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-But CSOs, Farmers Want Implementation
By J. Dominic Farley
 Liberian Government often boasts of signing and ratifying international agreements and protocols, which it sometimes falls short of implementing or fulfilling.
  One of those agreements is the crucial Maputo Declaration, which the government is yet to implement after several years, whether deliberately or due to some uncontrollable factors. But civil society organizations in collaboration with small-scale farmers on Thursday called on the Liberia Government ‘come what may’ to stop paying what some of them referred to as “Lip Service” to agriculture and ensure the full implementation of the Maputo Declaration.
  The declaration calls on all African governments, including Liberia, to allocate 10 percent of their National Budgets to the agricultural sector in an effort to achieve 6 percent average annual growth needed in the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program (CAADP).
  The CAADP is a strategic framework developed by African leaders to restore agricultural growth, develop rural economies, and enhance food security in an integrated fashion. It considers agricultural-led growth as a main strategy for poverty reduction and calls on all African governments to allocate 10 percent of their budgets to the sector, something the Liberian Government is yet to execute as a signatory to that international document.
Although the government claims it considers agriculture growth as critical to poverty reduction, which it has articulated in a number of policy documents, including the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), Statement of Policy Intent for the Agricultural Sector, National Food Security and Nutrition (FSNS) and the Food and Agricultural Policy and Strategy (FAPS). However, the government has yet to dedicate the 10 percent of its national budget for which it signed that strategic document which is of paramount concern to Liberian farmers.
  According to Liberia Agriculture Sector Investment Program’s (LASIP) 2009 Report, prepared in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the CAADP Compact, experts in the agriculture domain acknowledged that “public financing of agriculture continues to fall significantly short of government’s stated commitment to developing the Sector as envisaged in the PRS document and the Maputo Declaration.”
The Liberian farmers made the call along with their civil society counterparts at a three days “Applied Budget Analysis Training Forum” organized by the Foundation for Human Rights and Democracy (FOHRD) in collaboration with the Institute for Democracy in Africa, based in South Africa in support of the Economic Governance Program (EGP) for Small- Scale farmers and civil society organizations in Liberia.
  FOHRD Program Coordinator, Davestus James said the EGP Network through cooperation shares knowledge, supports other farmers’ institutions and representatives to foster good governance in the area of public expenditures and Small-Scale Agriculture.
    James vowed that FOHRD and its Networking Partners would forge collaborative efforts aimed at providing an environment in demonstration of service to support, develop and maintain livelihoods through good governance and best practices that would build the agriculture sector and communities in Liberia.
   He told participants that budget reflects government social and economic policy priorities by “translating policies, political commitment and goals into decision on which funds should be spent and how funds should be collected. As such, budgets are crucial to understanding the planning choices made by governments”.
   The FOHRD Program Coordinator observed that for the past decades, budget work has grown and development extremely, which in his view is a tool to hold government accountable at all levels from national to grassroots.
  He noted that by empowering civil society organizations to explore issues related to education on national budgets, could create opportunities that would allow local people engage the question of national economic policy, adding that “it is therefore important for marginalized groups to be able to participate and express their opinion regarding decisions that impact them.
  Meanwhile, participants attending the three days forum are expected to come with a resolution on how to approach National Government on the way forward.