Introduction: Reimagining International Development

Welcome to the Reimagining International Development issue of the journal. It is inspired by an online Conference titled Healing Solidarity: Re-imagining International Development, the brainchild of Mary Ann Clements, who is guest editor for this issue. The Conference was a week of online conversations, some recorded, others live, with activists, practitioners and thinkers interested in re-imagining international development practice, and reflecting on how to care for ourselves, and each other, in the process. Over 1, 500 people from all over the world engaged with the conference, and other online discussions and conferences have followed since¹.

Contributors to the conference included international development practitioners and many feminist activists working in social movements. Central to the conference and its successors – and to this journal issue – is the recognition that there will be no change in the ways in which wealth and power are so unequally distributed in the world unless development researchers, practitioners and policymakers do things differently at both the individual and the collective levels.

A clear message that emerged was the need to reconceptualise the work of the international development sector from a frame of benevolence, (with all the vertical hierarchies it implies between ‘givers’ and receivers’), to one of solidarity, marked out by equality and horizontal relationships. Framing international development as an act of benevolence from ‘developed’ country populations to distant communities in ‘developing’ countries ignores the fact that all are located in an interdependent and unequal global system. This system relies on racialised, gendered, relations of exploitation, extraction and inequality.

The Conference focused in particular on racism in international development, which is both pervasive and strongly-rooted. Feminists in development have highlighted the sexist and racist biases in human institutions (Kabeer 1994), and international development institutions specifically (Goetz 1995). Power operates both overtly, and also through unconscious socialisation (Lukes 2005). In international development organisations, deep structures of organisational culture are biased to hold inequalities in place (Rao et al. 2016). Racism and sexism can be seen in all aspects of organisational life, including decision-making, governance, spending patterns, staff selection, and remuneration.

Lisa VeneKlasen, the Executive Director of feminist organisation JASS, expressed the link between transforming the sector and individual change in these terms, in the 2018 Healing Solidarity Conference:

Chang[ing] the culture and how we see ourselves … means changing who we are and being comfortable to be able to step into something that maybe we didn't know … [otherwise] we're not going to be able to contribute to major, major shifts. So it is really about changing who we are, but from a place of much deeper politics.

Building on this, a key theme of the 2018 Healing Solidarity Conference was the need to uncover and root out the deep prejudices and assumptions that perpetuate inequality. In a post #AidToo world where patriarchal power and privilege are being called out by feminists and anti-racists in humanitarian response and development interventions, can international development rise to the profound critiques of it and become the force for justice and equality that so many working in the sector want it to be? Intersectional feminist analysis emphasises the specific experience of multiple types of discrimination, for example the intersection of gender, race and class in shaping the choices and chances of women living in poverty (Crenshaw 1991). Intersectional feminists are working as change agents both inside and outside the international development sector.

Another key theme of the 2018 Conference was the need to recognise the toll that this activism takes on the minds and bodies of activists, and to focus on replenishing and restoring our energies. This work commonly places activists at risk of violence and abuse. Even if these immediate acute fears are not present, burn-out is common. Jessica Horn, writer and Director of Programmes at the African Women’s Development Fund, writes about feminist care and wellbeing in this issue. She spoke pointedly in the Conference about the lack of investment in the wellbeing of practitioners in the international development sector.

This issue and the themes within it

What insights can activists offer to re-imagine international development and humanitarian work that can deliver economic, social and political justice? Three of the article writers in this issue participated in the Conference. They are joined here by others who responded to the journal’s open call for contributions. They adopt an intersectional feminist analysis to re-imagine the sector.

Articles here look at work to challenge inequality, marginalisation and poverty across the world, rejecting the narrow traditional focus of international development on so-called ‘developing countries’. They focus on a wide range of organisations, ranging from university departments to women’s rights organisations, to service providers working at community level. They describe attempts to share power and decision-making in more meaningful ways, address the post-colonial roots of development, and challenge the racism, colonialism and sexism in our organisational ‘deep cultures’, structures and ways of working.

