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Social Inclusion in Fragile Contexts Policy Brief

Every Voice Counts

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Every Voice Counts - Social Inclusion in Fragile Contexts Policy BriefJuly 2019CARE NederlandCover photo: Josee is participating in the Every Voice Counts (EVC) project. © CARE/Peter Caton

This policy brief makes recommendations for supporting the inclusion of women and girls in local governance processes in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. It is based on research conducted in Burundi and Rwanda by CARE Nederland’s Every Voice Counts (EVC) programme. Country case studies were accompanied by a review of the global evidence and interviews with academics and practitioners working in the areas of governance, social inclusion and fragility. These recommendations are geared towards the Dutch government, the European Commission, and other donors working in the area of inclusive governance. The policy brief recommends that the Dutch government, the European Commission, and other donors working in the area of inclusive governance contribute to gender equality and sustainable peace bysupporting the inclusion of women and girls in local decision-making spaces and structures. On the part of donors, this will involve:

1. Supporting women as active agents in their own pathways towards empowerment through, for example, partnering with individual women leaders and local women’s movements and associations;

2. In designing gender and social inclusion programming more broadly, paying closer attention to the subnational and informal dimensions of post-conflict statebuilding and reconstruction.

3. Continuing to develop and apply innovative,

locally-led funding mechanisms that provide agile and adaptive support to women’s movements, associations, and women leaders and allies;

4. Understanding and addressing the normative roots of gender inequality, violence, and fragility, including how they interact;

5. Taking an intersectional approach to gender equality by being more aware of the ways in which economic status, age, and ethnicity interact with gender inequalities;

6. Using a ‘gender lens’ in conflict and political analyses in order to design programming that is more responsive to the complex and interconnected way in which fragility, violence, and gender affect empowerment and governance processes;

7. Working with local authorities and governments in fragile settings to improve feedback mechanisms and information sharing within budgeting and planning processes;

8. Encouraging and monitoring gender awareness and commitment amongst top-level leadership internally and within INGO partners;

9. Underpinning programming with the recognition of gender equality as a funda-mentally political issue and applying politically aware models accordingly;

10. Strengthening the enabling environment for civil society to pursue women’s empowerment agendas and inclusive development goals freely and safely.

Pathways towards inclusion in fragile and conflict-affected contextsUnderstanding the engagement of women & girls in local governance processes

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The Netherlands (NL) has had strong global policy commitments on gender equality in place and has been a vocal advocate for the full implementation of UNSCR 1325, which was adopted when NL had a seat on the UNSC, for many years. The Netherlands also has a robust track record of supporting civil society to strengthen democracy and justice and has been a strong advocate for increasing civic space. Under its Dialogue and Dissent strategic partnerships framework, in 2017 - 2018, the Dutch government supported 5,968 organisations in more than 60 countries to strengthen inclusive and sustainable development. Working with civil society and governments across the globe, Dutch foreign assistance has influenced changes in laws, policies and social norms in order to enhance social inclusion and women’s voice.

In the second iteration of the Dialogue and Dissent framework, from January 2021 onwards, various Dutch inclusive governance, peace and conflict programmes will be brought together under one overarching framework for Civil Society Strengthening. One of the main components will be Power of Voices, consisting of Power of Voices Partnerships, VOICE, and the Accountability Fund. The other component of the framework will be comprised of several programmes under a fund specifically addressing SDG5 – Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls.

This new policy framework offers an important opportunity to continue strengthening the Dutch government’s approach to inclusive governance. The new framework will, even more than before, focus on the space for civil society organizations and the contribution they make to achieving the SDGs, with an explicit focus on SDG 5. As seen in the ‘Leading from the South’ programme, the Dutch government has already shown strong commitment to developing innovative funding mechanisms and partnsership models with women’s rights organisations. The recommendations in this brief will build off these achievements, to ensure that its cooperation with civil society and governments continue to positively impact inclusive and sustainable development across the globe.

Dutch policy should always also be seen through the lens of its membership of the European Union. As a member state, the Netherlands has a dual responsibility in influencing and creating EU policies and budgets and in implementing them. The Gender Action Plan II (2016-2020) is the key framework and it includes enhancing women’s voice and participation as one of its four objectives. Thus, the recommendations in this policy brief will address the EU as well.

Background on social inclusion policy in the Netherlands

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In global policy, there has been growing recognition of the connections between social inclusion1, governance and building more peaceful and stable societies, with specific emphasis on gender equality. Whilst women’s empowerment has been found to contribute to sustainable peace, achieving gender equality often depends on understanding and reducing conflict and fragility. In particular, this means understanding the ways in which the social norms that drive gender inequality are intrinsically linked to those that perpetuate violence and fragility. Increasing attention, for instance, has been given to the relationship between conservative gender norms, conflict, gender-based violence, and women’s marginalisation in public life. Addressing fragility from a gender perspective is not only about supporting women and girls to manage the gender-differentiated ways in which they experience fragility. It also necessitates a focus on women’s ‘full and equal’ inclusion in governance processes

and decision-making structures at both national and subnational levels. These processes can be heavily dominated by (male) elites and violent and repressive social norms in the aftermath of conflict may become entrenched.

