CORPORATE PRINCIPLE

National Ownership

1AN HDR ACHIEVES NATIONAL OWNERSHIP THROUGH A PROCESS THAT

DRAWS UPON NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ACTORS AND CAPABILITIES

THROUGHOUT PREPARATION, YIELDING A PRODUCT FIRMLY GROUNDED IN

THE COUNTRY’S PAST AND EXISTING DEVELOPMENT PLANS. NATIONAL

OWNERSHIP IMPLIES A COMMITMENT TO BROAD, COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP

ENCOMPASSING DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS. IT ALSO CONTRIBUTES TO

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT.

A REPORT ROOTED IN NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES INSPIRES TRUST IN THE HDR

AS A SOURCE FOR POLICY DIALOGUE AND DEVELOPMENT

ALTERNATIVES.

Four key questions help HDR teams meet minimum standards for nationalownership:

1. Is the report nationally driven and owned?

2. Does it reflect national perspectives, including through recommendationslinked to the country’s development plans and policies?

3. Does it rely primarily on national expertise and capacities?

4. Is preparation participatory, building national credibility and ownership?

CHAPTER 1

CORPORATE PRINCIPLE 1:NATIONAL OWNERSHIPAN HDR ACHIEVES NATIONAL OWNERSHIP THROUGH A PROCESS THAT

DRAWS UPON NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ACTORS AND CAPABILITIES

THROUGHOUT PREPARATION, YIELDING A PRODUCT FIRMLY GROUNDED

IN THE COUNTRY’S PAST AND EXISTING DEVELOPMENT PLANS. NATIONAL

OWNERSHIP IMPLIES A COMMITMENT TO BROAD, COLLECTIVE OWNER-

SHIP ENCOMPASSING DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS. IT ALSO CONTRIBUTES TO

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT.

A REPORT ROOTED IN NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES INSPIRES TRUST IN THE HDR

AS A SOURCE FOR POLICY DIALOGUE AND DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES.

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DEFINING MINIMUM STANDARDS

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WHY ISNATIONALOWNERSHIPIMPORTANT?

National ownership does not arise auto-matically. Rather, it is rooted in existingplans and policies, and then cultivatedby deliberately calling upon the viewsand expertise of people from acrossvarious sectors to develop collectivefindings. An HDR’s success in advancingdevelopment transformation dependsheavily on the extent of this process, inthe same way that participation andcivic engagement in development ingeneral play an essential role in effec-tive policy reforms.

A truly country-driven report processcontributes significantly to overall quali-ty and credibility in the following ways:

• Relevant: A report built upon nationalperspectives and grounded in nationaldevelopment plans and policies is farmore likely to be relevant and useful.

• Concrete: With the contributions ofan array of national actors and devel-opment decision makers, a report isbetter equipped to offer sound andrealistic analysis and policy messages,and more reliable quantitative andqualitative data.

• Valued: Ownership among key sectorstends to generate strategic involvementand the commitment of those who canincorporate findings in their delibera-tions and decisions.

• In demand: Broad ownership general-ly results in greater demand and use ofthe HDR by different constituencies,including policy makers, donors, NGOsand academic institutions.

Human development, as a concept anda practice, emphasizes the investmentin and exercise of human capabilities,which free people to lead the kind oflives they choose. Because participationin dialogues related to HDR preparationstrengthens human capabilities, itcontributes to human development.

This chapter introduces the concept of ownership as it relates to preparing andlaunching national and regional HDRs, touching upon issues such as govern-

ment involvement, and donor-driven agendas and priorities. It reviews some of thecore concepts underlying report preparation, including links to the broader goal ofcapacity development. While national or regional ownership is essential to produc-ing a legitimate and substantive HDR with the power to influence policy, it is alsoan objective in itself. A nationally owned report engages people in the issues thataffect their lives, simultaneously building their capabilities to analyse policies anddata, and to explore a wide range of alternatives.

