President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa has relieved the country's deputy president, Jacob Zuma, of his post. Mbeki announced this to a joint sitting of South Africa's parliament in Cape Town. His move came in the wake of the conviction of Zuma's financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, on charges of corruption and fraud last week. Mbeki said he took into account the basic pillars of South African jurisprudence, including the presumption that someone was innocent until proven guilty. Zuma - who was not charged in the trail of Shaik - "has yet to have his day in court." Mbeki also noted that Shaik was taking his case on appeal and that it was possible the judgement might be overturned.

Pro-democracy and human rights organisations are holding weekly candlelight vigils in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to demand an official apology for violence during the constitutional referendum in May. A number of women said they were sexually assaulted when clashes broke out between supporters of President Hosni Mubarak and oppositionists.

"As members of the WTO prepare towards the Ministerial Conference in Hong-Kong, we note that four years since the adoption of the Doha work programme, there is little evidence of progress in tackling the developmental concerns of African and other developing countries which were proclaimed as pivotal to the success of the Doha agenda. On the contrary, as evident from their proposals, the rich and powerful industrialised countries of the WTO continue to pressurise African and other developing countries to undertake further and deeper liberalisation commitments in their industrial and agricultural sectors even while the developed countries remain intent on maintaining their advantages and protection. "

The collapse of a flagship water privatisation in Tanzania, and opposition to both a planned privatisation of the state cotton board and the completed privatisation of the state railway in Mali, highlight the continuing struggle over pressure from the Bretton Woods institutions to privatise in Africa. In late May, the Tanzanian government pulled the plug on a deal with British company Biwater, which had been contracted in 2003 to bring water to the capital region. Privatisation of the capital's water system was a condition of both IMF support to Tanzania and for getting debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative.

African civil society organisations have called on the African Union to be prepared to repudiate Africa's multilateral debts, should the G8 summit scheduled for July fail to agree on a 100 per cent debt cancellation for the continent without conditions. The CSOs said that the continent spends US$15 billion to service debt in a year, and that Africa's debt stock, which currently stands at US$330, had been paid many times over.

Thirteen African countries are expected to provide universal primary education by 2015 and another 31 may reach that Millennium Development Goal (MDG) if they invest more in the lower educational levels, according to a new report from the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The report, compiled by UNESCO's Regional Bureau for Africa (BREDA), is entitled "Education for All: Paving the Way for Action" and has been released in Senegal's capital, Dakar.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC) are to participate in a global research project looking into the adoption of free/libre and open source software (FLOSS). FLOSS, an alternative to often expensive proprietary software, is arguably one of the best examples of open, collaborative, internationally distributed production and development that exists today. The open format encourages development and allows software to be tailored to the needs of users.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, is sending a fact-finding team to Togo next week to investigate allegations of rights violations in the wake of the West African country's recent elections. Arbour has appointed human rights expert Doudou Diene to head the mission, which is expected to arrive in Togo on 13 June and stay there for two weeks, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said.

Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia, which has been based in Nairobi since formed eight months ago, began relocating to the country on Monday. Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari said the relocation from Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, would be completed in a few days.

If development in Africa continues in a business as usual manner, sub-Saharan Africa will reach the UN Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality not by 2015 as targeted but a century later, a study says. That means 28 million children will die, who could have been saved if the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had been achieved by 2015.

Britain's policy of forcing failed asylum seekers to return to war-torn countries has drawn an unprecedented public attack from the United Nations. Christian Mahr, the deputy representative in the Office of the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told The Observer that sending people back to dangerous countries such as Somalia was a recipe for 'chaos' that would make problems worse. The UNHCR has published advisory notices raising concerns about a number of trouble spots including Burundi, Somalia, Ivory Coast and parts of Angola.

As a change agent I need to be supported by these great tools and resources that you are producing. I hope to get connected and receive regular resources to facilitate my work. I work as a community development/civil society capacity building coordinator. We aim to promote rights in our programming through good governance and participation in decision making which can be attained through community empowerment.

For Africa to move forward out of stagnation means Africans all over Africa should move beyond pettiness and babyness. The world is changing and with the change is the reality of integration and intermingling of the races. This new age integration and intermingling of the races especially Black and White has always been in existence previously. It started with the moving into Africa by European adventurers in the 13th and 14th century.