At the same time, conflict and its aftermath can create unique opportunities to reconstitute unequal gender relations and redefine the prevailing political settlement. Governance institutions, both formal and informal, in conflict-affected contexts are particularly important for women and girls, because they are the vehicles through which many of the drivers and outcomes of fragility can be addressed. Some of the opportunities include restoring the rule of law and access to justice; promoting women’s equal political rights and participation; advancing women’s economic empowerment; re-establishing basic public services; addressing trauma, and re-building trust and social relations.

Why social inclusion, governance & fragility?

1 In this study, social inclusion is understood in terms of the extent to which women and girls access, participate in, and influence local

governance processes in fragile settings.

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Evaluations of donor interventions, however, show that they have had trouble addressing the connections between social inclusion and fragility. A recent review of donor efforts found that programmes could do more to enable conflict-affected women as active agents in post-conflict and statebuilding processes. It found that programmes tended to include women affected by violence and conflict as passive beneficiaries only rather than as active agents in their own development. Moreover, donors have not been able to successfully contribute towards transformative gender programming because they fail to adequately address gender norms. Similarly, the evidence on gender, fragility and governance points towards a donor focus on formal, national processes over subnational and informal ones. There has been a tendency in both research and corresponding policy interventions to ‘essentialise the state’ as the single domain of activity. Formal, state-level policy and legislation, like the 30 percent women’s quota for elected positions, have been fundamental for increasing women’s access to, and participation within, public decision-making spaces in conflict-affected countries like Burundi and Rwanda. However, the case studies conducted in these countries confirmed that substantive change leading to greater influence over decision-making, particularly at the grassroots level, is unlikely to be achieved without attention to social norms and informal power.

In conflict-affected contexts, the formal state apparatus is often fragile; it can lack material resources, legitimacy to govern, and technical capacity. Moreover, women’s engagement with formal governance structures is often mediated by other, non-state institutions, including the household. This means that understanding both formal state structures and informal non-state institutions – including how

they interact – is doubly important for addressing the inclusion of women and girls in fragile contexts. By overlooking different constituencies within the state, including subnational and informal ones, important opportunities have been missed to effect positive change.

CARE’s Every Voice Counts programme recognises the importance of local governance as the locus of state-society relations. Local governance can be both formal and informal; it is constituted by a set of subnational institutions, systems and processes through which services are provided to citizens. It is a context for potential political action and empowerment, where citizens articulate their interests and needs; it is often where they mediate their differences and exercise their rights and obligations. Women’s active participation in local governance can drive the social norm change needed to develop even deeper and more meaningful influence in governance. Working on social norm change alongside and in support of interventions promoting women’s local, public participation and influence, supports the long-term process of beneficial and sustainable social norm change.

The research confirmed that working with non-state actors and informal institutions, can provide one of the most effective entry points for renegotiating gender relations and roles in local decision-making processes. For instance, the research in Burundi found that non-state associative structures, like VSLAs, can function as stepping stones toward women’s inclusion in formal local government budgeting and planning processes. As shown in Figure 1, Burundian women initially driven by practical interests and economic concerns will engage in associative community structures. The Burundi case study research showed that engaging in such spaces enabled women to gain confidence, capacities, and public recognition, which

Policy gaps & opportunities: local governance, social norms & informal power

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eventually enabled some women to move into public roles and formal decision-making spaces. Through increasing their exposure and respect within the community, as well as capacity to engage, participation in these meetings helped women to be nominated into local government councils and committees tied to formal budgeting and planning processes.

This points towards a promising relationship between engagment in less formalised community structures and influence in local government decision-making spaces. It should not, however, be assumed to be an inevitable or linear progression in all contexts. The study, and wider CARE experience, indicates that a number of conditional factors need to be in place for this pathway to be effective. These incude a strong focus on political empowerment (e.g. strengething voice and rights awareness), alongside addressing practical issues and economic concerns. Moreover, women’s practical interests are an entry point towards wider empowerment if contextual opportunities

to influence decision-making exist (e.g. national laws enshrining participation rights and women’s representation in politics).

Individual women and girls in conflict-affected communities also have important roles to play in pathways towards empowerment and inclusion. For instance, the research found that influential women can act as powerful role models and leaders, inspiring other women and girls to participate in public life. The research found that men can also act as powerful enablers for the inclusion of women and girls in local decision-making in both public and private spheres. Support from male family members in Burundi, for instance, has proven to be a particularly instrumental factor for women and girls who have gained access to local government planning processes. However, donor and INGO support for role models could be improved to have more effect if it became a stronger focus of social inclusion programming in fragile contexts going forward.