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This is true whether it involves a one-time consultation, collaborativeresearch, or the transfer of resourcesand responsibility for one section of thereport to a specific group. Each of thesescenarios can be used at different stages.

HOW CAN ANHDR processBUILDNATIONAL

OWNERSHIP?National ownership of an HDR can beinterpreted as government authorship,but the HDR concept is very different.While the precise meaning varies fromone country to another, it consistentlyconnotes some degree of commitmentto broad, open discussions around policypriorities that affirm improved humanwell-being as the central objective ofdevelopment. To avoid the ambiguity ofthe word “national”, some people referinstead to collective ownership.

However, it is also true that in any HDRprocess, the government is a key player,whether its involvement is active ornot. Because it is the chief architect ofpublic policy, collaboration is critical toprogress on human development, andHDR teams are duty-bound to consultwith the government in report prepara-tion, as in virtually every other aspectof technical cooperation. It is alsoextremely important that all opportuni-ties are taken to depart from merelyformal interactions and move towardsfull, meaningful involvement andcommitment to human developmentprinciples.

In some cases, an HDR’s unique champi-

oning of broad-based national owner-ship – embodied in participatorypreparation, diverse contributions, andtransparent use of data and analysis –can prove challenging or even contro-versial. In these situations, an incremen-tal approach is advised, with the goalof expanding ownership over time.

Countries as diverse as the Philippines,Swaziland and the Solomon Islandsfurnish examples of report processesthat offer non-threatening approachesto advocating and institutionalizinghuman development. They reveal theopportunities that can arise fromtapping new perspectives, data andideas, including from people andorganizations that might not normallycontribute their expertise.

• The Human Development Network ofthe Philippines started as an informalgroup of individuals who took responsi-bility for preparing the first nationalHDR in 1994. Over the years, they haveevolved into a formally registerednetwork of over 90 prominent develop-ment practitioners. Today, they play apowerful role in propagating humandevelopment, through preparing HDRs,conducting research, holding workshopsand training sessions, and acting as apressure group to monitor governmentcommitments. UNDP serves as the under-writer of a truly Filipino process foundedon collective ownership, autonomy andhigh standards of scholarship.

• A steering committee prepared Swazi-land’s HDR in 2000, on the topic ofgrowth with equity. The group broughttogether important stakeholders, includ-ing government officials, scholars, theMedical and Dental Association, the

Federation of Trade Unions and others.

• For the Solomon Islands’ 2002 HDR,Building a Nation, secondary and tertiarystudents participated in an essay compe-tition, offering their views on governance,along with ideas for rebuilding the coun-try and maintaining peace.

• Given the strong ethnic tensions inKosovo, its 2002 HDR, on multi-ethnictolerance and integration, placed highpriority on building ownership amongthe various groups in the country. Thereport team included representationfrom the Albanian majority as well asKosovo’s other ethnic communities, andbrought together diverse organizations.

• As Armenia works on the develop-ment of national statehood, rebuildingtrust between authorities and societyas well as nurturing transparency havebecome critical tasks. For the 2000HDR, a national team selected thetopic of human rights, and in theprocess, reached out widely to bothlocal and international human rightsorganizations.

• In India, a unique experiment beganin 2001 during the preparation of asub-national HDR for the state ofChhattisgarh. To capture people’s aspi-rations, over 18,000 villages under-went two to three days of training byfacilitators from within the communi-ties, and then wrote their ownreports. These were ratified by villageassemblies and became part of 16district reports written by teams of upto 40 people. The district summaries,after ratification by elected districtcouncils, subsequently fed into thestate report prepared by an NGO.UNDP and the National Planning

Commission jointly facilitated theprocess, which has helped deependemocracy in the state.

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The 2001 HDR in Laos, Advancing Rural Development,

involved consultations with rural communi-ties across different agricultural systems.Interactions with one indigenous group,the rural Highlanders, resulted in some

important recommen-dations related toresource allocationand aid strategies.The report maintainsthat its proposals,while not in line withcurrent governmentpolicies, would supportother public priorities,such as expanding thenational economy.

