ODA reform; UN reform; re-thinking civil-military relations

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Background

JVC is continuing to work together with people who have suffered from development or from the violence of the "War on Terror" to see issues from their perspective and to transmit their views so that ODA and the various systems within the UN can come to be of more benefit to people.

Summary of activities

1. ODA reform

Japanese ODA entered its 51st year this year. It is necessary to pay attention to recent changes in Japa-nese ODA, in particular to the increasing emphasis on "donor-side strategic benefits". JVC believes that the main use of ODA should be poverty reduction, and in 2005 we participated in the "Global Campaign Against Poverty (GCAP)". We also actively pushed for a reappraisal of the system of aid implementation, working in cooperation with the ODA Network, JANIC and others to hold policy dialogues with rele-vant policy-makers and to host symposiums to pro-mote the thinking that ODA should be used to work towards creating a world without poverty.

2. UN reform

We have been able to establish the "UN reform public forum" as a regular place for direct dialogue between civil society and the government regarding UN reform. In future, we will work through this pub-lic forum to connect with NGOs who work not only in relation to "development", but also to NGOs work-ing on "peace" and "human rights", in order to push for a UN that can effectively alleviate people's inse-curities.

3. Re-thinking civil-military relations

Currently, there are increasingly cases in conflict situations where humanitarian aid is implemented by the military. However at the same time, it is becom-ing common for NGOs and other civilian groups to be attacked and to become victims of conflict. In par-ticular, where JVC is working in Afghanistan and Iraq there is especially strong evidence of this ten-dency. As an NGO working in conflict areas, we are trying to foster the beginnings of a debate within Japanese society that will address these issues and look from the point of view of the victims.