Addressing Gender & Protection Issues During Humanitarian Emergencies

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Nimarta Khuman is a Gender and Protection Advisor at UN Women under the Australia Assists Program, managed by RedR Australia. Her role involves supporting the Vanuatu Government’s Department of Women Affairs and Gender and Protection Cluster to address gender and protection concerns related to the Ambae emergency and other natural disasters.

PORT VILA, Vanuatu, Aug 19 2019 (IPS) – Vanuatu is among the world’s ‘most at-risk’ countries to natural disasters. In the last 12 months alone, the country has faced multiple volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, cyclone and tsunami.

The largest humanitarian emergency was caused by volcanic eruptions on the island of Ambae which resulted in the evacuation of over 8,000 people. Some displaced communities have resettled in the islands of Santo and Efate, but land ownership is a contentious issue.

Vanuatu also has the lowest rate of women in parliament and ministerial positions globally and high rates of gender-based violence. Cumulatively, these issues increase the risks affecting women and girls in humanitarian emergency and recovery periods.

In an interview with UN Women, Nimrata Khuman explains what it means to incorporate gender and protection in humanitarian action and why it’s important.

Excerpts from the interview:

What is meant by “Gender and Protection in Humanitarian Action”?

When we talk about gender and protection in humanitarian action, we need to ask the questions about whether we have addressed the different needs of women, girls, men and boys in our humanitarian response, because there is no “one size fits all” approach that works.

Every context in which a disaster has happened is different and women and girls may have unique risks, vulnerabilities and capabilities. There are other factors that can contribute to their marginalization and vulnerability, such as disability, age, sexual orientation, income and location.

The Department of Women’s Affairs leads the Gender and Protection Cluster in Vanuatu in partnership with CARE and Save the Children. The Cluster works to promote women’s voice and leadership, prevent and respond to gender-based violence, and ensure child protection and disability inclusion in any humanitarian response is designed and implemented for the affected population.

During the humanitarian response to the Ambae disaster for example, referral pathways for gender-based violence and child protection services were developed and Gender and Protection Cluster partners raised awareness within communities about violence prevention and where to go to access assistance.

Partners also developed and disseminated information for communities about their rights during evacuation and resettlement, conducted leadership training for women involved in humanitarian response, provided psycho-social support services and child-friendly spaces to help children cope with the effects of the disaster.

Volcanic eruption in Vanuatu

How did you incorporate gender and protection in the humanitarian response in Vanuatu?

The Gender and Protection Cluster ensures that people’s rights are protected and respected, and they can access services across all sectors safely and with dignity. This involves assessing needs, referring concerns and raising awareness among communities and service providers (such as agencies involved in food distribution, shelter, education and water, sanitation and hygiene).

It also involves advocating with other ministries to include gender and protection concerns into their response. During the Ambae State of Emergency, a joint Gender and Protection and Health Cluster was established to provide services across sectors for people with disabilities.

The Gender and Protection Cluster worked with the WASH Cluster to raise awareness on issues such as safety, lighting and privacy for toilet and shower facilities. During the Ambae and Ambrym responses, partners also integrated information on gender equality and menstrual hygiene management when speaking to communities.

We have also drawn attention to the lack of access to land and income for displaced communities, exposure to violence and delays in children’s education, when advocating with the Government.

We are now in the Ambae recovery phase and have been working with the Prime Minister’s Office to ensure all sectors include relevant actions and budgets for gender and protection in the programmes under the Ambae and Affected Islands Recovery Plan.

What has been the role of women in the different crises in Vanuatu in the past year?

Women are a vital part of humanitarian response and the ongoing emergencies have presented an opportunity to increase women’s participation and leadership in humanitarian action. In the Department of Women’s Affairs for example, seven of the ten staff who have been involved in leading response in different provinces are women.

The National Disaster Management Office and NGOs have involved senior female staff members in coordinating and responding to emergencies. The Vanuatu Women’s Centre has also been very active in efforts to prevent and respond to gender-based violence in emergencies and has provided support for life-saving counselling, health, legal assistance and access to justice services for survivors of violence.

At the community level, women are pivotal to disaster preparedness, and for designing response and resilience activities that meet the needs and realities of their communities. Gender and Protection Cluster partners are implementing programmes involving women in Community Disaster and Climate Change Committees and increasing women’s voice in decision-making at the local level.

But we need more women in leadership positions within communities, in the humanitarian sector and in Ministries and Departments which make decisions on policy, planning and financial resource allocations.

What are the biggest challenges that you are facing in your work in Vanuatu?

Since I arrived in Vanuatu a year ago, there have been five natural disasters due to the volcanic eruptions in Ambae, volcanic eruptions and earthquake in Ambrym, a tsunami affecting Aneityum, Tropical Cyclone Oma, and most recently, the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle, which has the potential to destroy livelihoods of tens of thousands of people if left untreated.

These disasters have caused people to leave behind their homes, their land and jobs. Integrating into new communities has also not been an easy process for the displaced. Some are still living in tents in Santo and there is tension between displaced people and host communities due to the lack of essential services and resources in resettlement sites.

Some of the key issues that the Gender and Protection Cluster addresses in times of emergencies include violence against women and children, family separation, inclusive response for marginalized groups and ensuring that people can access services across sectors.

Although we have been able to shape policies, we need them to be implemented down to the community level. For this to happen, we need increased awareness that addressing gender and protection in humanitarian action is lifesaving and planning and budgeting needs to reflect that.

