Svenska sektionens svar på Blueprint for Moving Closer to the Ground Underlag till styrelsemöte 1-2 december 2012

The comments from the swedish section on the Blueprint for an integrated and results-driven IS, closer to t he ground (ORG 30/011/2011)

We welcome the Moving Closer to the Ground initiative as an initiative that we think will substantially strengthen the Amnesty International movements impact – both the International Secretariat and Sections/Structures – through increased local relevance; wider global presence and representation; and hopefully enhanced research capacity.We realize that many aspects of the initiative are operational, but the nature of the proposed changes have implications for the entire Movement. Especially when it comes to research and global planning. We also think that it is challenging to align the proposed regional hubs and their role to the global processes when it comes to governance and management.At the ICM 2011 this initiative was discussed at many instances and we feel that many of the concerns that were put forward were concerns that our section also had. And from the report from the discussion on key operations that will deliver the ISP 2010-2016 we can reiterate the following:

We have concerns about the following issues:

• we are worried that the process might weaken the quality and quantity of our research. We believe that we need to keep the oversight of our research and that the role of the Regional Program Directors must be maintained as overseeing, strategizing and supporting the research agendas of the various regional hubs to ensure coherence and consistency. We also find it important to keep a Senior Director post, responsible for the entirety of our global research agenda instead of dividing the total responsibility for the regional hubs to different Senior Directors. That would or could lead to inconsistencies and lack of coherence.
• we need to be aware of the challenge to balancing global priorities and local relevance across regions with clear delineation of the roles and responsibilities of regional hubs and Sections and Structures, and of opportunities for collaboration among them; we don´t want a development where the Hubs take us in the direction of becoming a constellation of a number of regionally-based and regionally-focused human rights organizations.
• we need to follow the principles and processes outlined in the Blueprint, including fair treatment of staff, and ongoing risk management and financial analysis;
• we need to pursue a timeline that is both ambitious and manageable with regular evaluation including of the impact on strategic coverage and global monitoring;
• we need to identify clear measures of success and regularly report on progress against these measures.

We also want to add to these concerns:

- that we think it is important to identify and implement relevant recommendations from the Owers Report , the Review of Reviews and other review processes, so as to ensure proper governance and management of new regional hubs and international offices before they are established;

- that we think it important to incorporate a process for maintaining and strengthening effective movement–wide planning and priority-setting; we would like to see a more focused and coherent approach to movement-wide planning and priority-setting in the initiative both in structure and responsibility, with clear and empowered IS senior responsibility for carrying it out.

- we think that the decision to make the Director of Fundrasing report directly to SG signals the importance of fundraising, but we wonder why the position is not part of the SLT
- we think that the merging of the Campaigns and Communications clusters is excellent, but we think that fundraising should be a global team at IS and included in the organisational structure of the IS. We see a risk in that fundraising is located in a "silo" on the side and not integrated with Campaigns and Communications, which we believe will not promote growth.