nextEverybody has goals. Presidents of countries, executives of
companies, directors of organizations, and the experts in the cubicle. Most
goals are actually quite good goals.
Halve poverty. Get girls into school. Use a condom next time. Spend more time
with the kids. Keep your email-inbox down to 15 messages. Now, who managed to
fully implement last year’s New Year resolutions, let alone remember them by
Christmas? Maybe we had the goals but the environment wasn’t enabling enough? If
we at all had a plan, perhaps it had flaws?
Let not anyone get me wrong – I am absolutely for goal-setting. But let’s not
kid ourselves. Any Government leader in any odd country would very much like to
raise enrolment rates, fight AIDS, and have wealthy citizens. Even if they
wouldn’t care, politicians know that it is good to pretend they do. But there
are still competing priorities that need to be reconciled. For once, advertising
militant conflict resolution does not shift anybody’s resources from defence to
education. And even if you want to enrol girls, you still need to work on your
electricity supply.
If we want to get this macro-picture and enabling environment right, we cannot
continue piling goals upon goals – or recycling those that haven’t been met. And
working on just a part of the plan, without seeing the big picture, is of
limited value. It is not enough to stick girls’ education in on page 183 of the
national development plan, and throw in some Euros to build latrines.
So what then is our best advice to the leadership of poor countries, who have
repeatedly signed up to get the girls into school, rid the country of HIV and
AIDS, and secure the livelihood of smallholder farming communities, and all this
with a GDP of 400 Euro per person and year?
Principles guide human behavior, and our choices for action. Human rights
principles should guide development decisions and investments. They can help a
poor Ministry in a poor country to take the better decision. There are only a
handful of human rights principles and humanitarian principles to remember. That
should be easy. But to advise properly, we have to understand the options, and
read more than just page 183 of the National Development Plan.
(25 April 2003)
previous
next