More initiatives are also required to prepare communities for the effects of natural disasters and to ensure that they are supported in the recovery phases.

What innovative approaches have worked so far?

Listening to communities and community-led solutions have been key in the programmes developed by the Gender and Protection Cluster partners. In Vanuatu, we have very strong church and chief systems and the Gender and Protection Cluster has been working with both in disaster preparedness, emergency and recovery.

Partners have trained church leaders and chiefs in community-based protection, peacebuilding, violence prevention and referral pathways. Churches are often used as evacuation centres and in the recovery phase, the Vanuatu Christian Council has mapped churches and assessed inclusivity of design in different islands.

The Vanuatu Women’s Centre has trained church leaders and chiefs to become male advocates and other partners have included local chiefs in their awareness-raising activities to ensure women’s leadership and voice is factored into response programmes.

The joint Gender and Protection and Health Cluster for the Ambae State of Emergency was also the first of its kind in Vanuatu and demonstrated that collaboration across different sectors and ministries can increase access to services for the most vulnerable.

Building upon lessons learned from recent disasters, in the next year we will be working on strengthening preparedness and response at the local level and developing protocols for elimination of violence against women and girls in emergencies.

We will also be training government, NGO partners and community leaders in Gender and Protection in Humanitarian Action and setting up Gender and Protection Committees in each of the six provinces of Vanuatu.

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A Rural Sanitation Model That Works

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A woman collects the drinking water from the third tap in Simlipadar village in Thuamul Rampur, Kalahandi | Picture courtesy: Ajaya Behera

Raibari Bewa standing near the toilet, bathroom unit and collecting water from the third tap in Dudukaguda village, in Thuamul Rampur block, Kalahandi district of Odisha. On the walls, details of Swachh Bharat Mission benefits availed by her in Odia | Picture courtesy: Ajaya Behera

BHUBANESWAR, Odisha, India, Jul 30 2019 (IPS) – Research and experience across more than two decades in rural Odisha, India, show that an effective rural sanitation model requires both financial assistance and an integrated water supply.

There are studies and field reports that have analysed the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) in terms of coverage and use of toilets in rural India. The official government survey, the NARSS 2018-19, shows that 93 percent of rural households have access to a toilet and 96 percent of those having a toilet use them. Critiques of the survey point out the contradictions between NARSS and micro-level assessments in different parts of India. Other studies point out issues related to how comprehensive the approach to sanitation needs to be, if SBM is to truly address the large scale problems of ill-health, malnutrition, and poor quality of life caused by poor sanitation practices.

The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation has already issued guidelines for follow-up components, such as the ‘Advisory on ODF Sustainability interventions‘. It is quite likely that with the Prime Minister and his government taking charge for the second term, the sustainability of the first generation SBM efforts will be given high priority. In this context, it is pertinent to throw light on some micro–level issues, based on more than two decades of experience in rural Odisha.

A rural sanitation model that works

Gram Vikas, the organisation I lead, started its work in rural sanitation in the year 1994. Our model of 100 percent coverage of all households in a village, all of them building and using household level toilets and a bathing room with piped water supply, has been recognised as a best practice nationally and globally.

Infrastructure alone is insufficient to sustain health benefits. Additional efforts are needed to motivate people to adopt safe sanitation practices…There are other aspects of personal hygiene and sanitation, including personal habits, disposal of child faeces, and menstrual hygiene; these need to be addressed by demonstrating workable models, accompanied by education

The integrated water, sanitation, and hygiene (WSH) intervention that we support rural communities with, is built on the following principles:

  • Participation of 100 percent of the habitation’s households; it is all, or none.
  • Cost sharing by the household, partially towards construction of the facilities, and fully for operations and maintenance.
  • Ownership and management by a village water and sanitation committee, consisting of representatives of all sections in the village.
  • A sanitation corpus fund built from a one-time contribution by all, towards providing cash incentives for future families in the village to build toilets and bathing rooms (ensuring 100 percent coverage at all times).
  • A maintenance fund through regular household fee collection, for maintenance of the piped water supply system.

In 25 years (up to March 2019), the Gram Vikas WSH model has been implemented in more than 1,400 villages, covering close to 90,000 households. The villages are financed primarily through the sanitation and rural drinking water schemes of the government, and Gram Vikas has mobilised private resources to fill in gaps.

What we learnt

Over the past two decades, working with rural communities of different types, we have realised that bringing about attitudinal and behaviour changes towards safe sanitation is not easy. When we began in the mid-1990s, saying that every house in the village will have toilets, bathing rooms, and piped water, most people laughed.

Between 1994 and 1999, we could cover only 30 villages—this resulted from our own efforts at motivating people, and not any felt desire on their part. Then started the gradual process of change—fathers of unmarried girls motivating future sons-in-laws’ village elders to take up the sanitation project; women taking the lead to convince their men to build toilets, and even stopping cooking for a day or two to make their husbands see reason; migrants who worked outside Odisha coming back to their own villages and motivating their parents, and so on.

When it comes to rural sanitation, government financial assistance matters  

Between 1999 and 2007, the government’s support to sanitation, as part of the then newly launched Total Sanitation Campaign, was INR 300 per household, for below poverty line families. Support for community-led, piped water supply projects came much later, in the form of Swajaldhara in 2003.

