Interestingly, the book was published in early 2018, but seems to be attracting some attention only now.
While nobody appears to have read the book, its subject and title strike a chord with a good number of current and former UNICEF staff: UNICEF and hypocrisy! Yes! We knew it!
The summary of the book on Amazon is a little cryptic. It culminates in the statement that separating rhetoric from action is detrimental to an organization's goals in the long run.
Yes! And again, isn't that what we knew all along? Didn't we all tire about full-mouthed promises, the excessive spending on ourselves, the endless workshops and the poor results? Didn't we all feel uncomfortable with the pathetic reports that left us wondering what this was all about? Doesn’t the author rightly agree with UNICEF's own management evaluators and consultants that the organization suffers from "a lack of accountability and transparency, cases of fraud, reluctance to address performance issues, excessive bureaucracy, slow action, mistrust, a focus on processes rather than results, a tendency to write new rules or manuals in response when things go wrong, poor internal communication and an attitude of superiority that leads to uneasy partnerships?"
Yes, but wait a minute. The topic of the book is not really about the big-mouthedness and ineffective work of UNICEF, but about organizational hypocrisy using UNICEF as an example. One of the author's conclusion is that "complex organizations survive and even flourish through rhetorically satisfying external demands, e.g. for efficiency or the adoption of new tasks, while keeping their actions on the ground to business as usual".
The author finds hypocrisy in UNICEF’s claim to be a rights-based organization, while its programmes almost exclusively follow a basic need-oriented (or humanitarian, or charitable) approach. "The political implications of rights-based programming are particularly problematic for a government-dependent organization such as UNICEF. Basic needs can be met through consensual cooperation with those responsible for politics and administration in host countries. The enforcement of rights, on the other hand, requires extensive political, legal and social changes in host countries, which are not necessarily desired by the decision-makers". Conflict avoidance is not an appropriate strategy for the enforcement of rights.
En passant the author notes that the determinants for the needed systemic change are beyond UNICEF control. UNICEF can provide humanitarian relief or help a caring government provide better services, but supporting an indifferent or uncaring government is pointless and may even cause harm.
Here is a link to the summary and introduction (the latter also in English) of the publication.
The summary of the book on Amazon is a little cryptic. It culminates in the statement that separating rhetoric from action is detrimental to an organization's goals in the long run.
Yes! And again, isn't that what we knew all along? Didn't we all tire about full-mouthed promises, the excessive spending on ourselves, the endless workshops and the poor results? Didn't we all feel uncomfortable with the pathetic reports that left us wondering what this was all about? Doesn’t the author rightly agree with UNICEF's own management evaluators and consultants that the organization suffers from "a lack of accountability and transparency, cases of fraud, reluctance to address performance issues, excessive bureaucracy, slow action, mistrust, a focus on processes rather than results, a tendency to write new rules or manuals in response when things go wrong, poor internal communication and an attitude of superiority that leads to uneasy partnerships?"
The author finds hypocrisy in UNICEF’s claim to be a rights-based organization, while its programmes almost exclusively follow a basic need-oriented (or humanitarian, or charitable) approach. "The political implications of rights-based programming are particularly problematic for a government-dependent organization such as UNICEF. Basic needs can be met through consensual cooperation with those responsible for politics and administration in host countries. The enforcement of rights, on the other hand, requires extensive political, legal and social changes in host countries, which are not necessarily desired by the decision-makers". Conflict avoidance is not an appropriate strategy for the enforcement of rights.
En passant the author notes that the determinants for the needed systemic change are beyond UNICEF control. UNICEF can provide humanitarian relief or help a caring government provide better services, but supporting an indifferent or uncaring government is pointless and may even cause harm.
Here is a link to the summary and introduction (the latter also in English) of the publication.
As e-book available here, for 59 Euro.
*****
More Insights from Outside the Bubble, by Detlef Palm
Detlef can be contacted via detlefpalm55@gmail.com
Yes, I recognise the issues flagged. Everyone who worked for UNICEF knows that these problems were not only there but were left unaddressed. However, we opted to keep quiet and focused instead on whatever positives allowed us to reminisce about the golden era of the organization. It may also be interesting to read a review of the work of this year's Nobel Prize winners in economics (The Economist has a good one). It can be summed up in one sentence: it takes good governance for a country to develop. Aid, by UNICEF or others, does little if anything to foster good governance. On the contrary, it could be argued that aid helps bad governments stay in power.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHow funny to see this going viral now. I wrote a book review back in 2019 for the DGVN newsletter :-) https://zeitschrift-vereinte-nationen.de/publications/PDFs/Zeitschrift_VN/VN_2019/Heft_2_2019/16_Buchbesprechung-Tan_VN_2-19_11-4-2019.pdf
ReplyDeleteUsing these arguments means that the whole UN and its Charter, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is nothing but hypocrisy. UNICEF has its basic mission in the Declaration on Child Rights and the Converntion of Children's Rights. If it provides support for meeting basic social needs, it does so on the request of the governments it aids and in areas like health, nutrition, education, water etc. which , in my book, are also "Rights".
ReplyDeleteI bought book with a Amazon credit I had - it was costly - and had it shipped to my duty station. It is a dry and painful read - but looking for some crumbs to share. the review shared above - is very accurate thus far. It doesn't matter how emotional we are about our "mandate" - we often act contrary to our words. When we spend ALL OVER OUR time hand wringing about an unliquidated cash advance to some dubious partner, when we tidy up our files for audits, when we hold our nose and approve liquidations and travel and procurement - in the name of getting stuff done - we demonstrate how hypocritical we are. No country has developed from aid - it may have given then a leg up - but only when they had the political will and means did they graduate off the donor teat. Thankful we have young people who keep challenging us like this. Without such reflection we move closer and closer to outright irrelevance
ReplyDeleteI actually know of a moment when a country office I worked in staged the appearance of life cycle programming for an RD visit -- I was OIC at the time - ended up signing over 40 TAs for staff to travel to some remote place and force all of our interventions to be placed in one location so the RD could see them all - we sort of fudged that it was done for convenience but assured the RD this was our approach in each district. But in fact we never had all those interventions (0 - 5, school age, and youth) all in one place - we worked in silos. The senior staff who pulled this off all got promoted very fast and moved on. I pooh-poohed it (saying we were lucky the RD did not figure out the charade) and I never got promoted after that. We continued the charade for years if not decades. A decade later I was back (still not promoted)- and the district approach was evaluated as we were developing a new CPD. The external evaluator picked 15 districts where UNICEF had "supported" for MUCH more than a decade, and 15 districts adjacent to those - identical in demographics - where we did not provide one penny of support (as we were "piloting" in those 15 or so but not in all). Surprise, surprise - the evaluator found children did BETTER in the districts we never set foot in. Our staff had a filt - we nearly had a revolution against the evaluators - but the evidence was clear : we had ZERO impact in those areas - and in fact in places we did not work children did better. Our staff tried to say we picked "hard to reach areas with more vulnerable kids" - but the districts were identical - we just picked those as that is how many districts we thought we could manage - the ones right next door were left out. What happened right next door - they did not have any UNICEF workshops, there was no DSA spread around, no UNICEF staff and consultants scurrying around to make things look like they are improving, no sham annual review or donor report. Local government and parents in those places had to get on with things - and in so doing their kids gradually did better than the "pilots" next door where UNICEF poured in MILLIONS of dollars piloting all sorts of non sense. I did not rub anyone's face in it - but I was dead right back when we staged it for the RD and when we said if we did all those things it will transform the child. None of it worked.
ReplyDelete