Debating Development: NGOs and the Future

NGOs working in the humanitarian and development sectors won official approval in the 1980s and 1990s, but there are signs now that they are losing favour. The NGO sector stands acused by some of complacency and self-interest, on the one hand, and of being ineffectual and irrelevant on the other. NGOs are increasingly challenged to demonstrate their legitimacy as respresentative voices of civil society. NGOs themselves are taking a hard look at their mandates, their core values, and their role on a changing international stage. Contributors to this volume reflect on what kind of development will eradicate poverty, and what types of agency are best suited to the task. Leading representatives of NGOs development think-tanks, and civil society organisations (CSOs), as well as scholars and activists, ask: What model of international cooperation can deliver social and economic justice? And what does this mean for NGOs in the future?

This book is based on the tenth-anniversary double issue of Development in Practice, co-edited by Deborah Eade, Editor of the journal, and Ernst Ligteringen, Executive Director of Oxfam International.

Download the full text of Debating Development here (1.26 MB)

Introductory essay: NGOs and the future: taking stock, shaping debates, changing practice
Deborah Eade and Ernst Ligteringen

Good news! You may be out of a job: reflections on the past and future 50 years for Northern NGOs
Alison Van Rooy

Riding high or nosediving: development NGOs in the new millennium
Rajesh Tandon

International NGOs and the challenge of modernity
Brian K. Murphy

Globalisation, civil society, and the multilateral system
José Antonio Alonso

The World Bank, neo-liberalism, and power: discourse analysis and implications for campaigners
Andy Storey

Dissonance or dialogue: changing relations with the corporate sector
Judy Henderson

NGOs as development partners to the corporates: child football-stitchers in Pakistan
David Husselbee

NGOs: fragmented dreams
Jaime Joseph

Indicators of identity: NGOs and the strategic imperative of assessing core values
John Hailey

Development agencies: global or solo players?
Sylvia Borren

Coming to grips with organisational values
Vijay Padaki

We NGOs: a controversial way of being and acting
Cândido Grzybowski

Northern NGO advocacy: perceptions, reality, and the challenge
Ian Anderson

Campaigning: a fashion or the best way to change the global agenda?
Gerd Leipold

The international anti-debt campaign: a Southern activist view for activists in ‘the North’ … and ‘the South’
Dot Keet

Heroism and ambiguity: NGO advocacy in international policy
Paul Nelson

Dissolving the difference between humanitarianism and development: the mixing of a rights-based solution
Hugo Slim

Aid: a mixed blessing
Mary B. Anderson

The Sudan experience of the Local Capacities for Peace Project
Abikök Riak

NGOs, disasters, and advocacy: caught between the Prophet and the Shepherd Boy
Alan Whaites

Capacity building: shifting the paradigms of practice
Allan Kaplan

Gendering the millennium: globalising women
Haleh Afshar

Gender in development: a long haul – but we're getting there!
Josefina Stubbs

Impact assessment: seeing the wood and the trees
Chris Roche

Does Matson matter? Assessing the impact of a UK neighbourhood project
Stan Thekaekara

Annotated bibliography
 

© Oxfam GB 2001. First published by Oxfam GB in association with Oxfam International.
ISBN 0 85598 444 9
All rights reserved.
Available from Stylus Publishing
Also available in Spanish from Intermón Oxfam under the title El debate sobre el desarrollo y el futuro de las ONG, 2004, ISBN 84 8452 239 3.