Unequal partnership

Dear Debriefers,

The most powerful force in disability advocacy is simple. It is persons with disabilities connecting with each other.

Disabled people getting together transforms what we imagine and what we make of our lives. Often for the first time, we find peers like ourselves and we find power to do something in a collective.

In recent years, international efforts to support disability rights have increasingly recognised the importance of this coming together, and the role of organisations run for and by persons with disabilities themselves.

But recently-released research from the Global Action on Disability (GLAD) Network reveals limitations in international funders' support to grassroots action by disabled people. Partnerships are unequal and donors support local organisations of disabled people “as indirectly as possible”.

This is missing an opportunity to use resources in a way that helps people build their own power, rather than depend on outsiders. Growing the disability movement needs more direct support.

Disability Debrief can only provide an independent view on the disability movement thanks to reader support.

I'm disabled, you're disabled

My first encounter with an Organisation of Persons with Disability (OPD) came when I was climbing the steps to a small hotel I was staying in Sirajgonj, Bangladesh. I went up one step at a time, leaning heavily on the bannister.

Someone passed me on the steps, but on the landing turned back and called out to me. He said he was disabled and that I was disabled, and that he was part of a group of disabled people in Rajshahi. I should come and visit. So I did.

It was 2008, I was a few months into learning Bangla after graduating from university. I reckoned Rajshahi was on my way to India and thought I'd go for a week. I ended up staying for a month. I made lifelong friends, and took the first step in a path that led to the career I have today.

Asraf, the man on the stairs, took me to meet Protibondhi Shawnirvhor Shangstha (PSS), Disabled people's self-reliance organisation. I hung out at their small office, visited their homes, and went to their annual picnic.

Perched on the wooden platform of a rickshaw van I went to the self-help groups PSS held in nearby villages. I saw how needed their work was by disabled people who had been forced to leave school or hidden at home, but could now claim a proud place in their community.

A couple of years later I would be back in Bangladesh, this time working as part of the international development industry. I was in an office in Dhaka, disoriented how far away I was from the realities of regular lives. Now occasional visits to the so-called “field” were done in air-conditioned 4x4s.

Trickling down to the grassroots

The distance of development initiatives from grassroots OPDs is brought out by two reports released by GLAD, the coordinating network of international organisations funding disability-inclusive development.

The first report looks at disability and localisation based on case studies of investments in Bangladesh, Nepal and Kenya. The second looks at OPD access to humanitarian funding in Jordan, Ukraine and Kenya.

The localisation report describes the layers separating funding of disability-inclusion and grassroots organisations. Funding organisations pass their money onto International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) who then pass it onto national bodies, and then to smaller organisations. At each stage, a slice of the pie is taken:

“Local OPD funding landscape is done as ‘indirectly as possible’. Donors prefer to fund project delivery INGO intermediaries. These intermediaries channel their funding to national umbrella OPDs/federations that then channel funding to other OPDs who are engaged to deliver smaller bits of the project. The amount that trickles from donors to smaller OPDs is small as huge chunks of budgets are retained by the INGOs and national OPD associations.”

I know what this chain looks like because I used to be part of it. A good piece of the budget of helping disadvantaged people goes to advantaged go-betweens that connect each of these layers with project proposals and reports. With that comes a tension of whether one is adding something or just taking up resources before they get to those who need them.

While I worked in Dhaka the question of how I was contributing was put to me in an unforgettable way by Rafiq Zaman. Rafiq, may he rest in peace, was an outspoken OPD activist. As we came out of a meeting he asked what I'd been up to recently. Was I doing ashol, real, work or just “eating, meeting, cheating”?

“Unequal partnerships”

The localisation research brings out how where you are in the development chain gives you a different perspective on real work.

From the donor perspective there is “little option but to work through project delivery intermediaries”. Funding organisations have limited staffing and extensive requirements: they need intermediaries to manage agreements, provide expertise, and “shoulder the financial and delivery risk and paperwork rather than the local OPDs.” INGOs are, from the donor view, “fit for purpose”.

However, from the OPD perspective these delivery intermediaries are seen “less favourably”. They point to an imbalance in power that is sometimes taken advantage of. OPDs resent the amount of funding taken by intermediary organisations when OPDs rarely get support for costs of running their organisations. Some are suspicious that INGOs deliberately paint OPD capacity in a bad light or withhold direct communication with the donor. Opportunities for funding are usually in English rather than the local language.

Some funders and INGOs are making efforts to move the localisation agenda forward. But even then the relationships are still unbalanced:

“We find unequal partnership arrangements between INGOs and their local OPD partners in terms of the nature of sub-contractual rather than strategic partnership; less visibility of local partners; shorter length of partnerships; complex criteria for partnerships that marginalise small, rural-based and emergent OPDs; and partial involvement in the project/programme cycle.”

The research on humanitarian response, conducted more recently, is a bit more positive about efforts to facilitate partnerships with OPDs. But it still finds these efforts “limited” and that “equitable partnership approaches are still the exception rather than the norm”.

A glaring manifestation of the unequal partnership is in that OPDs don't get a say in strategy or deciding what type of work be done. In the localisation report's most striking consensus, none of its 67 respondents thought that OPDs got to decide the priority areas to work in:

“OPDs are expected to align their priorities to those of their funders (donors or INGOs), not only in terms of activities but also in terms of location, type of beneficiary and the various events within projects.”

“Stark though not surprising”

One comment on the research comes from Alberto Vásquez Encalada, someone who has roles in both OPDs and NGOs. He described its findings as “stark, though not surprising”. Alberto himself had called attention to global funding dynamics in his article on gatekeeping in the disability sector, where he describes INGOs setting the agenda over OPDs as “perpetuating a cycle of disempowerment, colonialism, and marginalization.”

