New Year's Message from the Secretary General

By Lars Udsholt

10. January 2003

Dear friends in MSiS programmes across the world,

First and foremost: a happy new year to all of you! I am very pleased to send this letter to staff members in MS offices in Central America, Nepal and East and Southern Africa. Over the past years I have met quite a few of you when I served as an MS board member or more recently during my five-year tenure as principal at MS-TCDC in Tanzania. As I decided to apply for the position as MS Secretary General earlier last year, the prospects of working together with you to address the many challenges confronting MS were indeed among the most motivating factors.

MS: a living organisation

To me MS has always stood out as a unique organisation:

• engaging people from a multitude of different backgrounds in practical and concrete efforts,  
• committed to fight poverty and promote intercultural cooperation,  
• rich in experience with lots of insights and knowledge gained over the years  
• engaged in a diversity of different yet mutually complementary fields,  
• with extensive national and international networks,  
• commanding respect and praise from practitioners, academicians and the establishment alike. 

Since I took office in November, I have again and again come across statements like the above-mentioned. Still, beyond these (admittedly) glamorous yet sincere and true characteristics, I believe that MS displays a really essential quality: it is indeed a ‘living organisation’ – with priorities and current agendas being shaped by the people engaged with MS at any point in time. This implies that our approaches change, that new ideas are being introduced, that prevailing practices are subject to critic, that we assess whether old assumptions are still relevant.

Together with PAB and MS board members as well as Danish development workers, staff members working with MS across the MSiS programmes as well as in Denmark have a major role to play in making sure MS remains relevant and alive. In order to respond to the many challenges confronting us we need creative answers and fresh thinking. This calls for a good deal of debates and collective identification of directions to take. It also requires reflecting on the values to which MS is committed as well as taking stock of past achievements. This is obviously a tall order: MS has high expectations to its employees – but we also strive at providing a stimulating and rewarding work environment.2002: Achievements in the face of heavy challenges

 

Indeed, the past 12 months have definitely been busy and productive – with heavy issues on our agendas but also lots of commitment and good teamwork. Right from the start 2002 proved to be a tough and turbulent year. Cuts in government funding for development assistance affected all Danish NGOs, and as we all know MS programmes in the South had to cut their budgets. Partner support was restrained, DW recruitment substantially reduced, staff members laid off – and one MSiS programme, the sub-regional programme in Southern Africa based in Lesotho will be closed by 2004, whereas two others, Mozambique and Tanzania, were told to cut down by more than a third of their existing size. But this experience also showed that country/regional programmes and COs are able to respond quickly and professionally to sudden changes. Partners, DWs and COs in Mozambique and Tanzania showed remarkable ingenuity and willingness to reorganise the programmes with the more restrained budget framework. In the sub-regional programme in Southern Africa MS partners, DWs and CO staff are facing the tough challenge of consolidating achievements from MSiS partnerships while preparing for a ‘life without MS’.

In the Danish context we were also confronted with retrenchments in the secretariat in Copenhagen and Århus whereas staffing in regional offices in other Danish towns had to cease. Likewise, MS efforts with regard to ethnic minorities in Denmark suffered heavily in the face of cuts in government financing. The MS board shall decide later this month how we can revive and refocus this essential part of our work with funding now down to 1/3 of what we obtained just two years ago.

Yet, despite the above constraints the past year also demonstrated that MS remains a dynamic organisation capable of carrying out major new initiatives. I will mention but a few examples of these. Throughout the year, lots of efforts were focused on the UN summit in Johannesburg. The Rio+10 project proved to be an innovative and stimulating framework for political mobilisation and international advocacy, South-South networking as well as campaigns targeting e.g. media and educational institutions.

Later in the year, another lengthy process culminated when MS together with other Danish and European organisations engaged in a series of events focusing on the EU summit held last month in Copenhagen. MS efforts aimed at two broad objectives. First, ensuring that popular manifestations from civil society organisations could take place in a peaceful manner (in contrast to recent experience in Gothenburg, Prague, Genoa, Seattle etc.). Happily, this was successfully achieved as numerous activities and demonstrations took place around Copenhagen with only few skirmishes. – MS’ second objective aimed at drawing attention to the fact that both before and after the inclusion of ten new member states, the European Union (EU) plays an important role as a global actor. In current debates on European integration this is often overlooked – and while e.g. the detrimental consequences of EU trade policies for poor farmers in developing countries are increasingly acknowledged, schizophrenic arrangements continue. MS managed to get quite a bit of media attention around our trade campaign focusing on sugar – and we led a European wide effort of calls for changes in this field.

