Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility — DEIA — add tremendous value to the field of global development, the institutions and organizations that operate within it, the practitioners who drive it, and, most importantly, the local communities directly impacted by the work. Yet there is still a limited understanding of how DEIA can lead to positive developmental outcomes.
Over the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic and the globalization of Black Lives Matter compelled many organizations to recognize the importance of DEIA. In our industry, in particular, we witnessed growing calls to decolonize aid and to promote locally led development, especially as we observed our “local” counterparts take on responsibilities often reserved for “international” experts.
Many global development organizations responded by establishing corporate commitments, diversifying their recruitment efforts, establishing employee resource groups, and hiring key staffers such as chief diversity officers.
Yet, often these same organizations conflate DEIA efforts with human resources, allocating limited resources and often lacking an intersectional lens or insight into how DEIA impacts our missions externally and the communities we serve.
Within the unique sector of global development, efforts to address DEIA have lacked a cultural humility and the curiosity necessary to see how DEIA inputs into structural policies, processes, programs, and practices directly link to real-world, tangible outcomes in local communities and for people who may be marginalized or made vulnerable due to their personal characteristics or identities.
If such a siloed and limited understanding of DEIA is happening at the head office, there’s likely even more disconnect within local contexts. De-centralized staffers around the world live in a wide variety of contexts, cultures, and realities, and a DEIA framework couched in a white, Western, and patriarchal corporate framework limits the global application of such work and its potential impact.
As a sector, we must expand the aperture of how we view DEIA to include inputs from everyone impacted by it, which includes those working with us who are from local contexts and cultures. We must recognize the longitudinal impact of embedding DEIA initiatives across everything we do, no matter the current tides that may pass through.
Organizations today are working through many nuanced realities as we ponder the future of development and where DEIA holds value. We know that most international development staffers prefer a hybrid approach to work and that women, particularly racial and ethnic minority women, desire fully remote work. Additionally, we have learned that new forms of work require new technologies and approaches to operate effectively with a worldview that values our differences across contexts.
DEIA is an essential model for how to do this. The evidence is clear. As in other sectors, DEIA offers differentiation in creativity, innovation, and a sense of belonging among practitioners that lead to better outcomes. There are strong incentives for why DEIA matters to a business’s bottom line. Those who are not focused on DEIA fall behind. But the power of DEIA goes beyond the business case. Here’s why:
It connects and benefits us as a community
As we foresee the future of development, human beings are more interconnected than ever before as technologies advance, as our interdependencies become more intertwined, and our interpersonal relationships grow.
DEIA is a pathway that allows us to reveal the systemic inequities within global development and to ask necessary questions about how our sector can do better.
—Leveraging these interpersonal relationships will enable greater capability in overcoming challenges in advancing the work of development. We must hold ourselves accountable to do this. Joining CREED, the Coalition for Racial and Ethnic Equity in Development, or understanding more fully the U.S. Agency for International Development’s localization strategy can make a big difference.
Understanding who makes up our teams, in all their varied diversity, and how we can leverage all our unique strengths will improve our results.
It leverages existing frameworks and initiatives focused on inclusion
DEIA is not just a check box exercise conducted by one department with one or two staffers in charge. Instead, all staffers must understand the inherent possibility DEIA holds to improve our work and the ultimate impact we have alongside local communities. It should be budgeted into overall forecasting models for the organization.
Development organizations can start by working with their existing experts and in-house champions, such as your gender and social inclusion advisers or employee resource groups to start identifying big and small wins for your organization — with pay and recognition for their labor.
DEIA offices should be established and fully staffed with individuals who can draw the linkages between DEIA and development through data visualization, communications, program management, and monitoring, evaluation, and learning, or MEL, with a clear budget forecasted well into the future.
There are numerous frameworks and tools already in existence designed to reach vulnerable or marginalized groups within development, such as the Transforming Agency, Access and Power or TAAP tool. Use them. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. This isn’t that hard.
It digs deeper and expands the conversation
DEIA is a pathway that allows us to reveal the systemic inequities within global development and to ask necessary questions about how our sector can do better.
From assessing the overall makeup of our staff, reexamining the outdated policies that govern our organizations, or undoing the colonial paradigms that have historically guided our work, there are numerous opportunities where DEIA can help us to shift our work. It can also move us to expand the “how” and “why” of our work and shift expectations of the solutions that emerge.
This can only add nuance and profound value to the work we do. No group is a monolith, and yet too often, the proposed solutions in our sector apply a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach.
Leveraging frameworks like complexity sciences throughout our work will enable us to tailor more nuanced approaches and techniques with far greater results and local impact. This is what DEIA is all about.
DEIA provides an essential pathway in global development to help us leverage our greatest assets and ensure we build inclusive approaches that are equitable and accessible. To sustain DEIA, we must ensure that it becomes our way of life, not just a passing fad, at both institutional and individual levels within the entire sector.
The authors’ views do not necessarily reflect the views of their respective organizations.
About the authors
Tracey France
Tracey France is the chief diversity officer for the Millennium Challenge Corporation. She works collaboratively with all departments to integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility into all work streams agency-wide to foster a diverse workforce and an inclusive workplace culture.
Laura Kim
Laura Kim is a data storyteller and a monitoring, evaluation, and learning adviser and strategist. She is currently a senior consultant at the Canopy Lab, a boutique international development consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. As part of her role, Laura is engaged in Canopy’s Inclusion and Leadership series — an ongoing research project that explores the structures and norms that influence the composition of the international development workforce.
Ryan Ubuntu Olson
Ryan Ubuntu Olson is a globally recognized gender and human rights expert and recently served as regional director of sustainable business at Palladium, its diversity, equity and inclusion initiative across the company. Olson serves as the co-chair of Society for Inclusive Development’s Working Group on Inclusive Development. He also is a serving member of the Technical Review Panel, which serves the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He has been a front-line champion of diversity and inclusion and gender and human rights for the past two decades.
