Why the World Bank should stop (only) speaking English

By Rebecca Harris

In January 2008, community groups in Yemen wrote to their local World Bank office, asking for an Arabic translation of the conditions placed on a $51 million grant to their country's government. This was a reasonable request, they thought, since past World Bank loans had prioritized macroeconomic stability over social services, such as healthcare and education. The civil society groups wanted to be sure that this time would be different.

The groups were surprised by the World Bank's reply: The country manager thanked them for their "high level of awareness" of the ongoing development process and explained that "like all other project documents -- [the loan conditions are] available only in English, since this is the official language to be used in all the transactions and contracts between the Government of the Republic of Yemen and the World Bank." He apologized for not being able to provide a translation and hoped that the civil society groups could translate themselves -- a rather daunting task in a country where literacy is just 57 percent, few read English, and the cost of translation (at about $1,800 or $2,000 for a single document) would eclipse the $930 per capita GDP of the average Yemeni.

Ten days later, on January 30, 25 local organizations sent a follow-up letter, asking the Bank's office to revisit its translation policy. They have yet to receive a response.

By April 2009, the civil society organizations were fed up, and they submitted their complaint to the World Bank's independent grievance mechanism, the Inspection Panel. According to one of the groups filing the complaint, the Yemeni Observatory for Human Rights (YOHR), the Bank's rejection of repeated translation requests was indicative of a more chronic problem. In short, the Bank's linguistically narrow policy was keeping civil society out and the elite in. The executive director of YOHR claimed this as one of the main reasons that past World Bank projects had seen poor results.

Today, the question before the Inspection Panel is one far broader than just a few translations. What is at stake is the Bank's very ability to succeed, and its credibility among those it serves.

Let's put all this in context. Civil society organizations have had a tenuous relationship with the World Bank since the 1980s and 1990s, when "structural adjustment" loans were all the rage. These interventions were intended to get a country's finances in order through spending cuts and debt repayment. But though the bottom line may have improved, the side effects were devastating for social services. Budget ceilings were often placed on the hiring of teachers and healthcare workers, for example. Decades later, the loans are seen as a cautionary tale of what happens when macroeconomic policy is dictated without input from the people the policy is supposedly serving.

Although the loan structures have changed, the World Bank's English bias begs the question of what else really has. The Yemen case is just one example of the several barriers blocking public access to information at the Bank. Most supposedly public documents and studies held by the bank are essentially inaccessible -- unless someone makes the effort to pry them out. Deliberative documents that detail how loans and grants were negotiated are also highly restricted. And draft documents are not released until the Bank's board approves them, severely undermining the ability of interested parties to weigh in on the process. The only papers that merit this sort of burying -- whether linguistic, bureaucratic, or intentional -- are those whose release would cause demonstrable harm.

Issues of transparency aside, there are other reasons to question why the world's leading development institution would expect to do business solely in English in a country (like Yemen) where Arabic is the national language. From the outset, that decision excludes the majority of the host country's population from every step of the process.

This argument holds not just in Yemen but across the approximately 140 eligible borrowing countries where the World Bank is in the business of trying to help the poor (with whom it, ironically, often cannot communicate). It is in the Bank's interest to cut down its language barrier and talk to the real people. Civil society understands the local realities that will propel a project either to success or failure far better than any expatriate could. Besides, it seems only right that those populations targeted by the World Bank should have a say in what and how projects are run. Without this kind of participation, the World Bank's street credibility suffers and its projects flail for lack of public support.

Hopefully the World Bank understands this. One positive sign is its ongoing review of its information disclosure policy, set to be finished this fall. The right to participate must not be reserved for only those who speak English or can navigate the Bank's organizational behemoth. That kind of elite-dictated development dangerously approaches colonialism, rather than progress.

Rebecca Harris is information services coordinator at the Bank Information Center (www.bicusa.org).

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Why Honduras must bring back the very man most responsible for the crisis.

By Kevin Casas-Zamora

The old demons that have given Latin America a tragic political history are dormant but hardly dead. On Sunday, Honduras's president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted by the military, capping weeks of tension brought about by the president's ill-conceived attempt to engineer his own reelection. As U.S. founding father John Adams might have put it, Zelaya chose to have a government of men and not of laws.

Zelaya's fatal mistake was in organizing a de facto referendum to test the idea of allowing him a second term. Honduras's Constitution explicitly forbids holding referendums -- let alone an unsanctioned "popular consultation" -- to amend it and, more specifically, to modify the presidential term. Unsurprisingly, the president's idea met with resistance from Congress, nearly all political parties (including his own), the press, the business community, electoral authorities, and, crucially, the Supreme Court, which deemed the whole endeavor illegal.

