Draft Paper: Global Mechanism - Comments and critique please

First of all I would like to compliment both of you for having synthesised in the draft paper the many comments received through consultations of different kinds, a difficult task that you have achieved.

The draft will be an excellent basis for your forthcomming meeting in New York.

I do not have many comments to add since I participated in the first online consultations. I agree positively to the key question you have posed as well as that the impact of communication for development is not communicated to policy makers. I share your concern that the SDGs have not been indicated as a major focus. Alignment with the SDGs should be included starting  with the introductory paragraphs. I have not seen mention of evaluation as a key focus. Nor mention of universities as key players. What is meant by lack of a valid change theory. We should not be too theoretical.

As for mechanisms, a standing committee of the UN is the safest solution, although it has some drawbacks.  It will provide a formal standing with governments and policy makers. It will help with identifying funding and provide staffing. The other solutions are more innovative, but also more fluid. A federation of issue focussed networks is the most fluid.

I believe in the introductory  paragraphs you should include a brief definition of communication for development so we are all on the same wave length. This would enable  you  to eliminate repeating all the time communication for development, media, social and behavioural change, that makes for heavy going. The same for repeating always at international, national, regional and local levels.

I hope you will find these brief comments useful.

Best regards,

Silvia

Thanks to all those involved in this process.

By way introduction, WACC is an international organization (we currently have member and partners in over 100 countries) that builds on communication rights to advance social justice. A lot of WACC’s work consists of supporting grassroots organizations to use traditional and new media to enable their communities to claim their rights, access social services, engage in policy-oriented advocacy, and enhance their participation in democratic processes.  We are also very involved in media monitoring on issues of gender, poverty, and migration.

Below are some comments from us here at WACC.

1.      

On the  Development Challenge section

a.      

We agree with your assessment about the need to employ effective communication, media, and social and behavioural change processes/tools in order to advance development objectives. We feel that the role of communication is often missing from development agendas, as is the case with most of the SDGs

b.     

We also believe that communication should be conceptualized from a rights-based perspective in relation to development. Communication is more than just an instrument to achieve development; communication rights (freedom of expression/opinion, freedom of the press, access to knowledge and information, right to establish media platforms, linguistic rights, participation in decision-making, democratic media governance, etc.) area building blocks to advance other rights and can also help to advance a particular development agenda, such as the Agenda 2030 in this case.

c.      

We have been doing some thinking recently about ways to link the theory and practice of communication rights with the SDGs and have found that, while communication rights are relevant to all SDGs, there are close links (as you have pointed out in parts of the Paper) with SDG 5, SDG 16, and parts of SDG 9 and SDG 17. We have also found that there are major elements missing from the 2030 Agenda from a communication rights perspective, such as media ethics, media reform/democratization, and issues of cultural diversity and pluralism.

d.     

We believe this section could highlight issues of gender as they related to communication and development more prominently.

 

2.      

 On the Worries section

a.      

We agree with many of issues you raised.

b.     

In regards to the evidence, we believe that evidence does exist, but perhaps it isn’t reaching donors and policy makers, perhaps it’s not always clearly “packaged”. At the same time, we should also keep in mind that social change that happens as a result of communication interventions is often highly contextual and long-term, which may sometimes make it hard to quantify and show as evidence. For example, we recently learned of some very significant community development change that happened in Argentina partly as a result of a community radio project that WACC helped to kick-start some 12 years ago.  

c.      

On the absence of a theory of change, we have also been asking ourselves this question. We came up with a very high-level TOC for our most recent Strategic Plan that could be of interest to some of you. It’s on the last page of this document if you are interested https://indd.adobe.com/view/33637d77-f867-44c0-89e4-3f59dfc0cfd0

 

3.      

On the programming standards:

a.      

We understand the reasons for wanting to come up with standards—it’s directly linked to the need for evidence-  but given the great diversity that exists in this field,  we think it might be difficult (or very time consuming!) to achieve this in a way that makes everybody happy. Perhaps there could be a set of different standards for different types of work, or perhaps we should be speaking about guiding principles

 

4.      

On the training standards:

a.      

It would be good to build on what education and research institutions, both in the North and the South, have done in this area.  It’s also important to ensure there is balance of standards that include both quantitative and data-driven training with qualitative research.

