Reflecting on observations of participatory budget schemes in the Andean region of South America, this article argues that the statements and behaviour of those who take part in participatory budget meetings should be understood as a form of public performance which often differs significantly from the ‘backstage discourses’ of participants once they are no longer performing in public.

Most importantly, the widespread prioritisation of small-scale infrastructure projects that involve large volumes of cement highlights the ways in which the participants in participatory budget meetings quietly but strategically adapt external schemes and policies to their own goals and strategies.

In 2003, Lutheran World Relief (LWR), an international relief and development NGO, began a peacebuilding initiative in Colombia. They facilitated the formation of a partnership between peace sanctuary churches in Colombia and six communities of faith in the US Midwest, coordinated by LWR staff. This partnership, called Sal y Luz (salt and light) has the goal of education and advocacy both in Colombia and in the USA. Sal y Luz represents a powerful example of transnational solidarity for peace. There are also implications and lessons of this case study for the broader field of NGO peacebuilding work. The Sal y Luz model of peacebuilding brings benefits in terms of NGO accountability and effectiveness in peacebuilding. The key innovation of the model is how LWR effectively helped their US constituency understand and become involved in peacebuilding work.

Lack of working capital hinders collective commercialisation of recyclables. Social exclusion and bureaucratic constraints prevent recyclers from accessing official bank loans. As they continue to depend on intermediaries, the cycle of poverty, dependency, and exclusion is perpetuated. The article discusses collective commercialisation and the micro-credit fund created among 30 recycling groups in the Brazilian city of São Paulo. A committee of eight women recyclers manages this fund. The article contextualises reflections on empowerment and community-based development, applying the theoretical framework of social and solidarity economy. The author finally suggests that inclusive governance structures have the potential to generate greater justice and sustainability.

A workshop was convened in February 2008 to identify the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in the post-Paris Declaration aid agenda, prior to the High-Level Forum to review progress towards achieving aid harmonisation held in Accra in September 2008. The article highlights the many concerns about the focus on the mechanisms rather than the purpose or impacts of aid; the ways in which donors force through their own agendas; and the continuing gap between rhetoric and practice on issues such as gender equity and local ownership.

This study on the impact of fair trade relies on new field data from coffee and banana cooperatives in Peru and Costa Rica, including a detailed assessment of its welfare effects by comparing FT farmers with non-FT farmers as a benchmark. Attention is focused on three major effects: (a) direct tangible impact of FT arrangements on the income, welfare, and livelihoods of rural households; (b) indirect effects of fair trade for improving credit access, capital stocks, investments, and attitudes to risk; and (c) institutional implications of fair trade for farmers’ organisations and externalities for local and regional employment, bargaining, and trading conditions. Although direct net income effects remain fairly modest, important benefits are found to include capitalising farmers and strengthening their organisations.

The effects of counter-terrorism legislation on civil society organisations (CSOs) based in the South have received little attention in the wider literature. This article reports on the findings of a series of international workshops to examine the effects of such legislation held in Lebanon, the Kyrgyz Republic, India, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA. The evidence presented at these workshops suggests that counter-terror legislation is undermining the work of civil society in complex and interrelated ways.

Communication and its role in development and social change is still poorly understood and supported by large development players, despite decades of innovative practice and positive outcomes. Gaps between discourse and action, outdated evaluation methods, short timeframes, red tape, and power relations, combined with vertical and externally-driven communication models, and confusion between information and communication, all prevent development donors from giving support to participatory and community owned and managed communication initiatives. On the basis of decades of experience and observation, four key recommendations are made for transforming the communication profession both in higher education and in donor and development agencies.

This article makes a case for using participatory communication in research. It introduces participatory communication as a citizen-led approach to both creating and expressing knowledge; within research this means that researchers are not simply responsible for generating information and communicating about it, neither are they acting alone. From this perspective the emphasis of participatory communication is on communicating rather than extracting or delivering information. Participatory methods can communicate research findings in new ways and add depth and meaning to articulations of knowledge. This knowledge can easily get ‘lost in translation’ when findings are synthesised or communicated though conventional research outputs alone.

Social movements have generated interest in development circles since the mid-1990s as relatively independent expressions of civil society, mobilising people to set their own development priorities and agendas for issues as diverse as water privatisation, neo-liberal trade policies, the rights of women and indigenous peoples, and access to HIV anti-retroviral treatment. In the case of HIV and AIDS, independent civil-society initiative has been key to successful responses. Social movements of people living with HIV and AIDS, gay men, women, sex workers, and people who inject drugs have developed innovative institutions and responses to HIV and AIDS, and organised against stigma and discrimination. By bringing people together and advocating effectively, social movements have amplified voices of people most affected by HIV, enabling them to influence governments and decision makers.

This paper seeks to understand the restrictions media actors face in their day-to-day work in Acholiland, northern Uganda, and identify the strategies they adopt to maintain a space for dialogue and debate. Two case studies reveal that it is difficult to see how media actors in this conflict environment can play a significant role in holding the ruling government to account and promoting peace building when they are facing repressive media laws, intimidation, a lack of information, and weak managerial support. This paper calls for policies to support the daily struggles of media actors, such as the adoption of the African Peer Review Mechanism – an instrument used for self-monitoring by participant countries of New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Thus, the investigation turns away from questions of censorship to investigating what can be done to support the daily struggles of media actors who are constantly negotiating their way through a labyrinth of restrictions.

Mobile cellular phones have already been used widely around the world for activism, social and economic development, and new cultural and communicative forms. Despite this widespread use of mobile phones, they remain a relatively un-theorised and un-discussed phenomenon in community and citizen’s media. This paper considers how mobile phones have been taken up by citizens to create new forms of expression and power. The specific focus is the use of mobile phones in community development, with examples including the Grameenphone, agriculture and markets, the Filipino diasporic community, HIV/AIDS healthcare, and mobile phones in activism and as media. It is argued that mobile phones form a contact zone between traditional concepts of community and citizen media, on the one hand, and emerging movements in citizenship, democracy, governance, and development, on the other hand

The synergies created through the careful application of both organic and symbolic communication demonstrably reach those most vulnerable to the spread and impact of HIV and AIDS. The Clown Project uses labour-intensive face-to-face street theatre and dialogue, participatory workshops, and symbolic communication such as print-based materials. Some lessons learned in selected communities in Guatemala and other countries in Central America are shared. The paper puts forward an argument in favour of careful and critical analysis of culture in formulating communication strategies with and for specific groups. This analysis takes into account relations of power within and between vulnerable groups, examining the centre–periphery dynamic between classes, genders, ethnicities, age groups, and other social identities. Both appropriately supported insider perspectives and appropriately processed outsider knowledge are recommended, along with ways of bridging science and the field, theory and practice.

Given the centrality of communication to society, who ‘owns’ the media, who gets to speak on behalf of whom, and to what end are critical issues. The regression of ‘mainstream’ media from ‘watchdogs’ of democracies to business ventures resulting in Habermasian ‘refeudalisation of the public sphere’ is worrying. Community media re-engage communities on the periphery, opening possibilities for social change. The dominance of mainstream players in media governance, complicated by sustainability concerns of grassroots enterprises, result in legislation that impedes the potentiality of community media access and participation – as mapped in this paper with the case of community radio struggle in India.

The radio can help to stimulate better governance. However, state-run broadcasting organisations in the South are usually ill-prepared for their public-service role in new democracies. They are often poorly funded compared to their new, commercial rivals and often still bound by the same ‘rules of the game’ that governed them prior to the democratic era. Broadcasters typically remain accountable to government and not to their listeners, and promote the interests and agendas of the political elite. This paper focuses on the experiences of DFID support to a radio programme in northern Nigeria that sought to improve communication and debate between the government and the electorate. It argues that there are legitimate circumstances for development partners to engage with state-controlled media outlets, not least in rural areas where commercial broadcasters lack the financial incentive to establish stations and provide programming that has relevance to the poor. The authors critically examine the lessons learned from DFID’s support and identify measures that could assist similar initiatives in the future

An Action Learning process integrated with Sen’s Capability Approach can support development agencies to formulate interventions that enhance freedom. The authors show that putting this approach into practice has important implications for the manner in which ‘development’ is undertaken as an ideological project. It may help to examine and challenge those who hold power in development—the guardians. This finding is the result of an emergent Action Learning process that was initiated by applying Sen’s principles to focus-group interviews with women who care for people affected by HIV and AIDS. One of the findings of these focus groups was that the participants valued the process because it opened a space for them to influence the work of the implementing NGO. Essentially, they could hold the implementing agency to account. Reflection on this outcome by the agency led to important shifts in processes that are more supportive of freedom.

This article presents results of a quantitative/qualitative enquiry into ‘transformative learning’ and ‘mind-change’ dynamics among rural community representatives participating in the Government of Afghanistan’s National Solidarity Programme [NSP]: a community-driven, nationwide initiative to rehabilitate the country’s infrastructure. Drawing on frameworks for ‘transformative learning’ proposed by Mezirow (1990) and Freire (1993), and ‘mind-change’ proposed by Gardner (2004), it is argued that NSP catalysed transformative development learning through (1) its responsiveness to the expressed needs and interests of project participants; (2) engagement of community representatives as active development partners; (3) delegation of project management responsibility throughout all stages; (4) provision of social space for reflection and critical analysis; (5) opportunities to achieve project outcomes that are meaningful, attractive, and profitable; and (6) programme features compatible with the social and cultural realities of rural Afghanistan.

This ethnographic case study addresses the question of how women in Jopadhola patriarchal society in Eastern Uganda remember three decades of civil war and violence and survived its aftermath. When the war ended, little changed for these women, who are still exposed to a continuum of gender-based violence and continue to use the same tactics that, during the war, enabled them to somehow live with their suffering. The Mifumi Project, an indigenous NGO founded by one of the women whose life history was recorded for this article, has started to assist Jopadhola women to improve the quality of their present-day lives. By rebuilding their human and social capital, this NGO is also creating the space for women to heal their war memories.

This article highlights lessons learned from field research and related analysis, to address three fundamental aspects of development that are often overlooked: culture and governance, inclusive development, and market-based approaches. All three cases address issues of poverty and inequality. In addition, the critical role of institutions in governance and development is also highlighted. Finally, by bridging the gap between culture, economy, and society through these approaches, better and more effective development policies and programmes can be formulated and implemented.

This article outlines a comprehensive approach to facilitating the transfer of research into practice. It encompasses three main issues of importance: activities should be seen as part of a long-term endeavour rather than isolated one-off events; there are many audiences which may make use of the research findings in various ways; and there are many modes in which the process can be facilitated.

The Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund (TPAF) has been working in the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China since 1998 to increase the income and assets of rural Tibetans. From the beginning TPAF recognised that high morbidity and mortality were a constraint on efforts of rural Tibetans to improve livelihoods. Early interventions to train township doctors and midwives were not sustainable. In 2005, in partnership with local health authorities, TPAF launched a Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) strategy to build villagers’ capacity to improve health and hygiene practices and to make informed choices about using Government primary and preventive health services. Results from counties and townships in three Prefectures are preliminary but show significant changes in health knowledge and practice and growing links between village needs and Government services. Next steps include strengthening implementation and institutionalising Government support to extending and supporting the approach.

Huge amounts are being invested in information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as mobile phones and their telecommunications infrastructure. Development agencies provide a conventional view on the ‘climate’ needed to encourage such investment; particularly that good governance and security are required. We question this conventional view with a study of mobile telecommunications in three insecure states that score very badly in the Worldwide Governance Indicators. Data are limited but suggest insecurity and ‘bad governance’ may not be the barriers to investment that are normally supposed. Indeed, it is possible—at least for this type of digital technology—that they may encourage investment.

This article reports on the tenth anniversary conference of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), drawing attention to the irony that just as progress is being made on the situation of home workers (among the least protected of all working people) the two organisations that have done so much to raise awareness of these issues themselves face closure for lack of funding.

This article examines the semantic evolution of the term Community Development (CD) in the latter twentieth century. It is argued that CD has acquired different meanings, theoretical grounding, and practical application starting with a focus on traditional societies up to the 1960s, social and/or civil rights movements up to 1980s, and the modern middle class from the 1990s. The thrust of argument is that the concept is not cohesive and unified but represents a repertoire of meanings that encompass many shades of CD that are not necessarily mutually compatible but reflect the particular political and social practices in the contexts in which they occur.

This article discusses the process of transforming partnership from a conceptual framework into a practical, operational framework for field-level interaction among humanitarian organisations. The authors approach this transformation from the perspective of the core values of the partnership concept and the ability of field workers to behave in ways that are consistent with these core values, illustrated by an empirical study of the relationships between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and NGOs in a refuge-assistance programme in northern Uganda. The authors connect inter-organisational structures with the role of people charged with making partnership work, concluding that the structures and context in which individuals operate make it impossible for them to ‘act out’ the core values of partnership. By identifying the major challenges to creating field-level, operational partnerships, the authors offer lessons for current and future partnership-building initiatives, such as the Global Humanitarian Platform.

Crop genetic diversity and poverty are linked: first, resource-poor farmers often maintain genetic diversity; and second, crop diversity, when properly valued by the market, has the potential to alleviate poverty. This article examines this supposition based on three case studies of the intersection of the market with poverty and maize diversity in Mexico. These cases suggest that the bulk market for maize offers little room for maize landraces (local maize varieties known as criollo maize), in that it does not reward qualitative variation in maize grain, and instead presents incentives that make planting ‘improved’ maize germplasm the rational economic choice for small-scale farmers. Meanwhile, attempts to add value to maize landraces via market differentiation have had varying success. Although there is potential for differentiated markets to contribute to successful business models and poverty alleviation, these cases exhibit tradeoffs between product consistency, investment of labour and resources, and genetic diversity conservation.

A variety of interventions to mitigate the increasing impact of the HIV and AIDS epidemic on smallholder agricultural production and food security are currently implemented in sub-Saharan Africa. However, documentation and dissemination of such interventions is limited and patchy. Building on emerging experiences from the field, this article seeks to move beyond charting the impacts of HIV and AIDS on rural livelihoods and to review existing mitigation policies and programmes, identify the challenges to mitigation, and provide suggestions for future mitigation strategies and policy priorities. The experiences cited in the article are mainly drawn from the hardest hit Southern and Eastern African regions, but these provide useful lessons for AIDS-affected rural communities in other contexts. The main conclusion is that, as current initiatives are to a large extent ad hoc and localised, there is a need for documentation, dissemination, and scaling up of existing interventions, as well as greater coherence and coordination in policies and programmes to extend their reach and make the most of limited resources.

Adequate pricing of environmental goods is essential for the sustainable management of natural resources. It is not easy, however, to place a value on natural resources as the excludability problem makes it difficult to protect natural resources from unpaid use and to exercise property rights over them. This article discusses the achievements and limitations of current natural resource policies from the perspective of view of efficiency and equity. It argues that a trust fund operating via market-based transactions is a promising approach to help achieve simultaneously the goals of efficiency, sustainability, and poverty reduction, provided that property rights over the environmental resources are distributed fairly within current generations as well as between present and future generations.

The development of a cadastral system for the Republic of Guatemala was one of the priorities of the 1997 Peace Accord that ended 30 years of civil war. While uncertainty of land ownership and land title are contentious issues, the development of a national cadastre, equitable land distribution, and land tenancy are viewed as key to maintaining peace in Guatemala. This article addresses the most significant barriers to developing a National Land Information System used to support cadastral reform. Findings from interviews with government agencies indicate that while technical improvements can be readily implemented, social factors associated with NGO and government interaction, diffusion of equitable government policy towards land rights, and the costs of the land-registration process seriously hinder the completion of the cadastral process. These findings are discussed in light of international aid and development policy.

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All over Gaya District in Bihar, irrespective of a person's caste or economic status, irrigation is the overriding topic of concern on public platforms and in private conversations. In the absence of adequate government action, different kinds of community endeavour are emerging to answer the need, some supported by radical political movements, others by organisations of a religious persuasion, and still others primarily by prominent local citizens.

This article analyses in detail the impact and effectiveness of peer-education projects implemented in Cambodia under the Reproductive Health Initiative for Asia (RHI), in an attempt to provide important lessons for the design and implementation of such interventions and to contribute to the development of best practice. Under RHI, which was the first programme in Cambodia designed specifically to address the sexual and reproductive health needs of young people, peer education was implemented as if it were a directly transferable method, rather than a process to be rooted in specific social and political contexts. Consequently, peer-education concepts of empowerment and participation conflicted with hierarchical traditions and local power relations concerning gender and poverty; peer educators were trained to deliver messages developed by adults; and interventions were not designed to reflect the social dynamics of youth peer groups.

The World Bank and IMF have proposed the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) framework for all poor countries as a condition of receiving unconditional debt relief under the HIPC Initiative. The PRSPs will also be the key vehicle for the World Bank and IMF and other donors for various assistance packages, including loans. Like its predecessors, the PRSP framework promotes the ideas of 'participation' and 'ownership'. This article argues that ownership of such a grand framework cannot possibly rest with the poor countries or their people if the whole idea is the product of World Bank and IMF think-tanks. It discusses participation in the development of Bangladesh's PRSP and argues that neither participation nor ownership was the target in preparing a national poverty-reduction strategy: they were merely necessary components of a document required for the continuation of debt and lending relationships with the World Bank and IMF.

Good governance is essential for sustaining economic transformation in developing countries. However, many developing countries currently lack the capacity, as opposed to the will, to achieve and then sustain a climate of good governance. This article addresses, from a practitioner's field perspective, the fundamental objectives, principles, and key areas that need to be addressed for developing capacity for good governance. These frameworks are now beginning to be recognised, as both governments and donor institutions attempt to take advantage of the current demand and opportunities for addressing governance deficits. In pursuing capacity development for good governance, developing countries must ensure that such initiatives are comprehensively designed to be simultaneously related to change and transformation at the individual, institutional, and societal levels and to be owned and controlled locally.

An approach to establishing improved private extension-service provision for smallholder horticultural producers in Kenya was developed between 2003 and 2005 by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology and Natural Resources Institute in the UK, in collaboration with EurepGAP FoodPLUS GmbH and the House of Quality-South Africa, international NGOs, export companies, and out-grower farmer groups. The approach focused on good agricultural practices, food safety, EU regulations on maximum pesticide-residue limits, and the EurepGAP Standard. The approach is not a blueprint, but the lessons learned are applicable to similar smallholder production systems in other African countries.

Recognising that the stance of investigators could make a major impact on the quality and/or interpretation of development-study findings, a small investigation to explore researcher positions and roles was implemented. This was a subsidiary component of a larger health-development study which aimed to explore the evidence base for psychosocial and mental-health policy formulation and implementation in two conflict-affected, low-resourced countries. Five of the research team were interviewed by a sixth member in an open, semi-structured interview format, and the data were analysed thematically. The primary learning for the team, with wider implications for others in development research and practice, is that if the aim is to produce credible findings from investigations of this nature, it is important to exhibit a high degree of transparency regarding the role and position of each researcher, and an explicit attempt to be reflexive in relation to the associated challenges.

Development research has responded to a number of charges over the past few decades. For example, when traditional research was accused of being 'top-down', the response was participatory research, linking the 'receptors' to the generators of research. As participatory processes were recognised as producing limited outcomes, the demand-led agenda was born. In response to the alleged failure of research to deliver its products, the 'joined-up' model, which links research with the private sector, has become popular. However, using examples from animal-health research, this article demonstrates that all the aforementioned approaches are seriously limited in their attempts to generate outputs to address the multi-faceted problems facing the poor. The article outlines a new approach to research: the Mosaic Model. By combining different knowledge forms, and focusing on existing gaps, the model aims to bridge basic and applied findings to enhance the efficiency and value of research, past, present, and future.

Starting from an analysis of social and environmental injustice, the author argues that the concept of environmental racism is integral to the hegemonic model of capitalist development. She reveals how the financial mega-conglomerates, helped by the media, exploit such prejudices, and highlights the relevance of environmental racism in the struggle to overcome inequalities, to value the importance of diversity, and to build full citizenship for all.

Advocates and activists for human rights are currently facing a paradox: the coexistence of profound challenges in familiar territory (civil liberties) alongside expansion into new areas. Rights-based approaches (RBAs) are a part of this latter expansionary stream. This article argues that four kinds of potential value-added can be claimed. First, value-added can be sought through direct, indirect, and strategic uses of the law. Second, value can also be added by re-centring the state and (re)asking the question about its appropriate role in development (delivery, oversight), and strategising engagement with the state. Third, in relation to accountability, RBAs add value by calling the state to account; building capacities of rights holders and duty bearers; and encouraging a new kind of ownership of human rights among NGOs. Fourth, the article explores claims that RBAs re-politicise development, redefining it as rights-based rather than based on benevolence; reclaiming or re-politicising the key (process) terms of development; addressing the root, structural causes of poverty and conflict, rather than the symptoms; and speaking truth to power. Not all of these contributions are unique to RBAs, however, and on all counts it remains to be seen if RBAs will deliver on their promise.

Over the past 10-15 years there has been an expansion of interest in the subject of Development Studies (DS). There are now significantly more taught courses focused on DS, and research funds are booming. However, over the same period, DS has faced sustained critiques about its essential nature. This has led us to ask: what is Development Studies? And what could or should it be?

The quality of NGO work is hugely dependent on the quality of critical thinking and analysis of poverty among all levels of staff. In particular, the quality of the work in the field - at partner and community levels - depends on an understanding of development processes and on strong facilitation skills, both of which rely on strong levels of critical thinking. While these are innately present in almost everyone, rote learning in education systems and patriarchal and top-down power structures often impede their development. This article suggests some practical means by which development agencies can develop strong analytical thinking and strong facilitation skills among their staff. While the article is mainly aimed at frontline staff, the implication is that such mechanisms are required at all levels if organisations are going to develop their own capacities.

Much has been researched and said about the impacts of international trade liberalisation at the country level; but little is known about its social and environmental local-level impacts. Since national averages can mask the existence of winners and losers, national-level studies may be a poor guide to addressing the plight of the rural poor and the environment that are at the core of the agenda of the social and conservation movement. This article compares the international trade-liberalisation debate with the findings of local rural-based case studies in seven countries, co-ordinated by WWF and the World Bank during 2004-2007. It discusses some actions that the conservation and social movement could take to improve the discussion and the practice of trade liberalisation, poverty alleviation, and environmental conservation.

