Van Ardenne to the Yemen Times:”I am impressed by the openness of the Yemeni people” [Archives:2006/924/Reportage]
Anna Maria Agnes (Agnes) van Ardenne-van der Hoeven is the Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation for two consecutive Balkenende governments since July 2002. Ms. Van Ardenne's career history involved contributions in various disciplines including economy, peace and security, development, women and children. Between 1988 and 1994, Ms Van Ardenne was a member of Vlaardingen municipal council, where she represented the Christian Democratic Alliance (CDA). From 1990 she also served on the municipal executive, as the alderman for economic affairs.
She was a member of both the CDA's Foreign Affairs Committee (1986-1996) and the Advisory Council on Peace and Security (1990-1994). Since then to 2002 Ms Van Ardenne was a member of the House of Representatives of the States General and of the North Atlantic Assembly and the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. She has also been vice-chair of the development organisation CEBEMO (now part of CORDAID), co-founder of a center for development cooperation in Vlaardingen, chair of the EPP/EUCD Women's Section and secretary of the Dutch branch of UNICEF. Agnes van Ardenne was born in Maasland on 21 January 1950.
Last week between the 20th and 22nd of February, the Dutch minister for Development Cooperation visited Yemen for the first time. During her visit, Nadia Al-Sakkaf editor in chief of the Yemen Times conducted an exclusive interview with the minister and filled in the following lines:
What are you aiming to achieve from this visit?
First of all this visit naturally aims at strengthening the bilateral relationship between Yemen and the Netherlands, including development cooperation, and mutual recognition of importance. The Netherlands has had a development relationship with Yemen since 1978. And it is the third largest donor, the largest being the World Bank and Germany, with particular emphasis on the water, health and education sectors. Special attention is paid to the environment, the position of women and good governance. Therefore, I have used this visit to substantiate the Dutch backing for the Yemeni national strategy on poverty reduction as well as underlining the importance of the reform agenda and democratization process.
Consequently, the main purpose of the visit has been to speed up the Yemeni government's reform agenda, improving governance, stepping up the fight against corruption, and underscoring the importance of water, education and health care.
Now that the visit is almost concluded, would you consider it successful? And would there be follow-up?
Over all I would like to consider this visit was successful. In fact I am glad that it took place at this particular time in Yemen's history. Just after the cabinet reshuffle and with the endorsing of the matrix on good governance. I believe that this visit embarked the start of a constructive dialogue between all donor countries and the government of Yemen.
During the three days of my visit I have discussed issues relating to the government's reform agenda, governance, the fight against corruption with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Prime Minister Abdulqadir ba Jammal, foreign minister Abu-Bakr Abdallah al-Qirbi, and with the ministers of planning, water, education and health. We have also held round table discussions with representatives of civil society and the business community on good governance, human rights, corruption and freedom of speech. Last Tuesday, in a special women's event she had meetings with key women in Yemen society from government and non-government institutions.
In these lines, we have successfully signed a public private partnership in the water sector by the Yemeni water company in Ta'iz. The agreement is between the Dutch water company Vitens and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and it mainly involves management support from Vitens to Ta'iz Water Company.
About the follow-up, we have had a two-hour long policy session on Wednesday morning chaired by the Minister of planning and attended by a number of important ministers. The policy session was only interrupted for a meeting with the President at his office. During the policy meeting we discussed various issues and stressed on the importance of reform. The Government of Yemen established specialized task forces in each ministry whereby their job would be to monitor the reform progress. These committees would then issue a report every three months and we as well as all the donor community will be able to share this information. Moreover, currently the World Bank is doing a CPIA review on the different aspects of governance and we hope the publication of this report will take place in May or June. It will be available online and accessible to the press. This report will give clear indicators on the government of Yemen's progress in governance, reform and fighting corruption and if the indictors prove positive we intend to increase our support to Yemen and consider increasing the aid budget allocated to this partner country.
Why the emphasis on good governance as one of the Netherlands's programs in Yemen?
The main goal of our policy is to achieve poverty reduction. To secure a right and fair allocation a country needs to have its governance in order. Important points to this effect are: Transparency, efficiency, equity and justice for all. Yemen has announced its intention to implement the long delayed economic reforms, and a complaints department was set up within the Ministry of Human Rights, which, in time, will acquire the role of ombudsman. However, still around 47% of the Yemeni population lives on less than $2 a day. And Yemen ranks 151 out of 177 countries in the Human Development Index according to 2004 statistics.
This has made us believe that attention should be given to crosscutting themes such as good governance, business climate, strengthening civil society, and the position of women in order to enhance the situation of this country. We are also involved in specific aspects including supporting major reform processes such as government finance (improving the system whereby companies bid for government contracts by introducing guidelines and tender documents), the civil service (modernisation by way of training and support for administrative reforms) and decentralisation (a large pilot project in the province of Shabwa).
The Netherlands has subsidised technical assistance for the legal reform programme in Yemen. We also co-finance the World Bank programme to reform the civil service. All civil servants are now registered centrally and the databases are linked, thereby containing corruption somewhat.
How do you appraise Government of Yemen's progress in health, education and environmental fields, especially in light of the MDGs?
Yemen is lagging behind in reaching the MDG's in 2015 and Yemeni people still have to deal with a maternal and infant death rate that is the highest in the world and in rural areas only one out of three persons has access to clean water. The only goals Yemen might still achieve are those for primary education (MDG 3) and infant mortality (MDG 4). Yet generally, achieving the MDG's will be a major challenge as maternal mortality and child mortality are still very high and many families are still lacking access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Moreover, hardly any data is available on the current situation in Yemen in terms of health.
In terms of education, more children have started attending school and an increasing number of them can read. However, many children, especially in rural areas, do not yet have access to complete primary education although huge improvements are visible. Girls' education still lags behind; the “gender gap”” in both enrolment and retention is not narrowing as quickly as we would hope.
Yemen does not score very well at all on the indicators for good governance. However