agenda, which is massive.  Those are still way too high.  There are many other areas. 

Let us be clear: global progress towards emissions needs to be transformed.  Success at Paris will not imply that we are there, in terms of the national plans not adding up to what we need.  They will add up to maybe a quarter of what we need, in terms of a plausible pathway to 2°.  We need to go beyond that and we need to see five‑year mechanisms to improve the ambition around that, and DFID, along with the rest of the UK Government, has a major role to play in that and also in the voice in Europe.

Q139   Albert Owen: Are you optimistic that we will get small progress rather than false dawns?

Dr Norton: You have to be optimistic, but there are two sides to that.  One is that what is on the table is not enough, in terms of the national plans that are the basis for Paris, but there are ways of ensuring that we can continually increase our ambition.  The least developed countries are asking for 1.5°.  That will be their ask, and that is because some of them are not confident, particularly the small island states, that they would survive 2°.  We know that even 2° displaces millions of people and, without drastic action, we will be looking at 3° or 4°.  The World Bank’s Turn Down the Heat study suggests that 4° displaces 20 million people in Bangladesh alone, so it is incredibly important that we do get on a path.  The UK Government has a role to play across the board.  DFID is really important and definitely a leader in some fields, but it is very important that there is coherence.

Q140   Albert Owen: I have just one final point.  We were told by the Ministers that they are going to be present in Paris but, more than that, they have projects like Energy Africa, for instance.  Do you think that will go up the agenda?  Do you think Britain is confident enough that it has enough partners to push that up the agenda, so that the African continent, for instance, can be seen as a focus of this to happen?

Dr Norton: That is an important programme.  Energy access is important, but it is also vital that you are not investing in that and disinvesting in health systems, because some of the biggest impacts will be in health.  This is just one example.  We need to make sure that the investments are across the board in all the SDGs.  This is the big challenge.  This is why everyone says climate finance ideally should be new and additional.  That is a tough ask of the UK, because its record on development finance is best in the G8.  It has done very well on that, but we are not as yet in a place where we are seeing enough climate finance and we are not seeing it well enough directed.  Also, there is still an agenda for the least‑developed countries, notwithstanding the welcome announcement about the LDCF.

Q141   Pauline Latham: It has been suggested that, in implementing the SDGs, DFID should concentrate where it has a comparative advantage or proven track record.  Can you tell me what your opinion is of that?

Thomas Wheeler: Starting with issues related to conflict and working in fragile states, as I mentioned, DFID already works in 21 fragile states out of the full 28 that it works in.  Even though there was an ICAI review of DFID’s engagement in fragile states that was critical, it also clearly stated that these are very challenging environments and that DFID was learning.  Beyond that, DFID is quite respected for its work in fragile states, although there is a lot to be learned. 

Also, an ICAI report was quite critical of its work on security and justice, but that does not mean that we back away from these issues.  In fact, we need to engage on them because they are so crucially important.  They are complex and we do need to learn about them.  We should continue to engage on them.  Finally, the “leave no one behind” agenda is perhaps more linked to the SDGs, but thinking about inclusivity is really quite essential.  From a peace-building and conflict-prevention perspective, there is really strong evidence that, when social groups or identity groups are excluded economically, politically or socially, that is a driver of conflict.  Thinking about how we can harness development programmes, how we can harness trying to reach the poor and how we can use that for peace-building should be a big objective.  That is one of the things that the ICAI report said DFID needs to learn more on.

Jessica Woodroffe: As I mentioned, DFID has a very strong record on what they would call “women and girls”.  I would probably say “gender equality”.  What is important in terms of the comparative advantage is that DFID does not necessarily have to work on every aspect of an issue.  Where DFID is particularly placed around gender inequality is challenging taboos and showing leadership on difficult issues.  We saw that around FGM, but DFID now needs to be looking to the next issues and addressing both the difficult issues and the issues that make a structural change, addressing the underlying causes.  I think that across the board, but specifically on gender equality. 

I would suggest that, for example, they could do more work on unpaid care.  DFID’s role in getting a target on unpaid care within the SDGs was important, I believe.  Personally, I think that target 5.4 on unpaid care is one of the most transformative targets in the entire document, because unpaid care affects every aspect of women’s lives.  It also affects the lives of the people who are being cared for.  If you can recognise, reduce and redistribute women’s disproportionate burden of unpaid care that could make a profound difference. Yet, unpaid care is the only target in the SDGs that has “nationally appropriate” besides it, so some governments might decide not to pursue it. It therefore needs that international leadership to demonstrate that unpaid care is something that should be on the table for everyone and should be talked about.  There is a very specific role for DFID and for the Secretary of State within this to break down the taboo of addressing unpaid care and particularly the social norms associated with it.

