The Problem with Partnerships – E5 – Why it’s hard to decolonise

Episode script with timestamps:
Gunjan Veda: the most difficult thing in this world is to acknowledge that you are part of the problem. That you have created, accentuated, intensified the very problem that you have been trying to fight.
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Raaval Bains: Welcome to the Problem with Partnerships, a Building Peace podcast-series from Peace Direct. I’m Raaval Singh Bains, your host for this series delving into the structural racism, and history of colonialism, that undermine the international development sector. A sector that fundamentally tries to do good but has caused its own harm.
We’re following up on Peace Direct’s guide on Transforming Partnerships, which outlined some ways we can decolonise our sector’s ways of working. Early in that guide, we acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: activists in the sector have been highlighting the need to decolonise for decades. Yet we’ve seen very little movement by those with power.
So, in this episode, we’re exploring the provocative question: why is it so hard to decolonise?
Véronique: I think it's a long process, because people have to let go of their power, of the position of privilege, of their resources, and they have to redefine and recalibrate their work and the way they work with others. And that takes time.
Raaval: This is Dr Véronique Barbelet, an independent humanitarian policy researcher and a Research Associate with the Overseas Development Institute’s Humanitarian Policy Group.
Veronique: I feel that things changed quite drastically, in the last few years, even if only in terms of if you’re not going to be equitable in your partnership, there is a huge reputational risk, even just for that, and it's not a very positive way of looking at it. But even that, you know, if you don't do it, then you will be criticized for it. And that's a risk to your reputation.
I think around me, I see kind of four different things. One is, obviously you have those who are unwilling, who don't see themselves as being part of the issue, they're still they still exist.
Raaval: But how is that possible? Why, when so many people in our sector have good intentions, want to help others, and would stand against racism, are we still not only failing to address the systemic problems affecting us, but being wilfully blind to them? It’s not like Global South activists have not been telling us directly that these are problems in our sector.
Chernor: The manifest in our sector is feel good, do good, I'm going to come save you.
Raaval: This is Chernor Bah, Minister of Information and Civic Education in Sierra Leone and the Co-founder of Purposeful, a feminist hub for girls’ activism, rooted in Africa and working all around the world.
Chernor: Then the critical people, on our side as well, say we see you for what you are, you're not really interested in our liberation, you're not really interested in a relationship that is based on trust and acknowledging harm and, all the wrong things that have been done. And, you know, there are different layers of harm here we're talking about, we're talking about slavery, we're talking about colonialism, we're talking about just capitalism, and all the harms of that, you know, the level of levels of resources, for example, that are extracted from our countries in Africa every year is way more than what they pass, to give us as so-called aid. And, you know, we're, we're stuck in terrible deals that are just inherently unfair. So there's, there's that and then there's also the harm of our sector, right years and years of exploitation to create an industry. You know, poverty porn, as they call it, and years and years of degrading and inhuman images of us.
So there's all this complex intertwined levels of harm. But really the problem with this transformation conversation is, is very few people are willing to start by even acknowledging all that harm. The assumption is that good intent, to the extent that is packaged as that is sufficient, that ‘oh, you know, there may have been harm but we meant good’. That doesn't do me any good. And it doesn't even start to address the fundamentals here.
Gunjan Veda: The most difficult thing in this world is to acknowledge that you are part of the problem. That you have created, accentuated, intensified the very problem that you have been trying to fight. And that's the challenge.
Raaval: This is Gunjan Veda. She’s the Executive Director of the Movement for Community-Led Development, or MCLD. It’s a network that works to shift power so that low-income communities can achieve their own visions and goals.
Gunjan: I remember this book, which I had once read, which was by Mazarin Banaji. And she talks about blind spots and she talks about this, you know, the not so good actions of good people, right? The fact is that when we come into the sector, a lot of us come here because we genuinely want to make change. We genuinely want to make this world a better place. We genuinely want to end hunger, we genuinely want to end poverty. We genuinely believe in the equality of people, right? These are all things that we don't just talk about, we believe in them. And we have spent years trying to address these issues right? Now imagine suddenly, you are told, but actually, your actions was what was promoting these, and perpetuating these very injustices that you spent your life fighting.