Indeed, I've also long heard these complaints from friends in OPDs. When I spoke with Misti Ashrafun Nahar, a leader in the disability rights movement in Bangladesh, she described the pain of OPDs not being respected by other actors in the disability sector.

A global survey on participation of OPDs confirmed how widespread these challenges are. Conducted by the International Disability Alliance in 2020, it found OPDs were “increasingly consulted, but not yet participating” and that financial support “remains the biggest challenge for OPDs to exist as representative organisations”.

It's definitely not just the disability sector where these dynamics play out. While there are some disability-specific issues of ableism or insufficient accessibility or adjustments, there is a broader pattern in international aid of failure to empower local actors. Donors give “lip service” to localisation without putting it into practice.

And worse, sometimes the way work is shifted to local organisations can consolidate rather than reduce power of international actors. A cautionary example comes from a New Humanitarian investigation of overall humanitarian response to the Syrian war:

“International aid actors are actually reinforcing their power through these processes [of localisation]. The system still determines whether local actors are worthy humanitarians, if they’re capable of receiving funding, how much core support costs they’re allowed, who can participate in coordination meetings, and even who is able to respond to crises in their own countries.”

Not just OPDs that have low capacity

The most-repeated reason I've heard for not giving more support to OPDs is that they have “low capacity”. Larger organisations are looking for partners that can manage grants and give technical advice. It's often true that OPDs aren't great at these things, but it's not fair to only raise the shortcomings of one side.

One of the most important contributions of this research is rebalancing the discussion. It's not just OPDs that have low capacity. Donors and INGOs are good at the admin side but they have much lower capacity in reaching communities, engaging disabled people or even just working in the language of the country they're based in.

The GLAD Network tell me they are pleased to publish the research and that the case studies rightly give OPDs “a chance to share their views on an important topic.” But there still seems to be a cautiousness about the way they shift the discussion.

These reports were released quietly and, in the case of the localisation report, after significant delay. A disclaimer qualifies the research, saying it does not necessarily present the “full picture of the realities and constraints of funding grassroots organisations”. And, sadly, OPD engagement with the findings is limited by a lack of plain language or translated versions, even of the executive summaries.

Calls for a relationship reboot

The localisation report anticipates some of the tensions in this discussion. It makes clear that its findings are “not about replacing intermediaries”. It points out that replacing INGOs with, say, umbrella organisations of OPDs still wouldn't change these dynamics for grassroots organisations.

Rather than replacing, it's looking to reshape relationships:

“Local leadership has asked for an overhaul of the partnership modality between OPDs and donors’ delivery intermediaries to support local OPDs with unearmarked core funding. This funding would allow them to develop institutional, operational and technical capacity; identify capacity-strengthening needs that shift their role to leadership in development and humanitarian actions; and involve the local actors from conceptualisation to joint action and review. For improved value for money, donors need to take a closer look at partnership arrangements between their international intermediaries and local OPDs.”

In terms of how to realise this, the report points to how OPDs working with each other in capacity-building can be particularly effective. And the key recommendation it gives for donors is “pooled funding mechanisms”.

Donors coming together to pool efforts to build up grassroots OPDs would reduce duplication of efforts and some conflicts of interest. Citing Disability Rights Fund as a good example of this, the report says says that pooling funding can widen the scope to support smaller OPDs.

Building the disability movement is a shared need, and coordinated action is needed to meet it. There needs to be a change not just in how funding is provided but also what it is provided for.

Direct support to the disability movement

The last time I saw my friends at PSS was on a trip to Bangladesh, just before the pandemic. They gave me a plaque commemorating our friendship, telling me they put it in the Bangla script to make sure people would ask what it was. It sits on my desk as a reminder not just of our connection but also of the importance of this work.

Everything in the rest of my career has confirmed the importance of disabled people coming together. Whether it's another wheelchair user telling me which model is good, or online communities sharing comfort, tips and activism. The pandemic – and other emergencies – always show that organisations led by disabled people are among the first to respond when we need it.

Funders should build up the movement in its own right. I don't think it's enough to shift relationships within existing processes and structures of work. Coopting the disability movement into structures of international aid can damage it as much as supporting it.

I want to see investment in bringing disabled people together, for the sake of that connection itself, not as a tool to implement someone else's project. The value of OPDs is in how they represent disabled people. I want to see funding for making that representation real, from self-help groups on up.

In the past ten years there's been a good spell of international attention to disability. The sector has been kept busy by trying to make nice projects or influence rights and development frameworks. But it saddens me that not enough was done to bring more persons with disabilities into a stronger movement.

The connections disabled people make with each other are the key to long-lasting change. The investment I want to see is in the invitation that was made to me: “I'm disabled, you're disabled. You should come and visit.”

Peter

Roll on

Further reading. For more about my work in Bangladesh, see prayer to failure, reflections on development a decade after the Rana Plaza building collapse. And for investigation of OPD governance see what went wrong at the International Disability Alliance.

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Acknowledgements (and disclaimer)

Many of the organizations funding the Debrief, including Disability Rights Fund, are also members of the GLAD network. But opinions are mine, as is editorial control.

Thanks to Kinanty Andini for her creativity in illustration of grassroots development.

Thanks to Asraf and all my other friends at PSS for welcoming me into the disability movement.

Thanks to GLAD Network for comment on short notice. And this piece benefitted from review from Áine Kelly-Costello and Alberto Vásquez Encalada.

And, as ever to the organisations and readers who support this work.