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TIN News Update / 15 January, 1997 / pages: 3 ISSN 1355-3313

The Chinese authorities have said that the European Commission should exclude foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from involvement in a large-scale development project due to be funded by the EC in Tibet.

The European Commission (EC) is likely to accept the Chinese demand if Beijing allows non-governmental experts to act in an individual capacity as advisors, according to an EC official. The Commission has offered to pay 7.6 mln ECU (5.89 mln or $9.42 mln) towards the five-year "Integrated Rural Development Project" in Panam, 200 km south-west of Lhasa.

The compromise has been criticised by members of the European Parliament, who passed a resolution in May 1995 urging the EC to divert the funds earmarked for the Panam scheme into small local projects run by NGOs. Foreign NGOs are regarded as crucial to the credibility of the Panam project, because they include the few foreign developmentalists with long-term Tibet contacts and experience.

The 1994 decision to propose the project in Panam as a bilateral arrangement with Beijing instead of through NGO projects led to criticism that the project was partly designed to improve the EC's standing with the Chinese government. So far EC funding in central Tibet has gone only to NGO projects, the normal procedure for politically sensitive areas.

The EC project was suspended two years ago after European parliamentarians described the original proposal as "politically insensitive" and based on a "laughable" and "haphazard" consultation exercise. In December 1995 the Parliament resolved that the project should be suspended until the missing Tibetan child recognised as the Panchen Lama has been freed from detention by China.

A revised implementation proposal for the project, which has not been made public, was handed to the Chinese for signing when EC Vice-President Leon Brittan visited Beijing in November last year. The document was returned to the EC unsigned with a clause crossed out which had stated that "the involvement of experts from NGOs with relevant experience would be considered". The document had already agreed that foreign experts, as opposed to organisations, would be involved in the project only "following consultation with the PRC".

The EC now hopes to implement the project through a professional consultancy with expertise in health care and development in Tibet, which will be asked to seek advice from experienced NGO workers, according to an EC official. It is not known whether any companies with such specialist knowledge exist.

DETAILS: COMMENTS FROM EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT -

The Panam project, which aims to boost the yield of one of Tibet's prime grain-producing valleys by improving irrigation, was suspended on 31 January 1995 following articles in the British papers "The Observer" and "The Independent" in December 1994, and questions by members of the European Parliament.

EC officials now say that the project is expected to go ahead once "some minor points" have been settled. "We just want to confirm 100% that we are ready to sign, and we are expecting to do so any day now," said an official.

The Commission this week rejected criticism of the revised proposal. "It is clear that we will be benefiting the Tibetan people with this project," said Guillaume Hoffman, the EC's Director of Relations with Far Eastern Countries in the Department of External Relations. "We have taken into account all the observations made by Parliament, and as far as I know there is now no opposition from Parliamentarians," he told TIN.

"It is completely unacceptable to those of us who campaigned very hard against the original proposals that the Commission should be prepared to backtrack in this way," commented MEP Glenys Kinnock on the reported compromise. "If the project is to benefit local people, it is essential that foreign experts who have a track record of working in the field are involved," said the Welsh MEP, who is a member of the EP's development committee.

"The formal involvement of NGOs with this scheme is very important. We cannot accept that this will be withdrawn," French MEP Bernard Kouchner, former Chair of the Parliament's development committee, told TIN.

The European Parliament cannot enforce political demands on the EC, but can withhold consent to EC spending plans. "If the Chinese misunderstand our keenness to involve NGOs in Tibet and anywhere else, the proposal may go need to go back to the European Parliament for reconsideration," said Edward McMillan-Scott, the Parliament's Rapporteur on EU-China relations. "If Parliament does not approve of the Chinese changes agreed by the Commission, we can freeze the budget for Panam. This is a test case for European Union dealings with China," said Mr McMillan-Scott, who is the conservative group's spokesman on foreign affairs.

EC officials are also negotiating over the word "indigenous", which the Chinese authorities have asked the EC to strike out from Leon Brittan's document on the grounds that it is pejorative. The Commission may propose changing the term to "local people", according to an EC source who asked not to be named. The use of either term is controversial because it could indicate a reluctance by both sides to specify the intended beneficiaries as Tibetans, the term which was used in the earlier proposal.