During 2001-2002 MS in DK and in the South has been engaged in activities around the Global Action theme ‘Peace, Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation’ – and in October MS Uganda organised a successful Civil Society Forum on Conflict Resolution and Development’. This event gathered more than 250 participants from Uganda, other African countries and Europe. The meeting debated how to strengthen community capacities to achieve sustainable peace – and provided a strong demonstration of how MS can mobilise people from a variety of different organisational, political and national backgrounds to share experience and identify strategies for future action.

These and numerous other examples testify what MS can achieve when working together with partners in the South and in the North – using networking, advocacy, alliances and capacity building as strategies to enhance efforts undertaken in individual partnerships and at grass roots level.

2003: challenges ahead

As we look back at 2002 I believe it is remarkable how much we after all accomplished in a situation where difficult decisions had to be arrived at within a very short timeframe. While MSiS budget cuts had severe consequences, I believe that we have become better at setting priorities and focusing our efforts. And the tough decisions made last year regarding the above-mentioned three African MSiS programmes should in general enable other MSiS budgets to regain the size they had before the cuts. It is also my impression that PAB members and CO staff are eager to look ahead at new challenges and opportunities to demonstrate the numerous qualities of MSiS partnerships. – In this letter I will limit myself to a few critical issues, where contributions from MSiS programmes will be particularly important.

European Union
In the Danish and European context it is obvious that the European Union is an issue requiring increasing attention. In the current draft of the new MS Manifesto (to be sent to MSiS programmes later this month) it is argued that EU must be a counterweight to the current US dominance based on the expectation that the EU can potentially be a progressive global actor. But we still need to qualify such statements by experience from the South regarding the role of the EU in development aid, human rights, trade etc. Together with partners in the South as well as elsewhere in Europe we need to put forward more specific proposals on how the EU should be reformed to fulfil its global responsibility.

Global Action 2003-4
Later this month the MS Board will debate the outline of a short position paper on Education to provide a platform for our Global Action activities in 2003-4. The MS Board in November last year suggested to focus particularly on issues such as informal education and civic education, emphasising the importance of education in enabling citizens to fight for their rights locally and globally. The Board expects a Global Action process this time which is more focussed and with somewhat less ‘all-encompassing’ ambitions. You will receive the paper soonest possible – and it will form part of the agenda for the Annual Policy Meeting in April. But we also welcome you to start planning specific Global Action initiatives, e.g. to be discussed at Annual Meetings, and to keep us informed on this.

MS Visibility
Changes in the Danish political landscape have obviously raised concerns that MS needs to pursue a more aggressive line with regard to our profile in relation to the Danish public at large and with regard to selected target groups among decision-makers, media etc. In January – March the MS Executive Committee and the Management Committee will work on specific proposals on how we can enhance MS visibility in order to ensure increased popular and political support to the issues, which MS is fighting for. It is crucial that MSiS programmes are engaged in these efforts – both by contributing to the discussion on how we go about this as well as by providing specific inputs to be used in our information work.

Enhanced Learning and the Evaluation of MS
Finally, to improve our performance and ability to work together with partners MS needs to put much more emphasis on learning. The reason is first and foremost the need to produce results to the benefit of poor and marginalised beneficiaries. Learning is also critical with regard to our aims for increased visibility and our ability to demonstrate results to key stakeholders in the North and in the South. We therefore need to improve our systems for assessing whether partnership objectives as well as country programme aims are achieved and the reasons why we succeed – or fail. This calls for individual MSiS programmes to improve monitoring and evaluation, but it definitely also requires that we learn from one another across the programmes.

In November last year we have embarked on the evaluation of MS – initiated by Danida and carried out by a team from CMI in Norway during the coming six months. This exercise will definitely be demanding and challenging, notably for the three country programmes involved, Kenya, Zambia and Nepal. I am confident that the evaluation exercise will document the solid work done across MS – and I expect that the evaluation will help us improve our learning efforts. In turn this will assist us in building wider support for the work that MS and partners undertake and for the future funding of our programmes.

The issues mentioned above are of course just some of the challenges confronting MS in 2003. Once again, the new year ahead of us promises to be exciting as well as demanding. I look forward to working with you – and to all the contributions and ideas that each of you will be providing.

Best wishes,
Lars Udsholt
Secretary General