The prevalent thinking among policy makers in the early 2000s was that financial incentives were not necessary to promote rural sanitation. This was based on the limited success of the subsidy-led Central Rural Sanitation Programme, that ran between 1986 and 1998.

Financial incentives to rural households for building toilets is more than a subsidy, it’s about society meeting part of the costs of helping rural communities build a better life. To compare, urban dwellers who may have built their own household toilets, do not pay anything for removing the human waste from their premises; municipal governments ensure sewage lines and treatment plants. The cost of this (which is borne by the government) is not seen as a subsidy. And yet, the upfront payment made to rural households to help build toilets is looked down upon as wasteful expenditure.

In 2011, the policy moved to a higher level of financial incentives to rural households for constructing individual household latrines, mostly likely in recognition of the fact that rural households needed the financial incentive as motivation to change sanitation behaviours. But today, with statistics showing 93 percent or more coverage of toilets, the policy prescription is likely to move to the pre-2011 phase–big financial incentives are not needed for building rural household toilets.

Our experience has taught us that nothing can be further from the truth. First, actual coverage of usable toilets is likely much less than what the numbers show. Second, households will need support for repairs and upgradation of the already built latrines. In addition, there are two categories for whom the financial assistance must continue: those who, for various reasons, have not constructed latrines so far; and new households that have come up in villages that have already been declared open defecation free (ODF).

Availability of water in the toilet is critical to encouraging use and maintenance of the facility 

In most cases, where water is not available in proximity, the load on women to carry water has increased. A pour-flush latrine, the type mostly preferred, requires at least 12 litres of water per use. With 4-5 members in the household, the minimum daily requirement becomes about 60 litres, forcing women to collect at least three times the water they would otherwise collect. We have observed that without water in the household premises, women’s water carrying load increases to more than twice the pre-latrine times.

The addition of a bathing room, affords women more privacy, and a better way to keep themselves clean and hygienic. In most villages we have worked with, women especially, equate this part of their physical quality of life to what people in the city enjoy.

During the last few years, financial allocation for rural water supply has decreased. While the allocation to drinking water has reduced from 87 percent (2009-10) to 31 percent (2018-19), the allocation to rural sanitation has increased from 13 percent to 69 percent in the same period. This is definitely not a desirable situation, as noted by many.

Mainstreaming the community-owned and managed method of rural water supply will ensure equitable distribution 

Doing this, rather than pushing for large water supply projects across many villages, will give rural communities and local governments greater control over managing their resources and meeting the needs of every household in an equitable manner. The Swajal programme of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, which talks about village level, community-based water projects, is a step in the right direction. Much greater push is needed by the central government to ensure that the state-level apparatus moves to a more enabling and empowering approach in addressing rural drinking water needs.

Research and experience across more than two decades in rural Odisha, India, show that an effective rural sanitation model requires both financial assistance and an integrated water supply.

A woman collects the drinking water from the third tap in Simlipadar village in Thuamul Rampur, Kalahandi | Picture courtesy: Ajaya Behera

Second generation challenges

The water and sanitation infrastructure, when first built, contributes to a substantial decrease in water-borne diseases in villages. These are borne out of several studies conducted in villages in Odisha.

After the initial round of benefits, we find that the infrastructure alone is insufficient to sustain health benefits. Additional efforts are needed to motivate people to adopt safe sanitation practices. The ensuing issues have been highlighted by many. For instance, changing long-standing beliefs and attitudes related to toilet use requires intensive hand holding, particularly for older people. There are other aspects of personal hygiene and sanitation, including personal habits, disposal of child faeces, and menstrual hygiene; these need to be addressed by demonstrating workable models, accompanied by education.

From Gram Vikas’ experience in Odisha, we have been able to enumerate several challenges that need to be addressed. Even when piped drinking water exists, households prefer to store drinking water. We have found that handling of stored drinking water is an area that needs better education.

Disposal of child faeces, especially by mothers who do not think the child’s faecal matter is harmful, is another area of concern. We are also coming across new forms of discrimination in households, where menstruating women are not allowed to use the toilets and bathrooms.

While issues related to personal hygiene and washing hands with soap are already quite widely discussed, the next set of challenges relate to safe disposal and/or managing liquid and solid waste at the household and community level.

A charter of demands

We hope that the next iteration of Swachh Bharat Mission will truly lead to a Swachh Bharat. Based on our experience, we would like to draw the following charter of demands:
.

1. Strengthen the ways of providing household sanitation infrastructure

  • Add a bathing room component to the design and costing provided in the national guidelines; increase financial support per household to INR 18,000 for new entrants; allow additional funding of INR 6,000 per household for those wanting to add a bathroom to their existing toilets. 
  • Create provisions for repair or upgradation of toilets built, till 2018; provide for additional assistance to households whose toilets were built by contractors without involvement of the household. 
  • Provide financial assistance for new households in villages already declared ODF. 
  • Correct errors in the baseline of deserving households. 

2. Integrate piped water supply with sanitation at the household level, and facilitate greater community control over rural drinking water projects

  • Enlarge the scope for Swajal scheme by allocating more funds. 
  • Where ground water availability challenges dictate building of larger projects, it will make sense to separate the pumping and supply, from household distribution of water. The former could be done centrally for a large number of villages, while the latter could be managed by the communities at their level.
  • Make individual household–level piped water supply the standard design principle for rural water supply projects. 
  • Build community capacities to manage groundwater resources and undertake watershed and springshed interventions. 
  • Integrate water quality management as a community–level initiative, by demystifying testing technologies, and creating a wider network of testing laboratories. 