People don't come into this sector for money. You know, people come into the sector, often, most often, because of that sense of a mission, of a purpose. Imagine being told that everything you have done towards that purpose that you dedicated your life to, that, you know, your peers laughed at you because they earned way more than you. You know, that they afforded all those fancy vacations that you couldn't afford for your kids, even when they were asking, all of that was for naught, because actually, you were perpetuating that problem. That's the most difficult thing in the world to address and accept.
Raaval: It is definitely hard to hear that. But it’s the truth. We’re all part of this system. Even at Peace Direct, after years of research on and reckoning with this, we’re still unlearning, unpicking, and rebuilding. We all need to find the humility and self-reflection to be honest about this.
Gunjan: I mean, in my own case going back to the caste system in India, you know, I was part of the women's movement, I had been fighting discrimination, caste-based discrimination all my life. And then in the course of writing that book, I suddenly discovered that I was practicing caste-based discrimination. And my immediate reaction was to lash out. My immediate reaction was like, how could it be? Right?
I went home, I was furious at my mother, I was like, You did this, you did this. The fact is, she may have, there may have been a tradition that was passed on. I followed it blindly, just as she had. I was as culpable as she was, if not more, because I should have known to question it. I work in this area, but I did not, right? But in that moment, if I did not lash out, I wouldn't know what to do. And after that was over, I went through this intense period of self-doubt of ‘what am I even doing in the sector?’ ‘What right do I have to talk about this?’ You know, that guilt, that feeling of ‘Oh my God, I've been a liar all my life.’ It's very, very difficult to get through that.
And so I think one of the biggest challenges to this decolonising, shift the power agenda is, it requires acknowledging, we are part of the problem, it requires acknowledging that no matter how good our intentions may have been, we have perpetuated the problem. And that's difficult.
Raaval: Let’s dig into this issue of power: shifting power and transforming those structures in our sector. There’s lots of talk, there’s even a Shift the Power movement, so it seems like the sector in general supports it. So why isn’t power actually shifting?
Gunjan: Power corrupts. It doesn't matter who you are, and what your experiences in life have been. Power has this innate ability to somehow corrupt people. Nobody wants to let go of power. And it may be that we believe that we are keeping that power for good. A lot of people who actually, you know, keep power, right, who accumulate power, genuinely believe that they're trying to make a difference in this world, that they are solving a problem, that they are doing something good, and they need that power and influence to make that change.
So giving up power is very, very difficult. And shifting power requires us to give up power. It's as Robert Chambers said, you have to put the last first and to put the last first, you have to put the first last. The question is, are the first willing to be last, right?
And then there's all the systemic. So it's like we’re caught in a system where we try to address things individually. But it doesn't matter. You as an organisation may truly believe in something and may try to do it, while there are others who don't. And there are funders who don't care. And so you're just going to be left out and others are going to get the funding and the work is still going to happen the way it should not happen. And then you are like, well, at least if I agree to the system, I may be able to bring about change in that small area that I work in. So let me at least do that. Right?
And therefore shifting power is one of the most difficult things in the decolonisation agenda because it requires us to accept and it requires us to make others accept that they are part of the problem that they have done wrong, that they have actually initiated and carried out violence against their fellow human beings. It requires us to give up power and to believe that others will exercise that power way better towards those same goals than we would. And it requires systemic changes, not just individual changes.
Raaval: But do we have the will to make those necessary changes? Whose responsibility is it to challenge our system and make those changes happen?
Ishani: It's easy to talk about this, nobody wants to do anything about it. I think that's where the challenge lies.
Raaval: Ishani Ida Cordeiro is the Advocacy & Accountability Manager at Women Enabled International. She is a gender rights activist and human rights lawyer from India.
