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Negotiating the 'governance gap': The UN and Capacity-building in Afghanistan For the UN Capacity-building Task Force ACKU Nicholas Leader Islamabad, 24 November, 2000 [email protected] Managed by UNCHS Habitat. Funded by UNDP, UNHCR and UNICEF l3lt~ ~ACKU~l~t llii 00011175t[li tmil~tt ~~~mr 6 Negotiating the 'governance gap': The UN and Capacity-building in Afghanistan For the UN Capacity-building Task Force ACKU Nicholas Leader Islamabad, 24 November, 2000 [email protected] Managed by UNCHS Habitat. Funded by UNDP, UNHCR and UNICEF Table of Contents Acronyms .......................................................................................................... 3 Executive Summary ........................................................................................... 4 1. Background and scope ................................................................................... 7 2. Process ........................................................................................................... 7 3. The problem ................................................................................................... 8 4. The concept of 'capacity-building' and its relevance to the problem ............ 12 5. UN and Donor policy on 'capacity-building' ............................................... 14 5.1 UN policy ................................................... ~ ............................................ 14 5.2 Donor policy ........................................................................................... 17 6. Taliban 'policy' ........................................................................................... 19 7. UN-Tali ban relations; the 'governance network' ......................................... 21 8. UN policy implementation ........................................................................... 23 8.1 Working with or though the authorities ................................................... 23 8.2 Institution-building .................................................................................. 26 8.3 Community Development .................. ~ .................................................... 28 8.4 The future role and nature of the state ..................................................... 28 9. Conclusions and Recommendations ............................................................. 29 9.1 General Recommendations ...................................................................... 30 9.2 Working with or through the authorities ......................... ·......................... 3 I 9.3 Institution-building .................................................................................. 33 9.4 Governance and Community Development ............................................. 33 9.5 Human Resource Development ............................................................... 33 9.6 The future role and nature of the state ..................................................... 34 9.7 Further research ....................................................................................... 34 Bibliography .......................................................................... , ......................... 35 Annex 1: Terms of Reference .......................................................................... 37 Annex 2: Itinerary ............................................................................................ 39 Annex 3: List of Interviewees .......................................................................... 40 Annex 4: The Case for Targets,ACKU not Goals .................... :.................................. 43 Acknowledgements The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of the staff of Habitat and the RCO's offices for arranging transport and interviews in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and ofUNDP in New York. 2 Acronyms ARRP Afghanistan Rural Rehabilitation Programme APB Afghanistan Programme Body ASG Afghanistan Support Group CBO Community Based Organisation CAP Consolidated Annual Appeal CDAP Comprehensive Disabled Afghans Project DFID Department for International Development (of the UK government) DOLSA Department of Labour and Social Affairs ECHA Executive Committee on Humanitarian Affairs EPI Expanded Programme of Immunisation FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross lEA Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan IHL International Humanitarian Law JCC Joint Consultative Committee MMR Ministry for Martyrs and Returnees MOPH Ministry of Public Health MRRD Ministry for Rural Reconstruction and Development MoU Memorandum of Understanding PCP Principled Common Programming RCO Regional Coordination Officer SMU Strategic Monitoring Unit ToR Terms of Reference UNCHS (Habitat) United Nations Centre for Human Settlements UNDCP United Nations Drug Control Programme UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNFPA United Nations Family Planning Agency UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund UMSMA United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan WFP World Food Programme WHO World HealthACKU Organisation 3 Executive Summary · The issue of capacity-building has long been a controversial and problematic area of policy for the UN in Afghanistan. This Consultancy, not the first to look at the issLte, was commissioned by the UN Afghanistan Capacity-building Task Force to: 'provide advice to UN Afghanistan in terms of developing a principled, coherent and coordinated policy for maintaining and building the capacities of structures essential for the recovery and longer­ term sustainability at national, regional and local levels'. This report concentrates on UN capacity-building activities in relation to what remains of the administrative structures. This was partly to give focus to a very broad subject in the short time available, but mainly because, by common consent, this is one of the most controversial and confused area of UN capacity-building policy. Owing to time and transport problems, only Taliban held areas were visited and so the report corf1ments only on capacity .. building i'ssues in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. Twenty years of war have left Afghanistan's physical and social infra-structure in ruins. Despite assistance work by the international community, this process of degradation continues, notably the progressive depletion of human resources. It is widely agreed that a reactive, localised, relief-orientated intervention is insufficient to address these problems. However, the presumptive authority in most of Afghanistan, the Taliban, rule themselves out as a partner in a more systemic approach by their abuse of human rights. The predominant pol icy response has been to focus on communities, but this too is problematic as certain functions, such as public health, require wider structtires for successful implementation. The Strategic Framework can be seen as one of a number of attempts by the international community to deal with this 'governance gap'. Within that overall policy framework, the idea of capacity-building- of communities, organisations and of the remaining welfare and development arms of the state - is often.proposed as one way of addressing this problem. However, the concept is problematic. Firstly, it is used in the Afghan context to cover such a wide variety of issues as to be virtually meaningless~ It is used to mean; working with or though the administration on specific projects such as the EPI programme, institution­ building with parts of the administration such as the MOPH, community development activities with shuras and community fora, training and human resource development, the development of Afghan NGOs, promoting human rights, and the overarching question of what should be the future role and nature of the state in Afghanistan. Each of these policy issues should be addressed on its own terms. Secondly, the term assumes that there is a functioning and legitimate government,ACKU either as recipient of capacity-building or as regulator of civil society; bu't in the Afghan context the absence of 'good governance' is precisely the problem. The history of UN and donor policy on capacity-building iJ Afghanistan demonstrates these problems. The primary statements of UN policy- the ECHA guidelines (June 1997), the King Report (November 1997) and the Strategic Framework (September 1998) -all rule out 'institution-building' of the Afghan authorities while discriminatory practices continue. None of them however defines the difference between institution-building, which is forbidden, and working with or through the authorities, something that almost all UN agencies do, indeed it could be argued need to do to fulfill their humanitarian mandate. Donor policy on capacity-building has also been negative but uncoordinated. For donors, the 4 relief/development distinction, on which the idea of capacity-building rests, is still functional. The distinction has been rejected by assistance actors as it does not provide a workable model of vulnerability in Afghanistan. But for donors it is essentially a political distinction; the distinction allows them to provide humanitarian aid, but without recognising the Taliban. So th e distinction rules out 'capacity-building' with the authorities as this woul d imply recognition. But because 'capacity-building' is such an ill-defined concept what it rules out and what it does not is unclear. This leaves agencies (and indeed donors themselves) in considerable confusion as to what is acceptable in terms of

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