This is a CTP of initiative: Participatory Budgeting Amsterdam (PB Amsterdam) (Netherlands)
This CTP description has been modified on July 26th, 2019.
In 2013, the Centre for Budget Monitoring and Citizen Participation (CBB) decided to let go of the human rights perspective as the basis for budget monitoring. This was written in an article about budget monitoring in the Indische Buurt. The article explains the methodology and focus of budget monitoring in the Netherlands: “In comparison to INESC’s method, which focuses on human rights, our emphasis lies on social justice and civic participation. In addition, within the context of the Netherlands, the method of budget monitoring seems to fit active neighborhood organizations best as well as those communities that want to get a grip on the utilization of available resources in their neighborhoods”. This change of direction was not discussed with or within the group of volunteers and trainers of the CBB. According to the trainer budget monitoring, this move “directly opposes the narrative as it was told and agreed in the beginning”.
The critical and turning aspect of the letting go of the human rights perspective will be explained on both a personal and institutional level. Firstly, the decision to let go of the human rights perspective was made without consultation or discussion with a broader group of volunteers of the CBB according to the interviewed trainer budget monitoring: “They silently removed that, which made a difference to me”. On a personal level, this felt like betrayal as it was the human rights perspective that convinced him in 2011 of the benefit of budget monitoring of which he was critical in the beginning.
Secondly, the elimination of the human rights perspective can be considered as letting go of critical elements and aligning with an institutional perspective. When introducing budget monitoring in Amsterdam, the intention was to break with business-as-usual and to do it differently: “we would make a leap in radicalness to a different way of doing and thinking”. The CTP stands for the turning point when the CBB direction decided to frame it differently so that it fits better in the Dutch institutional context (see CONTESTATION).
In the elimination of the Human Rights perspective, the founders of the CBB and a closely involved trainer have played a main role.
Letting go of the human rights perspective means an opening up of the framing of the need for and the opportunities of budget monitoring. While the Alderman of Finance of the Amsterdam East district municipality was in favour of participation, he was also looking for legitimizing budget cuts and austerity measures. As such, adopting budget monitoring allowed him to stay within the administrative systems logic only when stripped of its human rights perspective.
The human rights perspective used by the initiators as of 2011, framed budget monitoring as a tool to give voice to citizens. Instead of just accepting austerity measures, this includes the possibility to develop an alternative to these measures or to refuse them. “Human rights was also a way to develop an alternative narrative […] against the narrative of the state – we need to cut back on healthcare – the neighbourhood can say ‘yes, fine’ but also ‘no, we cut back on green instead of on healthcare’.” An underlying motivation to put the human rights perspective on the background seems to be the extension of budget monitoring trainings to other municipalities. The CBB’s director had been in negotiations and signed a contract with the Ministry of Internal Affairs to initiate 6 pilots in different cities all over the Netherlands from October 2014 on. However, as municipalities were not keen on the human rights perspective. According to the trainer budget monitoring, it was most probably taken out of focus to make sure that municipalities stayed involved and that the national project would be honoured to the CBB.
In order for the CTP, the letting go of the human rights perspective, to happen, there is a need for a good understanding of the human rights perspective being an integral and furthermore central part of budget monitoring in the first place. This has happened for example through the impact of the visit of a number of local Dutch volunteers from the Indische Buurt neighborhood to their counterparts in Brazil.
The trainer budget monitoring emphasized that the Brazilian human rights perspective was the central thing that convinced him to become involved as a local community leader in the Indische buurt: “I have made in 2011 in Brazilia a video with Iara Pietricovsky de Oliveira [member of INESC Management Board – the organisation which developed budget monitoring in Brazil], where she states that it is the human rights perspective that can make the difference for approaching what happens in the Netherlands.” The understanding was also supported through a number of publications. A publication by the CBB and INESC (2012) states: “There is no realization of human rights without an honest redistribution of government money”, and “With the help of the strategy of budget analysis focused on human rights, one can analyse whether governments fulfil the following obligations (...)”. Another publication states: “At the beginning of 2012, after an exchange with capital Brasilia, they [initiators of budget monitoring] formulated their standpoints: ‘Budget monitoring is about awareness, democracy and human rights’” (Cadat, 2012:16).
For the first iteration of budget monitoring in 2011, the training was based on a human rights perspective. The invited local Alderman and her civil servants had been joining to “hear their story about how can we creatively cut budgets with citizens. They were not happy with the human rights perspective”. Already then, the friction between the government perspective and the human rights perspective showed (see also under CONTESTATION).
The trainer budget monitoring had approached both the former and the current director of the CBB to talk about this letting go of the human rights perspective. These meetings resulted in the agreement that trainers have the freedom with regard to which perspective they use in their respective trainings (see also CONTESTATION). The CBB had been in negotiations and signed a contract with the Ministry of Internal Affairs to initiate 6 pilots in different cities all over the Netherlands in October 2014. As a requirement for participation in a pilot every candidate municipality should beforehand team up with a citizens initiative. The human rights perspective was not included anymore in these trainings. The trainer budget monitoring had been in the first instance asked to be involved in the trainings. First he accepted but when it became clear that the human rights perspective was not part of the training, he proposed to withdraw due to his attachment to the human rights perspective. Thus the training was given by four CBB trainers from which some were newly involved.