The recommendationsinclude a convincing and carefully considered strategy for boosting exports of non-timber forest products, a project that would address poverty in marginalizedrural areas through income generation,improve forest management, and enhancetrade with neighbouring countries.

The presentation of alternatives like this hasmade a strong case that has now caughtthe attention of both the government andthe donor community. They are currentlyreviewing the forest products proposal forpossible implementation.

BOX 1.1

PROPOSING ALTERNATIVE POLICIES THROUGH POPULAR CONSULTATION IN LAOS

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271 Philip Dobie. 2002. "Models for National Strategies: Building Capacity for Sustainable Development." In Develop-ment Policy Journal, 1 (August).

A number of UNDP country offices haveencountered pressures to use the rubricof national ownership for slanting HDRstowards the government’s position. Oneway to ease these tensions is by engag-ing partners to present and discussalternative perspectives, data or policyoptions that may make governmentaction more efficient and effective,and/or less costly. The Laos 2001 HDRillustrates this strategy (see box 1.1).

Insome countries, the prepara-tion of HDRs confronts

particularly difficult or sensitive politicalsituations, and the task of engaging agovernment in dialogue on humandevelopment can be a delicate one.UNDP must often play a leadership rolein determining ways to work with someof the constraints, as was the case inViet Nam, where a multi-pronged strat-egy ushered in a political change ofheart (see box 1.2).

Where the government has collapsedentirely or institutions are barely func-tioning, building national ownershipthrough the HDR process takes on anoth-er layer of complexity – and importance.In Somalia, despite the lack of a unifiednational government or even nationalstatistical systems, UNDP pulled togethera group of partners to prepare a reportthat has made a critical contribution toneeds assessment, as well as to nationaldata collection and analysis (see box 1.3).

The 1996 OECD Principles for NewOrientations in Technical Cooperationunderscored the need for widespreadnational participation in formulatingdevelopment plans, nurturing nationalcapacities, developing local institutionsand strengthening local capacities.Further, the World Bank Poverty Strate-gy Reduction Paper (PRSP) exercise callsfor bringing local stakeholders togetherto help define national social andeconomic policies.

In reality, the balance of national anddonor ownership varies markedly from onecountry to another, but virtually alwaysinvolves a distinct asymmetry betweendonor and recipient. Each HDR team willhave to negotiate how far – and how fast –the imbalance can be redressed.

This task is made harder by the fact thatthe gulf between donor and recipientyawns widest in many of the poorestcountries, where an HDR can potentiallyplay a dramatic and much needed role.1

While no panacea or quick fix exists, thereports can sometimes help shrink thedistance between the perspectives ofthe government, donors and key civilsociety groups on what is desirable fornational progress simply by initiatingconsultation and debate. Whether asmembers of a reader’s group, as peerreviewers or through other means, vari-ous donors can offer their views andexpertise, as they become part of thecollective process of dialogue.

NATIONAL VS. DONOR

CHALLENGING POLITICAL CONTEXTS

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V iet Nam is a single party state that until recently avoidedassociation with the concept of human development, prefer-

ring a more technical emphasis on human resource developmentthrough health, education and training programmes. Frequently,official translations of documents replaced references to humandevelopment with human resource development.

With this history in mind, the UNDP Country Office devised astrategy for fostering acceptance of human development as aprocess for enlarging the scope of people’s choices. One decision was to avoidtaking a typical sectoral approach (focusing mainly on health, education, etc.) soas to minimize confusion between human development and human resourcedevelopment.

A second step involved analysing the country's widelyacclaimed doi moi reforms through the lens of expandedchoices. Doi moi, or “renovation”, denotes a reformprocess that began in 1987, characterized by a shifttowards more market-oriented policies and integrationinto the world economy. Viet Nam’s 2001 HDR providesan extensive analysis of the key changes, delving intoland reform, price and trade liberalization, and privatesector development. A third part of the UNDP strategywas to organize a workshop on human developmentinvolving a broad cross-section of decision makers, includ-ing deputy ministers, social policy research institute offi-cials and others.