Figure 1. Pathway towards inclusion in local governance processes

Decision-making positionsand inclusion of needs informal planning

Participation in spaces fordialogue (e.g. VSLA’s, trainings)

Participation in informal and formal decision-making processes, including local government meetings

Increased capacity to engage and access to resources

I N C L U S I O N

P A R T I C I P A T I O N

A C C E S SI N F L U E N C E

Recognition of needs, issues and rights

Contextual opportunities (e.g. laws, policies, enabling environments)

INGO intervention design

Social norm changes

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INGOs and local civil society are also key players in supporting the inclusion of women and girls. The research showed social accountability interventions on the part of CARE and its partners had contributed towards increasing access to information about local government meetings, mobilising women and girls to attend, and increasing their capacity and confidence to engage in a meaningful way. Pre-consultation meetings and trainings, for instance, have helped women in Rwanda organise their priorities collectively and rehearse their presentations in advance of formal budgeting and planning meetings. By collectively raising their voices, women are able to gain more influence and garner greater support for their needs and issues. The Rwanda case study found that the capacity strengthening and mobilisation increases women’s likelihood to attend local governance meetings, which also brings individual benefits to women. For instance, attending meetings is an important way to gain access to information about local service delivery. The research found that it also enables women to learn about budgeting and finance, which are skills that they have applied in their own lives.

There are, however, specific contextual factors associated with fragile and conflict-affected contexts that make empowering women and girls to engage in local governance processes challenging. These include:

• Politically challenging environments in which the space for civil society to pursue empowerment agendas is restricted;

• The politicisation and instrumentalisation of local planning and budgeting processes, which makes it hard for women to access influential positions or influence priorities without existing political, social and/or economic capital;

• The disconnect between form and function in many participatory local government processes, but particularly in fragile settings, whereby increased opportunities to participate do not necessarily result in positive gender outcomes or increased influence over decision-making. This last crucial challenge is discussed below.

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A big challenge: gaining influenceRespondents in both cases reported that the participation of women and girls in local governance processes, including government planning, has increased in recent years. The respondents indicated that this was predominantly as a result of increased opportunities to engage because of national legislation and policies that promote women’s role and participation in politics. However, participation does not always translate into greater influence over decision-making. Primarily due to social norms that define the domains of gendered decision-making, in Burundi for example, influence tends to take place in more informal spaces and is limited to “women’s issues” (e.g. community dispute resolution and gender-based violence). Participation and influence in higher administrative levels, in local politics, and in decision-making related to security and land is weaker. With regard to the latter, women’s land rights in Burundi have yet to be fully protected and enshrined in the country’s legal frameworks. This puts women at a particular disadvantage when it comes to economic decision-making. In Rwanda, whilst women’s participation in Imihigo planning processes is perceived to have increased, their influence over budget planning and decision-making related to resource allocations has not. This points towards a missing link in the relationship between participation and influence in the Imihigo process.

The studies showed that women who are able to take full advantage of new opportunities to participate in local decision-making tend to be those who are already in an elevated position due to other factors, including education. The Rwanda study pointed towards lower levels of effective participation amongst grassroots citizens at the village level. It also found that female youth were the least likely to participate in local government planning meetings due to the perception that it was not a suitable space for them

to pursue their interests. Similarly, in Burundi, women who have been able take up more influential positions in local governance, tend to be those who are more economically independent. The Burundi case study indicated that access to economic resources can help women attend local government meetings, enable them to buy clothes and cover the cost of transport to locations at higher administrative levels. These findings point towards the need to take a multifaceted approach to social inclusion programming in fragile settings, paying close attention to the ways in which economic status, age and gender interact.

There are central challenges posed by the intersectional and contextually dependent inequalities that women and girls face. There are a combination of factors that interact with gender, and gender norms, in affecting women’s capacity to engage. These include education, relationships with male power holders in both private and public spheres, economic status and independence, or being recognised within the community with esteem and respect. For instance, political economy dynamics mean that gaining access to decision-making spaces and political influence often requires money and connections, which women typically have less access to than men in fragile and conflict-affected settings. To conclude, formal policies and structures increase opportunities for women and girls to access and even participate in local decision-making, but actual influence remains heavily constrained by social norms, broader political economy dynamics and other factors affecting women, including socioeconomic status and education.

On the basis of the opportunities and challenges discussed above, this policy brief will now present its main recommendations.

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Policy recommendations This policy brief recommends that the Dutch government and European Commission contribute towards sustainable peace in fragile, conflict-affected contexts by supporting the inclusion of women and girls in local decision-making spaces and structures. To achieve this, the following specific recommendations are proposed.