The moving into Africa of these Europeans and the subsequent intermingling of Black and White was characterized by animosity and such hatred such that the Europeans abhorred the Africans in such a way that they called them Monkeys and Apes. The reduction of Africans by Europeans to animalism eventually let to Africans transported like donkeys to Europe and America's as slaves.

* For the rest of this response to Issa Shivji's article, The “Second Great Boer Trek” (http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=28321) and a response from Pambazuka News, please click on the link below.

EDITORS' COMMENT: It is surprising how many people seem to have missed the point of Issa Shivji's article. He wrote about the penetration of South African capital into the rest of Africa, the growing sub-imperial role of capital into the region, and its consequent growing dominance within the region's economies without necessarily a concurrent development of productive forces. This is not a matter of white penetration of Africa. We strongly recommend readers to re-read Shivji's important contribution. It has a direct bearing on the struggle for emancipation and self determination.

There is no one apart from ourselves who will develop Africa in the coming years. It is time to stop dreaming about salvation armies. What we need is to get access to tools and work from scratch. Lets work with them and lets stop all those who are not doing the right work by refusal or other methods like exposing they intentions and funny tricks.Cooperation yes! Exploitation never!

President Kibaki would trail Kanu chairman Uhuru Kenyatta and Environment Minister Kalonzo Musyoka were elections to be held this year, an opinion poll released yesterday indicates. The Steadman Group, whose Gallup poll last October placed President Kibaki at the top, has this time put him behind Uhuru and Kalonzo who tied in the first position with a 29 per cent rating. Kibaki scored 15 per cent.

Burundi's former main rebel group, the Conseil national pour la défense de la démocratie-Forces nationales pour la défense de la démocratie (CNDD-FDD), won 55.3 percent of seats in communal elections held in the country on 3 June, according to provisional results announced last Thursday. Political parties have four days to lodge official complaints to the electoral commission and final results are expected on 19 June.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni changed his stand on Wednesday and said he would campaign for the country's return to multiparty politics during a referendum scheduled for 28 July. For the past two decades, Museveni has strongly opposed party politics and claimed they were the source of Uganda's political upheaval during its post-independence era.

What is the meaning of social justice, and how can charitable foundations apply it in their grantgiving? Increasingly, foundations have begun to debate this issue. This article seeks to identify ways in which foundations, striving to become more socially just in their approach, can begin to reposition themselves. I acknowledge that this may be a difficult task and that the challenges facing philanthropic organizations in so-called ‘developing’ countries may be different from those in more ‘developed’ countries, but the questions of value are the same in each case.

While social justice is a concept that has been debated for thousands of years, it is only since the 1970s, and particularly in the past 15 years, that it has re-emerged in political discourse, notably among governments which have characterized themselves as social democratic or ‘Third Way’.[1] Essentially, as David Miller notes, in the context of the development of liberal democratic societies, ‘the quest for social justice is a natural consequence of the spread of enlightenment’.[2]

The concept is also a contested one, adopted from a variety of political positions and linked to wider arguments about the roles of the state, the market and the individual. Although contemporary social democratic governments appear to ‘own’ the approach of social justice, it has also been espoused by the political right, for example in the UK (where a former leader of the Conservative Party has established a Centre for Social Justice) and in Australia, where the government argues that social justice is best achieved when individuals are able to compete in the marketplace, unconstrained by the action of the state. Current arguments about social justice also expose tensions with other overarching political goals of economic competitiveness and environmental sustainability.[3]

The first critical point for donors, then, is to be clear to themselves and to potential grantees what they understand by social justice. If foundations do espouse the values of social justice, this implies a strongly proactive stance to grantmaking. It will influence not only what they do, but how they do it. They must also have a clear theory of social change, an analysis of the causes of injustice and a strategy for addressing them. This, as we shall see, must involve the participation of grantees in political change. It might, for example, also necessitate building strategic alliances, partnerships or coalitions with other donors or with proxies who can act where donors can’t, to pursue broader aims of social justice.

Justice as fairness

The simplest definition of social justice is that it is ‘fairness’.[4] Drawing on Aristotle, Hume, Hegel, Kant and other moral philosophers, John Rawls argued in the 1970s that ‘... the principal subject of justice is the basic structure of society … the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation ...’ He was not concerned with the benefits to be derived for individuals from private association.