This case study from Búzi district, Mozambique investigated whether gender equality, in terms of male and female participation in groups, leads to gender equity in sharing of benefits from the social capital created through the group. Exploring the complex connection between gender, groups, and social capital, we found that gender equity is not necessarily achieved by guaranteeing men and women equal rights through established by-laws, or dealing with groups as a collective entity. While there were no significant differences in the investment patterns of men and women in terms of participation in group activities and contribution of communal work, access to leadership positions and benefits from social capital were unequally distributed. Compared with men, women further found it difficult to transform social relations into improved access to information, access to markets, or help in case of need. pp 650-657

Evaluations involving stakeholders include collaborative evaluation, participatory evaluation, development evaluation, and empowerment evaluation - distinguished by the degree and depth of involvement of local stakeholders or programme participants in the evaluation process. In community participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E), communities agree programme objectives and develop local indicators for tracking and evaluating change. PM&E is not without limitations, one being that community indicators are highly specific and localised, which limits wide application of common community indicators for evaluating programmes that span social and geographic space. We developed community indicators with six farming communities in Malawi to evaluate a community development project. To apply the indicators across the six communities, we aggregated them and used a Likert scale and scores to assess communities' perceptions of the extent to which the project had achieved its objectives. We analysed the data using a comparison of means to compare indicators across communities and by gender. pp 633-642

PETRRA was an agricultural research-management project which used a values-based approach in project design, planning, and implementation. Through an experiential learning process, agricultural research and development (R&D) institutes, NGOs, private agencies, and community-based organisations rediscovered and improved the understanding of their strengths in meeting development commitments. The project successfully showed how values-based research can meaningfully be implemented and a sustainable pro-poor impact achieved. pp 619-626

The real experts on poverty are poor people, yet the incidence and trends in poverty are usually measured by the use of official economic indicators assumed by researchers to be relevant. Poor householders themselves distinguish between subsistence and cash income. In a 'self-assessed poverty' exercise, poor villagers in rural China specified and weighted key poverty indicators. Eight key indicators describing three basic types of poverty were isolated and used to construct a participatory poverty index (PPI), the components of which provide insights into core causes of poverty. Moreover, the PPI allows direct comparison of the incidence of poverty between villages - differences in social, cultural, and environmental characteristics of each village notwithstanding. As a result, the PPI offers an objective method of conducting poverty monitoring independently of physical and social features. This article provides a brief description of the PPI and the data needed to construct a village-specific PPI. pp 599-610

Until recently, participatory and conventional approaches to agricultural research have been regarded as more or less antagonistic. This article presents evidence from three sub-projects of a Thai-Vietnamese-German collaborative research programme on 'Sustainable Land Use and Rural Development in Mountainous Regions of Southeast Asia', in which participatory elements were successfully integrated into conventional agricultural research as add-on activities. In all three sub-projects the costs of studying local knowledge or enhancing farmers' experimentation consisted of additional local personnel, opportunity costs of participating farmers' time, and travel costs. However, these participatory elements of the research projects constituted only a small fraction of the total costs. It may be concluded that conventional agricultural research can be complemented by participatory components in a cost-effective way, while producing meaningful benefits in terms of creating synergies by blending scientific and local knowledge, scaling up micro-level data, and highlighting farmers' constraints affecting technology adoption. pp 576-589

This study explores the intra-household impact of improved dual-purpose cowpea (IDPC) from a gender perspective, in terms of productivity and food, fodder, and income availability, the impact of which is linked to the income thus placed in the women's hands. Surplus income is important in providing food and nutritional benefits to the home, particularly during periods of risk. More importantly, income generated through the adoption of improved cowpea varieties has entered a largely female domain, where transfers of income reserves were passed on between women of different ages, with significant impact in terms of social and economic development. However, the technology has strengthened the separation of working spheres between men and women. Future technologies should, from the outset, explore provisions existing within the local rubric, to focus on women with the aim of expanding their participation in agriculture with the associated benefits to their families. pp 551-563

The debate on empowerment encompasses an older discourse about the intrinsic value of empowerment, and a newer discourse about the instrumental benefits of empowerment; the concept of agency is useful in understanding this distinction. In agricultural development, empowerment efforts are often instrumentalist, viewed as an advanced form of participation that will improve project effectiveness, with adoption rates that promote compliance rather than intrinsic empowerment. Nevertheless, it is possible for projects to enhance the means for - and facilitate the process of - intrinsic empowerment. With regard to process, research and extension can make use of a constructivist rather than the behaviourist approach to support changes in knowledge, behaviour, and social relationships. In assessing empowerment, both developers and 'developees' need to look for evidence that people are taking control of their lives. Case studies - such as those used by the Indonesian Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Programme - will help to capture context and chronology, with unplanned behaviours being particularly useful indicators. pp 524-538

This article traces a history of agricultural participatory research, largely from the author's personal experience. Participatory research in the 1970s was mostly led by disciplinary scientists, and characterised by innovative activities and open academic debate, with some recognition that policy and development practice was a political process. The 1980s saw a shift to learning from past experience, and a participatory mainstream developed, seeking methods for scaling up. Meanwhile, others sought to understand and influence policy and institutional change in their political and cultural contexts, and to keep open the academic debates. The author considers the 1990s as 'lost years', during which mainstream participatory practitioners became inward-looking development generalists, not so interested in learning from others outside their paradigm. The late 2000s provide a chance to re-recognise the political and cultural embeddedness of science and technology; re-introduce strong, widely based disciplines; and learn from past activities that resulted in positive development outcomes (planned or unplanned). pp 489-505

Participatory research approaches are increasingly popular with scientists working for poverty alleviation, sustainable rural development, and social change. This introduction offers an overview of the special issue of Development in Practice journal on the theme of 'operationalising participatory research and gender analysis'. The purpose of the special issue is to add value to the discussion of methodological, practical, philosophical, political, and institutional issues involved in using gender-sensitive participatory methods. Drawing on 16 articles, we place some of the main issues, empirical experiences, and debates in participatory research and participatory technology development in the context of implementation, evaluation, and institutionalisation of participatory research and evaluation approaches. pp 467-478

In attempting to rebuild post-conflict failed states, the international community has drawn heavily on neo-liberal development paradigms. However, neo-liberal state building has proved ineffectual in stimulating economic development in post-conflict states, undermining prospects for state consolidation. This article offers the developmental state as an alternative model for international state building, better suited to overcoming the developmental challenges that face post-conflict states. Drawing on the East Asian experience, developmental state building would seek to build state capacity to intervene in the economy to guide development, compensating for the failure of growth led by the private sector to materialise in many post-conflict states. The article concludes that such an approach would, in the first instance, require the international community to accept more honestly its developmental responsibilities when it decides to intervene to rebuild failed states. pp307-318

This article offers strategies for women’s empowerment in conservative, tribal, and religious environments, based on an innovative programme in Pakistan. Mainstreaming Gender and Development (MGD) encouraged participants to build on their communities’ strengths, minimised resistance among families and communities by including them in the development process, and succeeded in building a cadre of women activists. Drawing on its experience, the author questions the importance of collective action, suggests that the selection of participants should be based on aptitude rather than socio-economic status, and highlights the potential for women’s empowerment in challenging environments. pp333-344

This article discusses the history and evolution of international volunteer-sending agencies and volunteers as a response not only to symptoms but also to causes of global poverty and inequality. It considers how international volunteers might be defined, what makes their role different from other forms of overseas development assistance (particularly their contribution to capacity development), and the positives and negatives that may accompany those differences. It also reflects on international volunteers’ suitability as contributors in the transition to a globally more ecologically sustainable state, presenting some insights from volunteers and other stakeholders. pp357-370

While it is internationally agreed that the worst forms of child labour should be eliminated in order to promote children’s welfare, the consensus breaks down when trying to define what constitutes ‘light work’. This article seeks to show why it is difficult to get everyone to agree on this issue, focusing on the definition of child labour proposed by the International Labour Organization (ILO). pp385-394

The world is at a critical point as humanity contemplates how our own activity is contributing to changes in the earth and atmosphere. Formidable challenges require raising fundamental questions and learning from unlikely sources. Drawing on field research conducted on the Zambian Copperbelt, this article explores how public conversations concerning differing views of reality can inform development-related thinking about the environment. Enumerating practical examples where words and images both conveyed and shaped conflicting viewpoints in the industrial mine setting, the article asserts that much can be learned from the experiential viewpoints of underground miners. Policy making could benefit, for instance, from lessening its dependence on dominant economic thinking and increasingly drawing upon historical, cultural, philosophical, and theological insights when devising policies, projects, and procedures. Questions of power, control, and humanity’s self-conception in relation to the physical world are also explored. pp403-411

Though less than expected, resources are available for simple, cheap interventions that can accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. Results-based management has been the key to increasing access to education and health care, but it does little to change the political, social, and economic conditions that make people poor. Unless there is a better balance between the drive to achieve measurable impact, investments in long-term poverty-eradication measures, and the creation of space where poor people can discuss and develop strategies for achieving equality and social justice, it will not be as easy to make poverty history as many people think. pp420-423

Development brings about changes in people’s lives and their ways of understanding and dealing with their world. It is possible to distinguish between two types of development intervention: (a) improvements in the external situation, chiefly through the provision of public goods; and (b) strengthening people’s inner capacities, an endeavour which depends on cognitive processes. The article links basic concepts from cognitive theory to development practice and proposes avenues for further research to study the way in which people develop their capacities and to find ways of supporting such processes. A fuller understanding of cognitive change as a key factor could greatly enhance the sustainability of development projects. pp430-436

The boom in the construction industry in South Africa has drawn attention to the need for skills development. This article reports on an evaluation of the ‘People at the Gate’ training programme initiated by Group Five in Gauteng and Mpumalanga Provinces. The programme aims to empower unemployed local community members in areas where the company operates. The programme targets women and men who come to the company’s sites looking for possible employment and are unable to be accommodated due to their lack of skills. The study evaluated the difficulties that trainees are faced with during and after the project; employment opportunities that are created; and the skills most needed in different trades and provinces. pp446-449

Governments in developing countries need effective programmes to advance public policies and improve social welfare. NGOs often have well-tested programmes and research outcomes that are relevant to such needs, yet the scaling up of pilot programmes to national level is difficult to achieve and frequently unsuccessful. This article presents a case of successful scaling up for an adolescent sexual-health and psychosocial-competencies programme in Mexico, through an NGO–government partnership involving IMIFAP, a Mexican NGO. The case illustrates how an NGO can create a successful partnership with government to scale up effective programmes, in ways that meet key needs of the target population while protecting the NGO’s core values. pp164-175

This article analyses the international humanitarian response to the earthquake in Jogjakarta, Indonesia in May 2006. It also compares it with a small but very successful local initiative. It identifies inherent weaknesses in the international system, and argues for the possibility of scaling up lessons learned from the local example. pp190-200

NGOs in Asian countries often experience fluctuations in funding because of the constantly shifting priorities of their international donors. Without domestic sources, Asian NGOs are forced to re-align their priorities with donor interests in order to compete for funding. In the case of advocacy NGOs, the resulting asymmetry in donor–grantee relations often leads to a crisis of legitimacy and deteriorating effectiveness for the NGO. Because of the political nature of advocacy work, these NGOs must maintain a reputation for independence and legitimacy if they are to be influential in the political process. This article analyses the impact of fluctuating international donor assistance to advocacy NGOs in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Thailand, and offers recommendations for donors. While donors have spent significant resources building the capacity of advocacy NGOs in South-East Asia, funding trends usually undermine the effectiveness of their grantees long before funding is ended. pp213-222

This article investigates the interaction between the processes of building development theory and development practice, arguing that theory must start with practice – and should not be top–down, starting with the ‘outside gaze’ of a supposedly detached academic or policy maker. The questions posed point to critiques of mainstream development narratives and notions of innovation through the diffusion of new technologies. The authors suggest that the assumptions embedded in mainstream development processes lead to unequal access to global and local markets, and that when they are imposed from the outside without a real understanding of the context, the development project is bound to fail. Parameters for assessing and evaluating outcomes also need to be based upon a close understanding of context – and this often comes through active involvement within it and not through being ‘detached’ and outside it. The assumption that an outside gaze is ‘objective’ is based in an implicitly colonial discourse, while building theory by being involved in the practice produces better methodologies for action and development. pp235-244

The article explores knowledge and practices of family planning among the tribal population of south Gujarat. The authors examine the reasons for discontinuation and non-use of various modern contraceptive methods by tribals and draw contrasts with practices in the urban population. They consider the roles of women, family members, local leaders, and effective communication, along with NGOs and the private sector, and make recommendations for increasing access to and usage of various family-planning methods by the tribals. pp258-266

With a rapidly growing population and limited resources, accountability has taken on increased importance, especially in the area of public management. To assess the effectiveness of public spending on education in the Caribbean, this article compares performance in five Caribbean nations, looking at input indicators such as the teacher–pupil ratio, expenditure per pupil, the number of adequately trained teachers as a proportion of total teaching staff, and public commitment to education. It analyses their impact on output indicators, including performance in English and mathematics, the repetition rate, and survival rate to the final grade in school. The article concludes that the levels of efficiency in the development of human capital in the Caribbean are very uneven, and that serious challenges face Caribbean countries as they seek to maximise the returns on their investment in education. pp273-279

Values are an important theme in discussions in international NGOs (INGOs), helping to create the conditions for solidarity among staff. But at the same time they are also frequently a source of demoralisation and destructive conflict. This is because the prevailing perceptions of values as instruments of management or as elements in some inchoate mystical whole render the power relationship between staff and managers undiscussable. Values need not be thought of as an instrument of management, and they are above all idealisations. An alternative theory of values is that they are emergent and intensely social phenomena that arise daily between people engaged in a collective enterprise. They are idealisations, but they must be discussed in the everyday context. Conflict is inevitable, but the exploration of the nature of this conflict in daily practice is the only way of ensuring that the discussion about values is an enlivening process. pp 5-16

Only in English

For the purposes of accountability and uniformity, and as a way of giving insight into their intellectual capital regarding development practices, NGOs in Southern Africa are required by donor agencies to describe their intended activities in very clear, unambiguous terms. These requirements may include the expression of theoretical approaches, the development of logical frameworks, clear objectives, indicators for success, criteria for sustainable development, and relationships to government policies. However, the interface between reality and these planning measures and tools, most often completed without the input and contributions of the communities whom they are to serve/service, produces a much more messy, dynamic, and involved picture of the development process. None the less, the NGOs are still required to be accountable on the basis of their original proposal and planning. The author presents examples of this phenomenon and discusses the challenges facing an evaluator when dealing with competing principles of accountability, autonomy, and authenticity. pp 40-52

How do we move from identifying ethical principles to enhancing development practice? How can donors and NGOs move beyond the reporting of technical outputs to explore less tangible aspects of their health projects: contributions to rebuilding trust, promoting social cohesion, and enhancing good governance at community level? This article considers these questions in relation to health and peace-building activities in conflicted settings. It describes difficulties facing practitioners and donors seeking to undertake health and peace work, in particular focusing on the lack of appropriate tools for screening, monitoring, and evaluating projects. It critiques the logical framework, a tool commonly used in project planning, monitoring, and evaluation, and considers it alongside a new tool, the Health and Peace Building Filter, which has been designed to reflect on health programming in fragile or conflicted settings. The authors argue that such tools can help to move us beyond focusing on inputs and outputs to examining processes, relationships, and the indirect consequences of aid programmes. pp 66-81

Recent interest in migrant remittances as a development resource calls attention to a deeper issue: the relationship between migration and development. Remittances may be a significant source of economic inflows to poor countries and regions, but their actual development impact (positive or negative) is tied to the migration processes that generate them. Attention to migration in turn creates an opportunity to think about the broader context of development policy and practice, and to re-think the boundaries that we put around our work. pp 94-99

News about Norway’s plans to establish a ‘doomsday vault’ for seeds in the permafrost of the Artic archipelago of Svalbard as a back-up for conventional gene banks reached the world press in 2006. The idea of a Global Seed Vault, which today is considered a ‘Noah’s Ark’ for seeds, was previously regarded with suspicion and considered to be unrealistic. In 1989/90 the Norwegian government offered to construct an international depository for seeds in permafrost, but the initiative was sidelined in the agitated debates between developed and developing countries over access to and control of plant genetic resources. The realisation of the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2004) resolved some of the most difficult issues and made possible the launching of a new Norwegian initiative to safeguard some of the world’s most important plant genetic resources for the future. pp 110-116

Patronato de Nutrición introduced a range of 18 optional agricultural technologies in the indigenous community of Chalite, Panama. Three of the technologies were adopted by more than half of the farmers surveyed, while an additional eight technologies were adopted by between 20 per cent and 50 per cent of the farmers. Farmers were more likely to adopt technologies associated with familiar crops, previously promoted by other groups, or requiring limited labour or financial resources. The article shows how development groups can quickly reduce the number of technologies promoted in order to deliver services more effectively. pp 125-130

Only in English

From an analysis of recent empirical research in the Dominican Republic, this article addresses the ways in which racism underpins elements of governance and explores organisational and individual responses to racialised discrimination initiated by the state. The context is timely, given the steady rise in reported racist and violent attacks against people presumed to be of Haitian origin in the Dominican Republic over the past five years. The government has intensified formal military and police round-ups of migrants and settlers suspected to be of Haitian origin, and this article assesses the group and individual responses to these state-led actions, analysing formal and informal interventions, their evolution, maintenance, and impact. pp 725-738

A progressive piece of legislation in 1993 granted collective land rights to Colombia’s black communities living in the rural areas of the Pacific coast region. This measure aimed partly to support sustainable development strategies in the region through territorial empowering of local communities. Yet 14 years later, the escalation of the country’s internal conflict into the Pacific region has created unprecedented levels of forced displacement among rural black communities. Once referred to as a ‘peace haven’, the Colombian Pacific coast is now characterised by new spaces of violence and terror, imposed by warring guerrilla and paramilitary groups, as well as the armed forces. This article examines the nature of the externally induced violence in the region and shows how specific economic interests, in particular in the African Palm sector, are colluding with illegal groups that are used to spread fear and terror among local residents, to make them comply with the requirements of these economic actors. pp752-764

The article considers international advocacy concerning the exploitation of gas reserves in an area inhabited by an isolated indigenous group in Peru, the Machigengua. Considerable international advocacy activity was centred mainly in Washington, DC. Poor communication between those directly affected and international environmental NGOs illustrated very different and not always compatible agendas. The article concludes that this failure to adapt the international lobby both to the views of the indigenous population and to political realities in Peru severely weakened the impact of the international advocacy work. pp 775-783

National frontiers with ecosystems experiencing rapid changes pose difficult challenges for scientific contributions to democratic processes for environmental governance. We describe an innovative outreach model, the ‘knowledge exchange train’, which combines educational outreach with capacity-building mechanisms to broaden public participation in planning for sustainable development. This involved an international team of scientists and practitioners from conservation and development organisations who travelled across a tri-national frontier area of the south-western Amazon to share recent findings with local leaders and stakeholder constituencies of several municipalities. The knowledge exchange train quickly increased public awareness in many places and provided a means of broadening participation in planning and governance. This model supports planning for sustainable development and can be adapted to other geographic contexts and topics. pp 791-799

This review essay focuses on the most crucial points in the evolution of Celso Furtado’s contribution to economic and political thought in relation to development, in the hope that a wider readership will appreciate the importance of his ideas to Latin America’s ‘development’ during the 1960s and 1970s, and perhaps even see value in reviving them. It opens with a description of the background to the rise of development economics, highlighting aspects of the discipline that this remarkable Brazilian economist confronted and transformed. This is followed by a description of his period as a development theorist or ‘reform monger’ (Hirschman 1963) and his subsequent exile (1964–1975). The article concludes with a discussion of some of the work produced on his return to Brazil. pp 807-819

In English only

A word analysis of six UK government White Paper policy statements on aid (selected between 1960 and 2006) compares the top 20 words and key word pairs used in each document. Characteristic sentences are composed of the top 20s to represent the spirit of each paper. Results illuminate changes in the content of White Papers on aid, and point to trends in the history of the UK’s approach to international development. A characteristic sentence to illustrate the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is contrasted with a sentence of words that did not appear in that document. Readers are invited and challenged to identify words they would like to be used and acted on more in development.

The term ‘social protection’ has been widely used around the world and is often treated as synonymous with ‘social security’, which is misleading. This article considers the numerous terms that have become part of the language of social protection, indicating that the image conveyed by the term is rather different from what is meant by it.

This article questions the growing use of the term ‘faith-based’ in development policy and practice. It is argued that it homogenises people in minority migrant and developing-country contexts and excludes many who are working for human rights and social justice from secular perspectives, thus providing an unsound analytical base for policy. Against the background of the ‘war on terror’, the author also examines the differences in US and British development policy arising out of the term ‘faith-based’.

This article discusses the different meanings that citizenship has assumed in Latin America in the past few decades. Its main argument is that, in the perverse confluence between neo-liberal and democratic participatory projects, the common reference to citizenship, used by different political actors, projects an apparent homogeneity, obscuring differences and diluting the conflict between those projects.

In parallel with, and as complement to, globalisation, ‘social capital’ has enjoyed a meteoric rise across the social sciences over the last two decades. Not surprisingly, it has been particularly prominent across development studies, not least through heavy promotion by the World Bank. As a concept, though, as has been argued persistently by a minority critical literature, social capital is fundamentally flawed. Although capable of addressing almost anything designated as social, it has tended to neglect the state, class, power, and conflict. As a buzzword, it has heavily constrained the currently progressive departure from the extremes of neo-liberalism and post-modernism at a time of extremely aggressive assault by economics imperialism. Social capital should not be ignored but contested – and rejected.

This article reflects on the vocabulary commonly used within development organisations to communicate about ‘gender and development’. It argues that the relevant terminology, though frequently used, remains problematic. Some terms are almost entirely absent, while others are used loosely and inappropriately – with the subtleties of carefully developed and much-debated concepts often lost. Terms such as ‘empowerment’, ‘gender’, and ‘gender mainstreaming’ which originated in feminist thinking and activism have lost their moorings and become depoliticised. Despite these problems, there are indications that debates and language may be taking a more radical turn with the acknowledgement of the shortcomings of the practices of gender mainstreaming, the deepening of interest in the notion of empowerment, and the explicit adoption of a human-rights language.

This article offers an intellectual genealogy of how the concept of human rights has entered the development discourse—from the formulation of a ‘right to development’ to the rhetorical incorporation of rights within prevailing discourse, to the articulation of a ‘rights-based approach’ to development. It concludes with some propositions about the important role that a focus on rights might play in the practice of international development.

Public and people-centred advocacy are shaped by the political culture, social systems, and constitutional framework of the country in which they are practised. It is the practice of advocacy that determines the theory, and not vice versa. If advocacy is not rooted in grassroots realities and is practised only at the macro level, the voice of the marginalised is increasingly likely to be appropriated by professional elites. However, the very credibility of advocacy practitioners depends on their relationship with mass-based movements and grassroots perceptions of what constitutes desirable social change.

This article focuses on the role that development NGOs play in capacity building, arguing that many conventional NGO practices are ultimately about retaining power, rather than empowering their partners. This leads to tunnel vision and to upward rather than downward or horizontal accountability, based on the assumption that the transfer of resources is a one-way process. At worst, this undermines rather than strengthens the capacities of the organisations that NGOs are attempting to assist. Sharing responsibilities and risks, mutual accountability, and committing to the long term rather than to short-term projects are more likely to create partnerships that can withstand vicissitudes and contribute to lasting change.

The term ‘country ownership’ refers to a property of the conditionality attached to programmes, processes, plans, or strategies involving both a ‘domestic’ party (generally a nation state) and a foreign party (generally the IMF, the World Bank, the Regional Development Banks, and other multilateral and bilateral institutions). Under what circumstances and how can the concept of country ownership be relevant to a country with a myriad heterogeneous and often conflicting views and interests? Or to a country whose government’s representational legitimacy or democratic credentials are in question? The author argues that the term has been abused to such an extent that it is at best unhelpful and at worst pernicious: a term whose time has gone.

The concept of peacebuilding is a buzzword of the development policy and practice mainstream. The recent introduction of managerial tools and the focus on measuring the ‘effectiveness’ of peacebuilding have marginalised and depoliticised critical questions about the causes of violent conflict, and have replaced them with comforting notions for donors that peace can be built and measured without challenging Western understanding of economy, governance, and social aspirations of people.

This article engages with the ways in which corruption has taken centre stage in much development policy making and rhetoric. It argues that there is a need to destablilise ‘taken for granted’ assumptions about what corruption is and how it operates. This means generating an understanding of how meanings of corruption vary, and how this variation is determined by the social characteristics of those engaged in corruption talk. It also means examination of how discourses of corruption and anti-corruption are translated from international to national and local stages – from the anti-corruption ‘establishment’ to the realities of bureaucratic encounters in diverse contexts.

This article examines the links between development and ‘security’, situating these concepts within their philosophical and political contexts, particularly in relation to contemporary wars, including the ‘war on terror’, and the so-called ‘securitisation’ of development. The security of states does not necessarily ensure the security of their citizens, and the very concept of security is both complex and contested. The author provides a succinct summary of various interpretations of security – of states, collectivities, and individuals – showing how each is double edged and ambivalent.

This article looks at ‘knowledge management’, using a case study of the World Bank’s research department, located in the Bank’s Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC). Despite the Bank's presentation of its research arm as conducting 'rigorous and objective’ work, the author finds that the Bank’s ‘knowledge management’ involves research that has tended to reinforce the dominant neo-liberal globalisation policy agenda. The article examines some of the mechanisms by which the Bank's research department comes to play a central role in what Robert Wade has termed 'paradigm maintenance', including incentives in hiring, promotion, and publishing, as well as selective enforcement of rules, discouragement of dissonant views, and manipulation of data. The author's analysis is based both on in-depth interviews with current and former World Bank professionals and on examination of the relevant literature.

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the concept of civil society in development and governance circles. Broadly understood as the space in society where collective citizen action takes place, civil society has, in fact, proved an extremely difficult concept to define and operationalise. This article proposes a framework and methodology for measuring and comparing the state of different civil societies around the world. It concludes with a discussion of outstanding questions and challenges, drawing on preliminary insights from current efforts to apply the approach in more than 50 countries.

This article proposes a theoretical framework, the Capacity-building Paradox, which defines individual relationship work as the basis for capacity building. It explains why capacity building has hitherto been largely unsuccessful. ‘Relationship work’ is central to the functions of practitioners. It consists of both ‘dependent work’ and ‘friendship work’, the latter synonymous with capacity building. To do relationship work, practitioners require power, in order to overcome environmental obstacles. Financial resources emerge as the predominant environmental influence, often prompting practitioners to use dependent work rather than friendship work. This results in a reduction in capacity and does not contribute to sustainable development. Most of the current literature provides organisational and institutional tools for capacity building. While there is an increasing recognition of the centrality of personal relationships in this work, there is as yet no theoretical framework within which to locate it. The article presents original research into people’s experiences of capacity-building work in a development context and proposes a conceptual model that may have important implications for capacity-building practice.

