Blog by Stéphanie Bacher, May 17, 2018
In June 2017, Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of International Development and La Francophonie, launched Canada’s new Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP). The policy places gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment at the heart of Canada’s approach to development assistance. What influence does this new policy have on Canada’s and particularly Québec’s civil society and their partners in the Global South? On April 18, a panel addressed this question, bringing together speakers from academia, Québec civil society and Global Affairs Canada, held at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM).
A “feminist” approach to international assistance: nice rhetoric without any clear content?
Although Canada’s new international assistance policy claims to transform the dominant development paradigm, it remains ambiguous on a large number of concepts, “whose repetition sounds more like a mantra than a policy proposal” according to anthropology professor Marie France Labrecque. Even the notion of a feminist approach, the policy’s core principle, is not clearly defined, even though it is a multidimensional concept that can have very different interpretations.
The lack of definition of key concepts reflects government officials’ lack of knowledge of feminist issues and the low priority they give them, which has worsened over the past years with the departure of Global Affairs Canada’s few remaining gender equality specialists. According to Labrecque, the government’s vagueness on what it considers a feminist approach allows development workers to present themselves as gender specialists because of the knowledge they acquired “thanks to their wife”, as some of her colleagues in the field told her.
Moreover, the new policy does not specify how social research can contribute to development assistance and provide the evidence that the government claims is the basis of aid-related decisions. The lack of research makes it difficult to situate development projects within their social context. Labrecque explained that the lack of studies on the Malian context led the project to rely on a context considered “similar” elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Under such circumstances, the government’s ability to effectively measure change and results is at best uncertain.
Not a turning point, but a great potential impact for Canadian international cooperation organizations
According to Anne Delorme, who coordinates the Comité québécois femmes et développement, the new international assistance policy is not a major turning point for Québec’s international cooperation organizations because many of them, such as the Comité pour les droits humains en Amérique latine and the Projet d’accompagnement Québec-Guatemala, have already been working with women’s rights activists and encouraging links between women’s rights defenders in the Global North and the Global South for many years.
Nonetheless, she believes that Canada’s feminist approach could have a huge impact, especially if it encourages international cooperation organizations to question their power dynamics with their Southern partners. FIAP prompted some organizations to think about how they behave towards their partners in the field, notably thinking about whom they hire, what their working conditions are and how to ensure that their basic rights are fully protected.
Between capacity building and a Kafkaesque bureaucracy for Southern partners
Many Southern women’s rights organizations welcomed FIAP with enthusiasm. These organizations often work in precarious economic conditions with a particularly high risk of burnout. However, these partners continue to struggle to meet all the Canadian government’s bureaucratic requirements. Caroline Leclerc, Assistant Deputy Minister at Global Affairs Canada on Partnerships for Development Innovation, acknowledged the problem and made a commitment to reduce the administrative burden on Southern partners, which she considers heavy on Global Affairs Canada as well. The government has conducted consultations in recent months in order to figure out how to simplify current procedures.
Although it is still too early to know what the new international assistance policy’s impact will be on Canadian civil society organizations and their Southern partners, the UQÀM panel helped us make a partial assessment and draw up some recommendations to avoid FIAP becoming not much more than just nice rhetoric. The government needs to articulate what it considers a “feminist approach”, otherwise the concept could become meaningless and be used to describe any activity related to women. If the government really wants its international assistance policy to be feminist and effective, it must also ensure a greater role for social research in development projects, allocate more resources to develop its expertise in gender equality and reduce the administrative burden on Southern partners.
The French version of this blog was originally published in Huffington Post Québec’s Un seul monde blog, May 6, 2018. The webcast of the UQÀM panel can be viewed here.