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Welcome to the FORUM FOR SOCIAL STUDIES (FSS) A New Initiative in Ethiopia Address FORUM FOR SOCIAL STUDIES P.O. Box 3089 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Telephone: (251-1) 55-61-21 / 12-95-79 / 55-20-25 E-mail: fss@telecom.net.et Table of Contents About FSS New Activities New Publications About the Forum for Social Studies Institutional Profile The Forum for Social Studies is an independent, non-profit policy research institution formally established in 1998. It is the first institution in Ethiopia actively engaged in promoting public awareness about the development challenges facing the country and the need for the democratization of public policy making. It main activities consist of organizing public debates, undertaking policy analysis, conducting research on development and related issues and disseminating widely the findings of such research. The resource center that it has set up, which at the moment consists of a small research library, is expected to play a useful role in support of the research infrastructure of the country. Vision and Objectives In broad terms, FSS is committed to the following broad-based objectives:
Whom does FSS serve and who are its 'stakeholders'? The following are the main persons and institutions that FSS hopes to reach and bring together to engage in wide-ranging dialogue about the development challenges facing the country: government officials and policy planners, including officials from the regional governments; civil society organizations; professionals and academics; the business community; NGOs, donors, and international organizations; the media; and concerned individuals from the wider public.
FSS believes dialogue between policy planners on the one hand and professionals and the public on the other will promote a better policy-making environment, and more sustainable development policies. The main goal of the organization is to promote transparency and accountability in policy-making and implementation, and thereby to serve as a catalyst in the democratization of the policy-making process, and help expand the democratic space. FSS considers policy analysis as an important input to policy making and implementation, and hence it believes the building up of a policy-analysis infrastructure in the country is an important contribution. As part of the emerging civic organizations in the country, FSS hopes to contribute to the growth of a diversified civil society. FSS is committed to mainstream gender issues in all of its activities. Governance FSS is a membership organization and democratically governed. Its governance structure consists of the General Assembly of all members, the Board of Advisors, and the Management Committee, which is the executive body. About 40 percent of the current members of the Board as well as the organization are women. Institutional History FSS was legally registered in 1998. At first, its supporters were small in number but thanks to its successful programs it has attracted a good number of supporters and wide interest among the public since then. Over the past two years it has held five public discussion forums, and several brain-storming workshops. It publishes a quarterly newsletter called Medrek, and several specialized studies and monographs. Medrek is bi-lingual and appears in Amharic and English. Public Discussions The public discussion forums are venues for debating a wide range of important policy issues. FSS has so far held public discussions on the following subjects:
All our symposia have been attended by invited guests from the institutions noted above. The debates in these forums have been quite lively with strong participation by policy planners and government officials from the regions. The symposia have been covered, on the whole quite favorably, by both the government and independent media. FSS is keen to work closely with the media since it is through the media that its activities will be disseminated to the wider public. Research FSS is engaged in a wide variety of interdisciplinary research on development problems, the findings of which are presented for discussion in public forums and made available to policy planners and decision makers. The organization believes that informed and knowledge-based policy measures have a greater chance of promoting development, and independent policy institutes (or think tanks) such as FSS have an important role to play in extending the knowledge base available to policy makers. Research undertaken by FSS will also be useful to NGOs, donors, and civic and advocacy organizations. Our current research undertakings are:
Publications Our publications have been widely distributed to our stakeholders and have been favorably received. The following have already been published:
An edited book provisionally entitled The View from Below: Democratization and Governance in Ethiopia is now in the final stage of preparation and will be published soon. Discussion Papers on food security, environment, and economic liberalization are also in preparation. FSS Discussion Papers are meant to provide valuable inputs to policy debates by government officials and donors. Discussion Paper No. 1, Water Resource Development, for example, came out when the government was discussing options for a water policy. The work on Addis Ababa was widely read during a major symposium on Addis Ababa organized by the Addis Ababa Chamber of Commerce. The Discussion Paper on Poverty appeared at a time when the government and its major donors are discussing poverty reduction issues. Library One of the mandates of FSS is to set up a research library to collect and preserve government documents, publications from the NGO and donor community, and fugitive literature useful for development and policy research. The library will be open to researchers from government departments, NGOs, civic groups, donor agencies and academic institutions. Such a library will be an important asset to many agencies which at present are constrained by lack of access to important documents and data sources. At present there is only one research library in the country, located at Addis Ababa University, but this is restricted to staff and students of the University. Other Activities FSS actively participates in major public debates organized by civil society organizations in the country. In February 1999, for example, FSS was invited to participate in the public symposium organized by the Addis Ababa Chamber of Commerce entitled "Addis Ababa: Building a Livable City". The symposium was meant to take a close look at the growing problems of the metropolis and to examine ways to address the problems. Two members of FSS presented a paper on the social problems of the city. The symposium brought together civil society organizations, government officials, professionals such as city planners and architects, academics, donors, NGOs, the business community and prominent citizens. The symposium was opened by the Minister for Public Works and Urban Development. Two prominent former civil servants who gave talks were H.E. Dejazmach Dr. Zewde Gebre Sellassie, former mayor of Addis Ababa, who made a keynote address to the participants, and H.E. Ato Shimelis Adugna former Minister and Commissioner who gave a luncheon address. At the end of the symposium, a Citizens' Forum was established to coordinate