This article draws preliminary lessons from the experience of engaging village elites in support of a BRAC programme for ultra-poor women in rural Bangladesh. It describes the origins, aims, and operation of this programme, which provides comprehensive livelihood support and productive assets to the extreme poor. Based on field research in the rural north-west, the article examines the conditions under which elites can support interventions for the ultra-poor, and the risks and benefits of such engagement. It describes the impact of committees mandated to support ultra-poor programme participants, and attempts to understand the somewhat paradoxical success of this intervention. Conclusions and lessons from the experience involve revisiting assumptions that dominate scholarship and programmes relating to the politics of poverty in rural Bangladesh.

Cambodia has embarked on a process of decentralisation and democratisation, including the establishment of elected Commune Councils in early 2002. Given the lack of a tradition of encouraging civic participation in public affairs, however, there was initially little general awareness of how to engage with these Councils. The authors describe a project supported by the Ministry of Rural Development and the German bilateral agency, GTZ, and undertaken with local no-government organisations, to identify and support active community groups and improve their capacity to interact with the Commune Councils, while at the same time seeking ways for the Commune Councils to support the different groups.

This article describes Learning Platforms, a structured effort by the Dutch-based agency SNV to encourage its expert advisers to engage in reading and analysing academic research related to the context in which they work, and to undertake research of their own. Although the practitioners’ ability to apply their research to their daily practice, and the organisation’s ability to absorb the findings of the research as part of its ways of working, have been partial or limited, the approach has the potential to bring academic and practice-based endeavour together in ways that are mutually beneficial.

The article identifies challenges and opportunities for the Ugandan robusta coffee industry in the context of the global coffee crisis. It presents a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of development strategies through which Uganda might promote its largest export commodity. It is suggested that Uganda would benefit from moderately increasing robusta production, while a further decline in output could undermine its current price premium in the market. There may also be important benefits associated with increasing the value of Ugandan robusta through improvements in quality.

This article is based on research that explored and analysed the potential role of diasporas in development aid in the Netherlands. The research adopted the hypothesis that development agencies could benefit from the knowledge, skills, and views of diasporas as ‘agents of development’ and thereby make aid more effective and sustainable. Data were derived from semi-structured interviews with representatives of diasporas residing in the Netherlands; Dutch NGOs selected by the Dutch government for their capacity-building programmes; official donors, namely the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken); and international organisations, such as the International Organization of Migration (IOM). Secondary data were derived from a literature review.

This article describes the exploratory and preparatory phase of a research project designed to use cooperative enquiry as a method for transformative and participatory action research into relations between donors and recipients in two developing countries, Bolivia and Bangladesh. It describes the origins of our idea, the conceptual challenges that we faced in seeking funding, and what we learnt from this first phase. We analyse why the researchers, as well as the potential subjects of the research, were uncomfortable with the proposed methodology, including the challenges arising from our own positions and the highly sensitive nature of the topic. We explain why we decided to abandon the project and reach some tentative conclusions concerning the options for participatory action learning and research in development practice.

Natural chewing gum or chicle represents just 3.5 per cent of the total chewing-gum market, which is dominated by synthetic chewing gum made from hydrocarbons. However, recent interest in sustainable livelihood strategies has opened up opportunities for enlarging chicle commercialisation for what is still a small, niche market. The production of chicle can serve to strengthen forest conservation, and provide regular employment to those dependent on forest products, as part of a range of sustainable forest activities. However, the production and marketing of natural chewing gum has faced several serious problems: producers in Mexico have been organised in ways that enabled them to be exploited both by intermediaries and state institutions, and the processes of certification for organics and fair trade are unwieldy and expensive. This paper suggests a number of ways of addressing these problems.

The paper reviews current methodologies for the design of development projects and identifies foundational reasons for conflict between design approaches and participatory methods. A number of alternative approaches to the design of interventions in social systems are examined, and the potential application of some of these new ideas within a visioning process that is based on communicative rationality is explored. We conclude that there are many problems to be overcome before describing a complete design methodology that moves away from the objectivist basis of existing design systems, and that the new approach will need to address power relationships and the consequent and interrelated problems of accountability and trust.

Andries Du Toit (2004) argues that the concept of social exclusion has limited use in the field of development studies since chronic poverty is often the result of incorporation on particularly disadvantageous terms (adverse incorporation) rather than any process of exclusion. Du Toit therefore calls for going beyond seeing ‘exclusion’ and ‘inclusion’ in binary terms and looking more closely at how different kinds of power are formed and maintained. This papers argues that thinking about social exclusion has already moved beyond a simple included /excluded dichotomy, and that use of Sen’s analytical framework assists researchers to tease out the complex, interconnected factors underlying chronic poverty, such as that experienced by agricultural workers in South Africa’s Western Cape district of Ceres.

International networks for social change are growing in number and influence. While they need to be able to assess the extent to which they achieve their purpose and determine ways in which to be more effective, conventional evaluation methods are not designed for such complex organisational forms, or for the diverse kinds of activity to which they are characteristically dedicated. Building on an earlier version of the paper, the authors present a set of principles and participatory approaches that are more appropriate to the task of evaluating such networks.

AIDS-related morbidity and mortality affects not only individuals and their families, but is rapidly undermining the struggling capacity to develop of African states. Stemming the impacts of the pandemic has therefore become a major concern. This calls for addressing the issues of care and support for those affected, and increasing the access of persons living with HIV/AIDS to effective treatment. Provision of such complex medication in resource-limited settings is a fairly recent phenomenon. In this context, the paper builds on emerging experiences from the field in identifying issues and challenges that need to be addressed in order to facilitate the scaling-up of HIV/AIDS treatment in Africa.

This report summarises a project of participatory action-research combining concepts from the field of development management with practice in international mental health. The research was conducted in Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, and Romania. The policy-as-process model is central to understandings of development management but is unfamiliar to organisations working in mental health, even those working from a community level, bottom-up perspective to influence mental-health policy. At the same time practice and learning from the field of mental health and radical user-empowerment models have received little attention from development managers. The research reported here found that the policy-as-process model was useful to mental-health activists and that it provided a competing framework to more traditional, top-down and prescriptive policy concepts, and made it possible to make sense of the multiple perspectives, value-based conflicts, and power dynamics that characterise understandings and practice in mental health. Among the recommendations is a call for closer links between mental-health activism and development management, and a transfer of knowledge, understanding, and experience between the two disciplines.

It is virtually undisputed that poverty is multi-dimensional. However, 'economic' or income/expenditure/monetary measures of poverty still maintain a higher status in key development indicators and policy: The number one Millennium Development Goal (MDG) is the dollar-a-day; the Human Development Index (HDI) and Gender Development Index (GDI) of UNDP both use weightings that very strongly favour GDP per capita; and the income poverty headcount is generally the main focus in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. This article is concerned with this apparent contradiction between the consensus over the meaning of poverty and the choice of methods with which to measure poverty in practice. A brief history of the meaning and measurement of poverty is given and it is argued that while 'economic' determinism has gradually retreated from centrality in the meaning of poverty it has continued to dominate the measurement of poverty. This is followed by a section that contrasts the relative merits of 'economic' and 'non-economic' measures of poverty. The question is posed: why do 'economic' measures of poverty still have a higher status than non-economic measures?

Poverty and the way in which it is researched are major preoccupations for many social scientists. This article presents different ways of researching urban poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), focusing on qualitative methods and the different ways in which these can be used to collect data. Examples are drawn from field research carried out in urban areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre) to illustrate the ways that different research methods and techniques are used in the field and how a researcher might organise data collection.

This paper reviews prevention strategies initiated and implemented by NGOs across the globe to address female sex trafficking. It sets out the conceptual bases for anti-trafficking measures in general and prevention measures in particular before presenting a representative cross-section of programmes and approaches currently underway. The authors identify some of the gaps apparent in these responses, and offer recommendations to improve the implementation of prevention strategies. The paper concludes that anti-trafficking prevention measures must be skilfully integrated into current community-development practices and that for this reason, local and global development planners must become more aware of this issue and the strategic actions necessary to address it.

This article discusses the role NGOs play, not in their traditional role as service providers, but as employers in the Egyptian labour market. Over the last two decades, NGOs have been offering attractive job opportunities to middle-class professionals who are disillusioned with the private sector and no longer interested in joining the state bureaucracy. The working conditions of the growing number of NGO employees and how NGOs fare as employers has not been investigated in the substantial academic and policy literature on NGOs, which so far has been almost exclusively concerned with NGOs’ relationships with their ‘beneficiaries’ rather with than with their position as active players in a changing labour market.

The political project of gender equality in Africa has gained momentum and made many achievements. However, these have been largely confined to the ‘big’ women working in the public and private bureaucratic contexts in which there is a greater commitment to gender equality. It is argued that in the context of Cameroon, until these ‘bigger’ women renew their commitment to their grassroots sisters, the experience of gender equality among will remain largely unequal. Only strong linkages between white-collar workers and less privileged women will span this chasm.

This paper offers a case study of a secondment of staff from a Northern NGO (Trócaire) to a Southern partner, the Catholic Development Commission (CADECOM) of Malawi, as a possible model for capacity building. The approach described was tried in the context of an emergency programme but could also be used in a development context. The paper analyses the appropriateness of the model in terms of its administrative structure, focus, and impact, and attempts to draw lessons for practitioners for its successful application.

Harriet Matsaert, Zahir Ahmed, and Shah Abdus Salam This paper describes the experiences of a small Bangladeshi NGO in using actor-oriented tools to focus on key people and partnerships in project planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The approach has helped to identify interventions that are context-specific, building on key local actors and indigenous networks, and sensitive to the constraints experienced by the poorest. As a result, the NGO has away from an externally driven agenda and to become a more thoughtful and responsive organisation. In developing the approach, the NGO encountered some problems due to the political sensitivity concerning the representation of linkages. This underlines the importance of using these tools in a politically-aware, positive, and reflective way.

Based on the contemporary interest in developing new adult literacy learning programmes based on ‘literacy for livelihoods’, this paper examines some case studies from New Zealand, Bangladesh, and Egypt of literacy being used in livelihoods, and relates these to the kind of literacy being taught in many adult literacy programmes today. It points out that people often change their livelihoods and that each livelihood has literacy practices embedded within it. The paper suggests that the use of these literacy practices embedded within the livelihood activities might be a better starting point for adult literacy learning than a school-based textbook.

This article focuses on the development of African Studies, principally in post-1945 Europe and North America, and its counterpart in post-independence Africa. African Studies enjoys an increasingly close connection with bilateral and multilateral development cooperation, providing research and researchers (along with their own conceptual frameworks and concerns) to assist in defining and providing direction for aid and related policies. This is leading to unhealthy practices, whereby African research is ignored in the formulation of international policies towards the continent; while external Africanists assume the function of interpreting the world to Africa and vice versa. This dynamic reinforces existing asymmetries in capacity and influence, especially given the crisis of higher education in most African countries. It also undermines Africa’s research community, in particular the scope for cross-national and international exchange and the engagement in broader development debates, with the result that those social scientists who have not succumbed to the consultancy market or sought career opportunities elsewhere, are encouraged to focus on narrow empirical studies. This political division of intellectual labour needs to be replaced with one that allows for the free expression and exchange of ideas not only by Africans on Africa, but with the wider international community who share the same broad thematic and/or theoretical preoccupations as the African scholars with whom they are in contact.

This paper argues that those keen to characterise and harness the empowering potential of Information and Communications Technology [ICT] for development projects have to understand that the very existence of this technology opens up alternative models of cooperation and collaboration. These models themselves necessitate breaking away from ‘traditional’ command-and-control models of management. One alternative is to persuade participants, or potential participants, to coordinate their efforts along the lines exemplified by the open-source software movement and the contributors to Wikipedia: models of coordination that ought not to work, but appear to do so. The paper offers an outline of this argument, and then suggests ways in which NGOs in particular might try to incorporate these insights into their strategies. This is particularly critical for organisations with a reliance on increasingly pressurised funding opportunities, and which also seek to develop and engender participation and determination from within and among specific target groupings.

In this article, the authors reflect on the establishment and rapid evolution of an African electronic newsletter, Pambazuka News, an initiative that is rooted in the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the one hand, and the struggle against impoverishment and injustices, on the other. Among the main learning points are that electronic publishing is a long-term commitment because of the trust established between the organisation providing the service and those using it. The immediacy of the medium enables information to move around in a range of different ways, and exerts new forms of mutual accountability. There remains, however, the critical issue of how to guarantee the resources to maintain such a service without compromising the content or diluting the purpose.

This article explores the motivation for, traces the development of, and details the distinctive strategy shaping The Communication Initiative (The CI), a network of those using communication to foster economic and social change in communities around the world. Network members access information and collaborate with each other through any of three knowledge websites - one with a worldwide overview and focus, one with a worldwide overview and focus on Latin America, and one with a focus on Africa - and their associated electronic newsletters. These online spaces are components in a broader process that the author terms ‘horizontal communication’, which is central to providing a non-judgmental, level platform for accessing the information and interactions that are important to those actually practising communication for development. Drawing on this approach, The CI has engaged 50,000-plus people from 184 countries over the past seven years; the author outlines the elements that have been central to this success.

We suggest that PhD and post-doctoral researchers are a strong, untapped resource with the potential to make a real contribution to global health research (GHR). However, we raise some ethical, institutional, and funding issues that either discourage new researchers from entering the field or diminish their capacity to contribute. We offer a number of recommendations to Canadian academic and non-academic institutions and funders, and aim to generate discussion among them about how to overcome these constraints. We need changes in the way graduate research is organised and funded, so there are opportunities to work collaboratively within established low- and middle-income countries (LMIC)/Canadian research partnerships. We urge changes in the way institutions fund, recognise, value, and support GHR, so established researchers are encouraged to develop long-term LMIC relationships and mentor new Canadian/LMIC researchers. We ask funders to reconsider additional GHR activities for support, including strategic training initiatives and dissemination of research results. We also encourage the development of alternative institutions that can provide training and mentoring opportunities. GHR per se faces many challenges. If we address those that reduce our potential to contribute, we can become real partners in GHR, working towards equitable global health and solutions to priority health issues.

This review essay surveys the theoretical insights emerging from within the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement, also known as the Anti-Globalisation Movement, or the Movement of the Movements, and also reviews the literature focused on this phenomenon from those closely involved as well as from other observers. The central concern is to understand the nature and significance of the movement of the movements as it operates across local, national, and global boundaries, and to consider its capacity to represent and mobilise the many millions worldwide who stand to gain little or nothing, but may lose a great deal, from neo-liberal globalisation.

In English only

The central argument of this paper is that many of the tools developed to strengthen for-profit businesses can be applied to NGOs to make them more effective and accountable. The paper addresses a gap in the development literature by defining and describing how business tools can be effectively transferred to NGOs. It examines the implementation of ISO 9000 Quality Standard by one NGO, the Cambodia Trust. The experiences of the Cambodia Trust demonstrate that business tools have a place in NGO management. The paper also questions the extent to which the Cambodian experience can be seen as best practice for NGOs.

Fair-trade activities in the South have tended to be studied in relation to the internal aims of the fair-trade organisations themselves. This paper argues that it is also critical to consider the wider fair-trade ‘arena’ or set of interactions. The authors focus on the fair-trade coffee ‘arenas’ of Tanzania and Nicaragua and study the role of four key actors - small-scale producers, cooperatives, development partners, and public authorities. Using comparative data from field studies conducted in 2002-2003, the paper draws out key national and international issues affecting local producers. Illustrating how fair trade evolves differently according to context, the paper examines how the cooperative movement in Nicaragua has been strengthened by fair-trade production, in contrast to the situation in Tanzania. It concludes by looking at some of the challenges faced by fair trade, including how to reconcile the demands of the market with building solidarity.

The interchangeable use of the terms microcredit and microfinance creates serious confusions and misunderstandings in both academic and policy discourses. Microcredit programmes provide mainly one kind of service, namely loan distribution and collection, while microfinance programmes provide several financial and organisational services including credit, savings, insurance, and community development. From the functional perspective, differences appear more semantic than substantive. However, the conceptual differences are fundamental because they involve both the underlying motives and the ways in which the two types of venture operate in practice. Microcredit is essentially a non-profit approach to development and depends on external support, while microfinance programmes seek to return enough profit to be self-financing. Thus, the two programs need to be treated separately in relation to their role in the alleviation of Third World poverty.

Through an analysis of practical examples and key literature, this article considers what will enhance learning in and between NGOs and other development partners. The authors explore how the types and qualities of relationship currently evolving in the development sector affect learning, drawing predominantly on experiences of relationships between Northern and Southern NGOs. The article identifies those aspects of relationships that foster learning and those that inhibit it, and offers recommendations to strengthen learning. The authors highlight the relevance of, the challenges posed by, and the potential of partnership work, as well as the impact of accountability demands, procedures, and processes, on organisational relationships and on learning.

Summary: Microcredit is a means of providing financial services to people who lack access to conventional credit sources. New programmes in the North are endeavour to emulate successful experiences in the South. But such programmes have their own characteristics that differentiate them from those in the South, as illustrated in a case study of experience in Spain.

Reporting on AccountAbility’s 2005 Annual Conference, Hyatt observes that the Northern-driven ‘accountability industry’ is more concerned about predicting outcomes and controlling resources, and is thus largely missing the moral, political nature of accountability in terms of promoting equity and integrity, and is little concerned with the failure to learn and to encourage learning.

This article discusses humanitarian advocacy in the contemporary world within the wider crisis of political vision. Humanitarian advocacy over the last 15 years has drawn attention to how crises have been precipitated by state policies and has sought international intervention to protect people. It has consequently become associated with challenging the national sovereignty of the developing state. This article contends that the weak state is the problem, and suggests that the existing paradigm of humanitarian advocacy helps to legitimise the erosion of equality among sovereign states and the reassertion of international inequalities.

This paper underlines the importance of grounding the analysis of humanitarian aid in an understanding of everyday practice by presenting and discussing ethnographic vignettes about three aspects of aid response in Sri Lanka following the 2004 Tsunami. The first deals with the nature of humanitarian actors, the second explores how different kinds of politics intertwine, and the third discusses the issue of humanitarian partnerships. Each vignette points to the need for detailed analysis of everyday practice as the starting point for understanding humanitarian aid. This would require a shift in current academic approaches, where discussions on humanitarian aid usually start from the level of principles rather than practice. It is argued that accounts of the everyday practices and dilemmas faced by NGOs help to counterbalance blind expectations, expose uncritical admiration, and put unrealistic critiques into perspective.

As Tony Vaux points out in his Guest Editorial in this issue, the concept of humanitarianism applies to both war and general disaster, and is based on the principle that ‘in extreme cases of human suffering external agents may offer assistance to people in need, and in doing so should be accorded respect and even “rights” in carrying out their functions’. However, policy makers in humanitarian agencies, and aid workers on the ground, face a bewilderingly complex set of challenges in determining such ‘rights’. Gone are any comfortable certainties about what in the commercial sector is known as ‘the licence to operate’, and claims to the moral high ground of ‘neutrality’ have an increasingly hollow ring. Perhaps more to the point, such assumptions are of little practical use to frontline workers who may risk ambush, abduction, deportation, or even their lives as the result of their professional activities. Nor do outdated road maps help relief agencies to orient their decisions on whether to withdraw or continue providing material assistance in the knowledge that a proportion of it is fuelling the violence or lining the pockets of conflict profiteers. There are no standard ‘off-the-peg’ answers, because each situation must be considered on its own merits. And of course no aid agencies share an identical mandate, or have precisely the same expertise or history of involvement with the affected population – all factors that must be weighed up in deciding what is the appropriate course of action. For reasons of space, we have not sought to cover the areas of early warning, prevention, and mitigation associated with ‘natural’ disasters, although of course the two are always linked, as became very clear in wake of the Asian tsunami in Aceh and Sri Lanka. It has long been recognised that since catastrophic events disproportionately affect the poor and marginalised, they expose and may intensify existing social divides and structural injustice. For instance, in his seminal work on the 1943 Bengal famine, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (OUP, 1984) Amartya K Sen argued that such food shortages do not occur in functioning democracies. Similarly, Roger Plant's, Guatemala: Unnatural Disaster (Latin America Bureau, 1978) showed how the 1974 earthquake triggered an intensification in state violence that was to result in the death or disappearance of 200,000 Guatemalans and create ‘a nation of widows and orphans’. In accordance with the focus of this issue, we have given priority to publications and organisations that reflect on some direct involvement in humanitarian endeavour, rather than giving priority to more policy-oriented or scholarly works or academic institutions. We have included literature on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, since this was such a defining event for humanitarianism; and some recent publications concerning the US-led invasions of Afghanistan in October 2001 (‘Operation Enduring Freedom’) and Iraq in March 2003 (‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’), since these have significantly redefined the global landscape of policy and practice within which humanitarian agencies operate. Inevitably we can offer only a glimpse of the growing literature in these fields, but we hope in so doing that readers, and particularly those directly involved in humanitarian endeavours, will be encouraged to explore the issues further.

One could be forgiven for concluding from the current debate that the ‘protection of civilians’ is something ‘done to’ the passive recipients of international largesse. Whether the macro-level interventions of the UN Security Council or micro-level attempts to reduce the negative side effects of relief action, those in need of protection are rarely seen as key players in their own futures. Although this type of external intervention can be valuable, it is a far from complete picture of how people manage to survive the effects of conflicts. This vision of protection seriously underestimates the resourcefulness of people who have no choice and in so doing misses opportunities to help communities as they are forced to adapt to their new realities. Effective humanitarian action will thus not only focus on the actions of those with a responsibility to protect, but will also support and strengthen the rational decisions that people themselves take to be ‘safe’ in conflict.

Humanitarianism and politics are more often than not considered distinct despite the increasing complexity of contemporary conflict. In some cases the separation is pushed too far and leads to unintended consequences. This article highlights the specifics of the flight of one renegade soldier and some 300 of his men to Rwanda, while the international community was plotting the road map for an ideal solution that everybody could have signed up to. This did not happen, and the article studies what caused the relevant parties to forfeit such a solution and makes recommendations for how to improve coordination and complementarity in international operations involving a range of actors.

The humanitarian aid sector faces a growing skills shortage, at a time when it aspires to expand the scale, quality, and impact of its response to humanitarian needs. Rapid staff turnover has been pinpointed as one of the major constraints on both staff capacity building and organisational learning. A study undertaken for Oxfam GB (OGB) supports previous findings that traditional human resource practices in the humanitarian field, with many staff employed on short-term contracts, have inhibited skills development as well as programme and organisational learning.

Scaling-up local innovations in natural resource management (NRM) involves learning that is centred around three themes: promoting local-level innovation, understanding why local innovations work in specific contexts, and reflecting on their relevance in other geographical and social contexts. Successful scalin- up depends in part upon the relationships among multiple stakeholders at different levels around this learning. The experiences of researchers supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) provide insights into four questions: What is scaling-up? Why scale-up? What to scale-up? and How to scale-up? The authors propose that scaling-up is a multi-stakeholder process consisting of five components including: framing the context, promoting participation, fostering learning, strengthening institutions, and disseminating successful experiences. Key bottlenecks to scaling-up are the absence of open communication and the mutual recognition among stakeholders of each other’s rights, responsibilities, and roles.

Fair Trade has become a dynamic and successful dimension of an emerging counter-tendency to the neo-liberal globalisation regime. This study explores some of the dilemmas facing the Fair Trade movement as it seeks to broaden and deepen its impact among the rural poor of Latin America’s coffee sector. We argue that the efforts to broaden Fair Trade’s economic impact among poor, small-scale producers are creating challenges for deepening the political impact of a movement that is based on social justice and environmental sustainability. The study is based on two years’ research and seven case studies of Mexican and Central American small-scale farmer cooperatives producing coffee for the Fair Trade market.

Following the Renamo/Frelimo conflict and the 1992 Rome Accord ending hostilities, the Christian Council of Mozambique undertook to remove arms from the civilian population by trading them for development tools. The weapons were given to artists associated with a collective in the capital, Maputo. The weapons were cut into pieces and converted to sculptures that subsequently focused international attention on the Tools for Arms project, or TAE (Transformação de Armas em Enxadas). While succeeding in drawing attention to the proliferation of arms among civilians, and collecting a considerable number of arms and munitions, the project encountered difficulties in relating the production of art to the overall initiative. This paper examines the aspect of the project that produced art from weapons, with insights and observations based on fieldwork conducted for CUSO and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Gender mainstreaming was established in the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action as a major strategy for the promotion of gender equality. As a development strategy, gender mainstreaming requires attention to gender perspectives, making them visible and showing the links between gender equality and the achievement of development goals. To evaluate gender mainstreaming in development projects and programmes requires a squaring of evaluation criteria such as relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability, with gender mainstreaming indicators at both project and programme level. This paper suggests a framework for evaluating development interventions from a gender-mainstreaming perspective, with a view to integrating gender perspectives in every phase of the project cycle.