Dr Norton: Just to reiterate, one of the things that DFID is known for is very high quality engagement in partner countries, being there with high-quality staff over a long period.  There have been two consecutive years of reductions in administrative costs.  There is a concern about whether you have the spending in that area necessary to maintain the kinds of engagements you need, particularly on these complex issues.  In fragile states and on gender, it is often more about the quality of the thinking and policy engagement than it is necessarily about the volume of money delivered.  That is also an important factor across all three.

Chair: The next couple of questions flesh out some of the answers that we have just had.

Q142   Jeremy Lefroy: Continuing with fragile and conflict‑affected states, the Prime Minister announced that 50% of ODA spending, as opposed to 30%, would be going towards these states.  Is there a conflict, or at least a difficulty, in having a results‑oriented agenda with one where you are putting more and more into fragile and conflict‑affected states?

Thomas Wheeler: It is a really important question.  I would welcome an increased focus on conflict‑affected and fragile states.  We still need to hear those contexts.  It refers to regions as well, so how those are defined, where that spend would go and what it would be between them.  There are some really practical operational considerations at the forefront of DFID’s mind.  This touches a little bit on the last panel.  The first is around incentives.  Is there a risk that you are incentivising in‑country DFID staff to see success as spending more and getting the money out of the door? 

Secondly, is it dictating what kinds of partners DFID can work with?  For example, can it work with a small organisation that cannot handle £3 million?  Thirdly and linked to that, does it start dictating what kinds of projects DFID runs?  Do we end up with fewer larger projects in fragile states, rather than many smaller ones?  There are ways around this.  For example in Myanmar, they have set up a fund that allows small, bespoke, very targeted projects.  That is something that needs to be supported, because we still have a huge amount to learn. 

Thinking about results, the end result should be poverty reduction, in these contexts, and it should be creating a peaceful environment to allow that.  Again touching a little bit on what was mentioned, it is a very obvious point, but more aid does not necessarily mean more peace.  For starters, sometimes the drivers of conflict and fragility are not necessarily issues to do with outside money, for example very entrenched extractive political systems or deep divisions at social level.  In fact, we have seen cases where more aid can end up fuelling conflict, entrenching those very political systems, for example through enabling regimes or fuelling local‑level conflicts between communities.  We need some humility over how we use this money, and long‑term horizons and patience by DFID might be more of an asset than money and scale.

Q143   Jeremy Lefroy: I think Andrew was referring to this in the last answer.  Would you also see the importance of relationships and experience of staff in a country?  I think particularly in the last Parliament of the case of Burundi, where we pulled out in 2011, as far as DFID was concerned.  We now see Burundi in a very difficult position, and one wonders whether, if DFID had been able to exercise some influence through a longer term relationship there, which they were building, perhaps something might have been a little different.  It is clearly very difficult to answer that one, but the point I come to is that often it is the relationship that DFID has with a government or with a country that is more important than the quantity of money that is spent.

Thomas Wheeler: Those relationships are very crucial, and they come down sometimes to the individuals who are in a country and the expertise built up around that.  In thinking about relationships, perhaps we need to move a little beyond a very state‑centric vision of stability.  For example, DFID’s definition of fragility is about state weakness, and we need to be thinking much more about society.  That is where the SDGs are quite helpful, with this language of peaceful, just and inclusive societies.  There is a huge amount we can be doing outside of the state.  For example in South Sudan, projects around reconciliation between different ethnic groups would have been a useful thing, where we saw that there are quite deep‑seated social divisions as well.  There are risks about taking an overly state‑centric view and building up relationships with regimes that do not always have the interests of their people at heart.

Q144   Jeremy Lefroy: Could I just ask, given that clearly going into fragile and conflict‑affected states carries more risks with it, how they could be mitigated?

Thomas Wheeler: It is the definition of risk.  For example in Somalia, as I understand it, DFID has done quite well managing risks related to corruption.  It sets up processes.  The risk that we are most concerned about is the risk of driving conflict.  That is where conflict sensitivity and those approaches really need to be integrated into programming.  It is thinking about the whole full wave of programmes that DFID is running in fragile states, thinking through if they are addressing the root drivers of conflict and if there is a risk they could be making things worse and fuelling things.  What kinds of actions can we take?  Basically that comes down to having very good conflict analysis and building programming around that.  That is something that came out in the ICAI report.  In some cases, DFID is still programming around conflict, working around conflict and doing development projects that are not dealing with root causes.