3. Deepen and integrate WSH interventions for better health and nutrition outcomes at the community-level

  • Incentivise states to achieve stronger schematic and financial convergence between National Health Mission and the Integrated Child Development Services at the intermediate and gram panchayat level.  

4. Create a multi-stakeholder institutional platform to deepen and sustain SBM across rural India

  • Incentivise states to enable Panchayati Raj Institutions to play a greater role in the SBM process.
  • Allow for more active participation of civil society organisations as facilitators and implementors, to support rural community–based institutions to adopt sustainable sanitation interventions. Provide financial incentives to such organisations based on outputs and outcomes.

Liby Johnson is the executive director of Gram Vikas, Odisha

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

 

Sri Lanka on Security Alert Long After Easter Bombings

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NEW YORK, Jul 3 2019 (IPS) – Sri Lanka continues to be on a security alert long after the devastation caused by a string of bombings on Easter Sunday this year.

Raisa Wickrematunge, Editor of Groundviews, told IPS: “There has been a tightening of security. There are now security checks being carried out outside hotels and shopping malls – either through scanners or bag and body searches”.

“At the St Anthony’s Church, where the first blast occurred, there are bag and body searches conducted before worshippers can go inside, and bags are left outside the Church premises. Many churches and some schools have also increased their security.”

Curfews were put into place and a social media ban was enacted temporarily, in order to prevent the graphic nature of the tragedies from being broadcast publicly. There has been much damage of the emotional and physical varieties in the once war ridden nation.

For one thing, this attack was not expected by the Christian minority in Sri Lanka. Despite this, they have persevered.

Father Rohan Dominic of the Claretian NGO told IPS: “For quite some time, there were attacks on the Muslim and Christian minorities by extremist Buddhists. In places, where the Buddhists were the majority, Christians lived in fear.”

However, in a turn of events that left many in shock, one of the minority groups seemed to be the ones that initiated the attacks that occurred on Easter.

All seven of the perpetrators allegedly belonged to a local Islamist group, National Thowheeth Jama’ath, according to government officials from the country.

In response to this, there have been bans put in place for burqas and niqabs, traditional facial coverings worn by Muslims and people have been denied entrance into establishments, even while wearing hijabs.

There were smaller bombings in Dematagoda and Dehiwala later on that same day. With a death toll of 290 people and 500 injured, domestic measures to protect the citizens were taken.

After its 26 year long civil war between the Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic groups came to an end in 2009, conditions in Sri Lanka were mostly calm.

However, on 21 April, 2019, the country erupted into violence. Three churches in the cities of Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo, along with three hotels in the city of Colombo, were targeted in bombings by a group of seven Sri Lankan citizens.

The churches were St. Sebastian’s Church, Shrine of St. Anthony Church and Zion Church and the hotels were Cinnamon Grand, Kingsbury Hotel and Shangri-La Hotel.

Sri Lanka is a country that is primarily Buddhist with a large Hindu population and Christian and Muslim minorities.

Father Dominic said that, “The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka was able to recover from the attack quickly and aided the survivors and the families of the victims by consoling and caring for them. The Church also has guided the Christian community at moments of anger and frustration in controlling their emotions and not to blame the Muslims. This position of the Church has helped to prevent violence and created common understanding and religious harmony.”

According to Wickrematunge, there has been much help in helping the community adjust to life after the attacks and in restoring what has been lost.

Other efforts have been led by organisations such as the Red Cross, Kind-hearted Lankans, the Archbishop of Colombo and the Church of the American Ceylon Mission in Batticaloa. There have also been crowdfunding efforts on popular websites like GoFundMe.

Since the attacks have affected lives in a physical and emotional way, the state has given financial support to the affected as of 21 June.

There has also been a trust fund set up for children who have lost family members to the attacks.

Some of the industries affected, such as tourism, have been offered subsidized loans in order to help with paying employees. Psychological support and educational resources are being provided to citizens as well.

While it has only been three months since the attacks affected the lives of many, steps towards rebuilding have been made and the future appears to be promising.

 

UN Says Kyrgyz Journalist Should be Freed

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Gulnoza Said* is Program Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Europe and Central Asia

Kyrgyzstan journalist Azimjon Askarov and his wife, Khadicha, pictured during a family vacation in Arslanbob in the summer of 2009. ‘This was Azimjon’s last summer of freedom,’ Khadicha told CPJ. (Askarov family)

NEW YORK, Jun 10 2019 (IPS) – On a recent morning in Bazar-Korgon, southern Kyrgyzstan, Khadicha Askarova was giving hasty instructions to her daughter about what needed to be packed.

They were about to set off: first for the capital Bishkek, some 600km from where they live, and then another 70km to a prison colony where her husband, Azimjon Askarov, was transferred in March.

But Askarov, a 68-year-old independent journalist and rights activist, shouldn’t be in jail at all. The U.N. Human Rights Committee ruled in 2016 that Askarov was subject to torture and mistreatment from the moment of his detention on June 15, 2010 to his speedy trial and subsequent imprisonment, and that he should be released immediately.

CPJ’s research into his case found that the original trial was marred by irregularities and allegations of torture, mistreatment and harassment of defendants, including Askarov, and their witnesses. But Kyrgyz authorities defied the U.N. resolution and in 2017, amid international outcry, upheld his life sentence.