While development cooperation can cause or exacerbate conflicts, withholding aid is not the solution. The issue is how to provide aid in a manner that prevents conflict, so as to achieve sustainable peace. This Practical Note examines how NGOs have prevented and managed conflicts arising from water projects in Ethiopia. The legal framework and institutional settings in that country leave little room for manoeuvre for NGOs, so their scope for adopting a conflict-preventive approach lies mainly in being more sensitive and being non-confrontational yet firm in their style of communication. Different funding conditions, and a more conducive legal framework, are fundamental to increasing NGOs’ effectiveness in preventing conflict.

Collaboration has become a watchword for development practitioners and theorists. Yet collaboration or partnerships between academics and community-based researchers and activists have often proved difficult. This is particularly true for partnerships with smaller, grassroots community researchers, who are generally less resourced than their academic partners. This paper focuses on such partnerships in gender research, with the aim of reflecting on past problems as well as successes in order to develop strategies for making such projects more truly collaborative, rather than a minefield of broken promises and unspoken (and sometimes spoken) resentments.

Decades of development practice suggest the fundamental importance of improving aid-delivery systems and stakeholder competence in order to improve the well-being of poor people. However, it is questionable whether the aid system is able to change its attitudes and values through such partnerships in a way that will do this. This paper suggests that for this change to be possible, processes of individual, organisational, and inter-organisational learning have to be encouraged, in ways that do not sacrifice the knowledge obtained by aid workers in the processes of global management. The paper explores procedures of bilaterally funded community education projects in Ghana, in order to give insights into the working of partnership arrangements as a means to contribute to the alleviation of global poverty. Critical instances from the case study projects reveal the ways in which learning is facilitated, used, ignored, and hindered as the organisational relations develop.

There are a number of serious ethical challenges and problems posed in conducting development research in a poor country. It is argued here that the best way to ensure that research is ethical is to apply three foundation principles. By focusing on self-determinism, non-malfeasance, and justice and beneficence, it is possible to avoid the risks of an unethical, pro-forma approach. This paper discusses the particular challenges of applying standard university guidelines on ethical research to conducting social research in Uzbekistan, where to fulfil all these guidelines would prevent the research from taking place. However, by applying the most basic ethical principles, it was possible to design an ethical research project.

This Research Roundup reports on the pilot phase of BRAC’s ‘Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction/Targeting the Ultra Poor Programme’ (CFPR/TUP), which was initiated in three of the poorest districts of northern Bangladesh (Nilphamari, Rangpur, and Kurigram) in January 2002. The authors find a close link between the initial conditions of the programme participants and the degree of change they have experienced in their lives since its inception, with the most vulnerable reporting the least change. Some modifications to the CFPR/TUP are recommended.

This Practical Note examines the design and implementation of Community-Driven Development (CDD) programmes, using the Kecamatan Development Programme (KDP) and the Urban Poverty Programme (UPP) in Indonesia as case studies. Launched in 1998, both have been praised as successful twin CDD pilots, allowing community groups to gain control over financial resources and decision-making processes. Despite similarities, the paper finds that different CDD approaches have been adopted, for various reasons. By exploring the rationales and trade-offs of these different approaches, the paper offers deeper insights into how CDD principles can be translated into local practices.

Aid agencies provide significant funding for research that is directed at socio-economic development. These agencies typically require out-of-country (OC) researchers to work with in-country (IC) researchers on such projects. Moreover, building the research capacity of IC researchers is often an important objective. This paper is written from the perspective of an OC researcher engaged in building the research capacity of IC researchers.

This article argues for a combination of long-term engagement in providing security, culminating in training and mentoring of new security forces; a comprehensive approach to reintegrating ex-combatants that also benefits civilian host communities and helps to ensure that agricultural livelihoods are made viable; and the opening of a space for discussion of governance issues and revenue distribution that is supported by a revenue-collection trusteeship that takes some of the key areas of economic pillage out of the purview of the state and deposits state revenues transparently into the state's coffers, leaving it to a new breed of Liberian politicians to emerge.

A critical review of five contrasting publications on peace building, including the 2004 UN report A More Secure World.

The overarching challenge facing the growing number of international peace-building interventions is to achieve sustainable peace. This paper illustrates this proposition through a brief investigation of the situation in East Timor as the UN mission withdraws at the five-year state-building mark, and in Haiti as a ninth UN mission is established. Adopting the view that participatory democratic governance will best ensure long-term peace, the paper maintains that to build sustainable peace requires transformation on three inter-related fronts: (a) transformation of the society from one that resorts to violence to one that resorts to political means to resolve conflict, requiring that the elite negotiate and that there should be widespread social dialogue and reconciliation; (b) reform of the governance framework to seek to ensure both that a negotiated governance arrangement between parties prevents future conflict and the adoption of basic democratic governance; and (c) the creation of meaningful institutions that will be sustainable after the mission leaves. These institutions cannot be imposed from outside, but must be bodies that are able to perform their core function and are committed to doing so.

In English only

This article focuses on the debate about the developmental impact of migration on the sending countries. Throughout the post-World War II period, temporary labour migration has been promoted as a path to development. Remittances have grown to rival or surpass official development assistance and have increased living standards in the sending countries. However, the evidence over time is that the remittances do not lead to development or even to higher incomes that are sustainable without further migration. Some determinedly temporary labour migration schemes offer promise. But where the pattern of migration and remittances locks into a semi-permanent arrangement (the standard line is `There's nothing more permanent than "temporary" migration'), then this may be a developmental trap for the South whereby, in a semi-permanent `3 D's Deal', the South foregoes self-development in favour of being a long-range bedroom community to supply the labour for dirty, dangerous, and difficult jobs in the North.

This paper reports on a collaborative research project that shows how participatory social research can be used as a strategy for combating social exclusion. The Crime Prevention Partnership Project brought together dominant and disempowered groups to explore social issues of mutual concern and identify potential solutions. Indigenous Australian undergraduate students played a central role in this project, working with the police as customer service trainees and with the university as members of a project research group. This project became an opportunity to train and empower new researchers who, as people from disadvantaged groups, brought their own knowledge, concerns, and worldviews to a research process that they helped design and carry out themselves. The result was a learning process for all involved, referred to here as multidirectional empowerment. It led to tangible bridge building between mainstream, powerful institutions and a disadvantaged community. The project process offers a model for using participatory research as a framework in which to address development issues.

Kenya is not yet a major emigration country, but emigration of Kenyan professionals and technicians is increasing in importance. Kenyans and those with links to Kenya living abroad are a potentially important resource for national development. It is thus useful to examine the various ways in which this potential can be more effectively realised. The paper first discusses the patterns and impact of emigration before exploring the different ways in which the contribution of Kenyans abroad can be enhanced. It then puts forward proposals for priority action to implement the suggested initiatives.

Global workers' remittances have grown noticeably in recent years. Remittances are now a key macroeconomic factor in many developing countries, representing an increasingly large percentage of total monetary inflows. For many developing countries, remittances are comparable to or greater than total export earnings, official development assistance (ODA), and foreign direct investment (FDI). Remittance flows are also more progressive than these other international flows as they more equally distributed. The relative volume of this resource and its sharp increase over the past decade makes remittances increasingly significant in terms of development. Focusing in Nicaragua, this paper reviews the increasing importance of remittances and examines their potential to bring positive development outcomes to developing countries.

Total remittances from migrant workers (US$80bn in 2003) significantly outstrip the total amount of overseas development assistance (US$55bn in the same year). Many conclude that such remittances make a positive contribution to development in the global South. However, the experiences of women health-care workers and migrants contradict easy and hopeful assumptions about the positive effects of migration. Further, the more economistic analyses of the benefits of migration do not subtract its gendered and social costs when calculating labour savings in the North or income from remittances in the South.

Non-formal education often represents a last chance for adolescent girls who do not attend school to receive some education to improve their health before they become mothers. This paper describes the development of a literacy and health education curriculum for adolescent girls in southern Malawi who will never enter formal schooling. The curriculum was redefined in the light of participants’ feedback and providers’ observations. The health messages could effect change but would have had limited impact on girls’ health practices without the participation of the wider community. The curriculum’s innate visibility ‘under the trees’ was a key factor in facilitating villagers’ involvement and exponential learning.

This paper investigates how, why, and when community-based strategies are effective in promoting corporate accountability (CA) to the poor. It argues that mainstream approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) underestimate the importance of power in the relationship between corporations and the communities in which they invest, which limits their applicability to many developing country contexts in particular. In addressing this neglect, the article draws on literatures on power, accountability, and citizen participation in order to analyse 46 cases where communities have attempted to hold corporations to account for their social and environmental responsibilities. The paper argues that more attention should be paid to a number of state-, corporation-, and community-related factors, which are found to be key to the effectiveness of strategies aimed at enhancing CA to the poor.

Economic issues associated with poverty are complex and require holistic responses in order to realise the goals of sustainable development. While business alone may have significant economic impacts, the link between business-level behaviour and macro-level development aspirations is unclear. By developing a sound grasp of how companies understand and manage these impacts, we are better placed to understand how corporate responsibility clusters, or partnerships with other companies, civil society organisations, and governments, can harness corporate impacts to deliver qualitatively better sustainable development outcomes at the macro level.

A corporation has only limited ability to create social capital through philanthropic activity, and in the context of a decline in official aid, the corporate sector is increasingly assuming a de facto developmental role. The presence of social capital assists communities in moving towards sustainable development and may contribute to the business case for corporate- community partnerships. While it is not the role of corporations to deliver social services, their ability to enhance social capital by partnering with community organisations can both contribute to development and work to their own commercial advantage. Such partnerships, whether philanthropic or commercial, will be more effective if delivered through balanced and transparent relationships with community organisations that help to create social capacity at the local level.

In the corporate world, design has received increasing attention over the last 50 years and is now firmly embedded within almost all aspects of corporate activity. This article explores the role of design in development. Design is widely used and understood, within capitalist economies, to denote a diverse set of tools, used to maximise market share, sales, and profits, and support market differentiation and brand identity of products. The progress of two convergent design-related threads is briefly charted: the growth, since 1950, of a view that design has a real contribution to make to social responsibility and sustainability; and the increasing evidence of design-like skills being used in development contexts. The article reviews several alternative models that are being developed and concludes with a number of short case studies, which illustrate these models and highlight the potential of their largely process-based methodologies for private sector activity in a development context.

Since the mid-1980s, aid agencies have endorsed the need to support the development of private enterprise in low-income countries as an instrument for overall economic development and poverty reduction. Facilitated collaboration between firms in industrialised and developing countries has become one of the most popular forms of assistance in this endeavour. Although such collaborations vary in design, they all involve third-party organisations that identify partners and sponsor the first steps in the establishment of a business platform for the cooperation. This paper discusses the mechanisms involved in such facilitation and assesses the effectiveness of the catalyst institutions in nurturing collaboration between companies in industrialised and developing countries. The discussion is illustrated with case studies drawn from Ghana.

Since the 1990s, development agencies and international institutions have promoted private-sector involvement in infrastructure, assuming that this would inject both investment and efficiency into the under-performing public sector. In the water and energy sectors, these expectations have not been fulfilled. Private-sector investment in developing countries is falling, multinational companies have failed to make sustainable returns on their investments, and the process of privatisation in water and energy has proved widely unpopular and encountered strong political opposition. This paper examines the role of this opposition in delaying, cancelling, or reversing the privatisation of water and energy. Local civil society has successfully mobilised highly effective political activity, its opposition being based on the perceived conflicts between privatisation and equity, and over the role of the state and community in these sectors. Such opposition has involved dynamic interactions with existing political parties and structures, including the use of existing electoral and judicial mechanisms. Its success poses challenges for the multilateral and donor community, NGOs, the opposition campaigns themselves, and the future of national systems of electricity and water.

This article is concerned with the question of whether participation in the global economy leads to sustainable income growth. It examines the furniture industry of Central Java, which has grown rapidly since the financial crisis in 1997. The article shows that the exporting small and medium-sized enterprises generated substantial employment and income growth. However, this growth is not sustainable because the viability of exports has become dependent on wood which is logged illegally and risks depletion. Government and donor projects aimed at small enterprises risk driving these enterprises deeper into the race to the bottom. The article then discusses ways to avoid this, stressing the need for a coalition of public and private actors along the local-global axis.

In the last two decades, the private sector has been placed under intensifying pressure to ensure it operates in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. Companies have moved through various phases of response, starting with a `deny and defend' position, moving to `paying penance' through donations and philanthropy, and currently settling on risk management through mitigating the negative impacts of their business operations. Drawing on research undertaken by Oxfam International mainly in the retail sector, as well as in the coffee and pharmaceutical sector, this article argues that the current approach is, as yet, inadequate. Simply mitigating negative impacts through castigating intermediaries or suppliers does not contribute to sustainable solutions. For the private sector to meet corporate social responsibility pledges, companies need to pursue alternative business models that forge connectivity, coherence, and interdependence between their core business operations and their ethical and environmental commitments.

The debate among NGO and union activists about how to improve working conditions and labour rights has been dominated by proponents of specific approaches, arguing variously that the best route is through company codes, legislation, organisation of workers, or sweatshop-style campaigning. This article describes a campaign by NGOs and trade unions that integrates these approaches to improve the labour rights and conditions of UK homeworkers. Its `change model' is to seek changes in company behaviour as part of a strategy to strengthen legislation while also exploring the opportunities and mechanisms for leveraging change in (company) practices and (government) policies: the susceptibility of brand-name companies to campaigning creates an opportunity to leverage changes in their practices; campaigning (threatened or actual) invigorates, and should underpin, engagement with retailers and brand-name companies on the implementation of voluntary codes; and the establishment of a `level playing-field' dynamic means that companies meeting higher standards can become allies in advocating better corporate practices and labour legislation. International development NGOs, with their ability to campaign, engage with brand-name companies, and work alongside unions and workers' organisations across the North-South divide, are uniquely placed to facilitate such integrated strategies.

The global garment-manufacturing industry will confront significant changes from 2005, when the system of quotas established under the Multi-Fibre Agreement comes to an end. These changes pose serious threats to jobs in the Central American assembly plants, or maquila industry. One possibility, however, is that `politically correct' consumption could provide a niche market for firms that are committed to corporate social responsibility and the respect for human rights, and that this might even be a way to improve working conditions in the region. In this sense, notwithstanding the grave risks it represents for the very poorest, the market could serve to bring about changes favourable to working people.

The movement to promote sustainably produced coffee is one of many efforts aimed at linking social responsibility and market capitalism. In the wake of a worldwide coffee crisis in which prices have fallen to levels that do not support small-scale production or living wages for plantation workers, non-profit certifying and labelling organisations are working to develop a market that is sustainable for workers and the environment. They seek to influence cultural and political values in such a way that consumers and corporations in the North will have to respond to them by incorporating the welfare of Southern workers and ecosystems into their purchasing decisions. This paper discusses and evaluates current strategies to link producers and consumers within this movement, all of which involve a great deal of education. It argues that partnerships between businesses and NGOs are essential for broadening the corporate base of the market for fairly traded coffee and promoting norm change among consumers, and discusses the challenges and opportunities that such partnerships create.

This paper addresses the introduction of a public-private partnership (PPP) for water provision in urban Congo. It describes the organisational context before and after PPP and discusses the various outcomes of the partnership, both positive and negative. Despite some promising early results, the PPP arrangements did not develop as planned and the private enterprises ran into financial problems. The role of the political environment in compromising the potential benefits of PPP was important, and the article closes with some policy recommendations in light of Congo's ongoing negotiations with the international financial institutions to secure their assistance for new economic reforms.

Radical approaches to introduce public-private partnerships (PPPs) for infrastructure provision in South Asia have been largely unsuccessful. Yet the region is home to a thriving informal private sector and several regional NGOs have become engaged in efforts to involve communities in improved infrastructure provision. Many line agencies and local authorities have devolved some responsibilities for service delivery to the private sector through small-scale service and management contracts. This paper explores the possibilities for expanding and building on these activities, bearing in mind institutional factors, including both organisational structures and the attitudes and assumptions of the various stakeholders. Particular attention is paid to the options for regulating the private sector and the balance to be struck between encouraging competition and promoting improved stakeholder cooperation. Options for moving to `higher' forms of PPP are considered, and brief concluding remarks summarise key findings and suggest some possible directions for the future.

Stakeholder dialogue, participation, and partnership have become mainstream concepts in international development policy, in particular in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, the accountability of multi-stakeholder initiatives on CSR to their intended beneficiaries in the global South is increasingly questioned. This paper looks at how the agendas of some initiatives in the areas of ethical trade and sustainability reporting are driven by what Western NGOs push for, what large companies consider feasible, and what consultants and accountants seek to provide. It describes how the resulting practices and discourse restrict change and marginalise alternative approaches developed by Southern stakeholders. It is argued that enthusiasm for stakeholder dialogue, participation, and partnership in CSR matters, and beyond, needs to be reconceived with democratic principles in mind. `Stakeholder democracy' is offered as a conceptual framework for this endeavour, and some recommendations are made for NGOs, companies, and governments.

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This article identifies the need for an appropriate methodology for evaluating Fair Trade, given that most evaluations to date have been in-house or commissioned reviews and hence not followed a consistent approach. Focusing on the development aspects of Fair Trade, the article reviews a range of impact evaluation methods and presents a detailed methodology for analysing Fair Trade that incorporates standard project evaluation criteria and is based on a wide range of proven methods for collecting and analysing data, principally qualitative but also quantitative. This framework is a modular package from which practitioners may select according to their needs and means, while still retaining an overarching logic. The article illustrates its use by reference to evaluations undertaken in Costa Rica, Ghana, Nicaragua, and Tanzania. The approach allows for a comprehensive understanding of Fair Trade programmes and enables these to be compared with conventional development projects.

The article discusses the methodology and application of the Key Informant Monitoring (KIM) tool as used by the Nepal Safer Motherhood Project (NSMP). NSMP aims to achieve sustained increase in the uptake of midwifery and essential obstetric care services by addressing, among other things, constraints on access to such services. Data collected by community-based Key Informant Researchers (KIRs), are synthesised and used by NSMP and key project partners for monitoring and planning purposes. NSMP has used KIM findings to modify its main interventions at the local level. International and Nepali NGOs have adopted KIM in their safe motherhood and other development programmes. Village Development Committees, with support from NGOs and NSMP, have responded to issues raised by KIM by running maternal health awareness-raising campaigns, working with traditional healers, improving the quality of care, and facilitating local emergency transport and funding schemes. KIRs have proved effective as sources of information and as change agents, spreading safe motherhood messages to promote behaviour change.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis With the inability of international economic integration to create opportunities for important segments of society, many Mexicans are searching for ways to forge their own alternatives. These strategies are the concrete manifestations of the realisation that the `mainstream' path of the search for proletarian employment is no longer viable and that a return to traditional forms of cooperation, organised around mechanisms for ecosystem management, might offer greater security and a better quality of life. People are finding ways to strengthen their communities, to ensure that their families can remain in the rural areas as part of dynamic communities searching for a new relationship to their regions, and to the nation of which they wish to continue to be a part. The article illustrates this process with an analysis of a project that focuses on creating a new product -low-fat pork- that can command a premium price in the market and in the process contribute to strengthening a community, providing new opportunities for women, and improving environmental management.

Ever more NGOs are dedicated to the eradication of poverty, while various government bodies are also committed to the moral and material progress of the so-called `human family'. However, the record is bleak. The arms trade constitutes a crime against humanity against which NGOs can make little headway. On the contrary, single-issue campaigns, for example on landmines, may in fact distract them from the wider issues. Similarly, through their involvement in humanitarian missions, often mounted mainly to appease the consciences of citizens in the rich world, NGOs may unwittingly be helping to maintain the deeply unjust world order. We need to reflect upon what NGOs actually do, rather than on ways to increase their efficiency, given that NGO actions alone cannot secure human rights. If NGOs do not engage in self-critical reflection, the poor will be always with us, so will NGOs, and the system will not change for the better.

The Royal Kingdom of Bhutan has not only a unique national environment but provides researchers with an opportunity to observe effective development in a relatively uncomplicated and controlled system that is government-led rather than donor-driven. This paper reviews recent progress in Bhutan's development and sees two inhibitors to this seemingly `ideal' situation: first, internal tensions between Drukpa and Nepali ethnic groups; and second, the impact of Bhutan's opening itself up to external influence through media and the Internet, supported by a willing donor community. Future developments in Bhutan could act as a useful barometer for global events.

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Legal reforms are increasingly seen as essential in combating various constraints women face in relation to property and inheritance. These efforts are reinforced by commitments countries have made by adopting such treaties as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and by the incorporation into their constitutions of various Bills of Rights that recognise women's rights. It is expected that such commitments will reduce discriminatory practices and promote the upholding of women's rights. Based on findings of a study on women's property and inheritance rights in Malawi, this paper discusses the role of District Assemblies in the administration and adjudication of women's inheritance claims. It shows that the whole system is a fertile ground for opportunism and contributes significantly to undermining such rights. The paper illustrates that while human rights legislation plays an important role in the upholding of women's rights, the realisation of these entitlements requires that critical attention be paid to the institutions and administrative systems that are responsible for implementation. It is through these operations of the state that people experience law as practice.

The article shares some ideas about community-based natural resource management programmes (CBNRM), which focus on three areas: rural development, nature conservation, and strengthening of local governance. Arguing that the prerequisites of a successful CBNRM programme are a favourable legislative context, a self-defined community, and the absence of basic felt needs, the article discusses the initial experiences of such a programme in Mozambique. It shows the rather slow response of an inland community that has some forest resources, but which is focusing on economic gains with minimum engagement of its own. By contrast, a fishing community was immediately inspired by the programme, organising itself into co-management committees and starting to use its already over-fished resources sustainably. The two cases show that CBNRM programmes are not universal blueprints but have to be adapted to each specific situation.

Since March 2000, in partnership with the Women's Centre of Montreal and other units at Montreal universities, McGill's Centre for Developing-Area Studies has carried out an action-research programme on gender and human security issues in the context of war and reconstruction. Our interdisciplinary team of researchers and activists has been working locally with women refugees, asylum-seekers, and immigrants from various countries experiencing armed conflict, and internationally with women's organisations primarily in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Combining human security - the protection of civilians across borders - and gender - the different ways in which women and men are affected -- allows us to analyse the impact of gender inequality on the continued insecurity in war-torn societies. Our action-research in a community - university alliance addresses the personal needs (especially untreated trauma) and rights of women while also examining the socio-economic and political context of violent conflicts.

This article examines the role of state in the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme in the northern province of Haryana in India. In the past two decades, significant developments pertaining to institutional reforms in promoting community - state partnerships in protecting and managing forests have been undertaken in the province. By reviewing the experiences in management of water- harvesting structures and lease of forest area to local communities, the article demonstrates that the adoption of `joint management' rhetoric does not guarantee successful partnerships at the field level. The implementation of the programme calls for a radical re-definition of the role of the state in order to establish credible commitments to the local communities in terms of both policy and practice.

This article explores the implementation of Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour in the mining sector in Burkina Faso. It highlights key lessons from a project funded by DFID and Save the Children UK and implemented by COBUFADE, a Burkinabe NGO. Children were found to be important and capable actors in the fight against child labour, notably in research and lobbying, and the article explores the role that civil society can play in taking local voices to national policy makers and in linking the different actors implicated in Convention 182.

In order to take up the challenge of responding to the thought-provoking insights found in The Selfish Altruist (Vaux 2001), the author brings together some of the threads in the book and combines them with her own psychological approaches to increasing self-awareness in order to put forward specific suggestions as to how personal development and self-awareness could be enhanced for both aid agency managers and frontline workers.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. This paper examines the excesses of the `audit culture' in relation to North-South development NGO partnerships. It argues that the focus on documentation needs to be reduced, and greater faith placed on personal interaction and judgement between Northern and Southern development NGO partners. In some circumstances, this is a strategy that can encourage more rigorous monitoring and accountability practices, which are able to move beyond a problematic focus on quantifiable targets. The paper draws attention to similar debates over the public sector in the UK, and the problems associated with micro-management in a culture of distrust.

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This paper reviews the lessons of democratic decentralisation in Madhya Pradesh (MP), a poor and semi-feudal Indian state that emerged as a leader and bold experimenter in institutional design in the 1990s. Despite inauspicious beginnings, political leadership in MP set out to use decentralisation as a lever to expand and improve basic service delivery. The architects of the MP strategy were fully aware of the social and economic constraints, but they believed that through careful design, proper support to build social capital, and the achievement of early successes, the initiative could unlock powerful forces for community development. This article focuses on two initiatives, one to improve access to school and another to promote direct democracy at the village level. The authors find that, while the first phase of decentralisation has resulted in some significant improvements, especially in the area of education, the second stage has been far less successful.