Q145   Dr Cameron: This is a question specifically for Jessica.  DFID has repeatedly asserted and emphasised their commitment to women and girls.  What do you feel we could be doing better in terms of achieving gender equality?  You mentioned unpaid care.  Are there any other underlying levers that you think are crucial?

Jessica Woodroffe: As I said, unpaid care is probably one of the most important ones.  Another one is addressing social norms—the attitudes, beliefs and informal legal structures that reinforce assumptions, for example of men as breadwinners and women as carers.  In every aspect across the goals, you will often find that it is those discriminatory social norms that are preventing progress. For example, it could be occupational segregation preventing women from getting more employment under Goal 8. It comes back to this issue about looking at the underlying causes.  DFID is starting to do that, but there is a lot more that they could do.  Social norms is one.  Unpaid care is one. 

Another one is looking more broadly at women’s economic empowerment or women’s economic justice.  We have seen quite a lot of emphasis within DFID on violence against women and girls—FGM and early forced marriage specifically.  A great deal of good work has been done, but it is often not getting to the fundamental causes of why women are not able to control their lives.  Looking at women’s access to economic resources and their access to decent work would probably have a more profound effect, so again there is an opportunity for showing leadership.  Women’s economic empowerment is one of the four pillars in the strategic vision, but it has had less focus up until now.  It is probably fair to say, not just for DFID but for most donors and, to be honest, most NGOs, they have a fairly siloed approach to gender and economics.  There is not a great deal of synthesis between the two.  If we could get some of the social development advisers and someone who specialised in gender working more with some of the economists, you could start making a breakthrough there.

Q146   Dr Cameron: Is access to education, such as secondary education, one of those levers too?

Jessica Woodroffe: Within every area there is something they could do.  I did not mention education, just because, on the whole, more attention has been given to education than it has to economic empowerment.  Certainly within education, once you look at further education, tertiary education is where it really drops off.  Primary education is roughly similar.  Secondary education is getting towards being similar.  Tertiary education is where it really drops off. 

Also within education, and this is starting to happen, recognise the particular barriers that girls face in education.  Under the MDGs, you had enrolment as a target.  It has now been recognised that you should look at completion rather than enrolment, because girls enrol, but then they drop out of school, for all the reasons that we know.  It is finding those underlying causes, where the barriers for boys or girls, men and women, are different that is important.

Q147   Dr Cameron: You mentioned mobilisation of women’s groups.  Did you feel that the Girl Summit that was held helped mobilisation?

Jessica Woodroffe: The Girl Summit was useful in getting some issues on the agenda, particularly around FGM.  Those big showcase pieces are very useful for breaking down some taboos.  In terms of mobilisation on the ground, as I was talking about, a women’s fund is probably more useful.  I cannot stress enough how important it is to get these small amounts of funding to these really good women’s organisations that could really make the difference.  Some kind of women’s fund, with the re‑granting that Ben was talking about, is what would make the difference.

Q148   Fiona Bruce: I am interested to explore the tension that exists between mainstreaming certain areas, like climate change and sustainability, and women and girls, and ensuring that they remain priorities, in terms of the SDGs.  I have to say, as a caveat, I do think our Secretary of State is unlikely to let women and girls be anything less than a priority.  Can I have your comments, please?

Jessica Woodroffe: For those of us working in gender, that whole mainstreaming in combination with standalone projects is the big issue/solution.  In fact, even within the SDGs, one of the things that we were arguing for very strongly was the importance of having both a standalone goal and gender being mainstreamed throughout the goals.  That is the approach that we take all the time.  If you do not have some of those standalone projects exactly as you say, mainstreaming can make things invisible. 

The other thing is how to do mainstreaming well.  There, we found there are three key things. The first is high‑level political leadership—and, as you say, we have that at the moment—and secondly, technical resources. One of the things that you can have is the political pressure to mainstream gender, but people are somehow expected to know how to do that.  It is a technical issue.  Quite often, the youngest woman in the room is made the gender champion and they are supposed to know how to do this.  It is a technical body of expertise that requires the resources.  It is that combination of political leadership, resources and thirdly analysis.  Particularly if we are looking at policy coherence across Whitehall, that analysis is important.  It is moving from talking about women and girls as a vulnerable group, which is the old‑style analysis, to understanding that it is about the unequal power relationships between men and women.  That is not the same as women as a vulnerable group.

