Can state and civil society trust and support each other?

-Hard as this seems to imagine, not the least in East Africa, state and civil society need to learn how to trust and support, cooperate and compliment each other. If not, democracy itself will fall, HRH’s Niels Jacob Harbitz, right, stressed in his closing remarks at the seminar ‘Aid and the troubled democracies of East Africa’ last week. (27-JAN-06)

Closing remarks. Niels Jacob Harbitz: ‘Aid and the troubled democracies of East Africa’. Photo: Baard Brinchmann Lovvig.

Four years ago, Michael Ignatieff, a Professor of human rights policy at Harvard, asked if the human rights era, that optimistic window of opportunity that many of us saw coming from the end of the cold war, was ending. It was less than six months since the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center had come down. But what Ignatieff saw, it has turned out, was only the beginning of a very, very nasty turn of events, in fact, all around the world, but not the least in East Africa.

As we sat down to outline the framework for this seminar, Ignatieff’s question came back to my mind. Is the human rights era coming to an end? If ever there was such an era in East Africa, the answer now must be reluctant, conditional ‘yes’. We saw numerous other reasons for this than the 9-11 that Ignatieff was tying his argument to. But as we looked back in anger, ahead in deep concern, we saw also a pattern, repeating itself across the region, with variations of course, but still, a pattern, of the hope that once was, some time back now, being overshadowed, these days, by extended periods of growing democratic deficits, decline in human rights records, and general social, economic and political despair, now even leading to death on a grand scale, albeit for different reasons, in many of the countries in question here today.

The recent national histories we have here in front of us are easily summed up as typical rise and fall narratives, at least in terms of the high hopes invested, at home and abroad alike, in Yoweri Museveni’s Uganda, in Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopia, and in Mwai Kibaki’s Kenya. Given that in all these three cases, and in Tanzania, too, international donor support, in the form of state budget funding, has played a crucial role in consolidating the state bureaucracies, a heavy burden of responsibility also lies with the very same donors for the kinds of state regimes and bureaucracies that have been allowed to develop. Of course, it would be patronising to the point of bordering with racism not to leave prime responsibility for their successes and failures with the leadership of those state bureaucracies themselves, but even so, at the vantage point of referenda and elections being held across the region, we thought there might be some lessons to be learnt also on the donor side. We asked: Can one imagine possible changes of the aid policies, so as to avoid the fall part of these rise and fall stories in the future?

Early in the planning process for this seminar, we got one such indication. We welcomed Minister of Development Erik Solheim’s, left, announcement, if only referring to Uganda, that Norway was now seriously considering not only postponing one or two instalments of a certain, small percentage of its state budget support, but also a shift towards allocating, indefinitely, a higher percentage of the grand total to civil society organisations. –At last, we thought. But also, a cautious ‘we shall see’. After all, this is what we have been asking for, for quite some time. Now it seemed, we’re having it. But then again, only in Uganda. And only as something he was considering. Not yet an actual policy of his. Even so, the Minister excited me a little that day, to the point of making me wonder if his announcement was, at least in some very small part, a response to our first outing towards his Ministry that this seminar was going ahead.

We will never know. But what we do know, or rather, what we should have learnt by now, is that to survive its first vulnerable years and consolidate and institutionalise itself in a free and fair manner, every democracy needs to stand on two legs; the state and civil society. Hard as this seems to imagine, not the least in East Africa, these to legs even need to trust and support, cooperate and compliment each other. If not – and bear in mind, it makes no difference which of the two legs you cut – democracy itself will fall. This, if anything, should also be the basic lesson for all donors and also receivers of donations of the kind we’ve been talking about here today to learn: Rather than the shifting trends of one decade blindly believing in small, independent NGOs and civil society activism, the other being equally convinced that basket funding and state budget support is the yellow brick road ahead, one should always try to keep those two thoughts in mind, that neither state, nor civil society will survive for long without the other.    

We have heard the policy maker, we have heard the cutting edge analysts. We have heard some key local human rights defenders and also a representative of an acutely endangered species, particularly in East Africa these days, a practitioner of freedom of expression. Last, but not least, we have heard the voices of a fuller house than we have ever had here before.

I wish, in conclusion, to thank you all for coming and contributing. I wish, in particular, to thank those who have travelled from afar. Finally, a special thanks to Norad and Institusjonen Fritt Ord for making this seminar possible. Joh. Johansson gave us quite a few litres of the coffee he has imported – I don’t know if it’s from East Africa – for free. Others gave us of their time, their ideas or, as in the case of Catharina Vogt, their photo exhibitions. We, the Norwegian Council for Africa and the Human Rights House Foundation thank you all, and wish to see you again soon, for further fruitful exchanges, on all things African. Thank you, and have a safe journey home.