Since Ghana's decentralisation process began in the early 1990s, government officials as well as international aid agencies and NGOs have engaged in efforts to enhance attention to women's concerns and improve gender sensitivity in development processes at the local level. This article looks at three collaborative projects between international development organisations and district assemblies throughout Ghana to promote gender sensitivity and increase the representation of women in local governance. Though, as the author suggests, it is still too early to assess whether such initiatives have succeeded, it is also clear that decentralisation efforts need to be accompanied by adequate resources and appropriate institutional support and capacity building if they are to make a difference.

This overview draws on selected theoretical and empirical works to explore the links between decentralisation and democracy and their impact on participation and empowerment at the local level. Understanding decentralisation as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, the author argues that its potential benefits can be realised only when complementary policies and specific national or local conditions are in place. In addition, it is also important to strike a balance between the local, regional, and national levels of government so as to protect local autonomy while also promoting a reasonable level of uniformity across regions. The essay draws from the author's fieldwork in Mozambique as well as decentralisation experiences in other developing countries.

The author highlights the contributions of four Latin American thinkers and activists in relation to communication for social change. Arguing that development activities are about communicating on various levels, and are deeply embedded in the cultures of those involved, involving significant inter-cultural issues. The author draws on his own extensive experience in these fields, and distils a set of principles and lessons for wider application.

NGOs and social activists run the risk of following the policy directions favoured by foreign donor agencies to the detriment of their own organisational and moral capacity to act in solidarity with those whose interests they claim to support. With specific reference to Tanzania, the author argues that while NGOs readily take action to protect their own interests, they do not consistently stand up for the basic freedoms of working people. In a unipolar era, which holds that the age of politics and international solidarity is over, it is vital for NGOs and other social activists to keep alive the belief that an alternative to the existing world is both necessary and possible.

Children under the age of 18 years represent the largest group of the poor in Uganda (62 per cent). Their perspective has not, to date, been incorporated in the many poverty analyses which have been conducted. The survey reported in this paper asked children between the ages of 10-14 years about their perceptions of poverty, and also about the effectiveness of local government in addressing issues of concern to them. The survey found that children have a different perspective on poverty from that of the adult key informants consulted in our sample; they have a positive view of their own potential role in mitigating poverty, and are highly critical of the current performance of local government.

Issues related to democratic restructuring and citizenship at the municipal level in Latin America have been the subject of increasing interest and debate among scholars and development practitioners in recent years. This study investigates how international cooperation may facilitate enhanced citizen participation in local-level decision making in the region through examination of a specific Canadian-sponsored linking project involving the cities of Charlesbourg, Quebec (Canada) and Ovalle (Chile). The study presents a relatively optimistic account of the role which innovations transferred as a result of this project have played in enhancing citizen involvement in local government. At the same time, it suggests that any such gains may be limited and must be viewed within the larger politico-administrative context in Latin America and attendant factors restricting the establishment of a broad democratic culture at the local level.

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Project monitoring and evaluation in Africa have traditionally depended on the `expert' knowledge of `professional' evaluators to develop so-called SMART indicators. But this expert knowledge has not permeated the various implementing agencies - which include communities themselves. The result has been sporadic and unreliable data and weak monitoring and evaluation frameworks. In Zimbabwe, these difficulties have inhibited the development and establishment of a social statistical database. One weak area of social statistics is information on children. Since 1995, UNICEF Zimbabwe has worked with communities to produce up-to-date and relevant statistics through projects such as the Sentinel Site Surveillance Survey and more recently the development of a village register that will contain simple but vital programme indicators. This paper seeks to document and highlight the thinking on these exercises and the challenges faced by both UNICEF and the communities thus far.

Throughout the world, deeply entrenched barriers exclude women from meaningful participation in socio-economic and political activities. This is not merely an issue of fairness and equality. It has been argued that by expanding women's opportunities, society as a whole would simultaneously be strengthened and this would enhance broader development prospects. Recently, a wide variety of international initiatives have been developed to expand women's opportunities. One such programme is the funding of heifer projects for women. Using data from the Red Cross, this study examines the potential of heifer projects to expand women's opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper examines participatory processes in an Asian Development Bank (ADB) technical assistance package in Thailand's water resources sector. The authors analyse various levels of social interaction in the local community, in meso-level stakeholder consultations, and in opposition to ADB's environment programmes expressed by civil society organisations. While participatory approaches are employed to promote more bottom-up management regimes in water resources, the authors find that local power and gender differences have been overlooked. Evolving institutions of resource governance are constituted by gender, reproducing gender inequalities such as regarding water intended for agricultural use as a `male' resource. Finally, it is argued that understandings and practices of participation legitimise particular agendas especially in a politically polarised arena.

The May 2000 coup in Fiji prompted a flight of capital from the country's garment industry. As workers lost their jobs, attention turned away from improving wages and conditions to retaining garment factory jobs in the country. What can feminist researchers contribute in a climate of high capital mobility that prohibits organising for a living wage? This paper applies Amartya Sen's idea of women's `fallback positions' in relation to their husbands to an exploration of women's `marriage' to capital. An exploration of the lives of women garment factory workers beyond the workplace reveals the potential to enhance women's negotiating power in relation to their employers - by boosting women's individual and collective assets, their access to support from state and NGOs, to other income-earning means, and to social support systems upon which to call for assistance.

Mainstreaming of HIV/AIDS is not just about adapting NGO programmes, but involves adapting partnerships. Working in a context of high HIV/AIDS prevalence has a considerable organisational impact on implementing NGOs. As staff, or relatives of staff, fall sick there is more time off work, declining work performance, increased medical costs, and extra training and recruitment costs. Simply to maintain capacity, NGOs will have to invest in changes to their staff planning, training and awareness programmes, health policies, and financial management. It will necessarily cost more money to achieve the same work output and these activities will have less impact (as a proportion of beneficiaries may also be sick and dying). Providing effective support for NGO partners affected by HIV/AIDS therefore has major and difficult implications for donors, particularly at a time when their own back-donors are demanding visible `value-for-money'. Mainstreaming into partnerships requires that both partners change - can we rise to this professional and moral challenge?

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This essay reviews the often heated controversies unleashed by the 2002 publication of Globalization and its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and recipient of the2001 Nobel Prize for Economics. His critique of IMF policies and other economic orthodoxies, particularly in Russia and South Asia, has since come to be accepted more widely among mainstream economists. The author argues, however, that while Stiglitz is sympathetic to some of the arguments made by the so-called `anti-globalisation' movement, his views are far from the radical end of the spectrum.

This work presents a product development methodology for use with indigenous rural workers. It is based on the revival of cultural and social values, with a focus on the conservation of natural resources. Illustrated by the case of Mixtec craftswomen in Mexico, this paper shows how poor groups can improve their living conditions through innovation and the diversification of their products. The process combines techniques of product development based on marketing, with a participatory focus and continuous improvement, in order to develop a unique and high-quality product that can be more successfully marketed. The craftswomen are now able to plan their production and can evaluate and commercialise their products.

This paper explores the development issue of democratisation from a gendered perspective, emphasising the need to look for the building blocks of democracy within civil society sectors where women play a key role. Chilean and Argentinean women prove an important example for sustainable political development through their roles as Mothers, particularly in the 1980s in the movements to protest political disappearances. The author seeks to demonstrate how these women's practical endeavours have made them an indispensable ingredient in the achievement of real democratic development at the grassroots level, and how they serve as a model for policy makers in developing countries elsewhere.

Social researchers continue to grasp for critical factors that foster or impede the development of social capital. This article highlights some of these factors based on an investigation of a low-income urban settlement in Guatemala. Community activists and leaders, elected representatives, regional government service providers, local residents, NGO directors and staff, and other key informants living and working within the designated locality indicated a complex and diverse range of social, cultural, political, and economic issues that contributed to low levels of `broad-based' social capital. Long-standing fears related to violence and corruption within a historically top-down, authoritarian state were the most significant factors impeding social capital, social organising, and civic participation. Northern-led service-providing NGOs in the area also curbed `broad-based' social capital by fostering dependency through intervention strategies that were external, top-down, non-participatory, and not community based.

Although participatory research methodologies have been widely advocated, most projects do not involve the radical reversal of approach implied. Though defined in theory, participatory research is hard to implement and more precise description is therefore required at the practical level. Here, we describe a participatory research project on agroforestry tree domestication undertaken in the Meru area of Kenya. Continuous interaction between participants allowed the project to evolve from a tree species suitability test, to a species saturation study, and finally to a perception of tree species diversity survey. By allowing evolution through interaction, research results more relevant to the actual needs of farmers were obtained.

The abrupt closure of the WTO Summit in Cancún in September 2003 without any formal agreement dealt a powerful blow to what had been designated as the ‘development round’ in Doha in 2001—and with it to the promise that the concerns of most interest to developing countries would for the first time take precedence in international trade discussions. In this interview, Adrian Lovett, Campaigns and Communications Director of Oxfam GB, talks about the collapse of the summit and about what the future of international trade negotiations may hold. While in many ways Cancún was a missed opportunity, Lovett also argues that the enhanced assertiveness of developing countries may mean that there is now a better chance that the failed negotiations lead to rules that work for the poor as well as the rich.

The pro-poor agenda sees the dissemination of research findings as fundamental to ensuring that research helps contribute to poverty alleviation. In recent years this has led to a substantial growth in intermediary services, such as ‘infomediaries’ (1), networks and websites. Yet the pathway to, and actual uptake by, the ‘poor’ continues to elude practitioners, researchers and policy-makers alike. This article draws out the key lessons of recent dissemination experience, and sets out a new challenge to maximise research impacts: the support of the poor in exerting their own perspectives (and demand) for knowledge-based services.

Conceived by nurses in the hospital of a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, and inspired by Norwegian People's Aid, the international aid agency of the Australian trade unions was designed to give a genuine material base to solidarity with national liberation struggles. Bridging the difficult division in Australian labour politics between the Catholic Right and the social democratic and pro-Moscow Lefts, Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad (now Union Aid Abroad, APHEDA) was able to channel funds from unions and the Australian government to agriculture, health, and vocational training projects in southern Africa, Eritrea, Palestine, Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Kanaky. Unlike most counterpart organisations in Europe and the USA, its earlier partners were rarely trade unions. In the last decade, emphasis has turned to work with trade unions: on gender equality, literacy, cooperatives, HIV, and occupational and environmental health. Only recently has APHEDA directly supported trade union training in Cambodia, East Timor, and Indonesia, under pressure from Australian unions, who see workers' rights in neighbouring countries as crucial to their own fate. Yet unions in advanced capitalist countries don't spontaneously understand the humanitarian and development needs of countries, such as Papua New Guinea, where waged workers are a small minority of the population. Unionisation is only one part of the solution. The April 2000 Durban congress of the ICFTU called for trade unions to `organise the unorganised', such as informal-sector workers, and to build alliances with NGOs and civil society around shared values. As a trade union NGO, APHEDA is located in the middle of a challenging intersection. Mandated to educate Australian workers on globalisation issues, APHEDA finds itself often more partisan than other international development NGOs in Australia, sometimes more circumspect. With reactionary national governments since the mid 1990s, attacks on union rights, and the increasing share of the Australian aid budget delivered through/to high-profit companies, APHEDA faces decisions about its independence, alliances, direction, and sustainability.

This paper argues that the NGO position on global labour rights is mistaken. NGOs' concerns over race and gender inequalities and their rejection of the primacy of class in today's global, capitalist economy have frustrated the project of incorporating labour rights into the global free trade regime. Trade unions, meanwhile, are one of the few agencies dedicated to dissolving class inequalities, especially between workers in the North and the South. Until NGOs rethink their position on class, trade unions are the only agency capable of pushing the labour rights agenda forward.

In the early 1980s, support for trade unions was a significant component of Oxfam GB's programmes in various parts of the world, most notably Central America and South Africa. In Central America, this was motivated both because organised labour played an important role in popular movements that were pressing for equitable political settlements to the wars ravaging the region, and because unions as such, as well as their members and leaders, were the targets of repression and political violence. This article explores the background to the rise in funding for unions in Honduras, reflects on this experience, and discusses some of the factors that might change a potentially awkward donor-recipient relationship to one of dialogue and solidarity.

Reviewed by Luz María de la Mora, Trade Representative of the Mexican Ministry of Economy at the EU, Brussels

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Trade unions in India work mainly with workers in formal employment, particularly in the public sector. However, most people in India work in the informal economy, and their needs are attended mainly by voluntary agencies or NGOs. Economic globalisation and the policies associated with it are resulting in the increasing informalisation of work; as representatives of working people, unions and agencies alike are being further marginalised. Paradoxically, this situation is encouraging these organisations to overcome the mutual mistrust that has characterised relations between them in the past, and to join forces in order to pool their strengths. This article describes the background and current situation in general terms before presenting a case study of the National Centre for Labour (NCL), an apex body of labour organisations of all kinds working in the informal sector in India. Its members include unions and agencies active among workers in the construction industry, as well as in forestry, fishing, and domestic work. Such collaboration has not only enhanced the effectiveness of both the unions and the agencies, but has also increased the unions' representative character.

The garment and textile factories and assembly plants in the Central American free trade zones, known as the maquila industry, have given rise to new actors on the labour scene, as women's organisations and local monitoring groups now work alongside the traditional trade union sector. Furthermore, some of these new organisations are linked to networks based elsewhere, mainly in the USA and Europe, and are actively involved in transnational campaigns to improve working conditions in the maquila. To date, attempts between trade unions and these new labour actors to collaborate have been disappointing and often characterised by conflict. Challenging the idea that trade unions and NGOs are in competition for the same limited `space', by looking at the relations between trade unions and women organisations, this paper asks whether such conflicts are inevitable, and suggests ways in which the two kinds of organisations could work together to improve the conditions of workers in Central America.

The author describes the evolution of the garment-manufacturing sector in the district of Totonicapán in the Guatemalan highlands, an area long associated with weaving and related skills. Producers have been shrewd in finding ways to take advantage of changes in the global economy, for instance by importing cheaper fabrics from Asia to reduce the cost of the final products. Producers have thus been able to exploit the domestic and regional market niche for lower-cost garments than are available in the department stores, adapting their output to respond to fashions and trends. This adaptability has in turn generated more local employment and wealth among home-based workers and village workers, as well as among townspeople and traders, and a high level of self-employment. Paradoxically, a factor that has contributed to this situation - as opposed to becoming involved in maquila production - is that the failure of unions to organise the workers in the 1960s eventually brought about more equitable relations between the traditional elite and their former employees and a higher level of mutual dependence than exists in the maquila.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. The debate over workplace codes of conduct has created tensions between trade unions and human rights NGOs. These tensions result from the inherent structural differences between interest-driven trade unions and ideals-driven human righst NGOs. The differences play themselves out in how these actors pursue social justice in a globalised economy. Human rights NGOs tend to see codes of conduct as a method to prevent violations, akin to their traditional work on legal reform and human rights monitoring. Trade unions assess codes for their potential to help empower workers, especially to help ensure freedom of association, which will lead to the realisation of participatory rights. In our understanding of human rights as a means of empowerment for vulnerable groups, we argue that the trade union perspective on human rights is a good long-term approach. Short-term successes, such as improving working conditions through outside patronage, seem useful only to the extent they serve this long-term goal.

The proliferation of corporate codes of conduct generates both alliance and tension between trade unions and NGOs that deal with workers' rights in the global economy. Alliance, because trade unions and NGOs share a common desire to halt abusive behaviour by multinational companies and a broader goal of checking corporate power in the global economy. Tension, because unions and NGOs have differing institutional interests, different analyses of problems and potential solutions, and different ways of thinking and talking about social justice in the global economy. There are fears that codes of conduct may be used to undermine effective labour law enforcement by governmental authorities and undermine workers' power in trade unions. The substance behind the rhetoric on this new generation of corporate codes of conduct is certainly open to question. However, this paper argues that, given unions' weak presence in the global assembly line and the rapid-response capabilities of many NGOs, such codes are a valuable asset. Trade unions and NGOs still have more in common with each other than either has with corporations, governments, or international organisations that see free trade and free-flowing capital as the solution to low labour standards. But both need to be clear-eyed about their differences and their proper roles as they navigate the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. Trying to build alliances that span the divide between trade unions and NGOs as well as the divide between the North and the South might seem a utopian task. But this is exactly what an imaginative new generation of organisers from the western hemisphere's labour movements and NGOs are trying to do. This paper analyses two very different efforts working to bridge this `double divide'. The first is a combination of organisations, including unions and NGOs in both North and South, that are focusing on blatant violations of the dignity of workers in apparel export processing zones in the South. This `basic rights complex' has resulted in important victories. A second complex of organisations, also involving unions and NGOs in both North and South, has raised broad macro issues of governance focusing particularly on the anti-democratic character of current proposals for a free trade area of the Americas. Neither of these complexes is without its weaknesses, but each makes it clear that bridging the double divide should be thought of not as a utopian dream but as work in progress.

This paper examines the relationship between workers in the health sector and users of health services as seen through two case studies of trade unions and NGOs working together, one in Malaysia and the other in South Africa. In spite of a history of tensions between these two types of organisations, when they work together effectively, the results can be influential. The Malaysia Citizens' Health Initiative has set up a separate organisation and now has the power to mediate differences between trade unions, NGOs, and the government. The partnership between the Treatment Action Campaign and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in South Africa is providing a unified voice demanding government action on HIV/AIDS.

A comparison of trade unions and NGOs in Iran demonstrates the diverse nature of their activities. Over the last 90 years, trade unions have played important roles in changing the political system in that country. However, unions are largely male- dominated organisations, which explains why some women have begun to organise women's trade unions. This article focuses, however, on the activities of women's NGOs, which are engaged in improving the socio-economic conditions of the most marginalised sectors of society. Their activities are limited and they are not engaged in structural change. However, they are challenging gender-specific access and influence over institutional power, matters that are crucial to the process of democratisation. It is argued that, since many trade unions and NGOs in Iran are strengthening community-based institutions in different ways, their collaboration would have a mutually transformational impact which would turn these organisations into more powerful forces in the process of democratisation.

This article describes the legal frameworks governing trade unions and NGOs in Ukraine, with the latter defined very much as organisations working for the benefit of their members and other citizens sharing the same interests rather than as philanthropic organisations whose mission is to assist others. Trade unions and NGOs are encouraged to collaborate in areas where their interests coincide, and the article describes two recent programmes - one to promote more sport and physical activity among the Ukrainian population in order to address declining health statistics, and the other to address the needs of the growing number of people with disabilities in the country - in which such collaboration has been central.

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This paper draws on five case studies to explore potential benefits and barriers to horizontal networking to promote impact monitoring and assessment of microfinance. Its main aim is to stimulate further discussion of this issue, but it also draws tentative conclusions about factors likely to contribute towards success. In particular, experience from Honduras suggests that network organisations can work most effectively when they facilitate wider use of impact assessment (IA) activities already piloted by a lead member of the network.

Smallholder farmers in developing economies face a range of marketing and exchange problems. This article concerns the organisation of vegetable markets in Ghana, in which transactions are characterised by uncertainty, mistrust and undeveloped buyer-seller relationships. It recommends adopting written standard form contracts to improve buyer-seller exchange and suggests key contractual features. Contracts furnish major advantages over existing verbal agreements by specifying the terms of an agreement by which performance can be measured and improving business attitudes and enhancing moral obligation.

This paper reports on some of the generic findings arising from research being undertaken in the UK, South Africa, and Uganda into the ways in which the management tools currently promoted by official donors are passed down the aid chain, through UK NGOs, to civil society organisations in the South. The increasing competition for donor funds is both squeezing out the smaller NGOs, and also setting an increasingly standardised approach, with the resulting loss in diversity. More disturbingly, NGOs at all levels are increasingly secretive about their own shortcomings, and reluctant to voice their concerns about what is happening, for fear of losing their funding. This environment, and the attitudes it fosters, are not conducive to learning; allow for donor-defined paradigms and priorities to dominate; and threaten to destroy the values and strengths that NGOs can, at their best, bring to development.

In this paper, Asset-based Community Development (ABCD) is presented as an alternative to needs-based approaches to development. Following an overview of the principles and practice of ABCD, four major elements of ABCD are examined in light of the current literature on relevant research and practice. This involves exploring the theory and practice of appreciative inquiry; the concept of social capital as an asset for community development; the theory of community economic development; and lessons learned from the links between participatory development, citizenship, and civil society. The paper outlines how ABCD both reflects and integrates trends in these areas, and stands to benefit from the insights generated from this work.

This paper documents the lessons drawn from several years of practical work with a range of Programme and Project Cycle Management (PPCM) processes and tools. The need for PPCM training, and not simply Logical Framework training, is emphasised, as is the importance of using an experiential training methodology. Institutional ownership of both PPCM tools and approaches are considered to be vital for success. Since so many donors now use PPCM tools, the need for development professionals to have PPCM skills and knowledge is paramount. The value of logframes as a tool to both increase programme/project ownership and communication is highlighted. The importance of thinking outside the boxes of the logframe at the project/programme review stage is also emphasised.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. This essay is organised in terms of several propositions for discussion that link advocacy and research dilemmas. Whether researchers can make a difference to the World Bank requires a broader assessment of whether the campaigns they work with are having an impact. While there have been some spectacular successes in terms of halting or redirecting potentially harmful Bank projects, the longer-term significance of these successes is less clear. As the Banks public discourse becomes more enlightened, the challenge for civil society organisations and researchers is increasingly to highlight contradictions among and lack of compliance with its own policies, and the failure of its loans and projects to achieve their declared aims. This calls for vertical integration or systematic coordination between diverse levels of civil society - from local to provincial, national, and international arenas to monitor the parallel partnerships between the World Bank, national, provincial, and local governments. Finally, a call is made for social development professionals who conduct consultancies for the World Bank to adhere to a code of ethics requiring transparency in their relationships with the communities and social organisations who are the target of their research.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. Today's rapid changes within and outside Northern and Southern NGOs heighten uncertainty about how to meet new challenges and achieve results. In this volatile environment, risk management is a tool for maximising an NGO's opportunities and minimising the dangers to success. It enables NGO decision makers to think strategically all the time.

This article seeks to contribute to the debate on collaboration between national and international NGOs. It argues that it is vital for the development of stable, independent, and viable civil societies that the international NGOs promote a bottom-up approach in their support to and collaboration with local NGOs, especially among those emerging from situations of conflict or other profound social disruptions. From a study carried out in East Timor, the authors conclude that there is a noticeable discrepancy between rhetoric and practice with regard to such support. The multiple challenges to the international NGO community and persist although many years of development work have offered abundant learning opportunities. The authors argue that such challenges are less a question of standards and rules than of basic approach, attitudes, and power relations. They maintain that if international NGOs and the wider international community do not alter their approach, they will suffocate rather than foster the development of a viable and autonomous civil society in the countries in which they operate.

The discourse on social capital continues in the development arena, within which the concept is examined both as a means to an end and as an end in itself. Strengthening social capital begins at the community level. As the linkages become internalised and institutionalised, the networks created offer both state (weak or strong) and citizens a means of encouraging participatory decision making, problem identification, and problem solutions. As the Jamaican example reflects, development in small island states is an iterative process and not top-down. The paper therefore demonstrates the critical use of the concept as a part of the strategising of national development goals.

The role of organising and disseminating knowledge as a global public good has become a major preoccupation of international development organisations. One area in which they are particularly active is support for microfinance programmes in developing countries. More recently, the microfinance `best practices' deposited in, and disseminated by, these international organisations have been associated with social capital. This paper examines the ways in which the notion of social capital is employed to explain the success of microfinance programmes. It argues that various types of social interactions that are generated around successful microfinance operations are randomly called social capital. This means that the presence of social capital does not tell us much about what sort of microfinance programmes, in terms of design and implementation, should be regarded as good practice.

The results of a field study examined in this article show the remarkable success of a reproductive health education and community outreach project in Cambodia that has been implemented by the Ministry of Women's and Veterans' Affairs since 1995, in terms of levels of volunteer activity and impact of the project on increased knowledge and practice in reproductive health issues among the target population. A key to the project's success appears to be its adherence to principles identified, but seldom practised, such as a strong commitment to capacity building at all levels.

The author uses the metaphor of the development practitioner as psychotherapist in order to explore the perverse relationships of dependence and projection that may be fostered between aid agencies and `beneficiaries' unless there is a clear sense on the part of both parties that the ultimate goal is that the latter should take responsibility for analysing their situation and taking appropriate steps to improve it.

Zhuhai was designated a special economic zone (SEZ) as an experimentation point of economic liberalisation. This articles traces the development of the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone from a humble village to a significant economic power in southern China, focusing on industry, trade, education, and logistics.

