Jeffrey L. Atkinson

Organisation and contact details

Office: Oxfam Australia, 156 George Street, Fitzroy, 3065, Australia.
Phone +61-3-9289-9444. Email: jeffa@oxfam.org.au|

Project report

International NGOs and Southern Advocacy: Case studies of two Oxfam campaigns in South Asia| (PDF)

Associated NGPA research project

Crook, South-North Non-governmental Networks, Policy Processes and Policy Outcomes|.

Project dates

1 February - 30 September, 2007

Engagement in public action

For the past 25 years I have worked as a campaigner, activist, policy advisor, lobbyist and campaign manager for development NGOs (Australian Volunteers International, Community Aid Abroad, Oxfam GB, Oxfam Australia, and Oxfam International). In the 1980s and 1990s the issues I worked on included the quality of government aid programs, the arms trade and Australian military exports, labour rights and 'sweatshops', and the activities of Australian mining companies in Indonesia. This latter was a joint campaign with an Indonesian NGO (JATAM) to directly support communities adversely affected by a large mining operation in their midst. I was responsible for the Australian part of the campaign, which involved taking their complaints directly to the companies in Australia and the UK (with mixed success) and advocating for an industry-wide code of practice. Activities that I have been (and still am) involved in include everything from organizing street demonstrations and media stunts, through to policy work, media interviews and negotiating across the table with company executives and senior government officials.

Since 2001 my time has been spent exclusively on a large international Oxfam campaign called 'Make Trade Fair', which was run in both the North and South.

This has had several 'sub-campaigns' within it:

1. making World Trade Organization (WTO) trade rules fairer for developing countries;
2. pharmaceutical patents and access to affordable medicines;
3. ensuring a fair price for poor farmers who grow coffee beans;
4. defending the rights of women garment workers.

My primary responsibility within the campaign has been to manage the Australian part of it. At the international level, I was from 2001 to 2003 a member of the Oxfam International (OI) working group that had overall responsibility for running the campaign - and from the beginning have been part of the OI Trade Policy Group, which determines the policy positions to be taken in the campaign.

I am also a member of the OI Regional Strategic Team for South Asia, and as such have been directly involved in the 'Make Trade Fair' (MTF) campaign in that region, in particular:

1. a campaign with local unions and NGOs in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in support of garment workers that tried (with limited success) to gain support in Europe from the international MTF campaign, for such things as Rules of Origin for garment imports.
2. a campaign on agriculture in India and Bangladesh in which there were clear tensions between local Indian and Bangladesh NGO priorities and those of the international campaign on agriculture.

Project objectives

The 'Make Trade Fair' campaign was predominantly focused in the North - on the WTO, on Northern governments and on Northern based transnational companies. Despite the fact that Oxfam has extensive contacts with hundreds of local and national level NGOs in the South working on similar issues, there were very few links between them and the campaign. For example the campaign on the WTO Agreement on Agriculture was not connected in any effective way with those organisations working with farmers at a grass-roots level and trying to strengthen their voice at a local or national level (with some exceptions). Hence it was never clear how a win on agriculture in the WTO would translate into benefits for farmers. The sub-campaign on garment workers was a little better, but could not be regarded as a properly linked South-North campaign. Southern priorities were not always reflected in Northern campaign priorities. (It should be added that there were also North-North tensions; the campaign priorities as set in Europe were not always relevant in Australia, and these two parts of the campaign were not always well linked).

As the 'Make Trade Fair' campaign draws to a close there is a need to draw lessons from it. This was the first attempt by Oxfam to run such a large internationally coordinated campaign. The objectives of the Fellowship are to:

• determine the reasons for the paucity of effective links between the Southern development NGOs that Oxfam works with, and its international 'Make Trade Fair' campaign, using the South Asia region as a case study;
• set out what needs to be done to have a campaign that is driven by needs and priorities in the South (as well as opportunities in the North), and is 'vertically linked' so that wins in the North result in benefits to the poor in the South.
• Establish what is needed for Southern NGOs to have a more effective impact on Northern policy-makers (WTO, governments, TNCs).

Planned activities

Interviews with key NGO people in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India who were involved in the 'Make Trade Fair' (MTF) campaign;

• Interviews with key Oxfam staff in those countries, and in Europe who were involved in the agriculture and garment worker sub-campaigns of the MTF campaign.
• Compare the MTF experience with that of the six 'matched pairs' involved in the LSE study.
• Dialogue with academics in the LSE and elsewhere who have a theoretical framework in which to base the conclusions of this study.

Outputs

• a report on "Integrating Southern and Northern Advocacy" initially for internal use in Oxfam affiliates to help shape future campaigns and advocacy, but also for sharing with other NGO in the North and South;
• workshops on the paper, including one in Oxford or The Hague, one in South Asia, and one in Australia.