Last week, when Zelaya ordered the armed forces to distribute the electoral material to carry out what he called an "opinion poll," the military commander refused to comply and was summarily dismissed (he was later reinstated by the Supreme Court). The president then cited the troubling history of military intervention in Honduran politics, a past that the country -- under more prudent governments -- had made great strides in leaving behind in the past two decades. He neglected to mention that the order he had issued was illegal.

Then Zelaya -- a late convert to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian doctrine -- introduced an ideological rationale for his ambition: creating a "participatory" democracy in Honduras and subverting the country's dominant oligarchy (of which he is the quintessential product). Chávez and Fidel Castro, in an ironic turn of events given the two men's history, sternly denounced the danger of a military takeover in Honduras.

There was, of course, nothing ideological about Zelaya's plan. He never bothered to explain what kind of constitution he wanted, other than one that allowed his own reelection. In that respect, Zelaya is less a disciple of Chávez than of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, another unsavory character bereft of any ideal other than staying in power by hook or by crook.

Now the Honduran military has responded in kind: An illegal referendum has met an illegal military intervention, with the avowed intention of protecting the Constitution. Zelaya's civilian opponents, meanwhile, are celebrating. For the past week, the Honduran Congress has waxed lyrical about the armed forces as the guarantors of the Constitution, a disturbing notion for Latin Americans. At the very least, we are witnessing in Honduras the return of the unfortunate role of the military as the ultimate referee in political conflicts among civilian leaders, a huge step back in the region's consolidation of democracy.

That's why Zelaya, though he bears by far the greater responsibility for this crisis, must be reinstated in his position as the legitimate president of Honduras. The Organization of American States, the neighboring countries, and the U.S. government (which is still enormously influential in Honduras) should demand no less. They should also call upon all political actors in Honduras to take a deep breath and do what mature democracies do: allow the law to deal with those who try to step outside it. If Zelaya must be prosecuted for his harebrained attempt to subvert the Honduran Constitution, then let the courts proceed as rigorously as possible. And the same applies to the coup perpetrators. If Honduras is to have a decent future, its politicians and soldiers, in equal measure, must learn that the road to democracy and development runs through the rule of law.

Dark clouds are gathering again over Central America, and the United States would do well to pay attention. The current crisis in Honduras, the governance problems in Guatemala, and the ongoing destruction of democracy in Nicaragua form an ominous trend. U.S. President Barack Obama now has the opportunity to show both friends and foes in the Western Hemisphere that the United States has finally decided to side unequivocally with democracy -- and that the rule of law matters in Tegucigalpa as much as it does in Washington.

Kevin Casas-Zamora is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was vice president and minister of planning of Costa Rica from 2006 to 2007.

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By Josh Kerbel

In the last decade, globalization and interconnectivity have turned the world of information on its head. Every industry -- from journalism to telecommunications -- is hurrying to adapt, hoping to outpace the creep of irrelevance. Every industry, that is, except mine: the intelligence business. Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, we seem happy believing that our prevailing business model is not defunct -- not a relic of another time. Unless we make fundamental changes in the way we conduct our business, the relevance of intelligence can only decline.

The U.S. intelligence community still largely operates as it did during the Cold War. In general terms, it is a secret collection-centric model. Analysts prize classified information over open-source material, which inevitably leads to compartmentalization. Data availability, rather than analytical requirements, drives their analysis. Because there are no collectable facts about the future, analysts tend to focus on the present (though there is a heavy emphasis on preventing surprises, like the next September 11-style attack). And finally, the intelligence community measures success mostly by the quantity of products it produces, not by the policy outcomes those products help achieve.
This reactive model was built for yesteryear -- a more static world in which it was possible to know exactly where to look (at the Soviet Union) and why (the Cold War), access was severely restricted (secret collection was vital), and warning (especially of military action) was of the upmost importance.

Today's more complex strategic environment offers few, if any, of those characteristics. Because a threat or opportunity can emerge from almost anywhere, there is no single point for analysts to focus on. Targets' intentions and relationships are much more dynamic, so the context in which raw intelligence must be analyzed is far more ambiguous. Access to information is almost unrestricted, now that the world is wide open and awash in data. Furthermore, the time it takes for something to move from minor threat to devastating impact can come quickly. Potential hazards require as much attention as threat trends that are already identified.

