Paper short abstract:

This paper analysis actors and effects of a Unicef Program for secondary girls education.The ethnography shows the project everyday practices and target group's perceptions of the intervention. It also explores how "gender equity" interacts with local social norms on early marriages and pregnancies.

Paper long abstract:

Based on a fieldwork in three districts of rural and coastal Madagascar (Sofia, Fenerive Est and Vangaindrano), this paper aims at investigating the practices and ideologies of a national Programme for girls secondary education. The "Education for all" plan has shaped many intervention promoted by Unicef worldwide and it has suggested a more gender-oriented attention. My case-study is represented by a Programme that seeks to foster girls education through scholarships, boarding houses constructions, mentoring activities and WC for menstrual hygiene management. Despite the effort to focus on gender unbalance in education access in some marginal areas, my research shows how everyday project practices have produced unexpected side-effects.

In the three areas of the Programme the main cause of girls dropping out from primary to secondary education is represented by "forced" marriages and pregnancies.

By establishing a series of activities under the umbrella of "girls friendly schools", Unicef and local partner NGOs risk to reinforce the idea of only female responsibility for unwanted pregnancies as well as construct an ambiguous category of vulnerability which is not well perceived by the schoolgirls involved in the Program. In addition, schoolboys and some adults do not properly understand the gender-oriented idiom and claim the same needs for them (money for school fees, boarding schools, etc.).

Finally, the paper explores which kind of gender equity/discrimination concept is promoted through the Programme and how it interacts with local realities where traditional marriages ("moletry") and sanctions for boys responsible for pregnancy ("détournement") work as social norms on gender relationships.

Paper short abstract:

To protect local claims to land, the 2005 land reform law in Madagascar integrated the UN polity format of customary land ownership. The paper will explore the ideas underlying this notion and the effects it had when implemented as a national law in Madagascar.

Paper long abstract:

In Madagascar, a 2005 land reform law guided by the strategic frameworks of global UN development polity advocates the large-scale privatization of land. The latter objective is to support the development of a private enterprise culture and create topographic maps based on actual land tenure. Hitherto, the land situation has been marked by the legal plurality of different customary and colonial land tenure systems. The principle of public domaniality in particular had often created conflicts with local populations occupying publicly owned land bailed for example to foreign investors. To take into consideration the actual occupation of such public land and protect local claims to land, the 2005 law adopted the global polity format of customary land ownership. The paper will explore the ideas underlying this notion and the effects it had when implemented as a national law in Madagascar. I will argue that the idea of certifying a presumably customary land claim by means of a land title a priori turns the entire system of actual customary local land tenure on its head. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in the coastal areas of SW Madagascar, I will show that the latter is based on the concrete working of the ground and the maintenance of good relationships with ancestral spirits who guarantee the continuity of political order at the micro-local scale, rather than any form of definite title or prerogative. In this sense, the introduction of the notion of "customary land property" initiates a rupture and fundamental change in the regimes of governance associated with land and local society.

Paper short abstract:

The UN's harmonised definition of the household is a key concept in surveys and censuses but it is often difficult to reconcile with local living arrangements and national data collection priorities. The repercussions of this harmonised definition are examined for West and East African countries.

Paper long abstract:

Over the half century since Independence in most Africa states the UN Statistical Division has played an increasing role in getting member countries to standardise and streamline their data collection and in particular the definitions used for data collection. A key concept in censuses and surveys is the definition of household since this determines the units for which much data are collected and analysed, and thus influences the data which are the basis for many policies.

In this paper we analyse the evolution of the UN household definition over this time period and what aspects of the household this definition appears to be trying to capture. Using detailed census and survey documentary data (from questionnaires, enumerator and supervisor manuals etc) for 4 African countries (Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda and Tanzania) we examine the extent to which each country has actually implemented this definition in different data collection activities over the last 50 years, highlighting differences between Anglophone and Francophone practice but also noting where country level idiosyncrasies and adaptations to local conditions are priorities. In a final stage perspectives provided from in-depth interviews with key informants from different levels within the hierarchy of statistical offices in each country, demonstrate the variability in the importance accorded to the UN harmonisation aims and the problems which arise when these standardised approaches interact with local norms and living arrangements.

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Paper short abstract:

Thanks to the concept of “hybridity”, this paper studies the case of UNIFEM/UN Women in Burundi, and shows how its programmes are received by different actors (the UN, the national state and local civil society organizations), and then reshaped in unexpected directions.

Paper long abstract:

Despite a renewed attention payed at the integration of gender norms in UN programmes in post-conflict countries, little has been yet written on the interactions between UN agencies, the national state and local civil society organizations in the production and implementation of these programmes. How do they evolve in relation to their reception by local actors? How have contested norms and practices on gender and women been renegotiated on the field? How do these programmes interfere with the local political game? Based on an ethnographic methodology, this paper studies the case of UNIFEM/UN Women in Burundi, and shows how these programmes are received by different actors, and then reshaped in unexpected directions. The concept of "hybridity" (Mac Ginty, 2011) will help us to describe these multi-level and multi-actor interactions, to study the local political uses of western views on gender and women and the learning process and mutual adaptation of the programmes to their unexpected effects. Moreover, we will analyse the ambivalent nature of hybridity: it is a source of conflict as well as of cooperation. Competitive and cooperative dynamics indeed take place between the various actors that produce and implement UN programmes on gender and women. In this complex configuration, UN agencies are not only used as a resource for local actors to advance their own interests, but also profoundly interfere in the Burundian political game. Their role is even more critical that the political situation has been unstable and tense, particularly on the land issue.

Paper short abstract:

The article examines the response of Cape-Verdean associative sector to the adherence of the country to neoliberalisme and the role played by UN Program “Delivering As One” in this process.

Paper long abstract:

This article presents the outcomes of a qualitative exploratory study carried out in Cape Verde between 2010 and 2011 within the scope of a research project aimed to understand the dynamics of the associative sector in African countries of peripheral modernity. Data collected sought to answer the question: "do local social organizations could be regarded, in the present days, as a social sphere of contention and fight, of debate and claims, shaped by historical forces (Bayart, 1986) and, thus, are they helping to build a strong civil society?" The data analysis showed: (i) a sector comprised by very heterogeneous organizations which, however, bear common features such as a growing financial dependence upon the State and acritically adhere to UN's discourse and proposals on Milenium Goals and poverty reduction; (ii) a sector in which the most structured social organizations operate as a State branch, undertaking activities incumbent upon the State, particularly in the education and health areas; (iii) that the UN, through the Delivering as One Programme, that establishes that the bunch of financial resources from UN's various agencies shall be canalized through the central Government of the aided country for subsequent reallocation, is indirectly contributing to restrict the already limited political autonomy of Cape-Verdean organizations form the associative sector.

These research findings lead us to reflect about Wickramasinghe's claim (2005, p.458) that the own term 'civil society' would have been "globalized", turning from an end in itself to a mean serving the political project of the central economies.