A s a result, Vietnamese leaders have come to embrace human development ascritical to their country’s future. For the first time, the Ten-Year Socioeconomic

Development Strategy (2001-2010) spells out the need for improving Viet Nam'shuman development index score as a major goal, while discussion has begun onincluding provincial human development indexes within inter-provincial transferformulas to help guide public expenditures. Donors have taken notice, most notablythe French government, which has committed financial and technical support toHDR follow-up activities.

BOX 1.2

BUILDING ACCEPTANCE OF CHOICES IN VIET NAM

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Following a decade of extreme political instability and chronic humanitarian need, UNDP recognized the potential of an HDR to

contribute to reconstruction and effective governance in Somalia. However, incubating a process involving national ownership amidst the ruins of a collapsed state was going to be difficult. Somalia had no national statistical system and no national government. Over one million Somalis lived outside their country.

UNDP recognized that while there would be no participation from official government institutions, there were many Somalis with expertise to offer anda stake in the nation’s future. It helped formulate a partnership between the UNCountry Team and the Somali Aid Coordination Body, and drew in the support ofthe Kenya Bureau of Statistics.

Together, they embarked on a truly collective HDR preparation process. It involvedSomalis throughout the country who participated in reading circles sponsored byUNDP in four major regional centres; extensive inputs from the diaspora; consulta-tions with national and international NGOs as well as private sector entities; anddrafting and technical support from Somali professionals. A number of the materials

were translated into Somali to enhance participation, especiallyfor the reading circles.

The HDR that emerged in 2001 focuses on reconstructingeffective forms of governance, reestablishing trade, and restor-ing judicial systems that embrace human rights. It finds thatone of the key changes in Somalia recently has been thegrowth of the private sector and civil society, both of whichare playing crucial roles in providing social services and help-ing resurrect political, social and economic systems. But thereport warns that this increased role is unlikely to improveequity.

A significant result of the HDR’s preparation was that it helped to coordinate datacollection systems and increase their coverage and quality. At the beginning,

UNDP, in collaboration with other UN and humanitarian agencies, undertook a majorhousehold survey covering almost 90 per cent of Somalia. This was the first compre-hensive poll conducted in two decades, and it has proved to be an invaluable sourceof data for national dialogue.

BOX 1.3

SOMALIA – NATIONAL OWNERSHIP IN A COUNTRY IN CONFLICT

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HOW DOESNATIONALOWNERSHIPCONTRIBUTE

TO CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT? Behind the notion of national ownershiplies two decades of thinking about capaci-ty development. It concludes that eachsociety has the responsibility and the abili-ty (albeit sometimes a potential ability) toidentify and implement its own develop-ment agenda. Human developmentfurther envisions that people have a right

to participate, as individualsand groups, in the decisionsthat affect their lives.

The traditional model of devel-opment assistance has tended tooverride existing capacities indeveloping countries andreplace them with knowledgeand systems that have evolvedelsewhere. Through distortionand lack of use, these frequently

constrain the growth of national capacities.Elements of technical cooperation in partic-ular have obscured the fact that differentsocieties have learned from one anotherthroughout human history – taking infor-mation and ways of doing things fromother cultures and using these imports,often with significant modifications, toexpand and enrich their own evolution.2

For its 2002 HDR, Chile chose toaddress the way national traditions

of living together have united andclashed, looking at issues of culture andhuman development. In We, theChileans: A Cultural Challenge, a centralquestion is the impact of modernizationon the country’s social cohesion.

Taking a broad definition of culture,comprising the conventional focuson the arts and the media plus awide assortment of otherexpressions through

which a society reflects onpeople’s coexistence, the reportconcludes that modernizationand globalization are threateningChileans’ sense of identity. Itargues that modernization willbe sustainable over time only if itaccounts for people’s aspirationsand feelings. The average citizenmust have the skills and culturalresources to incorporate thechanges taking place into his or her dailyreality.

Culture matters, the report maintains, andthere can be no human developmentunless people feel that they belong to anational community of values, history, anda common future.