The intelligence community has made some effort to adapt in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq war. However, it's difficult not to see most of these initiatives -- starting with the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence itself -- as less than fundamental. At best, they are incremental measures that suggest more change than they truly demonstrate. At worst, they are distractions that have allowed us to congratulate ourselves on our adaptability even while we continue to keep doing what we have always done. Activity has been mistaken for progress.

What's needed today is an analysis-centric, rather than collection-centric, model that would elevate the importance of unclassified information and discourage compartmentalization. It would encourage analysts to hunt and gather data, rather than living on a restricted diet of the secret -- or, for that matter, open-source -- data pellets that the current collection system feeds them. Intelligence should provide context and allow imaginative hypothesizing. Most importantly, modern intelligence would need to link analysts in partnership with policymakers, abandoning the producer-customer relationship of the past. We could then help identify opportunities, and not just threats.

Amazingly, many still argue that the intelligence community suffers "reorganization fatigue" and that what it needs to do now is "let the concrete set." To heed this notion would only compound an already large mistake. In the end, only fundamental change can stir us back to relevance. The alternative is to watch intelligence slide ever more toward the fringe of the national strategy and policy debate.

Josh Kerbel, a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy and CIA, works in the Institute for National Intelligence in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The views expressed in this article are his own and do not imply endorsement by the ODNI or any other U.S. government agency.

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Meet our new regulatory structure, almost as bad as the old one.

By David Andrew Singer

Last week, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama released a wide-ranging plan to reform the regulation of financial institutions and markets. Pundits and economists, pleased by the attempt to control "too big to fail" institutions and systemic risk, met the plan with guarded caution.

Harsher criticism would have been warranted. The proposal falls short, as it fails to address a crucial problem: the United States' fragmented, and thus broken, financial regulatory structure. Indeed, rather than emulating the world's best regulatory systems -- which are streamlined and unitary, like Canada's -- the United States has simply dusted off its current Balkanized system and tried to pass it off as new. American companies and investors deserve better.

Of course, Obama's proposal includes many sensible reforms. For example, all nationally chartered banks would be supervised by a new national bank supervisor, rather than multiple agencies. Financial holding companies would be subject to strict capital and other prudential standards, thereby closing the loophole that AIG, Bear Stearns, and other institutions exploited for enormous financial gain (but which ultimately led to their downfall). And hedge funds and other private pools of capital would have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and open themselves to monitoring.

However, as the biggest regulatory overhaul since the Great Depression, the proposal leaves much to be desired. It would abolish just one regulatory agency -- the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). Accountability for financial stability, whether of individual firms or the entire system, would continue to be spread thinly across the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and an alphabet soup of bank, securities, and insurance regulators.

The national bank supervisor would not have jurisdiction over thousands of state-chartered banks, which could still choose to be regulated by either the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) or the Fed. Fifty separate state regulators would still oversee insurance companies, with only a new token Office of National Insurance to "coordinate" their disparate regulatory regimes. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the SEC would remain institutionally separate, despite the clear overlap in their jurisdictions. Complex financial institutions such as Bank of America would continue to face a multitude of masters, including the new national bank supervisor, the Fed, and the SEC.

This regulatory hodgepodge inevitably creates loopholes to be exploited. In the past, banks and other financial institutions have been able to to play regulators off one another. For instance, in 2007 OTS actually courted Countrywide Financial away from another agency by offering more-flexible oversight. There's too little in the Obama proposal that promises to stop such malfeasance.

Another troubling part of Obama's proposal is the creation of a Financial Services Oversight Council to "identify emerging systemic risks and improve interagency cooperation." In place of regulatory consolidation, the new council would give the full gamut of regulators a seat at the table and no doubt invite the very turf wars and blame shifting that contributed to the financial crisis. The need for such a council reflects the underlying fragmentation that should be rectified -- and not by committee.

The United States has much to learn from other rich countries -- Australia, Canada, Finland, and South Korea, for instance -- that have simplified their regulatory structures. Financial institutions in these places, from the largest holding company all the way down to the smallest subsidiary, have a single regulator. Requirements are clearer and better enforced as a result.

Moreover, central banks in these countries are focused solely on keeping prices stable and monitoring systemic risks. The Fed currently has a dizzying array of responsibilities, from administering the White House's distressed-asset programs to determining if a company is overleveraged. It is difficult to imagine it will succeed, particularly with other Balkanized agencies muddying the waters.

The time has come for the United States to rationalize its regulatory structure by simplifying it. The rest of the world is waiting.

David Andrew Singer is assistant professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Regulating Capital: Setting Standards for the International Financial System.

