…TO THE XXII SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY
From: “DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION TO THE XXII SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY” 22 November 2007
Mr. President,
all RC/RC colleagues,
You have all received the written report of the work of the Development Commission since the last General Assembly. I will therefore concentrate on some key findings and concerns.
During the past two years the Commission has provided policy analyses and guidance especially regarding the implementation of the Global Agenda Goal 3. This goal, as you all know, is to “Increase local community, civil society and Red Cross Red Crescent capacity to address the most urgent situations of vulnerability”.
How should this goal be understood? What is the work that National Societies need to do to fulfill it? This is perhaps today not clear enough. Probably we do not have a common understanding. There is therefore a risk that instead of aiming at the same goal, different parts of our great organization take of in different directions.
If you compare the four goals, it is obvious that the third one is about increasing the National Society capacity to serve the vulnerable in the local communities. The first two goals represents the contents of these services, and the forth, if you like, some of the how-to aspects. Therefore, at the local community level all work has to start with goal 3.
In every community, regardless how poor it is, there are always those with capacities and goodwill. And those with capacities and goodwill can be mobilized and organized into RC/RC services to the vulnerable. This is true in a refugee camp as well as in a remote village. This is exactly what Henry Dunant understood and did in Solferino. This is what happened to the women of Castiglione. This is what we National Societies have been doing for decades. And this understanding is, I believe, the core of the Federation mission statement, to mobilize the power of humanity! So why should we understand Global Agenda Goal 3 differently?
And still today we sometimes forget this and treat whole communities as in need. Instead of sending someone to organize those willing and with capacities into a RC/RC grassroots unit, branch and service, we send in volunteers and resources from afar.
For UN agencies, international NGOs and other colleagues in humanitarian field, this “outsider-helps-community” approach is of course not bad. This is the best they can do. As they are and have to remain outsiders, they have no better choice. But we have.
As member-based voluntary organizations, RC/RC National Societies can create local branches or units in any community and thus be insiders. And who knows needs, priorities and local resources better than local communities? This is the definitive advantage we have as a global network of National Societies, and which we should make the most of. For us, communities are not targets, they are the starting point for building our strength and service delivery.
The present confusion on Goal 3 can not be allowed to continue. The Federation must establish clear guidance. This is also of crucial importance if we would like to significantly expand and strengthen our volunteer numbers and systems.
The Commission has also discussed the accessibility and relevance of the Federation tools intended to help NS to strengthen their institutional capacity. Yes, the Secretariat is confronted with contradictory demands. On the one hand it is asked to produce global standards applicable to all NS in a wide range of topics. On the other hand it is required to embark on bottom up approaches. But still, there are too many tools and approaches and to many different concepts behind.
There is also a strong language complication. For instance, not all Federation documents are accessible in the four official languages. And even when they are, in many cases they have to be translated and adopted to local languages and cultures to be fully useful.
There is also a strong perception that Federation tools are predominately anglo-saxon, not only in language and logic, but also in contents. This is an area in need for better strategies and guidelines. T he Secretariat needs to promote an in-depth understanding on the wide diversity that exists among the National Societies. The Development Commission has recommended that this diversity is taken into full account in all support given to National Societies by the Secretariat and delegations, and thus also when developing Capacity Building tools.
Let me also mention that the Development Commission has studied the history of its work since1981, and has produced a synthetic document that you can get at the OD Department . There were of course some forerunners like the Development Program created in the 1960-ties and the famous and still very important Tansley big study in the 1970-ties, which I encourage you to read because it still has a lot of interesting and modern concepts to say to us.
Unfortunately, these Programs and documents, as well as many more, too often are not considered, just cause our International Movement, and especially our Federation, lack of institutional memory.
Too many times we waste time and money in creating new documents, in making new studies, just because we do not know that similar ones have already been done. Sometimes we celebrate “edition one” of events without any follow up.
So I invite you visiting our secretariat library and archives, whose staff I want to personally thank for their work in order to preserve a lot of interesting documents from being forgotten.
I myself chaired the commission in the 1980-ties. One of the question we addressed then was to help National Societies to become sustainable. This is still a key question.
Finally, the work of the Development Commission has been characterized by lively discussions. We have had close and fruitful cooperation with the Secretariat support team. We have also good experience from involving an academic institution and external consultants. The Commission had a good collaboration with other Commissions, in particular with Youth and Health Commissions.
Thank you Mr. President.