Conditions in the new prison are harsh. In letters home, the journalist wrote that he had run ins with the guards and that prison officials punish detainees after visiting days. His health is also deteriorating and he has limited access to medication, the journalist’s wife, Askarova, said.

“What breaks my heart is to see how much he aged since being imprisoned. He used to be a man full of energy and vigor. Now, he is old, sickly, skinny, and there’s no way out of this situation for him,” she said, fighting back the tears when we spoke via a video messaging app earlier this month.

The couple, who have been married for over 40 years, now have limited contact: just six family visits and two phone calls a year. As Askarov wrote in a recent letter to his wife, “They like keeping us under a tight lid here. Communication with the outside world is banned.”

The letter, which his wife shared with CPJ, also gave a glimpse of the harsh prison conditions: “After family visits, inmates are punished by being forced to eat raw onions and carrots for several days.”

“On regular days, they give us pea soup that contains nothing but watery peas. On public holidays, we get what the prison administration calls plov [pilaf] but it is not more than 150g of rice cooked with some carrots, per person.”

Since Askarov’s transfer to a prison outside Bishkek in March, he wrote that he has had three “incidents” with prison guards. The journalist did not specify the nature of incidents, but wrote that guards were known for their mistreatment of and conflicts with inmates.

“There are few good ones among them”, he added, almost as if he was preventing possible punishment should the content of the letter became known to the guards.

One of the incidents was connected to the journalist’s poor health. He has the heart condition tachycardia, hypotension, and gets dizzy and nauseated if he stands for too long.

Under prison rules, if a guard enters a cell, the inmate must stand. “That’s the rule. Twice a day, guards enter cells. An inmate has to cite his full name and an article of the criminal code he was convicted of violating. But Azimjon was not able to stand straight for too long. His knees bend, he had to sit down. That was the ‘incident’,” the journalist’s wife, Askarova, told me.

Soon after the transfer, Askarov complained about his health to prison administration, and said that low blood pressure and a cold was diagnosed. “But they did not have any medication to give me,” he wrote.

Askarova told CPJ that doctors at the prison ask families to bring medication. “They rely on us for something that they ought to provide,” she said.

She added that the few visits they are allowed are emotional, and the travel hard and costly. She makes sure that one visit falls on her husband’s birthday, May 17. This year, the couple’s daughter and their three grandchildren also visited on his birthday, their first visit to a new jail.

‘I’m afraid they will forget how he looks’ Askarov’s wife says

Azimjon Askarov, pictured with his daughter Navruza and grandchildren, during a May 2018 visit in Bishek prison. The journalist was moved to a new prison in 2019 that bans families from taking photographs during visits. (Askarova family)

“The new prison is much farther from Bishkek. After a nearly 14-hour drive to Bishkek, we took another taxi to the prison, but then had to walk about seven kilometers in the heat and dust. It was especially hard for the little ones, although they were excited to see their grandfather. They are still little, and I am afraid they can forget how he looks like, how he sounds,” Askarova said.

Adding to that concern is a rule at the prison banning families from taking photographs during visits. “Now, I have to look at old pictures of Azimjon. They deprived me even of the photos of my husband,” she said.

Askarova said she would move to Bishkek to be closer to the prison, but she cannot sell the house that her husband has owned for decades. The authorities seized the journalist’s property after he was charged in 2010.

In 2015, the journalist’s lawyer successfully appealed against the seizure, but before Askarova had overcome a legal quagmire of changing the ownership, authorities placed a new lien on the house in February. She said she has started another appeal process.

Askarova said that before they visit each year on his birthday, the couple’s daughter Navruza, who lives in Uzbekistan, usually comes to Bazar-Korgon to help pack personal items, food, medicine and books. But it is Askarova who picks flowers from her garden and buys bouquets at a florist for her husband.

“He is an artist, you know. He loves flowers. I get the most beautiful ones for him. Many kinds, sometimes several bouquets,” she said.

Azimjon and Khadicha met at art college in the Uzbek capital Tashkent in 1974. They have been married for 42 years and raised four children, who live in Uzbekistan. He used to work as an artist. But every time he heard a neighbor complain of injustice, he felt the urge to help, Askarova said.

In the late 1990s, he started documenting the cases, mediating between his community members and law enforcement, and researching legal books. He eventually became a go-to person in Bazar-Korgon if the rights of a member of his community had been violated.

He was known for taking up the cases on police brutality. It was this reputation that led many people to come to him for help when violence against ethnic Uzbeks erupted in June 2010, she said.

In prison, Askarov started to paint again. In 2014, international and local activists organized an exhibition of Askarov’s work to raise awareness of his case. In 2018, he wrote a book, “I am happy,” which includes a dedication to his late mother, “who lost me, her son, during her and my life, and left this world, shocked by the greatest injustice.” Copies of the book are still available online.

During his imprisonment, Askarov studied English and is able to read the many cards sent to him from around the world, his wife said. She added that he has been studying Japanese from the books and dictionaries she brought him, and that he has become interested in herbal medicine because conventional medication was not available in prison.

Askarov has also kept a diary since 2010. “He writes down everything. I keep reading them in between prison visits. One word that he uses most frequently is freedom. When he sees rain through the cell window, he writes ‘I wish I was free to feel rain drops on my skin. When he sees snow, he writes ‘I wish I was free to be outside and enjoy the snow now’. Freedom is his main wish and goal. He lives for it,” Askarova said.