citizens' efforts to help improve some of the pressing urban problems in collaboration with the city authorities. The most important consensus arrived at the symposium was that the problems of the metropolis cannot be solved by the City Administration alone but require the joint effort of the city, civil society organizations, neighborhood groups, the federal government and international organizations. In April of the same year, FSS participated in a national symposium on the Ethiopia economy which was formally opened by the Prime Minister. FSS in collaboration with the Ethiopian Economic Association conducted a training program for journalists both in the government and independent media in September 1999. The aim was to young journalists on how to report on issues of economic and social development in the country. As part of the training program, FSS undertook a study of the private press, and the monograph noted above is the result. Institutional Collaboration FSS is keen to consult and work closely with government agencies, NGOs, civic institutions and international organizations. The public symposia it has organized so far have been formally opened by Ministers or senior officials, and have been attended by government experts and policy planners, including those from the regions. The organization welcomes collaborative work with the voluntary sector in the country, the donor community, and foreign academic, research and advocacy institutions. Some of the public debates held in the past have been joint undertakings with local civil society organizations. FSS has benefited by joint-venture schemes with the University of Sussex, the Chr, Michelsen Institute of Norway, and the Minority Rights Group International based in London. The organization is keen to attract the involvement of Ethiopians in the Diaspora. The brain-drain which has been going on since the 1970s has severely depleted the trained human resource of the country, and in view of this FSS considers involving Ethiopians in the Diaspora is one way to overcome the shortage of expertise and training in the country. There have been several initiatives undertaken to promote the participation of the Diaspora community. FSS also welcomes foreign researchers who wish to establish collaborative links. It has an "affiliation arrangement" to enable such persons to work with FSS and its associates. The arrangement requires foreign researchers to be based in research, academic or civic institutions, and have access to sufficient funds for the work they wish to do, of which some of it will have to be earmarked as institutional cost payable to FSS. Collaborative arrangements will be made on a case by case basis. Inquiries All inquiries about FSS should be sent to the address shown above. Recent Activities SYMPOSIUM ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT FSS recently held a symposium on the theme of Environment and Development in Ethiopia. The following was the general framework of the symposium. Environmental degradation has long been a major problem in Ethiopia but it was not seriously addressed until the latter half of the 1970s. Considerable loss of the country's forest cover, topsoil, water resources, and bio-diversity has been taking place in the last five to six decades due in part to lack of suitable conservation and land policies. Furthermore, ill-advised state programs having to do with agriculture and rural development have contributed to the acceleration of the degradation problem especially in the decades following the Revolution. At that time and before then, the government's environmental advisors were foreigners who had little knowledge of local land-use and farming practices and who thus blamed the land-user for the recurrent environmental crises that brought suffering to a large portion of the rural population. The debate on environmental change in Ethiopia has been going on in earnest since the 1980s when the previous government, the Derg, embarked on a massive program of conservation, based mainly on food-for-work schemes. The total food and non-food resources invested in the program from the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s may well reach one billion U.S. dollars, all of which was provided by Western donors. At the beginning of the 1990's, when the Derg regime collapsed, a good deal of the environmental assets created in these years were demolished. The underlying assumptions behind the Derg's extensive conservation program were threefold: a) that the removal of the vegetation cover from the land had been going on a massive scale for centuries, and land degradation has now reached catastrophic proportions; b) that the main cause of land degradation is population pressure which has drastically reduced the carrying capacity of the land; and c) that the most effective way of arresting environmental degradation is employing imported conservation technology on a large scale. While different in certain respects, the environmental policy of the present government is largely based on these same assumptions. It is, we believe, important to reconsider these assumptions in the light of our own experience which spans more than three decades and the evidence from other countries in similar circumstances. There are three main issues that have been ignored in the environmental debate that has informed government policy in this country. First, there has been no effort to tap the extensive store of environmental knowledge of the farming population. Until a few years ago, serious attention was not given to indigenous environmental knowledge and even today the subject has not been sufficiently investigated. In the 1980s, the choice of conservation technology was based on the mistaken assumption that no comparable or effective technologies were available in the country. Secondly, the neo-Malthusian explanation of population pressure as the paramount cause of degradation has been taken as an axiom of truth without sufficient evidence and analysis. Recent research undertaken in East and West Africa has challenged the neo-Malthusian argument. Thirdly, environmental programs have not given sufficient attention to the issue of common property resources which in the past helped conserve environmental assets through an effective resource management system. These systems have now broken down in many areas due to unfriendly state policy and the appropriation of common property resources by government making them in effect open access resources. The symposium focused on the following areas: a) indigenous environmental protection, its nature, effectiveness, and limitations. It will be important to make efforts to document the hitherto neglected area of women's contribution to indigenous environmental protection. b) The link between population growth and environmental change (does population pressure necessarily lead to environmental degradation?) c) Issues of common property resource management and how these should be incorporated into government environmental policy. d) NGOs and environmental protection. e) An assessment of current environmental policy, its strengths and weaknesses; the link with other rural development policies (eg. land tenure). f) Public awareness and environmental conservation: the mass media's role in promoting environmental awareness. g) Civil society and environmental advocacy. g) Issues of the urban environment.
