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An endeavour by terre des hommes
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Institutionalised partnership between North and South ?
An endeavour by terre des hommes
By Wolf-Christian Ramm
The term 'partnership' is firmly established in the vocabulary of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in development cooperation. Organisations in the South, that implement the project work, are called project partners. But are they really treated as partners, or does the North dominate after all? The aid organisation terre des hommes Germany, which focuses on children, places partnership on a new basis.
There is much talk of the partnership between North and South, meant as a relationship of equals. The notion of solidarity between NGOs in the North and South is also based on the idea of partnership, and the 'advocacy' mission of the North NGOs arises from the concept of gaining a hearing in their own society for a partner's political concerns. At the same time, the practice of fund-raising NGOs makes clear that a donor-recipient relationship conflicts with the idea of a partnership based on equality. How can one prevent that behind nice-sounding rhetoric about partnership between the NGOs, in the end the principle 'Who pays, buys' applies after all? Thus that it is indeed the financing North NGO that determines which projects are promoted and which campaigns are implemented? That in the end the imbalance of the North-South relationship is also reflected in the asymmetrical relationship between NGOs in the North and South? Or put another way: can that be prevented at all?
An obvious point to begin with: there is no ready-made answer to the question of how one can deal with this strained relationship. It is about an objective contradiction for which there is no resolving synthesis. Aware of this, the developmental children's aid organisation terre des hommes has in recent years attempted to create structures which enable concrete inclusion of partners in decision-making on the political alignment and content focal points of the association terre des hommes Germany. Important and new thereby is the binding nature of this approach, for in the past there were many discussions and recommendations by partners on political subjects which terre des hommes could work on or simply ignore. For instance, the propositions of an international terre des hommes women's conference in May 1987 titled 'Women must be noisy' resulted in the association taking up the theme 'Girls', to which since then it has paid much more attention in its programme policy. Other conferences, such as a meeting in Colombia of project partners from Central and South America on the subject of 'War and violence', have also promoted the exchange and given important impulses for the programme policy.
But it was not until a big meeting of international partners in Bonn in September 1996 that the starting signal was given for an institutionalising of the partner dialogue. Now, seven years later, this is formally established with an organisational model for the participation of representatives of South NGOs and must be filled with activity. The location for that in future will be terre des hommes' two-yearly delegate conference in Germany which will be attended by representatives of the three pillars that form the association. These are: delegations of the German volunteers who work for terre des hommes in about 150 action groups around the country; mandated staff members from the association's national office in Osnabrück; and delegates from among the project partners, who contribute the opinion of the South. The function of the delegate conference is to discuss and take decisions on the medium-term focal points of the work and the strategic alignment of the association. The representatives of these three groups (it would be worth considering whether the promoters and donors should be included as a fourth group) are selected democratically according to a fixed quota system during the run-up to the conference, and thus are 'delegates'. That means they are democratically mandated to participate in the delegate conference. The first such conference will take place July 4-6 this year in Bad Honnef, near Bonn.
This selection is easy to make among the terre des hommes association's volunteer groups, and even more so at its national office. In contrast, selection among the project partners with their divergent political approaches and cultural differences, apart from their geographical and language dissimilarities, requires a great deal of time and effort. To deal with this, in each case a conference, a so-called regional platform, is planned for terre des hommes' various foreign project regions (Southeast Asia, India, South America, Central America, Southern Africa and the Sahel) and German project partners. Here, the project partners in each region will send representatives who in turn will select for their regions the planned number of delegates for the delegate conference. This is a selection process which is not unlike that of German political parties (progressing upwards from local to district to federal state level associations).
Of course, only issues of fundamental significance can and should be dealt with at a delegate conference. Single aspects or questions of the organisational implementation of decisions have no place there. What is important as part of the reform of terre des hommes as an association is the reinforcing of the idea of the connection between decision competence and responsibility. This means that those who intend to set political courses are also responsible for the results and assessment of those courses and the consequences to be derived from them. Random decisions that can arise due to an imbalance in the composition of bodies, or result from the targeted lobbying of particular interests which do not relate directly to the core mission of terre des hommes, are to be precluded by the construction of the delegate conference.
Can the concept of partnership be taken into account with such a model? The practice will show if the system proves itself. But we think the model is worth testing and developing further. It promotes the networking of and the exchange between North and South, creates greater communication among each other, and thus an indispensable prerequisite for mutual understanding. It means that for all the objectively existing and in many cases desired and culturally enriching differences, trust develops – trust that the actors of the various cultures and countries follow a common goal in solidarity with the organisation terre des hommes. The model, of course, has clear limits: it does not create partnership as a relationship between true equals; the financial dominance of the terre des hommes association remains in place. We must try to ensure that this relationship of material dominance has no influence on the quality of the discussion and the willingness of the South partners to give terre des hommes clear and critical recommendations for the future strategy, and that they will not be inhibited by their awareness of the financial disparity. Forerunner conferences and meetings have raised hopes that this will not be the case.
Another question can only be answered in the future: whether among such different actors there really are common answers to the challenges confronting terre des hommes. What if that is not the case? What if it proves that the worlds and expectations of the German delegates and the foreign project partners are too different for them to find common ground? The solution cannot then be to mask the difference between North and South in order to uphold a rhetorically fostered myth of partnership. Rather, the model must then be developed further or fundamentally reassessed. This will require new discussions, which in turn would be an expression of the striving for partnership between North and South. And the final question itself may remain open at the end: whether the difference between the social actors in the North and South enables at all a common interpretation of the developmental challenges. If this were not so, terre des hommes could not use the delegate system as a model of the joint development of political projects. But perhaps it will turn out the opposite: namely, if advancing globalisation results in the problems in the North and South, and thus also the NGOs' reaction to them, becoming ever more similar, and in the end the NGOs in the North and South themselves as well. Whether, on the other hand, that would be desirable is another story.
Wolf-Christian Ramm is the terre des hommes Chief Press Officer. c.ramm@tdh.de
http://www.tdh.de
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