"The wording of documents like this is vitally important," said Toby Gooch, a consultant agricultural economist who has worked on EC projects. "It could be argued that the Chinese are indigenous or local, so the only way of guaranteeing that Tibetans are the beneficiaries of aid is to specify "Tibetans" in the document," he said.

NGOS "IDEAL" FOR TIBET -

In previous proposals for Panam the EC had emphasised its keenness to involve foreign NGOs with expertise in Tibet. "It is recommended that the EC consider sub-contracting the design and implementation of the health and education components to European NGOs," stated the EC's Reappraisal report on Panam. "This possibility was also discussed with local officials, all of whom said they had no objection to NGOs being involved in the EC project," added the report, which was compiled in September 1995.

The two EC-based NGOs which have the most extensive experience in Tibet "have actually been involved in aspects of this project", said Peter Guilford, the EC spokesman for external economic relations, in 1994, adding that one of the organisations had been paid for its work on the proposal. The two organisations referred to - Save the Children Fund UK and Medecins Sans Frontieres, Belgium - immediately denied his claims.

The 1995 Reappraisal Report described the two organisations as "very supportive of the EC Project" but both charities this week refused to comment on this claim.

EC development projects in politically sensitive places, in areas with low population density, and in sites with fragile environmental conditions are usually implemented through NGOs. "The Commission agrees that small-scale decentralised projects are ideal for thinly populated areas, such as most of Tibet," wrote the EC in a note to the Parliament in May 1995, but went on to argue that Panam was a special case.

1995 REAPPRAISAL REPORT COMMENDS PROJECT -

The revised budget for the "Panam County Integrated Rural Development Project" has remained unchanged at 7.6 million ECUs, with the largest share - around 24% - allocated to project co-ordination and monitoring, and 19% to the health and education sub-projects, according to the Reappraisal Report. A mid-term assessment mission is built in and foreign experts are increased from 166 "person months" over five years to 237 person months, representing just over half the budget at around 16,000 ECU (12,400 or $19,800) per person per month. 9% of the budget is allocated to sending Tibetans on training courses outside the area.

The Reappraisal team concluded that the project would alleviate poverty and protect cultural identity in a sustainable and replicable way, and found no evidence that the project would attract Chinese settlers to the Panam area.

Their report does not look into questions about the potential boost the project's grain surplus might give to Chinese migration in towns beyond the project area, or about the likelihood of traders from China obtaining a better market position over Tibetan farmers thrust into an entrepreneurial system, according to Graham Clarke, a British developmentalist involved in the initial assessment of the Panam area for the EC.

"The point is that if the project is viable only with a public sector subsidy from national level, then implementation creates a further structural and economic linkage and dependency on lowland China," said Dr. Clarke, who says that overall Panam is not impoverished and already has a grain surplus in most years.

The only other large-scale foreign project in Tibet, the World Food Programme's "Project 3357", is focussed on irrigation construction in the Lhasa valley, where it began in September 1989. It led to unofficial reports that irrigation canals had been built going uphill or had been diverted into Chinese settlements, that a number of project areas had been targetted for Chinese settlement, and that Chinese labourers had been hidden during foreign inspections.

In May 1993 four of its seven projects were suspended as a result of "problems related to technical design and management", according to WFP officials, who later confirmed that non-Tibetans had been employed as labourers. The project is again underway but is currently two and a half years behind schedule, and is still paying its Tibetan workers with wheat, although the staple in Tibet is barley.

Since 1978 Tibet has received foreign aid worth US$43.697 mln through 38 bilateral or multi-lateral aid programmes, according to a Xinhua report on 12th October last year. These projects include US$7.2 mln for the WFP project, US$9.8 mln from Germany to update a leather factory, US$2.4 mln from Italy for a medical centre in Lhasa, US$4.39 mln from UNICEF to support a dozen educational programmes in Tibet, and US$0.24 mln from the UNDP for a tourism survey.