* Gulnoza Said is a journalist and communications professional with over 15 years of experience in New York, Prague, Bratislava, and Tashkent. She has covered issues including politics, media, religion, and human rights with a focus on Central Asia, Russia, and Turkey.

 

What Standardised Testing Doesn’t Tell Us About Learning

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When we say that children aren’t learning, what we mean is that they are not fitting into our assessment of their learning outcomes | Picture courtesy: Nilesh Nimkar

When we say that children aren’t learning, what we mean is that they are not fitting into our assessment of their learning outcomes | Picture courtesy: Nilesh Nimkar

THANE, MAHARASHTRA, India, Jun 6 2019 (IPS) – When we look at learning outcomes for children, we only look at standardised tests, ignoring any indigenous knowledge, language, or problem solving strategies they might have.

The brick kilns of Sonale were bustling with activity—children running around, indigenous technology being used, and lots of mathematics being done. I recently went there after a teacher from the nearby primary school approached our nonprofit, Quest, because the children living there were simply not learning. The concern was, if they didn’t even know their multiplication tables, how would they cope in classes V, VI, and VII?

So I went to see for myself. I asked these children, “To make the mortar for the bricks, how many pits have been dug?

“On one side 11; another side 12”

They also told me they would put three containers of raw material in each pit. So I asked them how many containers they would need in total, and after running off to count them, they came back with the right answers. They could also explain how they arrived at those numbers. What I found was that they were counting in threes. Not the way one recites the tables in the schools, but visualising it in their mind.

Clearly, these children knew how to multiply. That they failed to memorise their tables was beside the point. They had understood the concept and had demonstrated a strong meta-cognitive ability when they explained how they arrived at the answer

Clearly, these children knew how to multiply. That they failed to memorise their tables was beside the point. They had understood the concept and had demonstrated a strong meta-cognitive ability when they explained how they arrived at the answer. In my further conversations, I was amazed to see the kinds of calculations the children at the brick kilns did. For instance, 13 multiplied by 11 was done mentally because they were able to understand it within their own context (that of the brick kiln).

Standardised testing disadvantages marginalised children

This example illustrates one of the biggest challenges of our schools today—standardised assessment—which further disadvantages marginalised children. These children have a different type of cultural capital that schools and tests hardly recognise.

Western research in the field of math pedagogy points to the importance of children’s indigenous knowledge and strategies in solving problems and considers them to be the starting point for sound understanding of elementary mathematics. But what are those indigenous strategies in the Indian context? We still don’t know much about them. And our lack of knowledge results in us asking these children to run an unfair race.

Today, when we say that children from marginalised communities aren’t learning, what we mean is that they are not fitting into our assessment of their learning outcomes. By completely ignoring their indigenous knowledge, language, and problem-solving strategies, we have so far continued to focus on what they don’t know, and never paid attention to what they do know.

The process tells us more than just the outcomes

I do not deny the necessity of having some common indicators to understand the status of education in a given cluster, block, district, or state. But setting and chasing these indicators mindlessly could be dangerous.

Take for example, an encounter I had at an SSC exam centre in a rural school a few years ago. While I was visiting, I saw that the teachers were openly giving students answers to questions while they wrote their exams. When I asked why this was happening, a teacher said to me, “These children are weak from the beginning. It is almost impossible that they pass the exam on their own. If they fail, it will affect the result of our school and this would create a lot of trouble for us.”

This encounter is a classic example of what will happen if we neglect the process of learning and just focus on the numerical indicators of success. Our belief tends to be that if we can control learning outcomes, the quality of education will improve. But children can rote learn, or use unfair ways to pass their exams—we have no system that can check it at scale. What’s more, we are forgetting to track whether or not these children truly understand what they’ve been taught.

Ever since the ASER and other such reports have been published, we’ve been talking about how poor the learning outcomes are. But what have we really done to change things? We have been experimenting with examinations more than the actual process of learning, finding newer and newer ways to test the learning outcomes. But, if a pipe is choked, no matter what bowl you put under the opening, no water will drip into it. Similarly, no matter what exams, standard tests, and evaluation tool we use, only a little will change if we fail to address the core issues related to the process of learning.

When we say that children aren’t learning, what we mean is that they are not fitting into our assessment of their learning outcomes | Picture courtesy: Nilesh Nimkar

“What I found was that they were counting in threes. Not the way one recites the tables in the schools, but visualising it in their mind” | Picture courtesy: Nilesh Nimkar

What needs to be done

1. Strengthen the process, invest in teachers

One of the positive outcomes of the Right to Education (RTE) Act is that it improved enrolment rates. But we know that it’s not enough to get children into schools. We need to alter our schools to meet children’s needs. If we want to set the process of education right, we have to strengthen its most impacting factor, the teacher.

Teacher education and ongoing teacher professional development are areas where we haven’t paid much attention. Instead of offering our teachers quick fixes to the challenges they face, we need to begin working with, and for our teachers.

One example of how to do this could be through a technology based distant mentoring system for teachers working across geographies. Quest, the nonprofit I run, has a system like this on a much smaller scale—here, teachers send audio recordings of their classroom activity to mentors (experienced teachers, teacher-educators, or researchers in the field of pedagogy), who then provide them with ongoing feedback to help them fine-tune their skills. This type of support system needs to be created on a larger scale.