Philanthropic donors have a huge range of options open to them for promoting change: through social action, research, lobbying, partnership working, developing their own voice, promoting information and intelligence, facilitating capacity within specific sectoral interests, supporting the voice of the poor, levering change within other organizations, bringing grantees together to form social movements, and so on. Some or all of these strategies can be pursued with organizations similarly committed to social justice. Which strategies they adopt depends significantly on the political and policy context.

In Rawls’ ‘well-ordered society’, everyone is presumed to act justly and vested interests are put to one side. Other theorists support this view: social justice cannot be found, they argue, in a society oriented towards individual gain and ‘standards and values cannot be developed privately’, ie within one institution or in relation to one practice.[5] What ‘we apply to others we must apply to ourselves’.

These approaches are grounded primarily in the traditions of a redistributive modern welfare state and have big implications for the relationship between donors and grantees. If donors require grantees to live up to claims of being socially just organizations, then the donors have to do so themselves too. Are the decision-making procedures of donors fair, transparent, culturally appropriate and open to challenge?

Social justice and equality

Social justice has a strong relationship with – but is not the same thing as – equality. The obscene disparities in income and wealth which characterize most societies in both North and South are clearly not socially just, particularly as much of that income and wealth is earned at the expense of others’ poorly paid labour. However, it is arguable that the development of skills (often through extended training, on or off the job, and education) and the undertaking of particularly risky jobs that benefit society more generally deserve some public recognition, usually through financial reward. Conversely ‘inequalities which are not to the benefit of all’ constitute injustice, and this would include gross inequalities in income and wealth. This approach to social justice also highlights distinctions between equality of opportunity, or access, equality of outcome, and equality of status.

Most contemporary politicians arguing for equality tend to argue for equality of opportunity. However, those on the political right emphasize simply equality of rules and processes, the state’s role being merely to ensure free market exchanges for all (although we know that the powerful – in Russia, China or the USA alike – can in any case manipulate the so-called ‘free’ market in their own interests). Those broadly on the left emphasize equality of outcome – or at least sufficient equality of outcome to prevent injustice. Technically, all full citizens have equality of status within a society; however, equality of opportunity and access, and of outcome – say, for black and minority ethnic groups, or for women – are clearly not present in any society. We know from educational statistics in most countries that equality of opportunity – in the sense that everyone starts school at roughly the same level of attainment – is not itself enough to achieve social justice. The impact of racism within educational systems in many countries means that many minority ethnic children fall far behind the average in terms of achievement by the time they leave school even if, as is the case in the UK, some are actually ahead of the average when they enter school. This is but one example of the critique that ‘equality of opportunity in the context of economic and social structures that remain profoundly unequal is likely to remain a mirage’.[6]

Desert, need and equality

More recently, David Miller has based his conception of social justice on the themes of desert, need and equality. In relation to desert, a just society is one ‘whose institutions are arranged so that people get the benefits they deserve’. This principle cannot, however, become a rigid formulation contingent simply on institutional arrangements within a society. Resources cannot be committed solely on the basis of desert but also on the basis of need. We should not, for example, starve prisoners who have been tried and convicted; their need for and rights to food override society’s disapproval of their behaviour. And the concept of need cannot be ‘merely idiosyncratic or confined to those who hold a particular view of the good life [as it usually is by the most powerful in society] … it must be capable of being validated on terms that all relevant parties can agree to.’

This validation is a political process; in some countries, consensual versions of poverty have been arrived at through market testing.[7] Generally, however, many parties – usually the poor and disadvantaged – are excluded from defining their needs (or at least from publicly articulating their definitions and seeing them turned into policy) because of their lack of power. Hence, worldwide, definitions of poverty are usually imposed by transnational organizations such as the IMF and not negotiated with the poor themselves.

The implication of this for donors who claim to serve the interests of the poor and disadvantaged is that they must find means for listening to the voice of the poor; this would apply as much to priority setting and evaluation as to the choice of the individual projects that they fund. This is not to argue that the poor have a monopoly on progressive or socially just views, as Emmett Carson rightly points out (see below) – there is plenty of evidence to the contrary – but that their voice is often one which is missing in policy debates and one which donors should engage with.