The authors focus on work undertaken in solidarity rather than unequal, extractive partnerships. They also consider the challenges of doing this work in a world where norms of fundraising stress one-way accountability to donors. This requires new ways of funding and public engagement that rejects stereotypes that mislead and misrepresent. Authors also pay due attention to the link between the personal and the political, focusing on healing and wellbeing in the international development sector on multiple levels: from the individual to the collective.

Below, in the sections that follow, we focus on some of the key themes that emerge for us from the articles here.

Re-imagining international development as equal and global

International development is a construct built up over many years, with firm roots in a colonising and racialised world view and its thinking and systems. To save humanity and the planet, we must seek out alternatives and enable those who are familiar and expert in them to occupy spaces and take the lead in struggles for justice and equality.

In their article here, Neha Kagal and Lia Latchford critique the notion of ‘development’ itself, asking who and what is being ‘developed’, and by whom? They draw on their experience in IMKAAN, a diaspora organisation located in London, UK. IMKAAN works with women in the Black communities there, focusing specifically on ending violence against women. It also works internationally. The UK is a high-income country that sends funds overseas for development, but IMKAAN works with women whose realities span these different geographies. An intersectional analysis focusing on inequalities and poverty provides an infinitely more useful way of understanding the complex world we live in. International development organisations focusing only on ‘developing countries’ risk perpetuating racist stereotypes about poverty and its causes being somehow distinct and separate from poverty ‘at home’. This does a disservice to communities facing marginalisation and poverty everywhere.

In another article here, Emily Regan Wills et al. discuss an initiative run from a Canadian academic institution that sought to move beyond established development processes to create a programme to support migrants to Canada, the communities they had left behind, and indigenous people living close to the institution. Again, it bridged the gap between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’, showing this to be a stereotype that fails to capture the realities of people who are marginalised from power due to intersecting, complex inequalities. The programme was rooted in indigenous principles and non-hierarchical approaches, using participatory approaches to research the realities of migrants to Canada and their home communities.

In her article, Alex Martins considers how the concept of equity can be used as a lever for transforming the international development sector so that it better responds to growing inequality within countries. There are ‘global South’ communities living in wealthy countries that see themselves as ‘global North’. Alex examines equity in development from four different perspectives: language, knowledge production, funding, and partnerships, recognising that:

if we are to reimagine development in a genuine rather than a cosmetic way, we need to address the root causes behind global inequity and grapple with entrenched power imbalances. By explicitly using the term ‘equity’ in the context of re-imagining the global development system, we both acknowledge this reality and make explicit the fact that a rebalancing of power relations and global resources is necessary if we are to achieve a more equal global system.

(this issue, 135)

In her article, Tina Wallace reflects on her experience of working on gender equality and women’s rights in the international development sector for the past four decades. Tina was one of the feminists who started the first INGO gender and development unit, in Oxfam in 1984. These feminists were informed by the passion for finding an alternative vision of development forged in the national liberation struggles of formerly colonised countries, and other countries locked in similar relations of extraction and exploitation that endured beyond Independence. A commitment to internationalism and solidarity inspired the work.

Tina’s article tracks some of the trends that have challenged INGOs aiming to reflect these values. The struggle for justice depends on many different actors, providing different parts of the jigsaw puzzle: services, funding, collaboration with movements, lobbying governments and mainstream development organisations to challenge their belief-systems, cultures, policies and processes. But a major change is seen by some commentators to have taken place in the architecture of development, as INGOs have come to more closely resemble the mainstream development sector they once strove to hold to account.

Decolonising knowledge, ideas and practice

Decolonising development is about ending the assumption that international development practitioners, policymakers and researchers necessarily know best: an infantilising assumption that was challenged by proponents of participatory development many decades ago now, but which still lingers. In Healing Solidarity’s second conference in November 2019, Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of Oxfam GB, was interviewed by Mary Ann:

 … this notion that we know best or we are good people. You know, that's another development characteristic, I think.