 

5.      

On the Policy Voice:

a.      

We believe this is crucial. Our field needs to play a more active role in advocating for communication-based interventions related to development, but it takes time and evidence to build the desired level of influence.

b.     

It’s important to always link the policy field of the C4D field to the voices of grassroots communities. That’s where our legitimacy will come from.

 

6.      

On the Credible and compelling evidence:

a.      

This is also important. We agree with the approach of gathering existing evidence and packaging in ways that are appealing.

b.     

It would be important to link this evidence to the SDGs given that many funders may have already committed resources to advancing certain SDGs. But we should also have evidence for that falls outside of the scope of the SDGs.

 

7.      

On the Funding levels:

a.      

With the approach of the “common bucket” into which funds would be placed, it would need very clear criteria about the kind of work that will be supported (will it be mostly for health communication efforts that may be appealing to larger donors? Will it also help to advance media development or media democracy initiatives that may have access to lower levels of funding?), and it would be important to have autonomy for the mechanism to decide how the funds are spent without excessive interference from donors.

b.     

It would be important to ensure that grassroots organizations are able to access the funds, and that they receive capacity building to be able to comply with complex impact and financial reporting if they lack such capacity.

 

8.      

On the Civil Society engagement:

a.      

Very important dimension that should cut across the entire mechanism.

 

9.      

On the operating mechanism:

a.      

We don’t have clear position on this, largely because we believe the operating mechanism should help advance the priorities on which the mechanism would focus, and those have not yet been decided. It would also depend largely on the kind of funding that becomes available for this.

b.     

We do not support an overly bureaucratic mechanism, and are reluctant to support the establishment of a UN standing Committee on this issue. That is not to say that mechanism shouldn’t be have a close relationship with UN agencies or UN rapporteurs.

c.      

It’s essential that grassroots communities, especially those from the South, have a real and meaningful voice in the mechanism.

 

10.  

On the funding base:

a.      

We don’t have a clear position on this yet. But we think it would be a good idea to identify from the beginning of donors who would be willing to support this experiment in its early stages.

 

A final comment: It occurs to me that this debate will take place in the English language. How do we bring in the experiences from groups who operate in different languages? Thinking about this is key to ensure that the exchanges we have here are accessible and reflect the concerns of as many people as possible.

 

Thank you very much

Lorenzo Vargas

WACC

Identifying the actors, clarifying their roles

This is presented as empirical fact: "Comparative absence of the communication, media, social and behavioural change perspective/voice in policymaking forums"

But is it? What is the evidence? Absent compared to whom or what? Aren't most successful policymakers acutely and astutely  sensitive to media and public opinion? Are we conflating governmental public information personnel and purposes with independent news organizations and/or mass entertainment media and/or behavorial change specialists, from commercial advertisers to environmental, human rights and public health campaigners? Or are we talking about only the narrower 'C4D' subset of this latter category?

Global mechanism(s)

This presupposes that the absence of some agreed 'global mechanism' is a problem - ergo, the challenge is to fix that problem by building such a mechanism. Yet after more than a year of extensive debate, analysis and consultation, that core proposition still seems unproven. That is not to say that some sort of permanent internatonal forum or professional network in this area might not be helpful, but in its framing it seems more like a solution in seach of a prolem than the reverse

1)   A new UN standing committee is the last thing we need or the UN needs – even if achievable,  which is  (happily) unlikely,  the process of its creation and mandate definitions  would take up enormous amounts of time and energy, and to what end? Erecting yet another thoroughly politicized and dysfunctionally bureaucratic UN structure with little capacity to advance progress in its designated area but considerable ability to obstruct, question, delay and assert oversight powers.

      

2)   A loose federation or ‘network of networks’ of the different intersecting      subcultures in this wide universe of development-minded communications professionals and organizations could have some practical utility, especially if linked to the SDGs framework as an organizing principle for advancing, coordinating and monitoring progress towards these already agreed development goals on the local, national and global level.

3)   Thematic groups or coalitions or networks don’t make much practical sense on either the global or country level if  exclusively limited to their the C4D/news media/public information actors and issues – the goal instead should be to advocate and facilitate the inclusion of professional communications  substructures as integral components of existing development coordination and/or information-sharing structures in many different though ultimately interrelated areas (women’s rights, climate change,  public health, poverty reduction, democratic governance, etc).