For more than a decade, resolutions from the UN and the European Commission have highlighted women's suffering during wars, and the unfairness of their treatment upon the return to peace. Yet the injustices and the hypocrisy continue. Women are reified as the peacemakers while they are excluded from peace processes. Women's suffering during war is held up as evidence of inhumanity by the same organisations that accept, if not promote, the marginalisation of women's needs during peacetime. The author reviews the processes through which these phenomena are perpetuated and outlines some ways forward which could help to break these cycles. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives

The Gender Audit (GA) and associated reports and reviews drawn upon in this article enable an evaluation of how far the intervention processes at work in Kosova since 1999 have been inclusive of gender analysis and supportive of women's and girls' needs and interests. This assessment considers the strengths and drawbacks of various attempts to use and implement gender-sensitive projects. The GA was designed to support the emerging feminist reconstructive politics in Kosova. Its findings and recommendations tackle aspects of empowerment, equity, and opportunities, outlining some developments from community activism as well as outcomes of the international administration. By considering developments over a two-year period, it is possible to place issues of equity and opportunities in the context of change over time, with change at local and national levels linked with developing international dialogues. The article analyses local work undertaken by the Kosova Women's Network to overcome violence against women in war and domestic peace, and reviews international work engaged in by the Kosovo [sic] Women's Initiative (KWI). Many Kosovar women (of all ethnicities) do fully acknowledge their community membership, and recognise the risks involved in talking across their differences to achieve everyday security and reconciliation. International reports and reviews such as those produced in 2002 by the UN Secretary-General and UNIFEM on women, war, peace, and security, as well as the review of the KWI, allow an assessment of how dialogues are changing and what the potential impact of such change might be on policy development and implementation. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives

The fact that war changes roles and responsibilities within society, while exposing men and women of all ages and classes to new threats and opportunities, has become increasingly recognised. Civil wars disrupt and destroy civilian life. Men leave, die in combat, are brutalised, lose employment, or resort to despair, violence, or apathy. Women assume enormous burdens of work and all manner of different tasks and responsibilities, lose their security and their protectors, and are victimised and marginalised. Yet few members of peacekeeping missions have any training in dealing with the civilian population, much less the specific issues relating to gender relations. In response to this, a basic training package titled Gender and Peace Support Operations has been designed for use in pre-deployment induction. This article describes the background to its development and outlines how it is expected to be used and evolve in the future. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives

At first glance it would appear that despite women's vital participation in peace-making processes, they are for the most part marginalised or belittled. However, moving away from the idea of women as outsiders and/or victims, we find evidence of their involvement in projects initiated and driven by them and/or in activities in which they work in equal roles alongside men. Many women in conflict areas are advocating and working effectively with approaches to lasting positive peace that transcend traditional male-dominated structures and ideologies. Large numbers of ordinary women, men, and children are working mostly behind the scenes to achieve justice and equality. Women are very much involved but get far less recognition than men. The scale and diversity of largely unacknowledged but effective grassroots peace efforts worldwide, particularly among women, requires much greater recognition by the international community. This article is based on a research project that uses an oral testimony approach and a multicultural perspective to give voice to women working in the field in a wide range of transformational processes. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives

This paper, based on field research in Kabul in February 2002, begins by discussing how women experience war and violent conflict differently from men, in particular by defining different types of violence against women in Afghanistan. Second, by identifying individual Afghan women, as well as women's networks and organisations, I analyse their different coping strategies and the ways in which networking and different forms of group solidarity became mechanisms for women's empowerment. Third, I demonstrate how, throughout Taliban rule, many women risked their lives by turning their homes into underground networks of schools for girls and young women. I argue that, as social actors, they created cohesion and solidarity in their communities. Their secret organisations have already laid the foundation for the building of social capital, which is crucial for the process of reconstruction in Afghanistan. In the final section, I propose that women in Afghanistan, as social actors, are optimistic and willing to participate in the process of reconstruction. As a researcher, I intend to articulate their voice, views, and demands, which I hope will be taken into consideration by policy makers and aid workers. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives

This paper, based on a survey of benefiting and non-benefiting farm households in Uganda's Mpigi district, analyses the Heifer-in-Trust scheme. Although the scheme is intended to alleviate the nutrition and income deficiencies of the poorest rural farmers through dairy production, the actual beneficiaries tend to be the less poor because of the expenses involved. Such is the fate of many development initiatives in which the benefits often do not reach their intended recipients, with the risk of widening the inequality gap. On the other hand, those who did benefit from the scheme, though better off from the start, were found to be very active and enthusiastic, and it was obvious that the scheme had made a significant contribution to dairy improvement. The challenge, then, remains to devise the means by which the poorest farmers can be reached.

The research summarised here addresses the ambiguities and discrepancies of the capacity building dialect within the aid and development industry. Three interrelated themes are found to permeate the capacity building literature, despite diverse ideological persuasions. The appropriation of these themes within the capacity building discourse is subject to critical analysis. A meta-theoretical analysis questions the ability of functionalist constructs of capacity building to reduce poverty or achieve sustainable development. From a community development perspective, equitable social transformation will occur only when the focus of `development' involves strengthening the capacities of all people, communities, and nations to create a just and equitable world.

Through an analysis of how Bangladeshi NGOs have become institutionalised, the author examines patterns of bureaucratisation and professionalisation to argue that NGOs are part of a process of incorporation that mediates opposition to gender and other structural inequalities. Two important tendencies - the growing partnership between NGOs, the state, and donor agencies, and the discursive shift from social welfare and redistribution to individualism, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance - exemplify these processes. The paper shows how institutionalisation, accompanied by the conflation of civil society and NGOs, masks the loss of member-citizens' voices, channelling opposition through NGOs in ways that often compromise their interests.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. This paper reflects critically on issues of North-South collaboration and participatory research arising from a project on participatory and sustainable local-level environmental management in the peri-urban area surrounding Kumasi, Ghana. Rapid immigration, uncoordinated conversion of farmland to housing, intensified resource exploitation, and declining water quality and availability are particular problems there. Collaborative research arrangements with local partners as well as sustained participatory relations with selected village communities were central to this project. More generally, the paper reflects on institutional issues relating to the dichotomy between research and development assistance projects, and their implications for project evaluations.

Decentralisation is a policy feature common to many African countries. Local governance is therefore gaining in relevance, though not yet in clarity. Based on the experience of a development project in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, the article examines the case of local governance in practice, grounding this in a historical analysis and focusing on the relationship between local government and civil society. Through a phased process from experimentation through piloting to lobbying, the PAMOJA project develops interface mechanisms to structure local government - civil society relations at district level. Three actors are identified for the success of the project: the external agent as process facilitator, local champions as change agents, and strategic partners for the lobby component. A successful outcome would ultimately strengthen decentralisation processes.

This paper seeks to understand the human development potential of a lift-irrigation scheme introduced by a development NGO in Western India. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which this micro-level intervention has been able to create conditions for enlarging the choices of the poor. The impact of the intervention, captured at the farm and household level through both conventional and PRA data, is shown to have enhanced the productivity of the land, resulting in improved food security, higher employment, and a significant reduction in distress migration, especially among women. The success of the intervention is attributed to its appropriateness to local needs and to the creation of a suitable institutional mechanism. Given its demonstrated potential, the paper emphasises the need for replicating such interventions more widely.

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This article describes an NGO project intended to empower scheduled caste women working in the silk-reeling industry in India through the provision of microfinance. It documents the impact that the project had on their economic and social status over a period of time and highlights the negative consequences of excluding male relatives from playing any meaningful role. It suggests ways in which the project might have been made more male-inclusive while still empowering women. At the same time, it acknowledges that even if the men's hostility to the project had been overcome, the women's micro enterprises were unlikely to have been viable commercially. This is because the project insisted that the women operate as a group in what was a high-risk area of economic activity, with no clear strategy as to how their work could be sustained.

Microfinance--both credit and savings--has potential to improve the well-being of poor women in developing countries. This paper explores practical ways to achieve that potential. Based on lessons from informal savings mechanisms that women already use, the paper proposes two savings services designed to address the development issues that confront women. The proposals call for safe-deposit boxes and for matched savings accounts for health care or education.

NGOs have played an important role worldwide in trying to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS through achieving behaviour change. NGOs have often been at the fore of innovative changes, influencing government and international programming activities. This paper identifies and analyses the evolution of the HIV/AIDS programmes of one NGO in Thailand over a period of ten years. Three generations of programming are identified both through distinct approaches to this area of work, and also by the changing jargon describing the people the programmes are aimed at.

In 1999, with a view to strengthening the JFM arrangement, the Gujarat State Forest Department, in collaboration with the Aga Khan Foundation, initiated a nodal agency called the JFM cell. Its mandate is to assist in strengthening and expanding JFM in Gujarat by providing training, research, and communication support to the Forest Department (FD) and NGOs. The cell commissioned a study to understand the process of instituting JFM at the village level and the impact of training and communication by the FD and NGOs in this context. This Practical Note is based on the findings of the study conducted by the authors.

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This article proposes Bottom-Up Learning as a normative framework for international NGOs. It explores the common but often unacknowledged disparity between organisational values and mission versus actual practice. The first section of the paper raises the question of organisational learning disorders followed by an exploration of learning organisations and bottom-up learning in particular. A section briefly summarising positive developments in the field is followed by discussions of organisational barriers and possible mitigation techniques. The paper closes with a challenge for international NGOs to take a closer look at their learning capabilities with a view to improving service to communities of need. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections

Learning and knowledge management are crucial capacities for many NGOs. This article attempts to answer such questions as: why is learning seen as so important for NGOs? How do successful NGOs actually learn? And what role do key individuals or leaders play in this process? The article draws heavily on the findings of a study of South Asian NGOs, which suggests that an NGOs ability to learn is dependent on its organisational culture and in particular the development of an internal culture of learning. The case studies from South Asia reveal that the creation of this learning culture derives primarily from the attitude of the leadership towards learning: at the heart of a learning organisation is a learning leader.

Change is driven not only by good ideas, but also by disagreement and frustration. This article takes, the reader through a selective organisational history of the British NGO, ActionAid from 1998 to 2001, looking at events and changes that had a bearing on the introduction and initial impact of the agencys new accountability system. Systematic change appears very unsystematic. Effective transformation took a long time to arrive, and was preceded by a number of failed experiments. It seems that the frustrations of this time were necessary to develop the creativity needed for significant change. The efforts started to bear fruit once the organisation began to realise alignment of mission, structures, procedures, and relationships.

The integration of learning into community development processes and how that learning can stimulate positive change pose challenges that development practitioners have met with mixed success. Who are the most effective change agents, how they can be supported, and how their efforts can be diffused in the community and scaled up are key questions in the community development literature. The authors designed and implemented an action-research project in Western Kenya on traditional vegetables, recruiting pupils as co-researchers. The purpose of the research was twofold. One was to explore the feasibility of increasing the intake of traditional vegetables through a school-based horticulture programme. The other was to increase pupils competence as effective change agents by empowering them in culturally compatible ways. The results offer lessons for practitioners regarding creative means to identify and empower change agents within traditional organisations and encourage innovative creation and diffusion of knowledge.

This paper discusses the implications for organisational learning of recent research on NGO activity in natural disaster mitigation and preparedness. It identifies several institutional and other barriers to NGO learning. However, personal networks in NGOs are often strong, and determined and well-placed individuals can push significant innovations through. Greater emphasis on this human factor may be the key to mainstreaming disaster mitigation and other new or marginal approaches to development.

Organisational principles or value standards are considered crucial for maintaining quality in humanitarian assistance. Research among staff members of Médecins Sans Frontières-Holland (MSF-H) showed that fieldworkers construct their own interpretations of principles and priorities in response to demands placed on them in the field. Organisational principles are important for the performance and the wellbeing of volunteers: they serve as beacons, identity markers, and interpersonal glue. It also becomes apparent that while in practice, staff members renegotiate the formal principles of their organisation, they also adhere to patterns of organisational culture resulting in a number of ordering principles they deem typical of their organisation.

This article explores attempts by eight UK-based international NGOs currently engaged in rural development interventions in Ethiopia, to employ monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems as a means of strengthening accountability and institutional learning. Premised on the conviction that such NGOs comprise loose coalitions of interest groups at different organisational levels within them, the study explores how respondents in head offices, Addis Ababa, and field offices perceived and practised M&E. It was found that perceptions of M&E vary considerably between hierarchical levels and can have a significant impact on practice. Such perceptions are also framed by individual interests and thus frequently fail to reflect the reality of M&E practice. The story that unfolds offers valuable insights into the current myths and realities of M&E among INGOs.

This brief paper describes one attempt to update the programme logic models to incorporate organisational learning. It begins with a brief review of learning concepts, describes the traditional Logical Framework Analysis, and concludes with a sketch of an alternative programme model, entitled the Temporal Logic Model.

In the late 1970s, feminist social scientists began to challenge some of the assumptions underlying the dominant paradigms on organisations, arguing that they reflect and are structured by the values articulated within the larger institutional arenas in which they are embedded, thus reproducing gender-discriminatory outcomes. This paper unpacks the deep structure of one NGO, Utthan, based in Gujarat, India, to understand the extent to which it is an engendering organisation. It suggests that while gender-sensitive leadership, training, and resources play a critical role in addressing gender equity in development practice, organisational transformation is a much harder and longer process requiring sustained commitment from the leadership, staff, and funding partners.

The Learning Organisation (LO) is both a concept and a particular methodology within the larger domain of Organisational Development (OD). To fully appreciate the premises of LO, it is necessary to fall back on the main premises of OD, beginning with the view of the organisation as an open system. Many of the established concepts of systems science as applied to organisational systems such as system robustness, system intelligence, and system proactivity have a direct bearing on the capacity for continuous learning in the organisation. Moving on from concepts to action, an organisation needs a set of working practices to acquire the characteristics of a Learning Organisation. One particularly useful gateway for the LO process is a comprehensive performance management system that compels the organisations membership to re-examine ideas of performance and the assumptions about organisational processes underlying management practices. The gateway follows the Action-Research paradigm and appears well suited to non-profit development NGOs.

Many organisations do not learn. There are many reasons for this, and a lack of donor support tends to be cited as the greatest of these. But this is not the primary reason for a lack of learning. We fail to learn because we are unable to see the importance of doing so. We become so embroiled in our busy-ness, our self-inflicted demands for action, that we have ceased to value learning. And we have lost sight of the fact that without learning, our action is doomed to ineffectiveness. If we are about development and cannot measure how we are doing, how can we develop a rigorous and effective practice?

The concept of Learning Organisations is gaining prominence in the non-profit sector. Most organisations see the concept as a means of attaining organisational change for greater impact on development. While the principles of organisational learning (i.e. team learning, shared vision, common goal and strategy) seem to have produced impressive results in the private sector and some non-profit organisations, the question is whether these principles can be adapted with similar results in complex bilateral programmes. This article explores this question in relation to a programme between the Dutch and Kenyan governments in Keiyo Marakwet. It analyses the process of institutionalising participation as both a learning and a conflict-generating process. In the highly politicised context of bilateral programmes, learning is not necessarily carried forward from one phase to the next due to rapid changes in actors, national politics, diplomatic considerations, and the international development agenda.

This paper is based on a small micro-level study carried out to assess the impact of recent socio-economic changes in Tajikistan on the livelihoods and well-being of women in Gorno-Badakhshan. It examines the recent involvement of women in trading and informal economic activity with a focus on the trade-offs that women have faced as a result. It argues that the shift towards a market economy in a depressed economic environment has resulted in increasing socio-economic differentiation, insecure livelihoods, and declining social capital. Women's involvement in trading along with the withdrawal of the state from basic social services have increased women's workload. Women's participation in the political sphere is declining from an already low base. Increasing material poverty and multiple roles and responsibilities have made it difficult for women to take up opportunities for public participation, even at a local level. It concludes that there are structural barriers to reducing poverty in Gorno-Badakhshan and raises questions about the possibilities for disadvantaged groups and regions to benefit from a strongly market-based development paradigm.

Gender experts who formulate planning frameworks, and strategies for mainstreaming gender issues in organisational policies and programmes usually characterise non-expert policy makers and planners as either active resisters or passive implementers rather than as capable change agents. Because of this, more resistance to gender mainstreaming is encountered than is necessary, and mainstreaming programmes often fail to take into account the needs and contributions of planners as stakeholders. The paper discusses these shortcomings and presents cases from the UN system in which the author was involved, where organisational change and mainstreaming were based on stakeholder participation that began to overcome some commonly identified limitations. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections

This paper is based on the authors' analytical study of the experiences of participatory development interventions in Mozambique, which compared how different projects interpreted and applied the concept and identified the problems encountered and lessons learnt in using such approaches.

Two energy development projects were examined as the basis of recommending improvements in how resettlement issues are handled. One of these illustrated the [INS: following :INS] problems: lack of a proper communication channel from the implementing body to the local residents; the failure to address the resettlers' own preferences; the compensation scheme for the resettlers did not allow them to re-build their livelihoods; employment of local people in project-related activities was only marginal; and the development of communities and local industry failed to benefit the resettlers.

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Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. International funding of civil society organisations within the framework of support for democratisation processes has increased significantly in recent years. Yet this raises a set of questions quite apart from the effectiveness of the activities of the recipient organisations. Who are these groups? Whom do they represent? What effect does international funding have on their organisational workings and their rootedness in their local societies and political systems? This article presents the results of a survey that examined the sources of financing, level of organisation, domestic constituencies, and relationships to political parties of 16 civil society groups in Latin America that received support from the National Endowment for Democracy in 1999. It finds that while the groups demonstrate a remarkable diversity in their sources of funding, all of them receive the lion's share of financing from international donors. The author argues, however, that given the scant possibilities for domestically generated funding, this dependence is to be expected. The article concludes with a series of questions about the meaning of international support for local groups in developing democracies and the potential effects it may have on de-linking such groups from their broader political and party system.

The article investigates the impact of anthropology consultancy activities in the UK university sector and the role of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) as a major provider of consultancy work. DFID and other donors see anthropology consultancy as useful primarily in the delivery of technical assistance to Third World projects with a community or social development dimension. The article points to tensions both between UK-based consultancy and `grassroots' development in the Third World, and between applied anthropology and the relative autonomy of anthropology as an academic discipline. The author suggests that a necessary precondition for understanding the contribution of anthropology to policy is the need to overcome the unwillingness by practitioners to question politically the power relationships within which the social sciences, anthropology, and commissioned activities themselves are located. The primary purpose of the paper is to open up a debate on the relationship between power, knowledge, empowerment, and consultancy work.

The author asks what'win-win'public policies can substantially reduce the percentage of people who live in absolute poverty and enable the poor to become richer even if the rich also become richer.

Inadequate household income due to degraded resources and limited opportunities has led to migration, malnutrition, and poor quality of life among tribals in India. These problems have been effectively tackled by enabling people to re-build their resource base, and by strengthening local action through Gram Vikas Mandals (village development forums) and developing human resources at village level. The orchard programme described in this paper currently reaches more than 11,000 families and 4000 ha of marginal lands are converted into orchards. It has helped people to plan further development actions, improve their knowledge and risk-taking ability, and build social cohesiveness. Thus, it has ensured that tribals' wellbeing is linked with that of the ecosystem. This time-bound, result-oriented programme is now recognised as a model for development of tribals and rural poor and is run by BAIF Development Research Foundation and sponsored by the Government of Germany through KfW and NABARD, India.

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This article focuses on performance measurement in the democracy and governance (DG) programme of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in its Zimbabwe mission. The article tells the story of one qualitative indicator used for measuring progress, namely the 'Advocacy Index.' It traces the history of this indicator, from rationale and concept through the early stages of implementation. The article discusses the problems of quantitative measurement and observes that there have been a number of suggested 'qualitative' responses. It goes on to describe the introduction of the Advocacy Index by USAID mission and the responses of its Zimbabwean partners, and draws out some tentative lessons and questions raised by the experience.

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Never before has the Bolivian state made such a serious effort to promote peasant participation in local development. In 1994, it promulgated the Law of Popular Participation which institutionalised a Participatory Municipal Planning methodology. While fully recognising its progressive nature, it is not too hard to discover authoritarian flaws within this methodology. The authors argue that the concept of participation should be viewed as `negotiation' in order to increase the scope of peasant participation in the planning process. This in turn implies some major methodological changes, but would result in Municipal Development Plans with the flexibility to account for the specific situations of the Bolivian peasantry.

There is a widely recognised need for innovative institutional arrangements to provide financial services to poor people, and numerous efforts have been made to that end. These have ranged from modifying the services provided by existing banks to the promotion of people-centred systems. Programmes addressing the latter have tended to emphasise a broad development approach, with financial services as one of several interrelated activities. This article discusses the main features of organisation and operation in people-centred systems, explores the meaning of social mobilisation in this context, indicates a range of benefits that such systems may generate, and illustrates their features, activities, and benefits through one case study.

In the absence of a cohesive and controlling government in Afghanistan, NGOs have taken over much of the work in the economic and social arena, becoming, by proxy, the makers of policy and directors of practice. However the unpredictable yet growing power of the Taliban leads NGOs to put off confronting the policies of the government in favour of maintaining their own influence and implementing projects. The time has come for NGOs to abandon this proxy role, and seek to engage constructively with the dynamics of the emerging government. This paper describes seven small ways for microfinance to acquire the virtues of informal finance, which are commonly perceived as slashed transaction costs, supply of not just loans but also savings and implicit insurance, sensitivity to the constraints faced by women, substitution of confidence in character for physical collateral, socially enforced and/or self-enforced contracts, and sequences of repeated transactions.

Economies based on solidarity and mutual support, and which are geared to human development and social justice, represent the basis of an alternative to the neo-liberal model that is driving the current globalisation process, and which tends to destroy local initiative and expression. The author draws on long experience in southern Mexico to describe this alternative economic vision.

Investments in process-oriented and farmer-participatory research have led to the emergence of sustainable agroforestry solutions to the problems of land degradation, poverty, and food insecurity in rural areas. Thousands of farmers in diverse ecoregions have taken up innovations that demonstrate the potential of agroforestry. This paper highlights the importance of institutional change through illustrating the approach taken by the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry to scale up adoption and impact of innovations. Eight focal areas of intervention constitute the key elements of a development strategy aimed at providing 80 million poor people in rural areas with better livelihood options by 2010.

