Governance and public policy

Afghan NGOs have been a major provider of humanitarian aid throughout the Afghan conflict. They remained operational during this period by `dancing' with and between the various parties to the conflict, their survival contingent on their ability to build ad hoc patterns of alliance and Cupertino. This article explores the nature of `the dance' between NGOs, the warring parties, and the NGOs' constituencies. It asks whether `dancing with the prince' represents an accommodation with violence or is a necessary compromise which will ultimately contribute to resolving the conflict.

The author briefly discusses the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, negotiated and adopted by 189 countries at the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995, and how it promises that governments will take responsibility for its implementation, while recognising the roles NGOs have to play.

The World Bank claims to have become the defender of women's rights, urging national governments to 'invest more in women in order to reduce gender inequality and boost economic development'. Through its Women in Development Programme (WID), adopted throughout the developing world, the Bank defines the ground rules on gender policy. A market oriented approach is prescribed, with a monetary value attached to gender equality: women's programmes are to be framed in relation to the opportunity cost and efficiency of women's rights.

Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) emerged in the context of working with rural communities in developing countries. But the principles of participation and of action-oriented research are equally valid for development work in the urban sector, and in industrialised countries. This article describes the use of participatory appraisal techniques in disadvantaged communities in the UK, in the fields of health and social welfare.

Participation must be seen as political. There are always tensions underlying issues about who is involved, how and on whose terms. While participation has the potential to challenge patterns of dominance, it may also be the means through which existing power relations are entrenched and reproduced. The arenas in which people perceive their interests and judge whether they can express them are not neutral. Participation may take place for a whole range of unfree reasons.

In 1978 at Alma Ata, the date was set for achieving `Health for All by the Year 2000'. Achieving this seems more remote than it did then, due in part to Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), the author argues. In Nicaragua, as elsewhere, structural adjustment provoked the redirection of resources away from public sector spending, including health care spending, and towards exports. The author advocates reasserting and implementing the Alma Ata recommendations in order to counteract this continuing erosion of health care.

This conference, held in Lanzarote in April 1995, attracted delegates from NGOs, academic institutions, governments and the private sector, although representatives from the largest airlines, holiday companies and hotel groups were conspicuous by their absence. NGO-workers were concerned with shifting governments et al away from so-called nature tourism and towards the promotion of ecotourism. The final day of the conference was used to draft the Charter for Sustainable Tourism, for presentation to the UN.

Rapid population growth and its effect on the environment is one of the main concerns of development practitioners. Computer modelling tools have been used to explore the effects of proposed interventions, allowing agencies to quickly see where methods might be incompatible or have adverse or unexpected effects. The GIS is one such system, and is open to abuse if used to legitimise existing policy.

The position and contribution of NGOs to the health sector has changed over recent years. Their profile and sector size have increased, and their activities are often different from those previously carried out. In many quarters NGOs are viewed as the means of taking the health sector forward, regarded, amongst other things, as being more efficient and accountable than many developing country governments.

Most of the socio-economic changes taking place in Africa and much of the South are externally driven. External agencies, often in league with the State, bypass working people and do not involve them in the decision-making processes. Their economic approaches ignore people's cultures and their worldview. This denies working people a creative capacity to adapt new techniques and knowledge to their own concrete reality. This article argues for the importance of the historical frame of reference and for the centrality of culture in socio-economic processes.