It is hoped that the symposium will help stimulate greater public concern about the environment. The symposium will also enable FSS to identify key areas of research for further public debate on environmental policy. FSS hopes to initiate a program of environmental advocacy, and the research will serve the goals of this program. It also hopes to sensitize decision-makers about the complex nature of environmental change and the need for sound and sustainable conservation programs.
The symposium and research is undertaken in collaboration with SOS-Sahel, with funding from the JAPAN FUND FOR GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT (JFGE). POLICY DIALOGUE ON POVERTY FSS held its first Policy Dialogue on Poverty on 22 December 2000 at SEMEIN HOTEL here in Addis Ababa. This was the inaugural forum for what we hope will be a series of debates, consultations, research and policy analysis on poverty and poverty reduction in the year 2001 and beyond. The aim of this exercise is to enable civil society to voice its concern about growing poverty in Ethiopia and suggest issues to be addressed. A total of some 85 invited guests from civil society organizations, government institutions, donor agencies, the business community, the media, professionals and academics attended the forum. The speakers were: Dr. Minas Hirouy (Hope Enterprises) who spoke on the Social Dimensions of Poverty; Ato Abebe Kebede (Addis Ababa City Administration) on Poverty in Addis Ababa; and Wzo. Zenebework Tadesse (FSS) on the Gender Dimensions of Poverty. The following served as the theme of the discussion: The Forum for Social Studies is planning a series of debates on the problems of poverty and poverty reduction in Ethiopia. We are particularly concerned about those aspects of poverty that are not covered by the economists and which, for lack of a better label, we have called "the social dimensions of poverty". These debates will be participatory, involving government officials, members of civil society, the business community, the poor themselves and the donor community. They will be supplemented with articles and papers that we hope to publish in the coming year. We would like to solicit ideas, comments, and recommendations from participants to help us prepare a sound and constructive program Since 1999 the IMF and the World Bank have mandated that all low-income countries wishing to get loans or debt-relief have to formulate a poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP. PRSP, which is initially meant to cover three years, is supposed to be "country-owned", and participatory in preparation and implementation. It should involve government, civil society, the private sector and the donor community. The objective of PRSP is to determine the poverty reduction measures that the country plans to implement, and to identify the policy reform programs and institutional changes the government intends to put in place to achieve poverty reduction. PRSP also requires that policy makers set measurable indicators to monitor the impact of the PRS initiative, and disseminate information on poverty diagnostics, policy options and goals to facilitate broad-based participation. However, though the intention behind PRS is a laudable one, we cannot assume that it will be realized in practice unless civil society takes active measures to intervene in the PRS process. The Ethiopian government has submitted to the two donor agencies an interim PRSP (I-PRSP) but the document has yet to be presented for public discussion. FSS is keen to participate in the PRS process and to contribute its share to make the task of poverty reduction a successful one. We have repeatedly emphasized that poverty is the most critical problem facing this country and that unless urgent measures are taken to reduce the magnitude of the problem the very fabric of society will be at risk New Publications The following are recent publications of FSS: Medrek, Newsletter of the Forum for Social Studies, Volume 2, No.1, May 2000; and 2&3, December 2000. Development and Public Access to Information in Ethiopia. Edited by Zenebework Tadesse. A Survey of the Private Press in Ethiopia: 1991-1999. Monograph Series 1. By Shimelis Bonsa. Environmental Change and State Policy in Ethiopia. Monograph Series 2. By Dessalegn Rahmato. Environment and Development in Ethiopia. Edited by Zenebework Tadesse. Listening to the Poor. A Study Based on Selected Rural and Urban Sites in Ethiopia. FSS Discussion Paper No. 3. By Aklilu Kidanu and Dessalegn Rahmato. Small scale Irrigation and Household Food Security in Ethiopia. FSS Discussion Paper No. 4. By Fuad Adem. Thematic Briefings on Natural Resource Management in Ethiopia. Edited by Alula Pankhurst. Consultation Papers on Poverty (series) |