This raises awkward questions for procedures: for example, what constitutes success and who defines the measures? Should evaluation of project work be done by peer groups rather than outside consultants? Is long-term support for sustainable programmes better than supporting one-off projects? Are donor priorities determined by detached research alone (if that!) or can engagement with potential grantees shape them?[8] Why should grantees not have as powerful a voice as investment advisers ?[9] Most foundations are accountable only to the tax authorities: the claims of social justice suggest that they should develop transparent forms of accountability to their target publics. But the lack of political accountability also places them in a position where they – almost more than anyone else with power and leverage – can take risks. Exploring the causes of social problems may well cause controversy, but if they don’t do this, donors will generally remain locked into dealing with their symptoms.[10]

This approach also raises some interesting issues about the extent to which philanthropic grantmaking operates as subservient to, complementary to or in opposition to the policy of the state. The state often has a strong view on desert, and in most countries social assistance to the poor, for example, is set at extremely low levels. Do foundations support that approach or challenge it? And if they challenge it, by what strategic means? Should donors be in the business of challenging unjust laws – as many do, for example in the case of the treatment of refugees – and how do they determine what is unjust? Again, the voice of the poor can be a guide.

Social justice, citizenship and rights

The concept of social justice is linked closely to other key concepts such as citizenship and rights. T H Marshall’s classic exposition of rights[11] is still used by many to identify the characteristics of citizenship. Human rights have traditionally incorporated:
* Civil rights Property rights, legal guarantees and freedoms.
* Political rights Right to vote, rights of association, constitutional participation.
* Social rights Entitlements to basic standards of education, health and social care, housing and income maintenance (whether through work or benefits).

These rights are not, however, of equal weight. Private property rights underpin the operation of the market economy. This generates much unjust inequality, and ‘political rights and social rights tend to challenge such inequality’.[12]

Moreover, the unrestrained workings of the market, which is the fundamental cause of much injustice, both social and economic, may afford certain rights – for example the elimination of absolute poverty – but it cannot deliver social justice. The goal of social justice as fairness therefore requires governments to confront the inequities of market systems. And if they do not do so, where do donors stand? To implicitly or explicitly challenge the state again involves risk, but not being prepared to take risks in pursuit of social justice implies acceptance of the status quo.

Gender and culture

Earlier analyses of social justice are also limited in their understanding of the way cultural rights and gender rights need to be built into a framework of values, particularly in the context of a globalizing world. For minority ethnic groups, this means the right to be culturally different within a society that provides the same social, civil and political rights to all. How this plays out in particular multicultural societies depends on the nature of each society. It may lead to further tensions for donors: for example, in supporting an independent role for women within cultures which devalue women’s contribution, or encouraging the growth of migrant workers’ groups in countries where they are exploited and given no formal political power.

Increasingly, foundations will face the challenge of exploring the nature of social justice within multicultural societies, particularly in those characterized by institutional and individual racism, whether it be the marginalization of aboriginal groups, structured racism against the Roma, or the ‘everyday racism’ of most societies. Multicultural societies have increasingly been struggling with the difficulties of incorporating respect and recognition for cultural diversity and difference within a framework of universal rights. These arguments have, however, generally been couched in terms of social integration, assimilation and cohesion – and their obvious manifestations such as preferences in food and dress – rather than social justice. Social injustice in these societies comes not just from the unconstrained workings of the mechanisms of the market leading to significant differences in income and wealth and the opportunities and outcomes that these bring, but also from cultural and socially constructed differences based on, for example, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and disability.[13] Donors have to recognize how these differences operate and work to confront them in their own practices and policies.

Respect and recognition

Social justice is thus, critically, not just about the distribution of material goods and benefits but about the non-material aspects of life, the ‘relations of respect’ and ‘recognition’ between different groups and individuals (and not just the poor).[14] This relational strand, in particular ‘the elimination of institutionalized domination and oppression’, needs to be added to the concept of social justice. Donors supporting ‘relational’ social justice may find themselves challenging powerful attitudes and practices, including the biases against women, minority ethnic groups and disability that characterize many societies. The task facing foundations is then to ensure that all cultural groups within their remit are, first, recognized and, second, engaged in the process of determining and acting on these principles. But it also requires them to pay attention to the relations of respect between themselves and their potential grantees. This should be reflected in all donor processes, from application forms through to priority setting.

