Anglican Alliance director asks UK government to rethink plans to cut development spending
Episcopal News Service. March 2, 2011 [030211-04]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The director of the Anglican Communion's Anglican Alliance for Development, Relief and Advocacy asked March 2 that the U.K. government's international-development aid office reconsider proposed cutbacks in funding for some multilateral agencies, and cuts in spending to some developing countries.
Sally Keeble asked in a letter for a meeting with Department for International Development (DFID) officials to go through details of the proposed cuts which she said would have a serious impact on people in some very poor countries, according to an Anglican Communion News Service article.
The proposals are outlined in the department's report "Changing Lives, Delivering Results."
"In particular the decision not to fund work in Burundi, Lesotho, Niger, Cameroon, Angola and the Gambia puts pressure on some of the poorest countries, which have very particular challenges in terms of size, geography and in some instances conflict," Keeble wrote in the letter to Andrew Mitchell, secretary of state for international development. "Lesotho, for example, has suffered major loss of its adult population through HIV and AIDS and its geography makes economic diversification problematic."
"The direction of relatively small amounts of money away from these countries will have a disproportionate and negative effect," she added. "I would ask that you look again at the detail of the priorities for spending so that the lowest-income countries may be given an opportunity to meet the concerns of DFID about their capacity to deliver, or that funds could be delivered through different, and more effective mechanisms."
The full text of Keeble's letter is at the end of the ACNS story here.
The Anglican Alliance for Development, Relief and Advocacy is a new initiative which Keeble was appointed in December to direct. She began work on Jan. 10. Its mission is to build on work already being done across the communion, build capacity, coordinate and provide a clear voice for the Anglican Communion in international development, according to the ACNS article.
The organization was developed in response to a recommendation (paragraph C-44 here) from bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference to establish an organization "to coordinate and resource our commitment to the voiceless." That recommendation was affirmed by the Primates Meeting (paragraph 20 here) and of the Anglican Consultative Council (Resolution 14.03 here) in 2009.
Keeble, speaking Feb. 25 in New York to Anglican and Episcopal participants in the 55th annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, said the alliance has begun to operate on three principles.
First, it is meant to take its lead from people in congregations across the communion. "It's not going to be about anybody in the north or in an office in London, or anywhere else, telling other people what to do," she said.
Second, "it's going to be empowering," Keeble said, "so it's not going to start a whole lot of new things; it's going to look at what's happening" to determine what it can do to support the work that is already going on.
"And, thirdly, it's going to be bureaucracy light," she said, with a very small staff in London and regional facilitators in the southern regions of the communion who will have "a very direct relationship" with existing agencies such as Episcopal Relief & Development.
Those principles are aimed to support the three areas of coordination, including development, relief and advocacy.
Development policies "are going to be set by the south through a series of regional consultations," Keeble said. The first of those meetings will be held in Nairobi in April.
She also plans to have an interactive website where people can post information about their work. The site also will include a mapping project to show the development-related work being done in the communion. Keeble said it is obvious that work by global south dioceses can simply be plotted on the map.
"For the dioceses in the north, there's still some thinking going on about exactly what we map, because what we don't want to do is say the south does things and the north funds it," which, she said, might reinforce existing stereotypes. Keeble said that the north may well be invited to map outreach work being done in their dioceses, "but it might end up that we'll be mapping too much."
Keeble was clear to draw a distinction between the global north and south in the work of setting up the alliance. "There's still quite a challenge in thinking about what does the north bring," she said. "It can't just be money; it's got to be a more substantial, real, dynamic relationship."
She suggested that the north has things to learn from the south, especially in such issues as human trafficking and migration and refugee issues.
Keeble said she also is working with the Open University to provide access to training modules on basic community-development skills for remote learning.
Next year, there will also be a peace and reconciliation gathering for young people as well as some activities in conjunction with the Mothers' Union and connected with Mothering Sunday (traditionally the Fourth Sunday in Lent), she said.