NN41, December 2008
The New Politics of Partnership: Peril or Promise?
Partnership for Empowerment: Yemenis and Development Partners United For Progress and Change in the Education Sector
By Maaike van Vliet, Embassy of the Netherlands, Sana?a
Email: Maaike-van.Vliet@minbuza.nlKeywords
Partnership, Empowerment, Yemen, Education
Summary
This article examines different dimensions of partnership within Yemen?s education sector.
Yemen is a very poor country according to any standard, but rich in terms of an old civilization, history and its growing population (22 million, population growth is 2.97%). The enormous challenges that Yemen is facing in the development of the country, and in particularly in the education sector, are daunting. Remember that Yemen was closed from the outside world virtually until the 1960s, when the rule of the Imam was forcefully terminated. After a period of turbulence the country was united: the North and South of Yemen became one republic in 1994. Since then educational development has taken a tremendous step forward. Yemen became one of the first countries to qualify for the Catalytic Fund from the Fast Track Initiative in 2002/03 because of its credible policy and plan for Education. Key development partners who supported Yemen for the last 30 years have been Germany, the UK and the Netherlands together with the World Bank.
The statistics on education do not lie: the literacy rate is 53%. For females this is 40% (NB: this means that one out of three women is literate, and two are illiterate) and for men 77%. Enrolment rate in primary education is 65% for girls and 85% for boys.
In order to reach Education for All and the Millennium Goals, there is no time to waste to reach out to its people, the majority of whom (70%) live in remote mountainous and rural areas with limited sources of livelihood. With dwindling water- and oil reserves coupled with a fragile balance of power in the country and an influx of refugees from the Horn of Africa (Somalis and Ethiopians) there is a lot to do.
When I came to Yemen in the summer of 2005 I already had my share of working with partnerships, for better for worse, in East African countries, Pakistan and Vietnam, to name a few. In Yemen I had to adjust myself to the fact that we have so few development partners (Yemen, at times, therefore is labeled by some as a ?donor orphan?) and that our countries contribute a much lesser share of ODA to education in Yemen than in many other countries in e.g. in Sub-Saharan Africa. As an illustration: the total amount of ODA to the GoY education budget is not more than 7%. I also discovered that the first robust steps towards donor coordination, harmonization and alignment were taken on the bumpy road to an effective partnership that works. The first Partnership Declaration agreed upon dates from 2004 and has been adjusted to current realities; a Joint Annual Review has been initiated by the Ministry of Education and was held for the fourth time in May 2008 in Sana?a, building upon lessons learnt from previous years; the Ministry of Education has developed a Medium Term Result Framework (MTRF) and unified Annual Work Plan for Education with transparency of the contributions of all development partners including semi-government institutions like the Social Fund for Development (SFD), INGOS (Care and Save the Children), the UN agencies (UNICEF and WFP), the bilateral agencies (JICA, DFID, GTZ, KfW, EKN, USAID) and the World Bank.
My question has always been: how can I, as an educationist, best contribute to assist any country, including my own country, in education development, taking into account that education is an universal human right (and therefore a woman?s right)? It is as simple as that and this is at the core of my own personal and professional values in life, having been privileged to grow up in the Netherlands with access to quality and relevant education.
How does this relate to working in Yemen in our Partnership for Education?
First of all, I consider a ?partnership a way of working?. Hard work for that matter! It is a means to an end and not an end in itself.
Secondly, ?partnerships are here to stay?. For a good reason. We all agreed on the importance of aid harmonization, alignment and aid effectiveness through e.g Paris Declaration, Accra and EU Code of Conduct. In a globalised world it makes a lot of sense to try to work effectively and efficiently with the limited resources at hand (both funding and human resources).
Thirdly, partnerships are a ?work in progress?. Partnerships are not a given, a static concept, but it is a dynamic concept that needs a lot of nurturing. It is people who make up partnerships. Obviously power relationships are there, as in all human and contractual relationships. This is nothing new. What matters is how we deal with these power relationships from both sides. To be honest, given the many challenges in my work in education in Yemen I feel often more powerless than powerful. The education system in a country like Yemen is characterized by an enormous demand for education services, but a poor supply of these services; lack of teachers, especially female teachers; lack of school buildings, quality textbooks and curricula; and the well known issues of slow progress in civil service reform, budgetary reforms and decentralization. The workforce to implement the education reform and to provide the education services is made up of an enormous army of civil servants, often ill educated and ill prepared for the job, senior appointments based more on political affiliations and patronage than on qualifications. This frustrates not only us, as development partners, but also many of our colleagues at the Ministry of Education.
In this situation I commit myself to visit the field on a regular basis, after which I report at the highest level to the minister and his team and to my colleagues in the Development Partnership on what I observe by ?looking behind the façade?. In so doing I regard it as our duty to echo the voices of people we meet in the villages and the slums of the cities: the fathers and mothers, the boys and girls and the teachers of the schools we visit. I appreciate that most, if not all, of my colleagues from the development partner community do the same. In so doing we all contribute to a rich and effective policy debate, ongoing at the highest level, with trust and respect for each others? opinions.
The Ministry of Education, and H.E. the Minister of Education, are very proud of the Partnership and time and again they express, and show, a great sense of ownership. The Partnership on Education is often taken as an example by the Yemenis as a pioneering and effective way of coordination and cooperation among all partners that matter in education, including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Civil Service and Local Administration, and, last but not least, the Development Partners.
And that brings me to my last point on Partnerships in Yemen: partnerships can only flourish when there is mutual respect, understanding of each others? positions, a joint vision and commitment for the future.
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