The disadvantaged as actors

Most conceptions of social justice still fail to consider the role of those most disadvantaged by social injustice as actors – rather than simply victims – in the search for social justice. Some foundations, at least rhetorically, have now acknowledged the importance of processes which empower the disadvantaged to act and speak on their own behalf. An additional dimension to social justice is thus about the role of community development as the means by which the excluded and the marginalized can act in pursuit of it.[15] Human rights cannot be developed in the absence of processes of sustainable development, owned by the poor and disadvantaged themselves. To put it another way, social justice is not simply about achieving human welfare, but about the means by which it is obtained.

This focus on process again raises important questions about foundations’ relationship with their grantees. Are grantees encouraged to develop a critique of the processes and practices of the foundations themselves? Do these structures and processes – which often provide limited funds for limited periods – really empower grantee organizations or simply tie them into a more dependent funding relationship? Does the language that donors use focus on the positive and creative aspects of potential grantees, and the opportunities that funding opens up, or does it encourage them to view themselves as victims, as people simply with needs rather than with skills, aspirations and potential?

A wide-ranging definition

Drawing on these developing analyses, one wide-ranging definition of social justice might be as follows:

A framework of objectives, pursued through social, economic, environmental and political policies, based on an acceptance of difference and diversity, and informed by values concerned with
* achieving fairness and equality of outcomes and treatment;
* recognizing the dignity and equal worth and encouraging the self-esteem of all;
* meeting basic needs;
* reducing inequalities in wealth, income and life chances;
* encouraging the sustainable participation of all, including the most disadvantaged.

This challenging formulation, against which donors can test their programmes and practices, is not intended as a menu from which one can pick and choose but a range of dimensions to social justice, all of which must be contained within a policy programme. Which of these dimensions is focused on at a given moment does, however, depend on the political and cultural context within which donors are operating, as Alexander Irwan (see below) points out. Donors whose programmes focus on meeting basic needs alone cannot be regarded as implementing a social justice programme. Simply supplying the infrastructure for provision of clean water – a basic need for everyone – does not meet the test of social justice. To meet that test, it must enable, for instance, sustainable control of that provision by the recipients – which requires education, provision of skills and investment in human resources, alongside wider programmes to address the reasons why some groups still have difficulty having their basic needs met while others have a disproportionate share of available resources.

This might again suggest to donors that they need to think about the extent to which programmes they support simply address the manifestations of social injustice, or its causes. It may be acceptable in certain instances for donors to support symptomatic issues – for example campaigns to raise the income of poor people – but only if this clearly derives from an analysis of change and is linked to wider action to promote that change. Debt relief by itself is not social justice, but promoting an understanding of and challenging the causes of debt (whether domestic or international) can be. These examples provide illustrations of issues where broader alliances between philanthropic organizations can help to address social injustice at a number of different levels.

Critics of social democratic governments argue that the state has to intervene more strongly to promote social justice both in terms of the process by which it is achieved and in terms of redistributive policies. The market distributes goods and services as well as life chances unfairly, and the state should have a key role in correcting those deficiencies. Governments focusing only on the poor and disadvantaged fail one key test of social justice, which is that it is concerned with the fair distribution of the good and bad things across the whole of society and not just among the poor. This is another way of saying that structural issues matter because the rich and powerful control structures and processes. Donors need to focus on structural issues too: in doing so, they will come to understand more clearly why the world is not a socially just place and why, without social justice, the world will not have peace.

1 Commission for Social Justice (1994) Social Justice: Strategies for national renewal London: Verso.

2 D Miller (1999) Principles of social justice Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press.

3 See for example www.wangarimaathai.or.ke

4 J Rawls (1971) A theory of justice Oxford, Oxford University Press.

5 D Donnison (1998) Policies for a just society Basingstoke, Macmillan.

6 R Lister (2003) Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (2nd edn) Basingstoke, Palgrave.

7 See for example the Breadline Britain studies in the UK.

8 Interestingly, in the UK minority groups are becoming increasingly impatient with research projects that explore their needs, arguing that years of white-controlled research have not changed their impoverished position. They argue that they need to be involved from the start in setting research agendas.

9 The King Baudouin Foundation in Belgium has established a Listening Network whereby 250 individuals feed stories of social injustice to the Foundation to help it shape its priorities See www.kbs-frb.org and box on p30.

10 Emmett Carson, President of the Minneapolis Foundation, is one who has argued that donors must be prepared to take risks in the interests of providing a counterweight to the actions of the state and market. See Alliance Extra, September 2003, at www.allavida.org/allianceonline See also Steven Burkeman’s article in Alliance Extra, March 2003.