Dr Norton: It is interesting; the issues are similar in some ways, but different in some.  In the last Parliament, we had the International Climate Fund, which was a cross‑Whitehall instrument for DECC, DEFRA and DFID.  DFID staff in particular found that they had to jump through hoops in order to say they were doing climate.  They had to go through a set of procedures.  That is not the best way to mainstream across the board.  We hope that whatever replaces it, which is not clear at the moment, is more streamlined and user‑friendly for mainstreaming. 

In terms of the climate area, there are similarities to what Thomas was saying about fragility.  The key thing is to have a country‑level analysis of the ways in which climate change impacts on the full range of SDGs, but also the ways in which climate action can have co‑benefits with other things as well.  For example, low‑carbon cities will tend to be healthier cities.  A country‑level analysis in the countries where DFID is working, the focus partner countries, would be a good place to start in order to capture the full range of actions where climate change is relevant and should be taken into account.

Thomas Wheeler: Just adding to that, perhaps this is a little naïve, but I hope—and do not think it is a challenge—to prioritise both having a cross‑cutting focus, for example on conflict through making sure a programme is conflict‑sensitive, while at the same time having very specific programmes that are engaging on that specific issue.  I hope that we can have both. 

It is also quite interesting simply to think about the linkages between these three different issues here.  There are linkages.  How is DFID unpacking those?  For example, how is it unpacking how resilience to climate change issues will be the same as resilience to conflict?  How are issues related to gender inequality related to other drivers of conflict?  Something we have found really fascinating working on Goal 16 is bringing together governance people, people working on justice and people working on conflict.  There is a whole bunch of different issues in that goal, but there are a lot of synergies between them that could be unpacked a little bit more, really breaking down barriers.

Q149   Chair: Finally, we saw the Secretary of State yesterday and we were talking to her about Ebola.  During the context of that discussion, we also talked about her role as the lead minister on the Sustainable Development Goals for the British Government, but also the role that the Cabinet Office is playing.  Can I ask each of you to comment on two issues, policy coherence on the Global Goals but also the universal aspect, i.e. how we best implement the Global Goals domestically?  Who would like to kick off with that one?

Thomas Wheeler: I can kick off.  When we are thinking about conflict issues and fragility, policy coherence is probably more important for the UK than how much it is spending on fragile states.  That is the top issue.  It is absolutely key.  We know that commercial investments, banking regulations, national security policy and arms export controls issues can have a huge bearing on fragility overseas.  Although we have started to see this addressed in the SDSR and in 2011 we had the Building Stability Overseas Strategy, when it comes down to implementation, we have been lacking. 

There have been some incoherence’s.  Some of my colleagues, for example, would stress that the UK is spending £75 million providing humanitarian aid to people in Yemen while, at the same time, the UK still continues to authorise arms exports to Saudi Arabia, which is a conflict actor there.  How are those two things coherent?  We need to unpack those a lot more.  DFID needs to lead on Goal 16.  DFID needs to lead on the peace agenda.  It needs to play its mandated role, which is to deal with conflict drivers and deal with upstream conflict prevention, dealing with the root causes of conflict, but to make this work it needs to be independent enough, it needs to have long‑term time horizons and it needs to be able to focus on people’s security.  The mandate focused on poverty reduction and extreme poverty is the right way to allow and enable it to play that role. 

DFID’s experience in programmes on the ground should be coming back to London and informing policymaking in London, not vice versa, where Whitehall is dictating how DFID engages in fragile states on the ground.  Finally, it is really crucial that DFID has influence within Whitehall and that it is able to really challenge our short‑term policies, whether that is to do with a certain commercial aspect or to do with national security issues, and is able to stay, “Stop; you are potentially undermining years and years of work of upstream conflict prevention.”  Allowing it to have that voice, especially in the National Security Council, would be really important.  The UK should be investing in upstream long‑term conflict prevention, because otherwise we are going to be going from crisis to crisis to crisis.

Dr Norton: I touched on this earlier but, under the sustainable development paradigm and the shift towards universality and sustainability as the key things, arguably the most important thing that richer countries can do is reduce their own overconsumption and reduce their own contributions to unsustainable models for economic growth.  Policy coherence is absolutely fundamental in the climate space. 