Ishani: But I feel like I would also go to the extent and to say that there is also a recognition of the power dynamics, not only a recognition of it by Global South, but a recognition of the, of the dynamics by the Global North. Or how I see it, and this is sort of just my view of it, but how I see it is definitely that even though there is that recognition, nobody wants to, to dismantle that.
For, like, Global South can't dismantle it, because you know, it would have a direct impact on where money's coming from for them, and what work they can and cannot do and things like that. And then Global North would not want to dismantle it, because why would anybody want to dismantle a structure where you still have the power, you know. It’s easy to sort of sugarcoat it and to talk about how people recognise their privileges, and you know, how it becomes like, how, you need to sort of work around it, you need to dismantle it, you need to talk about what partnerships look like, we need to talk about, you know, what equity looks like, what equality, you know, like, it's easy to talk about this, nobody wants to do anything about it. And I think that's where the challenge lies.
The onus of challenging these power structures are always on on those who don't have the power to challenge it to begin with, you know. So it's almost like this guilt of those who are in power automatically falls on those who are not in power, and then they have to deal with the burden of that guilt.
Chernor Bah: I always say there's no record in history of holders of power willingly and voluntarily giving up their power - truly giving up their power. There is hardly any record of that in history in in the history of all the civil rights and power movement that we've seen. And power is hardly negotiated away. Like, we can't talk nice and be like, "Oh, and now we're gonna get all these, you know, people to now share our power." No. If it's done in that way, it's sanitised and it's patronising. And it's truly not transformative.
That's where intentionality comes in. And I think we need to shake the system in a in you know, in a way that most people are probably unwilling and are afraid to do.
Veronique: And what I see in knowledge production is for some people, they go completely to the other side of the spectrum, where they say, I'm going to completely let go of power. I don't have a role to play in this, I don't have anything to contribute, I don't have any value added.
And, and I think there's a bit of a fear there sometimes about ‘Yeah, I want to be equitable in the partnership, and I really don't know how to do that. So maybe if I don't do anything, and maybe if I completely let go of any question, leadership or power, then maybe that works the best.’
Chernor: The challenge with that is the premise of the conversation. You're not doing it, because you're doing it from the goodness of your heart. That's foundationally patronising. You're not doing it because you want to save me, that's foundationally problematic. If it is about, you understand intrinsically, that your liberation is inherent in my liberation. If you understand that you are not free until I'm free. If you understand that this word is not safe, until I'm safe, that you're not liberated until I'm liberated, then you're then you get a real stake. Then you're like, ‘oh, I have to do this because this is the reality. This is doing it for me. I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing…’ This is what true solidarity ought to be. It's not it's not trying to save the other. It's understanding that I do it, because I do it to be. I do it to be free.
That's for me it's the most important thing that's in it for folks who are truly interested in this conversation about letting go of power. So if you understand that the reason you're giving up power is because you want to create a different and a new world then it's a very different conversation than because I because oh you've been so touched by my poverty aww. That's, that's not something I'm interested in.
But a big chunk of this problem is the idea that, you know, I mean, I'm in, a lot of the conversations around localisation, shift the power, decolonisation, and it gets to the heart of it. These big INGOs are not really interested, very few of them are really interested in truly giving up power. Because even the metrics that they have set for themselves for success are colonial and racist. It's about how much money they make, how much money they put into their accounts in the US and in the UK, in other Western capitals. It's about their staff sizes, it's about their expatriate fees, all of those things are about exploiting, taking away from us and not giving up power. So you end up with oh, now they're going to transform their sectors and so they're going to appoint an African CEO, which is good. But all the power still remains in the West. So you have a classic case of we're just going to change the face of this institution that is outward-looking, but the staff in their local offices local are paid way less do more, way more, because they judge them by still colonised standards, you didn't go to Harvard or MIT or these institutions so that's what we're going to pay for, your lived experience and the quality of the work that you're doing notwithstanding.
There's still this feeling this persistent feeling that this is just how it is. And there are some things we cannot shake. There's too many totems here that are untouchables and I think until we truly crack those and see each other fully then we’re gonna still be papering around the edges as they say.