The case studies demonstrate the breadth and richness in approaches to and lessons learned from scaling up. A key lesson is that scaling up is far more complex than simply transferring information and planting material; it entails building community-level institutional capacity for promoting and sustaining the innovation process. An overarching problem is that there is a paucity of research on the scaling up process. Careful assessments of the relative costs and benefits and advantages and disadvantages of different strategies are often possible and can greatly strengthen the effectiveness of scaling up. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Agroforestry: Scaling Up the Impacts of Research

Valuable tree genetic resources are declining around many farming communities in the Peruvian Amazon, limiting farmers' options for economic development. The International Centre for Research in Agroforestry is working with farming communities to increase productivity and long-term sustainability of their forests, and to empower them to conserve tree genetic resources. This paper describes some principles of participatory tree domestication, and how researchers are working with farmers to select improved planting materials, reduce the risk of poor tree adaptation, produce and deliver high-quality planting material, and scale up participatory tree domestication. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Agroforestry: Scaling Up the Impacts of Research

This paper describes developments in forestry extension in two districts of Kenya conducted under the auspices of the Nakuru and Nyandarua Forestry Extension Project 1990-1995 and the subsequent influence of those developments on extension policy pertaining to agroforestry in Kenya. It provides examples of innovative aspects within a conventional service- delivery programme and describes in some detail the successes, weaknesses, and opportunities of the pilot activities using a participatory extension methodology. These activities, together with others piloted in the country, have contributed to conceptualising the bottom-up planning approaches that underpin the National Agricultural Extension and Livestock Programme, a government programme that, in conjunction with the ongoing government restructuring, has replaced the previously dominant national approach of Training and Visit. The current programme relies on interdisciplinary and participatory planning in focal areas. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Agroforestry: Scaling Up the Impacts of Research

This paper describes the structure and impacts of a development project in Nagaland, India. The project was a large-scale experiment in participatory development that emphasised local technology based on farmer-led testing of agroforestry, where farmers themselves select agroforestry technologies, implement the field tests and assume responsibility for disseminating the results locally. This assessment suggests that agroforestry has spread rapidly and been primarily adopted on land that otherwise would have been used by traditional farmers for swidden agriculture. Thus, Nagaland appears to be on a path to intensifying its land use, based on agroforestry, which is likely to brake deforestation rates. The high rate of scaling up was due to an effective property rights system, access to a large and growing timber market, a continual process of internal monitoring and evaluation, provision of low-cost seeds and seedlings, and a participatory project strategy with interventions based on flexibility and community empowerment. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Agroforestry: Scaling Up the Impacts of Research

Sustainable land use is critical for the development of the Philippines uplands, where about 18 million people live. This paper relates our experiences using a participatory approach to develop agroforestry practices and institutions for conservation farming that ensure food security, alleviate poverty and protect the environment in Claveria, Northern Mindanao, Philippines. We found that natural vegetative strips provide a simple solution to the technical constraints of soil conservation on slopes. These are buffer strips, laid out on the contour, in which natural vegetation is allowed to regrow into a thick, protective cover. The strips also provide a foundation for developing more complex agroforestry systems including fodder, fruit and timber trees. The tremendous surge in adoption of these systems has been enhanced by the Landcare approach. Landcare is a movement of farmer-led organizations that share knowledge about sustainable and profitable agriculture on the sloping lands while conserving the natural resources. The Landcare movement is spreading rapidly to many municipalities in Mindanao and Visayan islands. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Agroforestry: Scaling Up the Impacts of Research

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Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. Sub-standard and insecure housing conditions are recognised as a crucial aspect of urban poverty. In most large cities in the developing world, the formal market serves only a minority of the population. It is estimated that between 30 and 70 per cent live in `irregular' settlements, and that up to 85 per cent of the new housing stock is produced in an extra-legal manner, with severe social and environmental consequences. John Turner's ground-breaking work and the first Habitat conference in 1976 marked a paradigm shift towards an enabling and participatory approach to housing provision. However, little progress has been made in translating the new paradigm into practical and sustainable policies. Relocation schemes, social housing, slum upgrading, and sites and services are beset by two related problems: first, they are far too small-scale to serve the growing demand, and second, products are far too expensive to be affordable for low-income groups. The paper states that the informal sector's strategy of incremental development and improvement of housing and infrastructure can be incorporated into public policies, and introduces cases from the Philippines and Pakistan as best practices in this direction. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Cities

Large areas of Zimbabwean cites still reflect colonial planning traditions designed to promote racial segregation, which no longer adequately meet the demands of urban areas which are doubling in size every 10 to 15 years. This paper looks at the political, economic, and social influences on urban space production and use in Harare, and the extent to which the planning and regulatory system accommodates competing demands on public space in a fast-growing city. It argues that urban space is a crucial resource for poor households that cannot be ignored in the context of sustainable development, and that the failure of official policy and regulations to recognise its importance inhibits the ability of the urban poor to help themselves. Policy initiatives to redress this balance are explored. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Cities

The Casa Propia programme of the Buenos Aires City Government is an innovative case of public-private financing of social housing. It aims to encourage investors to build housing on private land for sale to low-income buyers receiving `soft' credits from the state. The Casa Propia experience suggests that in the South, where states tends to lack consolidated `social contingency networks', the design of housing programmes that are theoretically sustainable for low-income groups tends to give priority to financial variables over social and environmental concerns. This creates contradictions within such programmes that result in negative social and environmental impacts. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Cities

The MOLAND methodology adopts earth observation techniques combined with geo-processing tools and statistical data to monitor environmental and morphological changes in urban areas. The methodology is an aid to understanding urban development processes as well as a tool for planning. The MOLAND methodology provides detailed territorial information at a regional scale, enabling development agencies accurately to derive specific environmental indicators, and to improve existing urban sustainability indicators. This article describes the kinds of information that can be produced with the MOLAND methodology, efforts to develop comparable data series over time in different locations, and applications of these data to planning tasks involving population growth, mobility and security, strategic and environmental impact assessment on a large scale, and urban sprawl. Recent experiences in applying the methodology to Eastern European and Third World cities are discussed. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Cities

As part of a human rights education campaign, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) fixed 700,000 posters throughout Bangladesh. This met with opposition from religious organisations. This paper investigates the nature and cause of the backlash and sets out strategies for how development organisations can achieve their objectives in the face of opposition. The opposition was found to be in response to interpretations of the posters based on the Holy Koran and Islamic practices, and a perceived intrusion into the professional territory of religious organisations, which affected the socio-economic interests of these organisations' representatives. It was therefore concluded that development organisations should pre-empt such opposition by spelling out their objectives to potential critics, and formulating programmes that do not provide scope for opponents to undermine their development activities. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Cities

Democratisation, structural adjustment, state reform (including decentralisation), and liberalisation of the economy (including privatisation) have brought about dramatic changes in the nations, societies, and cities of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). As central governments devolve greater responsibilities to them, local governments are obliged to perform new roles and strengthen their managerial capacity to cope with increasing urban problems and popular demands. In response to the state's inability to address local problems, there has been a flourishing of civil society organisations (CSOs) engaging in self-help initiatives, building social networks and mutual support groups in order to meet their basic needs. To deepen democracy and promote popular participation in resolving urban issues calls for clear guiding principles and methodologies. These should be based on the wealth of experience that Latin American cities have acquired over the years. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Cities

High rates of urbanisation in the South have led to unsustainable development in its cities and towns. The form of development that is taking place is `parasitic', in that it excludes the poor and follows the development paradigm of the North rather than one more appropriate to the situations faced in the South. Sustainable development is seen as a measure to counterpoise economic growth with environmental concerns, but it remains doubtful whether this can be realised since the impact on countries of the South of their participation in the global market has proved disastrous. This paper highlights the need to be aware of a country's `carrying' and `caring' capacity, and argues that work towards sustainable development needs to go from the poor upwards. The Philippines epitomises these concerns, especially regarding the high rate of urbanisation in Metro Manila, where environmental problems and lack of services have led to a deterioration in the quality of life. This is seen by the author to be the responsibility of five overlapping power groups - the state, business, the church, the media, and international aid agencies. The latter tend to follow the Northern development paradigm, which places the South in a vulnerable position and forces Southern governments to act against their country's best interests. A new development paradigm is desperately needed that will avoid the mistakes of the past and improve future prospects for the poor and the environment. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Cities

At 300 million, the urban population of India is still less than one third of its total population. It is projected that by 2045 nearly 800 million Indians will be living in its cities - more than the total population of the whole of present-day Europe. Already, the infrastructures of all the six mega- and 40 million-plus cities of India are under very severe stress. The ground water is depleting rapidly, pollution is reaching crisis levels, the transportation system is in disarray, and sewerage and sanitation are in shambles, all of which is affecting public health and hygiene. This explosive state of affairs has not been adequately appreciated at the national and international level. This paper analyses the programmes and policies adopted so far to correct the situation, identifies their shortcomings, and looks into the new initiatives that have been undertaken to make the cities self-sustainable units of governance and reliable service-providers. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Cities

In English only

In a largely unregulated NGO sector, Living Earth Foundation (LEF) is piloting an externally accredited learning course in Environment and Community Development as part of an overall NGO capacity building strategy. The programme has a needs-led approach with the design and delivery of the course being managed in close consultation with the learners themselves. The advantages of such an approach are beginning to become apparent to individual learners and is informing the way in which LEF promotes community-based learning.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Government of Georgia has been struggling to provide healthcare services to a population experiencing a deterioration in health status, while at the same time restructuring and reforming the delivery, priorities, resource allocation, and overall focus of this healthcare system. International humanitarian and development organisations in Georgia can exploit this historic opportunity by serving as facilitators and mentors in stimulating a process of positive social change within this reform dynamic. But this process will require strategies and tactics that are broadly inclusive of internal actors and stakeholders, and that can be put into practice by using a range of participatory approaches.

The concept of 'community' became a popular buzzword towards the end of the twentieth century. However, its meaning is increasingly vague because of its rhetorical use in politics, as well as in development, gender, and environmental circles. Based on the experience of a Mohlakeng Township Site and Service Scheme that was undertaken between 1990 and 1994, the paper examines some of the implications of the flexible use of the term 'community' in South Africa.

This article argues that if children were the focus of more deliberate attention on the part of donors, it could result in more effective use of the resources available for poverty reduction. Instead, development assistance neglects some of children's most pressing needs, and fails to take advantage of the long-term benefits to be gained by ensuring their physical and psychosocial welfare. The article focuses especially on the living environments of children in poverty, an area which receives little attention, but which is integral to poverty reduction.

Civil society and grassroots campaigns are increasingly affecting foreign policy. Some of these campaigns are driven by solidarity groups in the North, who are in solidarity with a struggle in the South. This paper looks at the role of the martyr as a motivating factor to participation in solidarity groups. It looks at the pitfalls of relying on a martyr image, including the fall-out from a controversy between two books: I, Rigoberta Menchú and Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Advocacy.

Many farmers in less developed countries (LDCs) lack comprehensive information detailing the acute and chronic health impacts of pesticide use. Even at low levels, the use of pesticides can have significant chronic health implications. The results of research conducted among sugarcane farmers in Fifi demonstrate significantly higher occurrences of illness and disease among farmers using pesticides compared with a control group. Government agencies, NGOs, and donor groups must provide farmers with information describing the short- and long-term health risks in using pesticides. Improved information will allow farmers to make rational decisions regarding the types of pesticides to use or whether to use pesticides at all. Otherwise, LDCs can expect levels of chronic illness to increase alongside increasing agricultural output.

Often the primary barriers to improving women's health are rooted in socio-economic, legal, and cultural factors. Women are generally assigned subordinate status in terms of economic power, decision making, and options regarding education, work, and family. National laws often restrict or prohibit equality and choice within society. Thus, the improvement of reproductive health is not only a matter of effective health interventions, but also a matter of social justice and human rights. This article discusses how the international human rights (IHR) system can be used more effectively for the protection and promotion of reproductive rights. In particular, it focuses how IHR treaties can play an important role in fostering state compliance with rights relating to reproductive and sexual health. It ends with a discussion on how NGO advocacy work can better collaborate with the treaty body monitoring process in order to advance women's reproductive rights.

This paper is concerned with the requirements of microfinance organisations (MFOs) that seek both to reduce poverty and to become increasingly financially self-reliant. They need information on their impact in order to improve the services they offer. But impact assessment (IA) work has generally been carried out primarily to comply with the accountability requirements of their financial sponsors. This Note advocates re-orienting IA towards the MFO's own strategic decision processes, and integrating it more closely with internal monitoring.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. Participatory methods are increasingly being used in development work at grassroots level in Africa. Western liberal concepts like `one person one vote' underlie these methods. However, such concepts may not be easily compatible with a grassroots reality in which ethnicity (i.e. superior and subordinate ethnic identities) is an important factor shaping the social order. This article provides insights into the socio-political realities of ethnicity at village level in Botswana. The tension between participatory methods and the ethnically-structured village reality are illustrated with examples from a project that tested the relevance of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in Botswana. The authors identify problems and opportunities of participatory methods in addressing the inequalities in ethnically divided communities. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections and Development and Culture.

There is considerable focus nowadays on the involvement of communities in planning their own projects. Much of this involvement is in the form of verbal communication whereby villagers inform development workers of their problems and how they propose to solve them. Drawing on experience from two projects in Uganda and Ethiopia, this article argues that the starting point for any project planning in a community context is the current practice of that community. It is argued that if one looks at the community's practice, beliefs, and knowledge, one has a firmer foundation on which to build a project.

The ethos of technical assistance in emergency relief work has emphasised the importance of recruiting people with appropriate professional and technical skills to work under the difficult circumstances of disasters. The authors used the Critical Incident Technique to assess job-related skills that were seen to be crucial for the achievement of the objectives towards which emergency relief personnel were working. Fifteen Irish nurses, working predominantly in refugee camps, identified over 60 different work objectives and 54 distinct job-related skills. It is argued that greater account should be taken of the variety of objectives which motivates such field workers. The job-related skills identified were primarily process- rather than outcome-oriented skills, and the authors hold that a greater emphasis should be placed on the development of fluid as opposed to crystallised skills. The possibilities of using the Critical Incident Technique as a mechanism for feeding back authentic field experience and operationalising effective process skills is discussed.

Stepping Stones is a training package on HIV/AIDS, gender, communication, and relationship skills designed both for use in existing HIV/AIDS projects and more generally. Narrating her experience of a training of trainers programme in India, the author explores the possibilities and challenges of using this as a means of integrating gender into HIV/AIDS projects.

This paper attempts to draw some lessons from the experience of development NGOs throughout the world over the last five decades. It starts by describing the meaning of alternative development paradigm as practised by NGOs. It then examines some of the major socio-political changes that have occurred in recent years, and their impact on development NGOs. Finally, it outlines some key dilemmas facing development NGOs, and their potential implications for their future roles and contributions at the start of the new millennium. This article is freely available as a chapter in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

This paper analyses the significance and scope of the globalisation process, focusing on its implications for the autonomy of national actors, on the one hand, and on the new demands that global governance imposes upon multilateral action, on the other. It is argued that the current form of globalisation is in fact compatible with some degree of autonomous coordinated social action outside the realm of the market. This allows us both to differentiate between the realities and mystification (i.e. ideology) that underlie the concept of globalisation and to reject the standard discourse and economic therapy offered by certain international organisations to developing countries. If globalisation does not rule out the possibility of autonomous national-level action, it also establishes the basis for more solid and effective multilateral action. The factors that support the need for such action in the future are analysed, action that responds to demands for greater management of international public assets, and to calls for more effective global governance. The article ends by analysing the necessary characteristics of such a multilateral system if it is to meet the needs arising from a new international reality. This article is freely available as a chapter in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

In recent years, both the corporate sector and civil society organisations, particularly international NGOs, have become more influential in shaping development debates and policies. There is increasing awareness within the corporate sector of the need to demonstrate social responsibility; and growing acceptance among NGOs that business is essential to the economic growth which will fuel social development. This paper shows how the two sectors can engage constructively in order to establish and monitor standards, though it also argues the need for some pressure groups to retain an uncompromising and radical agenda in order to keep the critical debates alive. This article is freely available as a chapter in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

Development NGOs are in crisis. They are losing their capacity to engage in critical analysis and propose global solutions; to react to or seize the political initiative; or to situate themselves on the cutting edge of those social and political processes in which new approaches and potential solutions might be found. While some NGOs have sought to accommodate themselves around donors' policies and projects that focus on reducing the negative effects of structural adjustment, the raison d'être of NGOs is to have the autonomy, initiative, and flexibility that the non-governmental status confers upon them. A growing split between NGOs' capacity to lobby and do research and their grassroots work reflects a deeper division that exists - both practical and theoretical - between the concept and process of development and the concept and process of democratisation. The author argues that human development and participative and representative democracy are both mutually reinforcing and indivisible and that the challenge the NGOs face is to link - theoretically and practically- democracy with development. This article is freely available as a chapter in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. After 50 years of spectacularly successful work (particularly in raising the equity stakes, improving the quality of ODA, fostering Southern NGO work at the international level, and organising quick and effective humanitarian assistance), Northern development NGOs have come to a crossroads. Van Rooy argues that the history of the NGO `occupational category', coupled with a changing political and economic environment (the end of the cold war, rising international investment, declining ODA, and vastly heightened Southern NGO capacity), means that most Northern NGOs should close up shop. Instead, a kaleidoscopic rebirth is envisaged, where four key functions remain for Northerners (as humanitarian agents, economic policy watchers, North-South brokers, and corporate responsibility advocates). This change of job is heralded as good news: evidence that the project of global social justice has moved dramatically forward.

Every organisation has certain core convictions about its endeavours and about the ways to go about its work. When these convictions are translated into relatively enduring practices they can be called organisational values. Managing an organisation's value system is an important strategic task in itself, and the concepts and methods for undertaking this task are examined in this paper. This article is freely available as a chapter in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

This article reports the results of and conclusions from a survey of Northern NGOs conducted during 1998 and 1999 for the purposes of testing generalised criticisms of Northern NGO advocacy and providing benchmarks further research on the policy impact of the Washington Advocacy office of Oxfam International. Based on the survey findings, the author challenges Northern NGOs more thoroughly to evaluate their advocacy so that they may effectively demonstrate their advocacy achievements and, by so doing, confidently invest a greater proportion of resources into advocacy programmes which effectively contribute to their goals of reducing poverty. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Advocacy and in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

The growing crisis of external indebtedness in the South has become the focus not only of multilateral policy debate, but also the subject of an increasingly vocal international anti-debt campaign, the influence of which was clear at the abortive World Trade Organisation at Seattle in December 1999. Though effective, however, the anti-debt campaign encompasses a range of different positions, which result in diverse strategies and tactics. This paper examines the reasons for and implications of such differences, particularly in relation to North-South solidarity and action, and makes the case for Northern campaigners and lobbyists to take their principal lead from anti-debt groups that are mobilising public opinion in the South. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Advocacy and in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

The conventional (but false) dichotomy between humanitarianism and development, hitherto grounded in the perceived differences between international humanitarian law and international human rights law respectively, is not merely unhelpful in practical terms but also serves to diminish our understanding of the shared issues underlying the two discourses. There are welcome signs, however, of a growing recognition that all development and relief work is essentially rights-based and of efforts to integrate thinking and practice under one common set of principles. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections and in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

This paper examines the application of the Local Capacities for Peace framework in field operations in Sudan, and identifies lessons learned about planning and implementation in the World Vision programme over a 20-month period. This article is freely available as a chapter in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

The concept of capacity building is elusive, and our current approaches are doomed to failure, not because we lack adequate models, but because these approaches are in themselves inadequate. This article attempts to outline some of the fundamental shifts which a new form of approach to capacity building would entail, the first shift being from the tangible to the intangible, and the second being from static model to a developmental reading. Some of the consequences of such shifts are discussed. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections and in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

While women's movements in Latin America and elsewhere have succeeded in putting many issues that are relevant to women and to gender relations onto the political agenda, and although most international aid agencies have made efforts to incorporate gender analysis into their work, this progress has been neither comprehensive nor unproblematic. This article focuses on ways in which the development co-operation agenda, and the priorities and working methods of development agencies and NGOs, have served to distort the vision and practice of the women's organisations whose work they seek to support. This article is freely available as a chapter in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

The question of how development agencies should assess their impact has no simple answers and so is often either unasked, or is framed in terms that privilege time-bound and quantitative findings. Describing a council estate neighbourhood project in the UK, the author probes the understandings and perceptions of different stakeholders concerning what they believe has changed over the life of the project, and to what they would attribute those changes. The findings suggest that the impact of development interventions is always contingent upon many factors and can only be properly viewed over time; and that many of the most critical factors in shaping change are intangible and have to do with a wide range of social relations and with human motivation and drive, both individual and collective. The author does not present a `blueprint' for how to conduct impact assessment, but offers some insights into how to frame the questions and interpret the answers. This article is freely available as a chapter in Debating Development: NGOs and the Future.

Literacy programmes conventionally focus solely on non-literates and use a 'learn first, do later' model that is ill-suited to adult learning. Programmes based on existing groups (whether function- or location-based), and which use a 'learn through doing' approach, are more likely to be successful both in achieving literacy and in reinforcing other development goals. This paper reviews the theory and practice of adult literacy programmes.

Conferences are typically organised around specialist presentations and panel discussions in ways that do not foster broad participation or effective knowledge-sharing. The paper describes a computer-based method to facilitate focused dialogue among participants.

The author reports on this conference held in Tromsö, Norway, in June 1999. Discussion centred on the discourse of `gender' and on the women's movement, and the author considers these themes from the dual viewpoint of the practitioner and the academic.

In English only

In the 1990s, fair trade, as practised by alternative trading organisations (ATOs), has evolved from a solidarity to a partnership model. This paper explores the nature of fair trade partnership using a case study of Cafédirect and one of its suppliers, the KNCU in Tanzania. For ATOs, fair trade is articulated in terms of a partnership with both producers and consumers. Partnership in this paper is conceived in terms of a fusion of the market and ethics in the links in the supply chain from the producer and consumer, the core partnership being that between the ATO and the producer organisation. The case study is used to highlight the elements of the partnership that are necessary for a fair trade relationship to 'work', highlighting the importance of participation by the producer partner.

By exploring two approaches to organisational change, gender and organisational development (OD), the author argues that OD is flawed since it perpetuates existing gender inequalities by failing to address them. By contrast, the gender approach brings change both for women and for men and is contextualised in a broader agenda of social transformation. Analysis of how power is gendered is the critical starting point. While gender is not disconnected from other forms of oppression - such as race and class - special attention needs to be given to gender because experience has shown it gets 'lost'. The article seeks to contribute to breaking new ground in theory and practice in order to promote organisations that are both equitable and effective. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections

Educational and societal development programmes in the Third World have paid too little attention to the facilitative and motivational merits of using indigenous languages. From primary education through to development activities among adults, the use of a non-indigenous language may in itself hinder the development process. In academic institutions, more interaction between the two fields of language planning and development studies is needed.

This paper describes the relative advantages and disadvantages of formal Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (RoSCAs), in contrast with informal RoSCAs, as seen in Argentina. NGOs, it is argued, are not in a good position to use the formal RoSCA structure to developmental advantage, since they could not manage the risk assessment or legal framework necessary with formal RoSCAs, which do not rely on social censure and capital for their operation.

In English only

MOPAWI is an NGO in La Mosquitia, Honduras, working with indigenous communities in the region to create ecological sustainability and to strengthen technical knowledge and resource management. This paper presents the findings of research into how MOPAWI has `created linkages among the grassroots, the state, and ultimately the international level of politics in practice.' The strategic role of NGOs, and their ability to work across these levels, is discussed.

This paper examines a Community Banking Scheme set up in Nigeria in 1991, in terms of its financial capabilities - `deposit mobilisation capability, and the value and ratio of its loan portfolio' - and considers four examples of its non-banking development functions. The author believes community banks have much development potential, and, while stating that the Scheme `has had mixed achievements', argues that the growth of non-banking facilities, and increased collaboration with self-help groups or NGOs, should lead to greater success.

The author reports on this conference, held in Tokyo in 1999, which brought together leading development thinkers and practitioners, and finance experts. The main discussions are summarised, often with reference to the recent Asian financial crisis, and the author states that the IMF's apparent neglect of the link between finance and development was worrying, and evidence of the need for its reform.

Spirituality is central to many of the daily decisions people in the 'South' make about their own and their community' s development, including that of whether or not to participate in risky but potentially beneficial social action. Despite its importance, development literature and development practices have systematically avoided the topic of spirituality. This avoidance results in inferior research and less effective programmes and ultimately fails to provide participants with opportunities to reflect on how their development and their spirituality will and should shape each other. The author offers some possible explanations for the avoidance and suggests ways in which to address spirituality in development theory and practice. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Culture.

ABANTU for Development embarked on a regional programme to strengthen civil society capacities for engaging with policy from a gender perspective. An early activity involved an in-depth study of NGO capacities for policy engagement which ABANTU carried out in Nigeria during the recent period of military rule. In keeping with ABANTU's commitments as a regional human resources network dedicated to promoting development and gender equality from an African perspective, the local research team used a participatory action methodology to gather and interpret the findings in a way that privileged local NGO perspectives and understandings of gender and policy. The exercise generated hitherto unavailable information and experiential case study material, and simultaneously identified and involved a core group of NGOs in the development and planning of the subsequent training programme. More importantly, it also furnished the regional training network with an understanding of indigenous cultures and local gender politics. These were found to be infused with diverse local cultural dynamics, as well as with the contradictory legacies of the military's state-driven programmes for women, both of which constrain the extent of gender activism, especially when this is monitored through instances of direct policy engagement. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development NGOs and Civil Society.

The author analyses the concept of social exclusion, arguing that the term has become a label for `another `vulnerable group' with no differentiation, complexity, agency, or resistance'. She instead suggests that we look to broader ideas of justice, participation, and citizenship, to bring the `social' aspect back into the concept, which should be more synonymous with discrimination and marginalisation than with the failure of formal (education, employment, legal etc.) systems.

The author provides a matrix examining gender-based financial, economic, social/cultural, and political/legal obstacles to women benefiting from microfinance and enterprise. She goes on to discuss how impact assessment work can be approached in the light of this matrix, highlighting the importance of establishing the nature of gender relations prior to projects, considering the potential outcomes that assessors should look out for, and carrying out gender-sensitive assessment.

The authors explore the deleterious effects of economic globalisation on people in the USA, and explain the rise of poor people's organisations as a response to these conditions. They look at the impact of economic changes in terms of public policy and argue that the global economy is preventing a growing number of people from being able to meet their basic needs, by limiting or eliminating living-wage jobs as well as welfare programmes. However, poor people in the USA are organising to end poverty, and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union is given as a case study. Finally, the authors discuss the challenges faced by social workers and how they can be most effective in the face of a dying welfare state alongside growing exploitation and exclusion of the poor.

The author argues, using the example of microfinance institutions, that it is essential to build genuinely solid and alternative institutions if development is to take its direction from the poor and vulnerable. He sets out his view of the characteristics such institutions would have, and the vulnerabilities currently seen in microfinance institutions.

With reference to a recent visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh, the author gives his personal view on the spread of IT technology that accompanies globalisation. He comments particularly on the communication potential of the Internet and email, and the tendency of the technology to aggravate existing inequalities.