2. Change the way we test

We need to alter the tools and parameters we use to assess success. We had a chance to do this when the idea of continuous comprehensive evaluations was introduced. However, the teachers and education community at large could not free themselves from the idea of examinations, and we lost a golden opportunity to bring our focus on to the process.

In a country as diverse as India, the assessment framework could be common for all. But the actual tests should be local and culturally appropriate. For example, I have seen assessment tests that show a picture of a well-maintained French garden or a city park, expecting a rural child to talk about it. In this situation it is obvious that the child will show poor oral expression.

Or yet another example is that of asking children to write words only from the ‘standard’ language—when in reality, Marathi spoken in different parts of Maharashtra is not the same. But normally the assessments are not sensitive to this regional variation, which means that children with a home language that is different than the standard variant of Marathi will always perform poorly.

The question we must ask ourselves is, do we want to make the education system more inclusive, or do we want to use it as a sieve to weed out the ‘weaker’ children? We need to design an overarching framework and build a bank of regionally, culturally appropriate testing items. Unless we do this our focus will always remain on what children don’t know.

Nilesh Nimkar has over 20 years’ experience in the field of early childhood education, elementary education, teacher education and curriculum development. He has initiated several innovative programs for teachers and children, specially in the rural and tribal areas. He has received the Maharashtra Foundation Award for ‘Outstanding social work in the field of education’.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

 

India’s Most Significant Innovations Have Roots in Civil Society

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Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Development & Aid, Headlines

Opinion

Handpumps, participatory rural appraisals, wadi programmes, and so on, all came from an innovation or technology developed by civil society | Picture courtesy: Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)

Handpumps, participatory rural appraisals, wadi programmes, and so on, all came from an innovation or technology developed by civil society | Picture courtesy: Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)

AHMEDABAD, GUJARAT, India, Jun 4 2019 (IPS) – When we look at some of the things we take for granted in India today, there is a common thread to all of them. Every single one. They all originated from civil society.

People hear the word civil society and react differently; and it depends on where they come from. For the business leader, social and environmental concerns are impediments to business. “Environment ke liye poora project band hojata hai, what about growth, what about the economy?” (Entire projects have to be shut down for the sake of the environment).

I’ve also been in conversations with some government officers who say, “woh kaam chhota karte hain aur credit bahut le lete hain. Kaam toh hum karte hain paisa toh hamara hai.” (The nonprofits hardly do any work but take all the credit. We are the ones who do the work, the ones who put in the money).

But nothing is farther from the truth. When we look at rural India, and look at some of the things we take for granted today—be it women self-help groups (SHGs), ASHA workers, biogas plants, RTI applications, and so on—there is a common thread to all of them. Every single one. They all originated as innovations in civil society.

Our largest government programmes were born in civil society

1. National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) and Self Help Groups (SHGs)

When we look at rural India, and look at some of the things we take for granted today—be it women self-help groups (SHGs), ASHA workers, biogas plants, RTI applications, and so on—there is a common thread to all of them. Every single one. They all originated as innovations in civil society.

One of the largest programmes of the government—the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM)—is based on women self help groups (SHGs). And the concept of an SHG was developed by Aloysius Fernandes and his team at MYRADA.

In the 1970s, MYRADA was working with large primary agriculture cooperative societies (PACS), all of whom seemed to be failing. In some of the geographies however, while the cooperatives had collapsed, there were some villages where small groups were saving and giving credit to each other.

Aloysius and the MYRADA team saw this, identified them as empowered groups that the banks could lend to, gave it form and structure, and took it to NABARD.

NABARD realised the value of what MYRADA was helping build, because they themselves were trying to reach out to the poor and their existing institutional portfolio was failing because the cooperatives weren’t functioning. They supported MYRADA and then pushed the banks to lend to these groups of poor women who saved regularly.

So, in a sense the SHG movement was started by MYRADA and to some extent, NABARD. The state was not in the picture at that time.

Then the first SERP programme came up in Andhra Pradesh. They used the base created by NABARD and MYRADA and they promoted the SHGs. And because the SERP programme worked, and because the World Bank was funding SERP, when the government created the NRLM, they used the same principles and structures.

Today the NRLM, which rides almost entirely on the SHG infrastructure, is the only large-scale institutional arrangement that the government has to reach out to poor. Every government uses it, regardless of what end of the political spectrum they occupy. It is pro-poor and still has elements of the market—the state can extend its entitlements directly to the people, while also enabling them to be self-reliant by promoting enterprises. But if there hadn’t been MYRADA, we probably wouldn’t have had NRLM today.

2. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) 

India’s most talked about government programme MGNREGA came about because Jean Drèze and others in civil society drafted it, and advocated for it.

The idea of MGNREGA did borrow from an earlier employment guarantee programme that was started in Maharashtra by Mr Vitthal Sakharam Page—chair of the Maharashtra State Legislative Council, and a social activist—who wrote the first draft in 1965. But it was only when several civil society activists fought for it in the early 2000s, that it became something that the Central government took seriously and passed into national law.

3. Integrated Water Management Programme (IWMP)

The early work around watershed management was done in Sukhomajri in Haryana. A more integrated approach was later piloted at Ralegan Siddhi by Anna Hazare. This, and the Hiware Bazar model by Popatrao Pawar became models to emulate, and the IWMP guidelines that are in place today are a result of contributions from many nonprofits.