1. Support women as active agents in their own pathways towards empowerment, through, for example, partnering with local – and less formalised – women leaders, women’s movements and associations. They can be supported by enhancing the enabling legal and policy environment for political action, as well as the basic needs of women’s groups. The latter includes recognising the practical importance of access to resources. The global evidence indicated that providing practical support in the form of small grants to local women’s movements for running costs can be critical for the effectiveness of collective action.

2. In designing gender and social inclusion programming more broadly, pay closer attention to the subnational and informal dimensions of post-conflict statebuilding and reconstruction. As this brief has explained, important opportunities to effect women’s empowerment have been missed by overlooking different constituencies within the state.

3. Continue to develop innovative, locally led funding mechanisms that provide support to women’s movements, associations, women leaders and allies in fragile or conflict-affected settings. Particularly in highly dynamic contexts, using adaptive and agile funding mechanisms can be an effective way to strengthen locally driven empowerment agendas. These mechanisms should be capable of providing targeted support to less formalised structures and individuals; they must be able to respond to political opportunities to pursue specific agendas as and when they arise.

4. Understand and address the normative roots of gender inequality and violence, including how they interact. Taking a normative approach at the local level, includes partnering with politically active women’s rights activists and associations. It also involves working with communities, including men, and adolescent boys and girls, to address the social norms that underpin gender inequality through, for example, community dialogue mechanisms and communication strategies. CARE’s experience indicates that participatory power analysis can also enable a more locally-led interpretation of the political and normative aspects of gender inequality and poverty. Participatory approaches can also help reshape social relationships through, over time, establishing the ‘capacity to engage’ amongst marginalised groups.

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5. Take an intersectional approach to gender equality by being more aware of the ways in which socio-economic status, ethnicity, and age interact with gender inequalities. External interventions have tended to view gender as a siloed issue, or have framed it purely as an issue of women’s empowerment. The intersec-tion between different aspects of gendered identities, most notably class, has gained more attention in the literature on fragility and political participation. One way in which external donors and INGOs could address intersection-ality is by acting as a broker between elite-driven, urban-based women’s movements and rural grassroots initiatives and groups. Evidence shows that social movements that include and represent different social groups, including different ethnicities and classes, are more likely to make legitimate and successful claims.

6. Use a gender lens in conflict and political analysis in order to design programming that is more responsive to the complex and inter-connected ways in which fragility, violence, and gender affect governance processes and women’s empowerment. Evidence points towards clear continuity between women’s experience of violence, including intimate partner violence, before, during and post-conflict. Part of this continuity is explained by the persistence of gender norms and the direct relationship between social inequalities and fragility. Not only this, but the same norms that drive gender-based violence constrain women’s participation in public life and characterise the gendered political settlement underpinning post-conflict

governance institutions. One way for donors to more effectively address this intersection is to apply a gender lens to context analyses (e.g., conflict and political economy analyses). CARE’s experience also points towards the value of participatory power analysis for increasing social accountability outcomes in local decision-making for women and other marginalised groups.

7. Work with local authoritites and governments in fragile settings to improve feedback mechanisms and information sharing within budgeting and planning processes. The research showed that information relating to the process (e.g. timing and location of meetings) and outcomes (e.g. which priorities get integrated into the budget, which do not, and why) could be more effectively shared with communities who have participated in order to strengthen downward accountability.

8. At the organisational level within donors and INGO partners, encourage gender awareness and commitment internally and amongst top-level leadership. Establish organisational gender commitments and use robust account-ability mechanisms to ensure that gender commitments are implemented as intended. Evidence shows that development and human-itarian interventions in fragile and conflict affected contexts can mimic the same problems and inequalities that they aim to solve. Getting gender reflective management structures and approaches right internally is the starting point for any donor/ INGO intervention that seeks to redress social inequalities.

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9. Underpin programming with the recognition of gender equality as a fundamentally political issue and apply politically-aware models accordingly. This involves more connected or integrated approaches that address both the technical and political requirements of gender equality agendas. It calls for donor/ INGO interventions to work with key power holders and brokers, alongside technical support for gender equality institutions. It also requires moving beyond a limited programming focus on quotas and elections and seeking to enhance women’s influence and ability to promote gender issues once in office. For instance, donors can facilitate strategic coalitions and partnerships between male power holders and women in politics, linking them to cross-sectoral grassroots initiatives and broader civil society.

10. Support advocacy by INGOs to strengthen the enabling environment for civil society to pursue women’s empowerment agendas and inclusive development goals by advocating for increased civil society space and democratic rights in closed political environments. This involves tying efforts to secure legal or policy reforms with politically-aware programming that brokers relationships between key allies across government, civil society and other sectors to form locally driven coalitions for change.

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Every Voice Counts

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