11 T H Marshall ‘Citizenship and social class’, in T H Marshall and T Bottomore (1992) Citizenship and social class London, Pluto Press.

12 Lister, op. cit. H Dean and M Melrose (1999) Poverty, riches and social citizenship London, Routledge.

13 N Fraser (2001) ‘Recognition without ethics?’, in Theory, culture and society, 18(2-3), pp21-42.

14 I M Young (1990) Justice and the politics of difference Princeton, Princeton University Press.

15 UNDP (1993) Human Development Report, 1993 Oxford, Oxford University Press.

* Gary Craig is Professor of Social Justice at the University of Hull, UK and President of the International Association for Community Development (www.iacdglobal.org). He can be contacted at [email protected] Craig is Guest editor for the special Alliance feature on ‘Funding social justice’

* This article was first published in the June 2005 issue of Alliance Magazine, which has a special feature on 'Funding Social Justice', for which Firoze Manji and Gary Craig are guest editors. To find out more, visit www.allavida.org/alliance]

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Social justice is a political issue as well as a humanitarian one; consequently social justice philanthropy is a political act. This can pose formidable difficulties for donor agencies and activists everywhere, especially in an area as politically complex as the Arab region where human rights activism tends to be interpreted by authoritarian regimes as a direct challenge. Many local philanthropists shy away from such confrontation, leaving organizations in the field dependent on foreign funding. But this raises the problem of agendas and priorities as well as the independence of grantees and their accountability to local stakeholders. One answer, feel the organizers of a new fund, the Arab Human Rights Fund, is to articulate strategies that can build local support for human rights activities in the region and at the same time create bridges between the local and the international to minimize problems and promote international social justice philanthropy.

In most countries, laws preclude the use of public or tax-exempted funds for overtly political work. The politics of social justice are more subtle, however, and it is important to acknowledge the fundamental tension between the political and humanitarian motivations and perceptions involved in working for a more just world. Many funders around the world are unwilling to deal with the political implications of fighting injustices; to see themselves as being on one side or another of a political rather than a humanitarian question; or to occasionally confront those with vested interests in a status quo that perpetuates injustice.

This is also reflected in the relationships between international grantmaking organizations and the local activists they support. Are those who are most effective on the ground and deserving of support politically ‘acceptable’, asks the grantmaker, and is association with them politically safe? The enthusiasm and political perspectives of the recipient can conflict with, and be moderated by, the caution of the grantmaker.

Changing political dynamics

These questions have a particular urgency in the Arab region. The changing dynamics of both the international and Arab political scenes since the turn of the new century, especially the sharp shift to the right in US policies and the after-effects of 9/11, have produced a radicalizing response in the region as well, raising the levels of suspicion and making the debates more complicated. The new ‘due diligence’ procedures set in place by international grantmakers and the governments to which they are legally accountable are the clearest example of these complications. Most grant recipients in the region working in the field of human rights and social justice consider themselves to be on the side of democratization and the promotion of more open and just societies, yet they are being asked to prove this on the grantmakers’ terms. At the same time, they are deeply suspicious of the politics behind increased governmental and non-governmental funds pouring into the region for those same stated purposes.

The local dimension

The tension between politics and philanthropy is evident in local philanthropy as well. In the Arab region, philanthropy has been of a strictly charitable and often religious nature, taking comparatively little account of development approaches, let alone social justice activism. The preponderance of authoritarian regimes makes the philanthropic community very skittish vis-à-vis, for example, human rights activities, which are perceived as being a direct challenge to such regimes, and philanthropists generally will not consider putting themselves on such a crash course. Consequently, local human rights funding is almost non-existent, and groups active in the field must rely on foreign funds which in turn raises questions in the region about their legitimacy, independence and accountability.

The problems of reliance on foreign funding

Reliance on foreign funding gives rise to doubts as to whether or not human rights activists are wittingly or unwittingly implementing donor-defined agendas. Who sets those agendas, it is asked, and on what basis? Similarly, questions are raised over wider NGO accountability to other stakeholders: the individuals and communities they purport to help. How careful are activists to define their agendas in accordance with the immediate and long-term needs of their communities? How open are they in articulating their programmes and priorities? Who challenges them on the decisions they take?

