Annual Report to European MOs of Nonviolent Peaceforce
from IGC representative, Tim Wallis, April 2005
As agreed in Dunblane, here is the report of my activities during the past year as one of your representatives on the International Governing Council of NP. Please accept my apologies for getting this to you so late.
I will not cover in this report activities undertaken on behalf of Peaceworkers UK as a member organisation of NP nor the work I have done in support of Rachel and the Brussels office. This report covers only my role as an ordinary member of the IGC, as co-chair of the IGC and as a member of various IGC committees, including the Executive Committee and the Management Committee.
1. IGC Meeting, 2-5 July 2004, Cuernavaca, Mexico
The IGC met face-to-face in Mexico last July. A draft agenda for that meeting was circulated to all MOs well in advance of the meeting and most of the items were discussed by European MOs in Dunblane, so I felt I could truly represent European MOs at the IGC meeting. All MOs should have received some very detailed minutes of that meeting in November, so you will be aware of the discussions which took place.
The main outcome of the July meeting was to agree finally on a set of bye-laws for the organisation, and I worked very hard both before and during that meeting to ensure that the concerns and recommendations of European MOs were fully taken into account in the final decision. Of course there is always room for improvement, but I hope most of you are satisfied with the results of that deliberation, which solidifies MOs as the ‘backbone’ of the organisation and makes all other structures and staff ultimately accountable to the MOs.
The other main issue on which I tried very hard to represent the views expressed in Dunblane was concerning the Sri Lanka project and moves to start new projects elsewhere. There was a considerable amount of pressure from other parts of the organisation to terminate the project in Sri Lanka because it was not living up to people’s expectations of being ‘large scale’ nor was it working closely enough with the more ‘Gandhian’ organisations based in Sri Lanka such as Sarvodaya. At the same time there were pressures to start setting up new NP projects in Burma, Philippines, Uganda, Sudan, Ecuador and elsewhere. I again worked very hard to lobby other members of the IGC for a firm commitment to our existing project in Sri Lanka as our number one priority and to lower expectations about starting another project until we have been able to prove ourselves in Sri Lanka.
Overall, my involvement in the preparation and participation of the IGC meeting was focused on the need to be more professional in how we make decisions and how we operate as an organisation. I produced a number of papers for the meeting which were all agreed with minor changes and I will attach them to this report in case they may be of relevance to how we want to conduct future meetings of European MOs. They are on the Conduct of IGC Meetings, Clarification of Decision-Making Procedures, Notes for Facilitation of NP Meetings and Notes for Minute-Takers.
2. IGC Conference Call and Email Decisions
Since the IGC meeting in July, the full IGC has met once by phone. This was on 23rd January to discuss the 2005 budget and dates for next IGC meeting. I don’t believe you ever received minutes of that call, so I have just sent them out. Once again, the main issue with regard to the budget has been the balance between ensuring our existing project in Sri Lanka has enough funds to do its work properly and all the pressures to spend money on other things. We did agree to conduct initial exploration visits to Mindinao in the Philippines and to northern Uganda with a view to having proposals for a second project to present to the next full IGC meeting for a final decision by the Triennial of MOs sometime in 2006. We have also put money aside to develop a programme of regional trainings to be led by MOs, including in Europe. But the main budget decision was to proceed with the second round of recruitment for Sri Lanka with the addition of up to 18 new Field Team Members.
The full IGC also made some decisions by email during the past year, although not as many as we would like. One of the recent IGC decisions which has a direct impact on European MOs was the decision to locate our International Office in Brussels, as an interim step between moving it out of the US and ultimately moving it to somewhere in the Third World. The immediate result of this decision was to start advertising new NP staff positions that would be based in Brussels rather than in St Paul, Minnesota. (The decision to hire a European Director was a separate decision related to existing needs and staffing arrangements in the Brussels office and was not discussed by the IGC.)
The full IGC now receives regular minutes of the Executive Committee and the other 3 official IGC committees (Management, Programme and Strategy Committees) once a month. It also receives financial accounts of the whole organisation and reports of the Sri Lanka project on a quarterly basis. Although this is already too much information for some IGC members, there is a general feeling that internal communication within NP is still far from satisfactory and reporting from the Sri Lanka project in particular is grossly insufficient. I have raised this matter at almost every meeting of every committee I have attended during the past year and we are now at the point of issuing ‘final ultimatums’ to staff over this issue.
As co-chair of the IGC, I have been responsible for sending out a regular letter to all the Member Organisations with information about the latest developments in the organisation and issues coming before the IGC and its committees. I have not specifically engaged with European MOs since the Dunblane meeting to canvass your views or keep you informed of discussions in the IGC, but I have tried to be responsive to specific issues when these have come up. Since you are now receiving much more information than previously, I can only assume that you are all happy with what is happening if I do not hear from you to the contrary!
3. Management Committee
The Management Committee is primarily responsible for monitoring the finances of the organisation on a monthly basis, preparing accounts and budgets for the Executive Committee and IGC, and dealing with other ‘management’ issues such as bye-laws, financial and personnel policies (although there is now a separate Personnel Sub-Committee), moving of the international office, conflict of interest policy, etc. The MC meets by phone once a month for about 2 hours and sometimes twice a month. We receive detailed financial reports covering all parts of the organisation and numerous other documents to read through and comment on. I don’t think there is much here of specific interest to European MOs.
4. Executive Committee (EC)
The EC also meets at least once a month by phone for up to 2 hours. It has responsibility for general oversight of the organisation on behalf of the IGC and receives updates from all the other committees and the staff each month. It has the authority to take ‘emergency’ decisions on behalf of the IGC but in fact very few decisions are taken by the EC except at a fairly technical level. Everything we do in the EC goes to the IGC for their feedback and eventual ‘ratification’.
5. Co-Chair
As co-chair of the IGC, together with Claudia Samayoa from Guatemala, I have additional duties that go way beyond my role as IGC representative for Europe. We are first of all responsible for line management of the Executive Director, Mel Duncan, which involves another long and detailed phone call every month to discuss confidential staffing matters as well as major issues of planning and programming. All the day-to-day implementation of IGC decisions, including the running of the Sri Lanka project, are managed by staff ultimately accountable to Mel. Mel is accountable to the IGC through the co-chairs, who report on our meetings with Mel each month to the Executive Committee.
As co-chairs, we are also responsible for preparing agendas and running meetings of the EC and the IGC. It is our job to make sure that papers are circulated well enough in advance of meetings so that EC and IGC members can consult their constituencies and receive inputs and feedback. It is our job to make sure that meetings are conducted and decisions taken in a manner that satisfies as far as possible the many different cultures and constituencies that make up NP. It is also our job to make sure minutes of those meetings are comprehensible and get sent out in a timely manner. I can’t say that we have been 100% successful in fulfilling these tasks, but I do think we have had at least a 100% improvement since this time last year and I hope we will continue moving in that direction!
Overall, I think I have worked extremely hard over the past year to fulfil my duties as one of your representatives on the IGC. Although some of this work has been counted as part of my job at Peaceworkers UK, most of it has been additional to my full-time job and this is becoming increasingly difficult for me. I will continue to do all I can for NP over the next year, because I am deeply committed to making sure it succeeds. But I will be very happy to let someone else in Europe have a turn at this when a new IGC is elected at the next Triennial of MOs in 2006!
Thank you for entrusting me to represent you in the meantime. I will try to keep you better informed of what is happening in NP, but I also hope you will keep me better informed of what you are thinking. Please feel free to comment, criticise and make suggestions at any time for how NP can be improved. And with your help, we will improve it!
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