The 2002 HDR has become an importanttool for the design of public policies inChile, with the Ministry of Education turn-ing to it for reshaping a nationwidecurriculum. It has influenced the design ofa future Ministry of Culture, and stimulatedgreater media coverage and public debatethan any other Chilean publication bearinga UN imprint.

BOX 1.4

CHILE SELECTS A THEMETHAT’S ON EVERYONE’SMIND

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2 For a fuller discussion of the ways in which development assistance after World War II has differed from other de-velopmental exchanges among countries, see Peter Morgan, 2002, "Technical Assistance: Correcting the Precedents."In Development Policy Journal, 2 (1).

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Recognizing the value and sustainabilityof this more organic process, HDRpreparation aims at enlarging nationalcapacities so that a country and itspeople can take charge of their owndevelopment and thereby “own” it.Chile’s 2002 HDR, for instance, becamethe first report to focus explicitly on thedifficult relationship between exoge-nous and endogenous definitions ofwhat is valuable and desirable in thelife of communities and in nationaldevelopment. It provides a useful exam-ple of how a report process can unfoldas part of a broader strategy of capacitybuilding and inclusion (see box 1.4).

In general, HDRs can be consideredmodels of the new thinking aboutknowledge and the ways a societyincorporates it within its own particularsystems, as described below:

“Each society has the capacities that correspond to its own functions and objectives.

Non-industrial societies, for example, have few formal institutions, but they do have

highly developed skills and complex webs of social and cultural relationships that

are often difficult for outsiders to comprehend. Most important of all, by a process

of cooperative and cumulative learning, typically passed on orally, they have

worked out how to survive in often difficult and harsh conditions. Modern post-

industrial societies have their own set of capacities, although they seem very differ-

ent. They too have complex social structures, but tend to have more diverse and

specialist activities, and rely extensively on codified knowledge bases, myriad organ-

izations and a plethora of specialist skills, many of which can only be acquired over

years of education and training.

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“As countries transform themselves, they have to develop different capacities. But it

is important to recognize that they do so not merely as an aggregate of individuals.

National capacity is not just the sum total of individual capacities. It is a much richer

and more complex concept that weaves individual strengths into a stronger and

more resilient fabric. If countries and societies want to develop capacities, they

must do more than expand individual human skills. They also have to create the

opportunities and the incentives for people to use and expand these skills. Capacity

development therefore takes place not just in individuals, but also between them,

in the institutions and networks they create – through what has been termed the

‘social capital’ that holds societies together and sets the terms of these relation-

ships. Most technical cooperation projects, however, stop at individual skills and

institution-building; they do not consider the societal level…” 3

Read in this light, there is a strong simi-larity between what is required toachieve national ownership of the HDRsand the paradigm of capacity develop-ment. The discussion on nationalownership in the UNDP Corporate Poli-cy on NHDRs can therefore be viewedas a framework for action in itself.

3 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Carlos Lopes and Khalid Malik, eds. 2002. Capacity for Development: New Solutions to OldProblems. London and New York: Earthscan and UNDP. Several contributions to this collection may also prove help-ful to the HDR team, along with articles from UNDP’s Development Policy Journal and the 1992 OECD Principles forEffective Aid: Development Assistance Manual.

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Some necessary actions :

Ensure a commitment among principal partners to collective owner-ship of the HDR process and discussion of alternative perspectives.

Establish participatory mechanisms for report research, writing andfollow- up (ongoing processes, one-time consultations, joint research,etc.) that draw upon national development actors (government and non-governmental) at every level and each stage of the process.

Select the HDR theme through: a review of previous HDRs; consultations among national policy makers and other key stakehold-ers; and brainstorming sessions with partners on theme definition.

Determine the target readership for the HDR through consultationamong principal partners.

Through the report drafting process, situate analysis and recommen-dations within the context of the country’s past and existing policydevelopment plans and policies.

In the event that international consultants are needed, involve thereport’s steering committee in selection.

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