These are just few examples but the story repeats itself again and again regardless of the sector. Consider these two others examples; one old and one relatively recent:

  • ASHA workers: The concept of ASHA workers was born in Jamkhed. The Aroles—Dr Mabelle and Dr Raj—started a programme in 1970 which involved semi-literate women delivering home-based care to mothers and newborns. It was taken to scale by the government, and our country now has over six lakh ASHA workers.
  • 108 Service: The 108 service that everyone lauds as a model of efficiency and scale was started as a service by EMRI—a nonprofit in Andhra Pradesh under the aegis of Satyam Foundation (EMRI was later taken over by the GVK Foundation). It was handed over to the Andhra Pradesh government, and later, other state governments implemented it. Today it runs across 15 states and two union territories.

The list continues—handpumps, participatory rural appraisals, wadi programmes, and so on. Essentially, almost any government programme worth its salt came from an innovation or technology developed by civil society. This is not to belittle the role of the state, which is by far the major development actor, but to emphasise the role of civil society in nation building.

Despite this, we are seeing a marginalisation of the civil society sector by markets and the government because we haven’t told our story well enough.

Civil society is too self-effacing

What is the philosophy of a civil society? We believe that we will develop solutions which over time the community will own and the state or market will support. When that happens, we believe our work is done.

In a way, it’s a very phoenix-like approach—you create and you disband. And you start all over again on some other problem. We don’t patent anything; we don’t take credit for anything.

And perhaps this is because we know that something as complex as social change requires the contribution of many people—communities, grassroots organisations, the state, funders, and so on. But we have gone to the other extreme. We don’t even acknowledge our role in the change; in fact, we undermine it.

When people ask us if we have successfully run a programme, we say “Nahi humne toh kuch kiya nahi hai, ye toh sab gaonwalon ne kiya hai” (No, we didn’t do anything, it was the villagers who did everything). And while it might be politically correct to say that we are only the catalysts, and the real work is done the community; it’s not always an accurate representation.

Civil society is more than the catalyst; we are innovators—technical innovators and idea innovators. We take really complex problems and come up with new ways to address them. We do effective work but refuse to take credit for it. And our refusal to take credit only feeds into the government’s view point—if the community is doing everything and civil society isn’t doing anything, then we will deal with the community directly.

People don’t understand our unique proposition

Because we have undermined ourselves, our unique proposition is not known. Our value to society is not only what we do or how we do it, but also at what cost we do what we do.

Many of us work at ridiculously low costs but we don’t document it, and we don’t measure it. So, some corporates, who want to work on social programmes, believe that they don’t need nonprofits. All they have to do is take the nonprofit’s staff and implement it on their own because it seems easy and cheap to do so.

The reality is different. Running a programme is complex. It takes years to build trust. And it requires humility, rigour, and persistence. It requires training, all-weather support, and hand-holding—all things that lead to an enabling ecosystem that a good nonprofit creates.

But some corporates don’t know this; they just want to take on the programmes because they believe they can do it better on their own rather than share space with nonprofits. It’s we who are at fault because we allowed this to happen.

The assumption is that nonprofits cannot scale

Scale is the new measure of ‘success’, where others find civil society wanting. Small, local and specialised civil society organisations are disappearing, and are not considered relevant in this new India which is in a hurry.

If one studies what has worked in the past, one realises that many, relatively small organisations have transformed the country. Consider MKSS, which started its work in a small village in Rajasthan, and even at its peak, worked largely in Rajasthan for the citizens’ right to information. That the RTI Act eventually became one of the most effective legislations by the state to hold itself accountable to its citizens, is a story of how impact is not necessarily a function of size.

We are constantly told by corporates and governments that we can’t scale. But then I reflect on what is it that a large corporate that has scaled typically does? They pick one slice of a human being’s life, for instance, the fact that people might like to drink cold sweet water in summer. It is one need—one would think a very unhealthy need but nevertheless a need. And then a multi-billion-dollar soft drink industry gets created around this need. You serve nothing; in fact, you take a poor man’s good water and convert it into this sweet water and charge him INR 20 for it. That is your net value addition to society. So that is all you know. To understand one very small slice of a human being’s need and address it.

Now compare that to what civil society is trying to do. We are trying to transform the conditions in which human beings live. This is dramatically different from creating a market for one small need of an individual.

It’s easy to scale a product that is uni-dimensional, serves a very specific micro-need, to which you can throw a ton of resources—money, talent, technology. But can you do it when it involves changing entrenched social norms across all aspects of a person’s life and livelihood?

The problem is while we in the sector might know how to do some of this, we don’t know how to articulate it and how to measure it.

And because we haven’t articulated it, we cannot argue for resources, for space, for anything really.

Even if the state hasn’t failed, we will always need civil society

Civil society is that critical third pillar of the samaj-sarkar-bazaar (society-government-market) triangle. Without it, no society can function. Even in most successful countries across the world there will always be people who are marginalised, and issues that are not on government or company radars.

There will always be a human problem which the market will never take up and the state will not realise either, because it is too buried, or too out there in the future. Even in its best form, the government is not designed to look at these things. And countries that have a majoritarian democracy will ignore those who are not a part of their majority. It’s a design problem.

So, who will look out for these people, who will help change entrenched social norms, who will build awareness of issues that matter?

Apoorva Oza is the chief executive officer of Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India). He is also actively involved in founding and supporting nonprofits and nonprofit networks, as well as influencing government policy. A mechanical engineer with a diploma in rural management from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, he has also completed courses from Cranford University, United Kingdom, and Cornell University, USA.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)