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Sorry pundits, there's little the United States can do about the protests in Iran. Better to plan for when the dust settles.

By Suzanne Maloney

If anyone needs another reminder of how minimal Americans' understanding of and access to Iran has become, the discourse in Washington over the past week certainly provides one. As scenes of Iranian bravery and bloodshed have unfolded, American pundits and politicians have fixated on President Obama's syntax and inflection. Although a passing familiarity with Iranian history, as well as Iranians' appeals for Washington not to meddle in their nascent movement, buttress the case for caution, the tempest over presidential semantics is at best a pointless exercise and at worst a distraction from the serious question ahead: How will Iran's internal crisis will impact U.S. policy?

The fact is, no matter how much Americans like to think they are the ones shaping events in Iran, it's just not true. The dramatic events in Iran have been wholly internally driven. They are the product of three decades of semi-competitive Iranian elections, a sophisticated population that warily guards its limited rights and freedoms, the tensions of a longstanding elite power struggle, and the ever-important force of unintended consequences -- among other factors. Better for the United States, then, to focus on those areas where it actually has some capacity for influence: namely, its own Iran policy, and more specifically, how Washington can move forward with engaging Tehran in light of the dramatic changes of the past 10 days.

As profound as recent events have been, engagement remains the only path forward for Washington. Whenever the dust settles in the tumultuous battle on the streets and behind the scenes, direct U.S. diplomacy continues to represent the most viable mechanism for addressing Iran's nuclear ambitions. After all, Obama's interest in engagement was never about the Iranian leadership, and until very recently, most experts expected a second Ahmadinejad term. Instead, the case for engagement was - and still is - rooted in the urgency of the world's concerns about Iran's ambitions and the even-less promising U.S. policy alternatives, such as military action or externally sponsored regime change.

Even if the upheaval in Iran does not inherently alter the rationale for engagement, however, it will likely exacerbate the potential pitfalls of implementing it. One line the administration is floating on engagement now -- that the consolidation of power under Iranian hard-liners will create incentives for a quick resolution of the nuclear standoff -- is certainly conceivable. But given Tehran's uncompromising rhetoric and recent resort to violence, this argument sounds suspiciously like wishful thinking. More likely, the United States is going to have to deal with an increasingly paranoid and dogmatic Iranian regime, which is preoccupied by a low-level popular insurgency and a schism among its longstanding power brokers.

This begs a lot of questions, foremost of which is: How can Washington get an even more thuggish theocracy to make meaningful concessions and credible, durable commitments to its historical adversary when Iran's own power structure is still shifting considerably? Fortunately, this is not an insurmountable hurdle, and a little history can help us clear it.

From 1980-81, the United States conducted hard-headed diplomacy with a revolutionary government in Iran, when the country was still in a state of unrest, to secure the release of American hostages seized from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. This challenge was at least as daunting as that of today. The Carter administration's negotiators faced an array of implacably anti-American interlocutors whose authority, credibility, and interest in resolving the crisis remained an open question throughout the dialogue. Moreover, Tehran's ultimate goals seemed unclear, possibly even unknown to its leaders, who often employed the negotiating process as a means of prolonging the crisis rather than resolving it.

An agreement to end the hostage crisis was ultimately reached. But it took months of intense work and many false starts, as well as a variety of tools, including secret negotiations and a third-party mediator and guarantor for the eventual agreement. Whether or not this kind of hard-won success can be replicated now is unclear. If anything, the stakes today are higher and the Iranian political dynamics are less promising, at least in the very short term. Still, charting a path forward for diplomacy is certainly the most constructive use of U.S. political capital and energy at this juncture.

But what about Iran's burgeoning democracy movement? And what useful role can and should the United States can play in advancing it? Given recent events, it was inevitable that some American pundits and policymakers would renew their calls for additional U.S. democracy assistance programs for Iranian reformers. This would be precisely the wrong move - not because it would compromise the climate for nuclear negotiations, but because Iran's own activists have consistently rejected such funding. They don't want it, and elections-related news such as the massive reformist vote monitoring effort suggests they don't need it. Better for Washington to focus efforts on where it can be both useful and welcome, such as last week's timely intervention to encourage Twitter to defer network maintenance during a crucial moment of the protests.

The first chapter of Iran's next great social movement has begun. Now it is time for Americans to put aside futile squabbling over the righteousness of their indignation and move on to more practical deliberations of where Iran and the United States go from here. In short, stop talking about talking and start talking with Iran.

Suzanne Maloney is a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

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