The article by Jessica Horn, mentioned earlier, highlights a way for development to re-imagine itself by learning from feminist practitioners rooted in the communities they are working in. She sees this as a ‘consciously decolonial’ approach. Her study shows feminist practitioners working in solidarity with women, through the African Institute for Integrated Responses to Violence Against Women and HIVAIDS (AIR). It questions the presumption that orthodox Western psychology offers the most appropriate frameworks for understanding and designing mental health interventions targeted at African women and the practitioners engaging them. Instead, the African feminist practitioners drew on thinking and developed practices that are rooted in the realities of the women with whom they are working.

In their article first introduced above, Neha Kagal and Lia Latchford argue that an understanding of development is needed that is predicated upon ‘truth-telling’. For them, this involves engaging with discomfort, being honest about our histories, understanding our positionality and power, and thinking about why we do the work that we do. They value recognising and valuing ‘herstory’ – women’s alternative accounts of what has happened before – in particular,

‘those who came before us’: in the herstories, activist struggles and resistance movements of Black feminists across the globe.

(this issue, 11).

The article here by Brianna Strumm explores the scope for international development practitioners coming into communities as outsiders offering technical skills to decolonise their development practice, using the feminist practice of critical reflection. This offers a way of raising awareness and ‘outing’ inequality between development workers and the women and men seen as ‘beneficiaries’ of their initiatives. This article explores the use of critical reflection by a small group of women development practitioners with a background in social work. The members of the group were interviewed about their engagement with varying reflective practices while working in various global communities. As Brianna highlights, critical reflection is well-known and familiar to social and health workers (and to feminist researchers, as seen in our recent issue²). But it is less familiar in international development. It holds powerful potential for questioning and disrupting power, and lays the ground for change at an interpersonal level.

Another article in this issue, from Ella Scheepers and Ishtar Lakhani, emphasises the need for critical reflection in feminist organisations, too. Their article explores the experiences of South African social justice movements undergoing the transition into more formal organisations. They argue that feminists need to be vigilant that their sense of their organisations as founded on feminist principles does not lead them to ignore silencing, prejudice and sidelining of staff and partner activists, as they formalise and grow. They say:

Even feminists with the best intentions can create exploitative and unjust organisational environments. If we commit to critically reflecting on our work, this helps to minimise the risk and address issues when they arise.

(this issue, 119)

Funding women’s movements: a critical factor in development

Where does funding for activism to realise economic, political and social justice come from, and which actors receive it? How is it administered and what impact does it have? A range of feminist voices in this issue focus on this most important of concerns. Feminists are sharing insights with colleagues about the needs of women’s movements for longer-term, core funding with fewer strings attached to it, enabling transformational change. Multi-country research has shown, for example, that feminist movements are the single most important factor in influencing government policies on violence against women (Htun and Weldon 2013).

Feminists – and other social justice activists the world over - build and run movements and organisations that reflect the agendas of women on the ground. They meet, identify common goals, agree agendas and begin to organise on tiny budgets. When their movements and organisations grow, finding additional funding can require them to adopt a different way of working, focusing on shorter-term project work that fits donor priorities. Sadly, as Tina Wallace highlights in her article, funding relationships have morphed into more controlling arrangements than she recalls in earlier decades. In turn, Emily Regan Wills et al. discuss some of the funding challenges relating to their work in their article.

The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) have conceptualised a feminist funding ecosystem (Miller and Jones 2019). Funding bodies like FRIDA now exist, deliberately set up to fund young feminist activism (Bashi et al. 2019). International development can play an important role in partnering feminist organisations and funders. Some institutional donors are realising the importance of social movements for the real change they wish to see in the world, and shifting towards direct funding for women’s rights organisations, globally. An example of this is Comic Relief (personal experience, Mary Ann Clements 2020). This positive trend is welcome. But the challenge now is also to advocate for flexibility within these agreements, a flexibility many of the pioneering participatory funds are demonstrating already, but which feels alien to the technocratic tendencies of many more mainstream donors. This work requires trust between the stakeholders and, critically, an equal relationship between them.