It is telling that the SDGs were not mentioned more consistently in the surveys and consultations leading up to this week’s meeting, as this is another indication – from within a very specialized community of international development professionals – that the SDGs have not yet reached lift-off almost two years after launch. Why? A communications gap, fundamentally, on both the local and global level. The SDGs need the sustained, coordinated involvement of the community of development communications practitioners canvassed and convened by UNICEF and CI: the SDGs  & Agenda 2030 are nothing if not a communications enterprise, like the MDGs before them, designed to focus national and global attention on urgent but attainable development objectives.  The UN’s Agenda 2030 will succeed or fail based on public understanding and support of those goals. At the same time, the SDGs provide the ‘C4D’ community a needed, internationally endorsed strategic focus and framework for development communications.  These goals have to be our goals.

 

 

Are seventeen goals inherently too many to communicate, much less implement? Not necessarily - though achieving the SDGs will require much clearer communication of their overarching purpose, from the meta-goal of eradicating extreme poverty to the peace and justice and policy commitments of goals 16 and 17.  Take a look at the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’ adopted by France’s National Assembly in 1789, a manifesto which is remembered not just as a key moment in European history but because its goals and principles and spirit still resonate and remain relevant today.  Drafted by committee, the Declaration wasn’t a masterpiece of marketing or eloquence. It was a checklist of ‘articles’ or goals to be recognized and implemented. How many articles? Exactly seventeen.

Congratulations for leading this global effort.  The draft paper proposes a series of activities that are much needed in the SBC sector.

 

I am a researcher at the World Bank, where I recently launched an impact evaluation program of mass media and edu-tainment interventions. The program’s goal is to strengthen the evidence needed to systematically scale up SBC investments and to maximize their behavior change impacts. My comments are restricted to Problem Option 4: Credible and compelling evidence.

 

Without future high-quality causal research, the evidence base will continue lagging, which in turn is likely to negatively affect sector investments. While the number of experimental and high-quality quasi-experimental evaluations of SBC interventions has grown in the last few years; their number remains limited, especially compared to other sectors. The best evidence is usually qualitative; restricted to measuring intended versus realized behavior change; or uses methodologies that do not produce credible estimates of program impacts.  Because the bar for what constitutes credible evidence in international development has risen in the last few decades, and with competing sectors carrying out a series of large-scale impact evaluations (e.g. conditional cash transfers), the weaker SBC evidence base will increasingly make it harder to argue that SBC is a smart investment.

 

Option 4 should have a third goal: The development and the financing of an ambitious evaluation strategy. The two current goals, to have a consensus of 30 credible pieces of impact data in two years and to be able to cite 100 instances of these pieces in five years, suggests that there is no fundraising strategy in place to support an ongoing research program.  Without such a research component, the evidence gap with respect to other sectors is likely to continue growing. Fundraising for new evaluations is hard, especially without a central fund that provides incentives for different partners to co-finance new studies. The proposed evaluation strategy, which should include other types of evaluations (e.g. for formative research, process evaluations, etc.) has two additional advantages. First, it could help refine our theory of change (one of the papers’ key objectives) by testing different parts and applications of competing theories of change. Second, the research program could inform how best to design SBC interventions and their components to maximize their effectiveness at the individual and community levels; for example, how best to complement TV/radio broadcasts with interactive-voice recordings or social media interventions that directly target the individual and his peers.

 

High-quality impact evaluations will produce credible cost-effective measures, which are key inputs for investment decisions of ministries finance and donors. For example, the World Bank is completing an experimental evaluation of the MTV Shuga in Nigeria, a TV drama that aims to reduce HIV risk among African youth. The World Bank study provides credible estimates of program impacts, that when combined with the substantially lower costs of reaching millions of individuals of mass media interventions when compared to face-to-face interventions, this impact evaluation clearly shows that entertainment education could be among the most cost-effective approaches against the HIV epidemic in Sub Sahara Africa. We need more studies like this to make the business case that SBC is a smart and cost-effective investment.  By supporting a series of impact evaluations, the proposed evaluation strategy should help expand SBC investments in other sectors and regions of the world.