Finally, there is the question of sustainability. The foreign funding that human rights and other social justice activists continue to rely on is, more often than not, project-oriented, with short-term measurable goals and benchmarks rather than strategic approaches based on a long view of social change. If anything, international grantmaking mechanisms are becoming tighter, more careful and more short-term than a decade ago. More alarming is the ease with which funding patterns respond to the changing currents of the political environment. Today, it is very easy to find support for any project at almost any level that has anything to do with ‘democratization,’ but not so for advocacy for refugee rights, for example.

The Arab Human Rights Fund

The nascent Arab Human Rights Fund (AHRF) is an effort to respond to some of these concerns, both within the region and between the region and the international arena, by providing an indigenous, independent and sustainable source of support for human rights activities in the Arab region and by articulating principled, clear and practical strategies.

Over the past two years, a volunteer Preparatory Committee of five individuals from the Arab region, in cooperation with Ford Foundation staff and with support from the Foundation, has been preparing the ground for the establishment of the AHRF. This has involved carrying out research and holding consultative meetings throughout the region, hammering out approaches and strategies based on a commitment to universal standards of human rights with the long-term goal of developing capacity for their protection and promotion. Whether in its grantmaking strategies, fundraising efforts or operating principles, human rights standards remain the primary guidelines for the proposed AHRF.

By implementing transparent, inclusive and participatory processes for agenda and priority setting, and by ensuring indigenous decision-making in its programmes and activities, the AHRF hopes to strengthen local participation, and consequently respond to some of the legitimacy questions raised above. In the planning of the Fund, broad participatory and consultative mechanisms are being developed for nearly every aspect of the work, from Board recruitment to priority setting to the grantmaking process itself.

Promoting indigenous social justice philanthropy

The AHRF is hoping to harness local, regional and international sources of support for human rights and to promote Arab social justice philanthropy in the Arab region as one of its main strategic goals. This will take time, and many political fears within the region will have to be confronted. This is why the AHRF is planned as an endowment, eventually with assets of at least $50 million, in order to become an effective donor with tangible impact and a sustainable source of support for human rights work. (One positive trend is that NGO laws in the region are liberalizing, though very slowly.)

Bridging the local and the international
At the same time, the Preparatory Committee sees the Fund as a potentially important player in the international philanthropy field, and a bridge between the local and the international. It can help articulate priorities, funnelling international funds to the region where funds are most needed. At the same time, it can bring new Arab and regional players into the international philanthropy scene and into discussions of global social justice. This bridging function is desperately needed in today's divided world, especially where the Middle East and the Arab region are concerned.

A political choice
By establishing the Arab Human Rights Fund, the Preparatory Committee is making a significant political choice for the region. It implies a willingness to take risks in a difficult political environment and it will need the support and encouragement of like-minded individuals and organizations within the region and around the world. Today, more than at any other time in the past, we must recognize that local communities know what’s best for them, that human rights are universal values shared by activists and philanthropists alike, and that they form the basis of international cooperation in the promotion of social justice. The challenge is to build the trust necessary for such cooperation and to have the courage to confront each of our own societies and to move them towards the achievement of social justice.

After four years of planning and more than two years of research and investigation, the first meeting of a founding Board of Trustees will take place this summer. As the Fund begins its operations in Beirut, Lebanon, which will happen by the end of the year, it is hoped that the AHRF, and its perspectives on social justice, cooperation and participatory approaches, will be welcomed into the international philanthropic community.

* Fateh Azzam is Director of the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program at the American University in Cairo and a member of the AHRF Preparatory Committee. He was Program Officer for Human Rights at the Cairo office of the Ford Foundation when the idea for the AHRF began. He can be contacted at [email protected] For more information on the Arab Human Rights Fund, see www.ahrfund.org

* Please send comments to [email protected]

* This article was first published in the June 2005 issue of Alliance Magazine, which has a special feature on 'Funding Social Justice', for which Firoze Manji and Gary Craig are guest editors. To find out more, visit www.allavida.org/alliance

After the resounding success of the Send My Friend to School campaign in April, GCE and ANCEFA member coalitions are aiming to hand over a million cut-out ‘friends’, made by children around the world, to the G8 leaders in Scotland. On or around 16th June, the Day of the African Child and the GCAP Africa’s White Band Day, 12 countries will hold high-profile ‘send-off’ events to launch the ‘friends’ on their journey to take young people’s demands to Scotland.