Raaval Bains: Let’s hear from Véronique, with a Global North perspective on that:
Véronique: You have the pressure of that's not the way you do it. You have that pressure of this is the way you do research. And this is the way you write a report. And this is the kind of quality we expect. And it's really hard to let go of that. Because eventually it means you have to take back control. And to say, Okay, it's been great to collaborate, but now I actually have to deliver. And I have to speak in a language that will be understood by the person who is funding this research, I have to be speak in the language that will be understood by the people who still have the power in the humanitarian sector.
And when I was thinking about okay, but there must be a way forward, that just can't keep happening. And I think, really, the solution is to have more of a revolution of what is knowledge, what is considered as knowledge and how you communicate knowledge and evidence and findings. And I think until that revolution has happened, we're a bit stuck in the strict boundaries of what counts as evidence, what counts as knowledge, and what it should look like when you communicate it or publish it. So I think that's kind of your third scenario.
And then the fourth is one where, actually, it's the other side who doesn't really quite want that freedom. And I think that's a bit more controversial. But I had this experience working with a Global South research team, where it didn't go well at all.
Everybody in the team on our side was really being we tried, what happened, we felt like we were really giving them space. We're not being too controlling, we were trying to really be collaborative. And in the end, the Global South researchers we were working with said, we didn't want that, we actually would have much preferred for you to tell us this is what we need us go out and get it done and give it back to you. Instead, it was very confusing.
And I think again, I would say this was our mistake, we didn't check with them. We assumed that that's what they wanted an equitable partnership where we had equal control. And actually, at that moment, I'm not saying forever, but at that moment, those researchers did not want the responsibility, did not want to have more leadership, didn't want to have more equity, they just wanted to get a job done. And they would have much preferred for us to just tell, tell them, this is the data we need, can you please go and collect it?
And I think that's again, like we just assume something, we assume that that's the way they wanted it to work. And partnership is not like this. Partnership should be about what you want from the partnership. What do you want that? Can we work together? Yes, we can we want the same thing we can work together, then let's go. Instead, we were like, completely imposing our view of what we wanted to do. So I’d say like, that's why they're still those kind of things are not quite moving as fast. And we're recalibrating, and really rethinking our role. And it's confusing, and it will work, it will happen. And I think there's really a difference, or at least a different set of incentives that will push change.
Raaval: That last part is crucial, right? For so long, organisations in the Global North have assumed that we know what’s best for the world – the best way to build peace in a community we’ve never lived in; how to solve crises we’ve only read about and never experienced.
While that kind of thinking is thankfully disappearing, and we are better at respecting the expertise of local actors, we’re still struggling to shake the habit of our assumptions.
Even in our efforts to shift power and decolonise, we’re struggling to hear or at least really listen to what our colleagues in the Global South want and need.
Decolonising means letting go of our assumptions. Listening. Not neocolonially projecting our own beliefs.
Gunjan: You know, when I first joined the sector, I used to always hear ‘our job is to work ourselves out of a job’. Well, nobody genuinely wants that because you have a family to take care and needs to take care of. But the irony of it is, no local organisation wants you to work yourself out of a job, actually. That's something that we, in our myth of preciousness, and, you know, and benevolence cultivated for ourselves, that we people, you know, we are so great that we are actually going to work ourselves out of our job. That's what our intention is. Speak to any local organisation, they don't want the INGOs to go away, they just want the INGOs to change the way they operate and to treat them with respect and dignity.
Raaval Bains: Thank you so much Gunjan for closing this episode with such a great message, which really gets to the core of the problem with partnerships and the struggle to decolonise – respect and dignity. We’ve also talked about intentionality, and the courage to really take the steps needed to shift power and decolonise the sector.
Listeners, I hope you’ve enjoyed and learned from this episode. For those in the Global North, let’s reflect on the assumptions we’re making, and start truly listening.
Take a look at this week’s shownotes for an action pack, and join us next week for our final episode: what is a decolonised partnership?
For now, it’s been a pleasure to host you on The Problem with Partnerships. Take care.