In the meanwhile the trainer had been asked by a local active citizen group to give workshops on budget monitoring from a human rights perspective. The demand came through a national alliance of active citizen, being LSAbewoners, from a Dutch neighbourhood, being Emmerhout in Emmen in the North-East Drenthe Province. This local project was integrated in an international Oxfam-Novib program, E-Motive, involving exchange between local communities from Brazil (Brasilia, Uganda (a.o. Kampala) and Netherlands Emmerhout.
It is the human rights perspective, which leads to contestations and eventually to letting it go. The contestations are recognizable on personal level, i.e. how the trainer budget monitoring is involved in the change of direction and feels about it and on institutional level, i.e. between community and government.
On a personal level, the trainer budget monitoring was negatively surprised by the letting go of the human rights perspective, but he does not label it as a clear-cut conflict situation within the CBB. Rather, he says: “The others are very aware of the critique that I have”. He approached the founders of budgetmonitoring in the Netherlands as well as the current director of the CBB, to talk about their different foci. The situation was tackled by allowing the trainers more freedom with regard to which perspective they use in their respective trainings. The interviewed trainer can include the human rights perspective in the trainings he organizes: “and the others are allowed to do it without human rights, both are now possible”. The trainer is also developing a budget monitoring training for his employer based on the human rights perspective. The contestation was thus dealt with by discussing disagreements resulting in a compromise. In Emmerhout, neighbourhood of the city of Emmen, both perspectives met. On a voluntary basis, the interviewed trainer worked with a group of citizens in a neighbourhood based on his own training program including the human rights perspective. In another neighbourhood of the same city, a group of citizens was trained by another CBB trainer leaving out the human rights perspective. In the end, the groups were merged upon own request benefitting from the orientation of both trainings, the human rights perspective and the more financial/business perspective.
The contestation on an institutional level refers to a small interest of municipalities in the human rights perspective according to the trainer budget monitoring: “Many of them, they are not happy with human rights” and “It is too much power, critique, too politicised, it mobilizes people, but participation without claiming rights, fine, but then it goes against interactive policy”. The trainer underlines that there is however, outside the mainstream, some interest for a human rights approach among Dutch municipalities. He refers to the partnership Local Human Rights from the Dutch College of Human Rights, the Association of Dutch Municipalities, the Utrecht University and Amnesty International Netherlands (see: http://www.mensenrechtenlokaal.nl/). But this minority stream has still to grow in a context of austerity where budgets (not only humans) are at the core of the mandate for (local) government. The trainer also thinks that for the civil servants and the Alderman in the Indische Buurt of Amsterdam East, the participation in budget monitoring was much more about learning and democratically integrating creative austerity measures proposals from citizens. This institutional alignment, though based on participative budgeting, undermines the radical potential of budget monitoring: “We agreed that we would develop a new methodology which would make possible a break, another way of doing. And then suddenly we do it as the system wants. Fine that the system wants to accommodate, but will this work? Is this really the answer to the problems of the neighbourhood?”
As the respondent had explained, this CTP came as a surprise to him personally: “They silently removed that, which made a difference to me”. He clearly did not foresee the removal of the human rights perspective because in former publications of the CBB, before 2013, the human rights perspective was discussed extensively. The whole argumentation of introducing budget monitoring in the first place was linked to the human rights perspective and the role of the government therein. What the trainer budget monitoring added when reviewing this CTP: “There is here definitively an issue of democracy and transparency within grass-roots citizen initiatives. Without shared information one can not act rationally and on the based of shared power. Because ‘savoir c’est pouvoir’. Everyone is equal, but some are more equals than others. The old Orwell’s lesson can nowadays still be taken seriously.”
As a result of this critical turning point, the CBB installed the possibility to allow for diversity in the way budget monitoring is trained – whether based on a human rights perspective or not.
For the trainer budget monitoring as well as for others involved in the CBB, this CTP has been an example of ‘action learning’. Learning about the cooperation while cooperating. For the trainer budget monitoring, the beginning of budget monitoring in the Indische Buurt was characterized by the informal way the people were involved and collaborated: “You are busy with one another in an informal way and drift on love. The community is based on trust. And this includes transparency, communication, amicable contracting and to create room for this.” According to the trainer budget monitoring, space should be created to approach one other and to know what the other does.
The trainer budget monitoring contrasts this to a situation where communication and interaction is more formalized and structured – an undesirable situation in his idea: “Are we going to do it more formal then? Can it not be based on trust? These are dilemma’s again, how can you then find a balance and at which moment? A lot of what is working when being based on trust and love loses its power when being based on rules […].” This all is part of action learning for him. “It all boils downs to the following: we said ‘Yes we can!’ We wanted to change the world, but the world changed us. Where is the trust? Where is the love gone? What can we change? What can we … with budget monitoring?”
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