Jessica Woodroffe: On gender equality, in some ways it is easier because so many of the issues are the same but, in terms of policy coherence, one thing I did want to say is that, as more and more ODA is going through non‑DFID departments, there are a number of things in place that scrutinise DFID’s assistance in relation to gender equality, for example, the Gender Act and the OECD gender equality marker, which DFID applies but FCO does not, and also all the analysis that DFID has done.  It is extremely important for this Committee to scrutinise whether the same levels of standards and scrutiny being put on ODA that goes through DFID are being applied to ODA that is going through other departments.

In terms of domestic implementation, I was saying before that DFID can and does play an extremely important leadership role in terms of gender equality, but it will only go on being able to do that if it is actively being seen to implement SDG 5 in the UK as well.  That comparative advantage that DFID has will start being undermined if HMG is not very serious about SDG 5 within the UK.

Q150   Jeremy Lefroy: Given that the United Nations, for all the problems it faces, is absolutely key to many of these issues, whether it is in stability, peacekeeping, peace enforcing or indeed in development, do you think the review places enough emphasis on the role of the United Nations in these various areas?  Perhaps, Thomas, you can comment on that.

Thomas Wheeler: Especially when it comes to issues of conflict and fragility, the UN plays a key role.  We welcome that DFID and the Secretary of State chaired a discussion with the UN Security Council looking at how its work relates to dealing with the root drivers of conflict.  At the same time, it is important that we are using the SDGs to focus on the root drivers of conflict from a developmental approach, rather than from a securitised approach.  This sits across different bits of the UN and all of those bits of the UN need to be engaged on how they are taking forward the SDGs, but looking especially at the developmental parts will be quite important.  I do agree overall that a strong focus on the UN’s role in these issues would be quite useful.  How the UN is going to carry this forward is going to be extremely important as well.

Dr Norton: Obviously the UN is central, and SDG 13 is the only one that specifies a UN process, the UNFCCC, so it is obviously central in the climate space.

Jessica Woodroffe: In my area around gender equality, UN Women needs to play a greater role than it has so far, because there is a danger that the northern donors are written off as a northern approach to gender equality that is inappropriate to the south.  I do not agree with that, but that risk is there.  Supporting UN Women to take that more internationalised approach is really important. 

Within the Multilateral Aid Review, I should say that DFID did very well in looking at gender equality criteria.  I know that is not quite an answer to your question, but it is important that the Multilateral Aid Review needs to be looking at the extent to which UN agencies are delivering the SDGs.  In relation to gender, it was doing that, but I am not sure about other areas.

Q151   Jeremy Lefroy: While I welcome those comments, it seems to me that, in the United Nations, we have a body that has huge potential but is not fulfilling that potential in so many areas.  We have talked about this in the context of CSOs earlier, but the contributions to core funding are simply not there.  We have heard about the WHO and lack of core funding there.  If you talk to our former colleague Stephen O’Brien, who is now head of UN OCHA, again he talks about his budget only being about 40% funded.  Do you think that the UK, perhaps surprisingly given that we have not put as much behind the UN over the past 20 or 30 years as we might have done, could be a real advocate for the importance of working together within the UN?  Obviously we are thinking particularly of Syria at the moment, but it is much wider. 

Jessica Woodroffe: That links back to one of the points that Ben was making in the previous session around how you define value for money as well.  As we have become narrower and narrower in the definition of value for money, that long‑term and behind‑the‑scenes pulling together and building of political will for long‑term change is not quantifiable in terms of most of the value for money agenda.  Those two things really go together, both for funding for CSOs and funding for multilaterals, particularly the UN body.  We do need to redefine what we mean by value for money.

Chair: Do you want to add anything?  There is no obligation.

Dr Norton: Are these closing remarks?

Chair: This is the end of the session, yes.  There are no closing remarks.  We do not want to overrun. 

Dr Norton: I wanted to come back to the issue that Thomas and Jessica both alluded to of the interconnections between the three areas.  Climate change will have a major impact on gender equality.  There is lots of evidence around that and there are various transmission channels for it.  There is obviously a very contested relationship in terms of climate stress and conflict.  My own view is that climate is best seen as something that contributes indirectly towards climate threats.  The threat multiplier language is used.  There is always some other failure in human arrangements when you get violent conflict in response to an environmental stressor, but that does not mean it is insignificant.  The interconnections between the three areas here are what I would like to finish on.

Chair: That is an excellent note on which to end the evidence session.  Can I say a massive thank you to the three of you?  In the space of just under 45 minutes, we have covered a great deal of ground and your evidence, all three of you, has been extremely helpful for our inquiry, so thank you very much. 

              Oral evidence: Sustainable Development Goals, HC 337                            1