Oxfam has published a report, A Leap of Faith, focusing on the alignment and the gaps in the visions of donors and women’s movements (Sillis et al. 2019). In their article in this issue, Rania Eghnatios and Francesca El Asmar share the experience of implementing RootsLab, a feminist programme piloted in Lebanon by Oxfam, Global Fund for Women, FRIDA|Young Feminist Fund, and Young Foundation. It works with young grassroots activists, supporting feminist movement-building.

Alternative ways of funding progressive work are constantly evolving. In her article here, Jenny Hodgson explores community philanthropy – a form of solidarity giving that has started to gain visibility as a specific practice that has relevance to the broader field of international development because it turns on its head the idea that communities always need external funds. Her article discusses a range of examples from a global cohort of 16 organisations that identify with the community concept. Once again, the concepts of trust and social capital are critical elements of this approach. Jenny argues that community philanthropy is not merely emerging as a useful support structure within the context of mainstream development, but that by focusing on practices and structures that emphasise people and their assets, it is structurally equipped to disrupt and democratise that system.

Re-imagining resilience: resisting violence and abuse

Two key themes in this issue centre on violence and abuse of those involved in one way or another with the struggle to obtain resources, security and justice for the marginalised.

The #AidToo movement and its challenge to patriarchal power

A critically important catalyst to re-imagine development – or consider the alternatives to development – is the existence of egregious injustice within the development and humanitarian sectors, which have harmed the people we exist to support.

The #AidToo movement was catalysed by the revelations of Oxfam humanitarian workers paying young women for sex in Haiti and elsewhere in 2018. It is now clear that such abuse is widespread in the international development sector, as it is in wider societies worldwide. Previous similar abuses were uncovered in 2001 by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and Save the Children UK by peacekeepers in West Africa (UNHCR and SCF-UK 2002). Just as #MeToo called out the abuse of power of Hollywood film directors, #AidToo calls out the abuse of power by men placed in positions of authority by development and humanitarian agencies. Feminists have pointed out the obvious fact that this is an extreme manifestation of patriarchal power and its effect on the bodily integrity of women and girls – and also men and boys.

While abuses exist in all contexts – gender-based violence, sexual violence and violence against women and girls are all universal features of human life – the #AidToo case has particular factors tying into the themes in this issue. The fact that these abuses are perpetrated by development workers – often white, almost always outsiders from elsewhere, ‘experts’ sent in to rescue local people from famine or conflict or disease – remind us of the racism and unequal power inherent in development and in the colonial era that preceded development. The depiction of women under colonial rule as exotic, of cultures as sexually permissive, and of men as having needs that have to be satisfied regardless of the impact on other human beings: all this is so blatantly and obviously sexist and racist, yet these images and ideas lurk below the surface of mainstream understanding.

Whatever your stance on sex work/prostitution – and this is a contested area for feminists³ – the imbalances of power in #AidToo are stark and the commitment of the development and humanitarian sectors to adopt safeguarding practices that will robustly prevent such abuses in future has been made. In a world where misogyny and rape culture persist we must all contribute to work for an end to violence against women and girls meanwhile, the jury is out as to whether these commitments will be effective for the future.

A current response of international development organisations is to focus on strengthening their safeguarding practices and beyond this, committing themselves to becoming feminist organisations. They are committing – at least at the level of rhetoric – to the importance of uncovering sexist and racist ‘deep cultures’, to reform themselves and ensure the safety of all who come into contact with their staff and programmes on the ground. We had hoped to have an article in this issue which focused on these concerns in detail, but were ultimately unsuccessful. We encourage our readers to turn instead to the excellent thinkpiece commissioned by the UK Gender and Development Network (GADN) by Zimbabwean feminist Nancy Kachingwe⁴.

