This blog was co-written by Kit Dorey, Peace Direct’s Policy and Advocacy Manager, Lena Bheeroo and Katherine Strasser-Williams. It was originally posted on Bond’s website on 29 October.
Bond, Peace Direct, and the Advocacy Team have created a new set of resources and findings focused on advancing anti-racist and decolonial approaches in international policy and advocacy.
During Black History Month in the UK, alongside the 140th anniversary of the infamous Berlin Conference, which saw Africa formally carved up into European colonies, and following the recent UK race riots, we are reminded once again how vital it is to continue the work of racial justice and equity, including the role that reparations can play.
In recent years, conversations around anti-racism, racial justice, decolonisation and locally-led development have gained momentum in the international development, humanitarian and peacebuilding sectors. In large part, these conversations target programme or communication leads or CEOs and senior leadership, but rarely focus on policy and advocacy.
This is a huge gap. Policy and advocacy teams within international charities have a lot of potential influence on power-holders and organisational leadership, but too often they are disengaged, face other barriers or do not know what to do to further anti-racist and decolonial approaches.
Our project, This is the Work – a collaboration between Bond, Peace Direct and supported by the Advocacy Team – aims to bridge this gap. Adopting anti-racist and decolonial approaches is not an additional task or checkbox for compliance; it is the fundamental work that policy and advocacy professionals should be doing as part of their daily responsibilities to advance the demands and voices of marginalised communities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Policy and advocacy leads are frequently the main touchpoint between their organisations and decision makers, such as government officials and parliamentarians. As such, they are well positioned to address some of the core structural changes needed in our sector.
However, this part of the sector is often disproportionately privileged and white, and its internalised biases about ‘how advocacy is done’ are having an outsized impact on long-term strategies, policies, and even laws. Their position and influence can have a harmful effect, for example, by creating a barrier between decision makers and communities in LMICs or by perpetuating colonial mindsets and terminology.
A significant problem is the assumption within international charities that aligning with government rhetoric – for example, ‘Global Britain’ or championing UK ‘leadership’ – and avoiding topics like racism or decolonisation is necessary to gain credibility or access. This assumption discourages open conversations and silences important ones. To tackle systemic racism in international development, we must ask ourselves who benefits from this strategy, whose voices are amplified, who holds power and who remains silenced?
Over the last year, we convened a group of policy and advocacy staff to consider what it would take to adopt a new approach. Our initial meeting for This is the Work had an overwhelming response, with over 100 policy and advocacy staff from across the sector signing up. From this, we formed a temporary working group to agree what the initiative’s outputs should be.
We wanted to ensure that our work was informed by and rooted in evidence and lived experiences by interviewing diaspora and LMIC voices about what they wanted to see change in how UK INGOs conduct policy and advocacy. Their message was clear: they wanted marginalised voices to be fully included and consulted, and they called for the sector to acknowledge and address the power imbalances that too often exclude them. As one interviewee said,
