Deepening Voice and Accountability to Fight Poverty

This 11-page summary note is from a conference in France of 80 representatives from government, civil society, think tanks, and media organisations in developing countries, as well as representatives from multilateral and bilateral donor agencies, academic institutions, and international civil society organisations. They participated in a dialogue about deepening voice and accountability to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of national poverty reduction strategies. Conference sponsors were the Department for International Development (DFID), The World Bank Group (WB), and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).


According to the document, "[t]he objective of the conference was to begin to break through the “iron triangle” of technocrats in government, civil society and donor agencies that currently defines, and in many ways constrains, the development process; to amend the prevailing development paradigm to more effectively address issues of deepening voice and accountability; and to recognize the contribution of information and communication processes to that agenda."


The conference panel titles included: Democracy and Poverty Reduction, Accountability, A Strong Civil Society, and The Media and Poverty Reduction. As stated in the document, "[p]articipants agreed that deepening voice and accountability in developing countries is about people, including those living in [economic] poverty, making the decisions that affect their lives."


The panel on the media and economic poverty reduction expressed the need of the media in developing countries for more assistance from both government and the donor community due to marketing pressures and to increased risk, intimidation, and harassment. Despite scepticism about the media’s ability to be an effective and interested partner in development because of the notion that economic poverty and development issues do not sell newspapers; the political biases of owners of media outlets; and poor capacity of journalists to understand development issues, examples were identified showing that "...socially responsible journalism can be good business.” Participants agreed that expanding support to grassroots media could increase the reach of media and that donors and their government partners need to respect, help strengthen, and work through local structures of communication. The adoption of the journalistic ethics of western media and the need to increase the capacity of journalists outside of the urban elite newspapers directed attention to the need for better training of journalists and increased support to educational institutions that train journalists.

The following summaries of the roles and responsibilities for furthering the accountability agenda preceded participant recommendations:

• Civil Society - There was consensus that civil society should be an active player in setting the agenda for poverty reduction in their countries.
• Governments - Participants said that governments need to be better and more transparent communicators. It was agreed that governments have a role to play in passing freedom of information legislation and making relevant information more readily available to citizens.
• Donors - Donors have a role to play in creating an environment where citizens’ participation in the development process is improved by better information and communication processes around development issues, according to participant consensus.
• Media - There was consensus that the media should be seen as active partners in development, not just mouthpieces for government or donors. It was also suggested that the media could share some common platforms with civil society and academic groups to improve coverage of economic poverty issues. It was noted that donors should promote the media’s role as an independent watchdog, and as an institution essential to the governance and accountability agenda.
• Academics - The role of academics was seen as one of partners with journalists and civil society for translating and explaining complex development issues. Academics can also partner with donors to help produce a “body of evidence” that supports the value-added by communication and information for deepening voice and accountability.

The following are communication-related recommendations among those contributed by participants;

1. "Sharing media best practice;
2. Dedicated fund for training journalists;
3. National-level communication dialogue;
4. Central role for communication as strategic in development;
5. Donor investment in information initiatives;
6. Donor-funded communication studies on local perceptions of media and alternative ways to communicate with the economically poor;
7. Make communication strategies mandatory to all projects;
8. Development research that can be simplified and converted into coverage by the media;
9. Communication research as an instructive tool that communicates how to reach the "unorganised" [economically] poor;
10. Help build communication capacity in governments;
11. Support freedom of information;
12. Support for institutes of higher education;
13. The communication environment audit for showing gaps in reaching the "unorganised" [economically] poor; and
14. Design and roll out globally a senior management course on development communication."