Lacking Intelligence

As much as we would like to see a global war on poverty, AIDS, discrimination and ignorance, I am not trying to compare development work with warfare. But for the one major war effort, it has become abundantly clear that the planning assumptions and hence the underlying analysis were faulty: 

• There was no joyful reception

•  The only people who were awed were the coalition journalists 

• There is no evidence that more lives were saved than lost as a result of this intervention.

Now we hear through the media that there was a lack of intelligence when the war was launched. What else was wrong with the situation analysis? What can we development workers learn from this?

Firstly, we need to help generating the missing data and intelligently analyse the available information. 

Secondly, an analysis on international affairs or “foreign” situations cannot be guided by some home-grown idea. It must be guided by a human-rights-inspired conceptual framework that is based on agreed international experience, local and global evidence and lessons learned. And it must be validated by those whom we are mandated to help.

We’ll better get the scientific evidence and the global lessons sorted out quickly before our next Country Programme only manages to impress ourselves.

(20 February 2004)

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