Self-care: healing solidarity in a hostile world

Women’s human rights defenders attest to the violence associated with the extractive economy seen in many countries today⁵. Today’s violent land and resource grabs resemble the earlier conquests and colonialism of past centuries. Women human rights defenders are regularly reported as victims of femicide or survivors of violent attacks and abuse. Fighting for a world where people have rights to the resources they need for survival, where economic growth is not seen as a goal in itself, where money and materialism are not objects of worship, takes its toll on all who participate.

Clearly, protection is needed from the law and from government security agencies. INGOs need to ensure that working environments support the activists working with and for them. Yet a distressing reality is that many have not done this in the past, failing to make the effort to transform work culture so that it reflects feminist values: for example, tolerating sexual abuses that go on in plain sight in premises belonging to INGOs.

But beyond this level there is much day to day, low-key stress that takes its toll on activists, exhausting and depleting them and making burn-out and exit from justice work more likely. In their article, Shawna Wakefield and Kristen Zimmerman share examples from feminist movements and organisations that are drawing on therapeutic and spiritual practices, to replenish faith and boost the resilience of activists.

They point out that fostering feminist leadership in INGOs and the development sector more widely is about much more than programmes to support skills-building for leadership – a key focus for many. They articulate the issues as follows:

The goal of many international development organisations is to end the structural inequalities that drive poverty and suffering. In common with women’s rights and other social justice organisations and movements, they aim to transform their communities, social institutions, systems, and cultures. But as highlighted earlier, while their purpose is to foster change and movement towards sustainability, justice and equity, the practice and culture of these organisations often fall short, replicating the harmful dynamics of society at large. Urgency, short term gains, scarcity, martyrdom, fragmentation, and silos are just some of the habits that create conditions where organisers feel ‘stuck’, burnt out and ineffective. At the same time, the intensifying cultural, political and climate crises we face as a society are causing many feminist leaders and organisers to reflect on our deeper purpose and what might be needed at this historical moment.

(this issue, 164)

Conclusion

How, then, can we re-imagine international development into a practice of solidarity that ends injustice in a global context? These articles, provide us with a number of pointers forward. The work of re-imagining development is gathering pace. Transnational solidarity is required between activists working across the globe to realise a vision of justice, development and peace. We are optimistic that intersectional feminist perspectives can enable the development sector to transform, in line with this vision.

Notes on Contributors

Mary Ann Clements is a feminist writer, facilitator, activist and coach, and the convenor of the Healing Solidarity Conferences and the Healing Solidarity Collective (https://healingsolidarity.org). Postal address: c/o The Editor, Gender & Development, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Oxford OX4 2JY, UK. Email: [email protected]

Caroline Sweetman is Editor of Gender & Development.

Notes

1 For more information, see https://healingsolidarity.org/ (last checked 17 February 2020). Whilst the conversations were initiated and hosted by Mary Ann, a middle-class white woman, based in the UK, who has worked in the sector for the past two decades, she deliberately endeavoured to ensure that a majority were people from black and minority ethnic groups (BAME) and were located in, and working in, a number of different parts of the world.

2 See the 2019 Feminist Values in Research issue, Gender & Development 28(3).

3 For a useful summary of these different stances, see Mirna Guha’s article in the 2018 Sexualities issue of Gender & Development 26(1).

4 To read this article, see https://gadnetwork.org/gadn-resources/2018/8/30/confronting-sexual-violence-and-abuse-in-the-aid-industrial-complex-towards-transnational-feminist-responses (last checked 17 February 2020).

5 For more on the links between violence against women in regions where the extraction of natural resources is occurring see the 2017 Natural Resource Justice issue of Gender & Development 25(3). For an account analysing the connection between violence against indigenous women and extractive industry in the US, see https://truthout.org/articles/extractive-industries-are-fueling-violence-against-indigenous-women/ (last checked 17 February 2020).