The author argues that Northern NGOs are increasingly moulding themselves in the image of, and accepting the impetus of governments to become, a delivery service for global welfare. Commins believes that NGOs can, and should, avoid this by reassessing themselves on a variety of levels, including where they fit in complex emergency situations and how the new vocal presence of Southern NGOs presents a challenge for their role. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development NGOs and Civil Society.

There has been growing concern in Bangladesh that access to higher education is restricted to high-income families. Here, the author reports on the early findings of research into the socio-economic backgrounds of students at Bangladesh's major universities. These findings indicate that the average student is from an affluent, probably land-owning, family. The results are worrying since they suggest that doing well in the education system prior to university is not enough to ensure one has access to higher education.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. Recent initiatives from the OECD, the World Bank, and others on the subject of corruption have received widespread attention. However, the author argues that the incidence of corruption is closely connected with contracting-out, concessions, and privatisation, where multinationals based in OECD countries stand to gain profitable business. The encouragement of privatisation by the World Bank, and the economic benefit to OECD multinationals from this business, mean that action against corruption needs to involve effective sanctions by developing countries against multinationals which engage in corrupt practices; greater political transparency to remove the secrecy under which corruption flourishes; and resistance to the uncritical extension of privatisation. This article looks at empirical evidence on this subject.

As the agonising over `what next' for Kosovo and Serbia continues, Eastern Slavonia offers a transition experience and timescale from which we may learn. Each case is specific in historical and political terms, and in the nature of international intervention. But questions of transition and minority rights are inherent across the region. Though Eastern Slavonia was one of the areas of former Yugoslavia that saw some of the fiercest fighting in the 1991 Serb-Croat war, few international aid agencies now remain. The 1995 Dayton Agreement provided for a one-year transition period for its re-incorporation into Croatia, under the auspices of a special UN mission (UNTAES). Based on extensive fieldwork, this article details the constraints on the UN's input into integrated social and civil structures, and describes the Kafkaesque welter of legal and bureaucratic obstacles as well as economic and other forms of discrimination that now face minority groups living in, or returning to, Croatia. Without a firm government commitment to full equality and fair treatment of all citizens, the pattern of violent `ethnic cleansing' may yet repeat itself.

The author, the former president of Tanzania, answers this question resoundingly in the negative, arguing that while universal social principles may be possible, the inequity of wealth alone between countries means that social standards cannot currently be universally applied and adhered to. He goes on to argue that the equality of sovereign nations should be the basis for international economic, social, and political relations.

A fundamental question to be decided at the November/December 1999 World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting is whether to support or resist a new round of trade negotiations. The author argues that while many developing countries, and development NGOs, are right to feel that the earlier Uruguay round produced results skewed in favour of developed countries, there is nothing to be gained from resisting a new round: rather, developing countries should signal their willingness to get involved, but only if certain conditions are met. `[C]onstructive, but critical, support' is the only way to realise benefits and avoid further marginalisation.

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KwaZulu-Natal has the highest HIV infection rate in South Africa. The authors here report on a workshop using a participatory approach to train doctors, nurses and Environmental Health Officers from the region. The methodology, an adaptation of SARAR techniques, successfully provided an open forum for discussion, and, the authors feel, could help in developing household coping strategies and highlighting ways health care professionals can provide support at a community level.

Many NGO financial institutions and co-operatives are, arguably, incorporating the rules and norms of banking which, as `alternative' institutions, they sought to avoid. Here, the author uses CARUNA (the National Savings and Credit Co-operative `Caja Rural', in Nicaragua) as a case study through which to discuss what makes a truly alternative financial institution, with a gender focus. These institutions should recognise the value of promoting `innovative services that support social reproduction and food security activities, and promote participation by and accountability to communities.'

The author gives personal feedback on a review of this publication (Development in Practice 8(3)). She argues that the reviewers' criticisms in respect to the book's treatment of abortion and intra-uterine contraceptive devices, and it's failure to consider cultural and religious sensitivities, were unsubstantiated or incorrect.

By the 1990s, innovative ideas such as Sustainable Human Development (SHD) and People-Centred Development (PCD) had begun to shift the development discourse beyond economistic perspectives and the ideological (market versus state) debates of earlier days. This article describes how, despite their promise and the genuine efforts of international development agencies such as UNDP and ActionAid to put SHD/PCD ideas into practice, the conceptual deficiencies of the SHD/PCD paradigm, and internal organisational interests within the two agencies, have gradually displaced the agenda's core components. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development NGOs and Civil Society.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. Microfinance programmes are increasingly popular in Bangladesh, and are especially renowned for the excellent repayment performance of women borrowers. This article examines the loan use pattern of women involved in wage employment and the benefits they gain from such loans. It also explores the effects of wage employment on gender relations. Women wage earners are found to value paid work more than they value credit. It is thus argued that more employment opportunities should be created for women as these would help to promote economic and social empowerment.

In 1997, the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), which was formed in 1962, came close to being dissolved. The author provides a personal viewpoint on the way that the ICVA moved towards this point: highlighting organisational, managerial, financial, and structural errors of judgement. The ICVA remains in existence, but the author argues that while it continues to act as a promotional network encompassing NGOs with differing agendas and resource bases, it will lack `a genuine basis for a common agenda', concerning itself more with individual members' institutional security than with its emancipatory remit.

Based on her own experience as part of a Primary Health Care (PHC) community development project in Angola, the author assesses the way the project was set up, identifying problems and potential solutions. Greatly concerned with ensuring local participation in and ownership of new health clinics, the author dwells on the dynamics of relations between local clinic nurses, their trainers, and the community using the new services.

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Describing two models for the development of informal women's groups in Orissa and Kerala, India, the author discusses how it is possible to avoid the `top-down management' and bureaucracy that often contribute to the failure of other schemes. Informal self-help groups in rural areas serve to empower women, and provide a basis for the provision of credit and other support for various production and income-generation activities.

The author gives an account of a partnership between a UK-based NGO and the Zambian government, designed to encourage `smallholder farmers to form `cattle clubs' [to] operate and manage community cattle-spraying points on a full cost-recovery basis'. The project's success has been tempered by changes in the external environment and the perceptions of the farmers, and the inability of the government to continue to allocate enough resources to it. The author offers practical lessons to be learned from these difficulties.

This paper examines the potential for participatory rural appraisal techniques to contribute positively to community development and empowerment in a deprived rural community in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. A series of participatory workshops was undertaken in which a number of innovative techniques were used to identify people--environment relationships and, in particular, the community perception of the value and problems relating to the river and riparian zone. The workshops led to the community taking positive action to address problems identified. The study indicates the value and role of participatory research among disempowered communities in rural Africa.

This paper questions the appropriateness of some of the 'help' that has been given in mental health in 'developing' countries, particularly Africa, and examines some of the complex ideological issues underlying different cultural understandings of the aetiology and treatment of mental illness. Some personal experiences, illustrating examples of the imposition of culturally inappropriate ideology in the teaching of psychiatry, are described. In conclusion, some principles of good practice are suggested which could form the basis of a synthesis between cultures, and maximise the possibility of Western aid in the field of mental distress being more culturally appropriate. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Culture.

Developing countries with large nomadic populations have found it difficult to cater for itinerant people in their healthcare strategies. Some have tried to settle nomads, others to bring in health workers from outside the nomadic community, both costly and ineffective intervention measures. The author advocates a strategy which seeks to build on the traditional healers' and birth attendants' skills present in nomadic communities, to encourage self-care as far as sensibly possible, and to take account of `community ecology, the definition of an epidemiological profile...and group identity' when planning health services.

When Hurricane Mitch hit South America in November 1998, it most harshly affected Honduras and Nicaragua, and most of those affected were already living in extreme poverty. The author highlights the connection between the extent of the damage from this `natural disaster' and deforestation and bad land management practices, which greatly increased the impact of Mitch in these countries. He advocates a rebuilding strategy for the countries, which reconstructs the economies more equitably rather than reinforcing the socio-economic and political orders that perpetuate the violation of human rights. He makes specific reference to the need to cancel debt repayments.

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This paper, based on a review of SIDA's funding of NGOs in Bangladesh, explores the changing relationships between bilateral donors, Northern NGOs (NNGOs), and Southern NGOs (SNGOs). It compares direct and indirect funding routes between donors and SNGOs. Most SIDA funding of SNGOs was previously undertaken through Swedish NGOs. As SNGO competence and capacity has increased through their own efforts at professionalisation, through wider recognition and support from government, and by the provision of `capacity building' partnerships with NNGOs, these Southern organisations have taken up positions within the burgeoning `third sectors' of aid-recipient countries alongside the governmental and business sectors. SIDA has increasingly funded SNGOs directly through its Dhaka office. The paper sets out to address two main themes in the context of Swedish aid to NGOs in Bangladesh. Firstly, as bilateral donors provide an increasing proportion of their resources to NGOs, how can sound and responsible funding relationships based on mutual trust be built between bilateral donors and NGOs? Secondly, how can NNGOs work usefully in contexts where the number and capacity of local SNGOs has expanded significantly?

What does organisational decentralisation mean? What types of decentralisation can NGDOs choose from and what appears to be occurring? The author sets out answers to these questions and proceeds to analyse the pressures and forces involved in choosing, pointing towards devolution as the preferred option. The author argues that globalisation calls for a truly international response from NGOs, namely the formation of global associations. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Management.

Using the example of a project in Sheffield intended to promote user-involvement and participation in planning healthcare services, the author criticises the failure of the project to actually provide any forum for user-participation. The structures used to set up these partnerships are often too prescriptive, he argues, setting out a framework in which consultation may take place, and leaving no room for legitimate local interests which may not fit this framework. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Management.

Six development managers working for Health Projects Abroad in Tanzania provide an account of a typical working day, outlining their work, their frustrations, and the way they are perceived by local communities, for example. This Practical Note provides an insight into the pressures on managers, who must cope with day-to-day tasks while maintaining perspective on the bigger picture. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Management.

This Practical note describes the work of the Southall Black Sisters, a group, based in London, England, which provides a variety of assistance to, mainly Asian, women who have been victims of domestic violence and abuse. The author discusses how the UK legal system fails to help some of these women, as well as how patriarchal Asian social structures enable this abuse to go unchecked and unreported. The SBS consciously try to challenge on many fronts at once, working 'against gender and racial oppression (including religious fundamentalism and communalism) and...[operating] at the level of the family, the community, and the state.' This article is freely available as a chapter in Development with Women.

Thailand is experiencing the unfamiliar phenomenon of aid and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank lending money for internal development programmes. In the economic boom years, aid was neither sought nor required since structural development was funded from the growth which South East Asian countries had begun to take for granted. Today, falling growth and rising unemployment linked to a depreciating currency and weak export markets have meant that Thailand has had to look elsewhere for development capital and to become proficient in managing educational projects. This article describes a rapid training needs analysis of the Thai educational sector commissioned by the British Council, the purpose of which was to discover the capacity of the education sector to undertake and deliver externally-funded projects. Using the Kolb learning cycle as a paradigm of good practice, and an adapted version of the soft systems approach to planning, the paper describes a learning process for developing an action plan to produce a training package for enhancing project management skills. Finally, the paper reflects on the experience of the project and sets out some learning objectives for future exercises of this type.

Urban and industrial growth in developing countries makes the provision of adequate waste management services vital. Public sector-private sector partnerships (the authors describe potential structures for these partnerships) offer one way to manage this provision. The authors discuss how responsibility for public services should ultimately remain with the public sector, investigate different types of public-private partnership, and present five guiding principles for effective partnerships, as identified by the Cairo Workshop on Micro and Small Enterprise in Municipal Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Management.

This paper focuses on the contradictory relationship between tools, always open to criticism as technocratic and mechanistic, and processes of development. It focuses on the tools often known as Logical Framework Approach (LFA) which are increasingly used as process tools by many different agencies, including those who espouse values of participation and empowerment. We assess the tools from the perspective of their use in public action-based approaches, as a means to improve clarity and focus in multi-actor interventions. No one tool can fulfil the range of tasks required in complex situations and LFA is useful as one of various options. We consider two of its limitations. First, it can be used in many different styles, including as a means to analyse public interest as contested terrain, or as a technocratic tool. Second, the focus on viewing assumptions as immutable can limit the effectiveness of interventions.

The authors draw on experience from Uganda's commitment to decentralisation. This commitment is transforming the way services are planned and financed; new associations between local governments, NGOs, and private sector agencies are being created. Much attention has focused on the adoption of various techniques - such as participatory rural appraisal - through which direct and intensive forms of participation can be encouraged in decentralised planning. This trend is critically examined and potential unintended consequences are highlighted. A broader concept of accountability is outlined to illustrate a more inclusive approach to planning and allocation for more equity and sustainability in rural services.

With its emphasis on target-setting and performance measures, the New Public Management appears to offer a coherent and `no-nonsense' approach to public sector reform and the public management task. This article suggests that three questions require further thought: `Management of what?', `Management by whom?', and `How to manage?' It considers these questions using the case of Community Based Health Care and its promotion by NGOs in Tanzania. The article argues that the task of public management is one of managing an arena of public action which includes (and excludes) a range of actors and agendas. Once this is taken into account, it becomes clear that the challenge to all development managers is how to manage more effective interdependence.

This paper looks at the opportunities for civil society organisations (CSOs) in Brazil to increase and diversify income. It demonstrates the range of potential new sources of funds, including the Brazilian public, commercial activities, and government institutions. The role of volunteers is also addressed. The institutional and cultural changes that CSOs must make in order to mobilise these resources are highlighted, along with associated risks, such as diversion away from their representational and advocacy roles, loss of political independence, and bureaucratisation. The paper then suggests how aid agencies might fulfil their responsibilities to help counterparts bolster income, and raises the possibility of more inter-institutional collaboration in what is increasingly a global rather than national activity. Finally, some comments are offered regarding the funding priorities of the international NGOs, given the new income opportunities facing CSOs. The main recommendation is that these concentrate on supporting advocacy work rather than service provision.

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This article sets itself to answer the question: why theatre in development? It examines the reasons why development agencies have been reluctant to put Theatre for Development high on their agendas. It demonstrates the importance of critical pedagogy in the history of the form, which is linked directly to the emphasis placed on learner-centred participation in the Theatre in Education movement and in the techniques of Theatre of the Oppressed. It advocates a central role for the cultural component in any development process which claims to represent the needs of specific communities as articulated in their own voices, while exploring the particular dynamics of theatre as a non-literary form of dialogic communication that creates a `safe space' of fiction in which those who are habitually marginalised can not only find, but also use, a voice to effect change.

Worldwide concern for the environment has spawned a new field of interest and expertise within the development assistance industry. Environmental projects have become the new `darling' of the foreign aid community with donors and practitioners vying for suitable `eco' projects to support. While this support for the environment mimics the attention the development industry has paid to women (and later, gender), concern for these equally fashionable issues has not always been synchronised. Many development practitioners promote environmental projects which accord nominal concern to gender issues. Drawing on a case study of eco-timber production in the Solomon Islands, this article demonstrates how environmental sustainability and gender equity should be seen as complimentary project goals.

The author puts forward the personal view that participatory methodologies (such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA)) are often used by NGOs in such a way that they create a negative impact on the community they were intended to empower. Arguing that these methodologies incite the poor to feel the need to seem poor - a potentially disastrous starting point for any collaborative community/NGO initiative - the author advocates an approach by which communities identify their resources, and their capacity to improve their quality of life. An earlier version of this article was presented by the author at a PAMFORK Partticipatory Methodologies Workshop held on 24-27 September 1996 at Resurrection Gardens, Karen-Nairobi, and was published in Baobab, Issue 22 (1997). This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections

While larger non-governmental development organisations are implementing gender policies and practices, smaller NGDOs - while generally aware of the relevance and importance of gender-awareness - are yet to put this concern into practice. One reason for this is the lack of focussed gender specialists in these smaller organisations, but also, in the 5 Cameroonian and 8 UK-based organisations surveyed, there emerged little understanding of gender in the wider development context. Gender issues are marginalised and the NGDOs, while recognising that women's participation in the economic growth of a community is vital, fail to identify the fundamental inequalities regarding power, division of labour, and access to and control over resources.

In English only

Teams at their optimum efficiency during the normal course of work are more likely to be able to respond appropriately and handle pressure in emergency situations. This Practical Note goes on to describe various work procedures to ensure efficiency, communication and learning in a team. The author suggests ways of offering feedback to team members, skills supervisors should cultivate, and highlights the importance of `continuous learning'.

The author reports on the proceedings of this conference, opened by Clare Short (UK Secretary of State for International Development), who suggested that the event had come about due to a desire to `tackle the underlying causes of conflict and strife'. The participants, though, made it clear that humanitarians are divided over the principles governing their work. Many key questions, while discussed, remained unanswered; such as how to prioritise principles, whether political will or humanitarian principles (or both!) are lacking, and how to handle humanitarian intervention into just wars. The author concludes by discussing the under-representation of women at the conference.

There is a widespread perception that Southern NGOs best represent the authentic voices of the Southern poor. This article challenges this perception, arguing that poor people in general, and children and women in particular, continue to be disenfranchised, while NGOs - both Northern and Southern - offer a poor imitation of their voices. It argues that what is needed, given the current global economic paradigm, is an authentic `joint venture' between NGOs in the North and the South and the authentic voices of poor people themselves, that would bring the poor into the mainstream; and a new approach to capacity-building that would seek to empower them better to advocate for themselves. It concludes that, to achieve this, economic advocacy should perhaps take greater precedence over political advocacy. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Advocacy and in Development and Social Action.

'Multilateral debt is not a widespread problem for Severely Indebted Low Income Countries' wrote the World Bank in September 1994. Two years later, the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) - the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -agreed to a proposal to bring the debt of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) to sustainable levels. While imperfect, the proposal went some way to meeting the demands of NGOs which, with progressive forces both within the World Bank and among creditor countries, have played a crucial role in this process. While the multilateral debt problem is now too great to ignore, the authors maintain that it has been the persistent pressure of these players that has been responsible for the enormous progress made by the IFIs. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Social Action.

The standard models of the state and civil society balancing each other, as propounded by de Tocqueville, Hegel and Gramsci, are no longer useful in all cases when thinking about the relationship between the state, civil society and NGOs. The emergence in many countries of a weak state and relatively strong civil society organisations has led to NGOs filling the gaps in the provision of services which should nominally be provided by the state. The dangers of this are well-documented, and the author argues that NGOs should be seeking to strengthen the capacity of the state to perform these functions, as well as nurturing civil society.

The paper presents a case for all organizations that work on development, environmental, social justice, and human rights issues to work more closely together, arguing that many of the issues these organizations are addressing are one and the same. It is a call to reflection, debate, and action concerning the protection and guarantee of all human rights, and the holding accountable of all actors for actions that contribute to their violation. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

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The author reports on a visit to Lagos State, Nigeria, to research aspects of primary healthcare, and highlights how communities knew what they needed to improve their quality of life, and how they felt health education was not necessary. Their self-determination forced the researchers to adopt a participatory approach, and provide assistance in getting the locally identified schemes underway before attempting, collaboratively, to set up an education programme.

The Small Enterprise Development Fund of the Department for International Development (DFID) of the British Government commissioned a literature review and held workshops, both co-ordinated by ActionAid UK, to assess the impact of micro-finance schemes on women's empowerment. Three broad approaches to micro-finance for women are identified as well as the constraints affecting impact in each case: approaches emphasising financial sustainability, integrated community development or feminist empowerment. The author provides a framework for assessing degrees of empowerment and presents a `minimal gender strategy' for micro-finance.

Using data from a recent ethnographic study in rural Bangladesh to explore relationships between men's violence against women in the home, women's economic and social dependence on men, and microcredit programmes, this paper suggests that microcredit programmes have an varied effect on men's violence against women. They can reduce women's vulnerability to men's violence by strengthening their economic roles and making their lives more public. When women challenge gender norms, however, they sometimes provoke violence in their husbands. Male violence against women is a serious, widespread, and often ignored problem worldwide. By putting resources into women's hands, credit programmes may indirectly exacerbate such violence; but they may also provide a context for intervention.

This article describes and analyses the Gender Quality Action-Learning (GQAL) Programme of BRAC, a large rural development NGO in Bangladesh. This works with men and women field-staff and managers in a process of issue-analysis, action planning, and implementation (the GQAL cycle) to address organisational change and programme quality concerns that is informed by an understanding of gender. Gender, meaning women or the relations between men and women, is sometimes lost as deeper issues of power and instrumentality surface. The greatest challenge for the Programme now is to explore the gendered nature of both, and find ways to change gender bias along with other organisational, structural, and process features that promote gender inequity both within BRAC and in the delivery and impact of its social change objectives.

NGOs, like other organisations, are gendered; that is, they reflect society's power relations between men and women. The author argues that NGOs must begin a process of gender-sensitive institutional change, building equitable practices and attitudes in the long-term, benefiting and empowering NGO staff as well as impacting on their programme work, and strategic objectives. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development with Women.

The author identifies three key weaknesses in the debate leading up to establishing the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) for the European Union (EU). The process started in 1996 and a generally useful and relevant discussion has taken place between various governmental and non-governmental actors concerning conflict-prevention and structural stability. The author believes there must be further consideration of inconsistencies in international policy, the incoherence of the view that conflict and structural instability are essentially problems of the `South', and the tendency to analyse only countries where conflict has broken out, ignoring those where the potential for violence existed, but was avoided.

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SatelLife was set up by the organisation International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) in 1985, with the aim of providing a forum for the involvement of medical colleagues in the South in discussion of health and peace issues. SatelLife set up and run a satellite linking service (HealthNet) providing email and a medical information network for organisations and communities world-wide, integrating people working in countries with limited communications infrastructure into the debate. The author provides an overview of the system and the ethos behind it.

Global Knowledge '97: Knowledge for Development in the Information Age was organised by the World Bank and the Canadian government and held in Toronto. The Benton Foundation put together a group of US experts from the NGO sector, and the author reports on the conference and how various NGO representatives viewed the discussions. The consensus at the conference was that technological improvements and updating infrastructure were of the greatest importance for development. The NGO representatives quoted here, however, felt that an emphasis on meaningful content would also have been appropriate, as would the recognition that market forces alone should not drive policy in this area.

The vision shared by most development scholars and practitioners today is for beneficiary-driven development, the impediment and the means to which both lie with communication. The debate concerns the communication approach that would best realise this vision. This paper examines and critically comments on two major approaches, Development Communication (DC) and Development Support Communication (DSC), though it argues for neither of these. Rather, it draws on the `Another Development - Another Communication' paradigm and proposes a Participatory Communication (PC) approach, which both resonates in people's own moral values, conforms to the reality of many communities in Africa, and offers better prospects of achieving beneficiary-driven development.

Organisational capacity-building may be so focused on the hope for an improved future that it unwittingly fails to draw upon key learning from past experience. Reflection upon and public affirmation of those moments in organisational life when members felt high commitment can ignite imagination and build momentum for a better future. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) methods of organisational transformation suggest that a positive future image of one's organisation can be a compelling, if not irresistible, force, the creation of which needs to embrace the already-lived and shared satisfying moments of members. Organisational capacity is best understood, and most enjoyably and authentically pursued, when the process and desired product is co-generated from within the lived realities of all its stakeholders. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections

Many governments and international organisations have offered utopian visions of a Global Information Infrastructure (GII), a successor to the Internet, which will enable global sharing and communication. The development of the GII rests on the capacity of all nations to have access to the requisite technology, and the currently widening gap between access to PCs and telephone lines does not bode well for the prospects of the envisioned network. The People's Communication Charter may provide a framework for critically assessing and influencing the quality and distribution of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their products. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Advocacy and in Development and Social Action.

The author, formerly Director of the Clearinghouse Project, describes the aims, achievements and underlying philosophy of the Project, which was set up in 1979 by the American Public Health Association (funded by USAID) to improve access to information for health-practitioners in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Clearinghouse is a capacity-building resource, providing information on women and children's nutrition, as well as training for staff in the field, and works from the principle that services can match users needs more accurately if the users and service-providers are involved in communication and networking promoting information-sharing and dialogue.

The article explores the moral difficulties for international humanitarian workers operating as third parties in the midst of war. The main part examines current usage of the terms `humanity', `neutrality', `impartiality', and `solidarity' as they are used in the discourse of humanitarian operations. The article then considers the psychological implications for relief workers of operating as non-combatant third parties in war. Finally, the article recognises that a range of different positions is both inevitable and desirable in a given conflict, but concludes by emphasising the responsibility of any third-party relief organisation to be transparent in its position and to preserve rather than distort traditional humanitarian principles and language. It ends by recommending concerted support for international humanitarian law and its possible reform as the best way to focus the current debate about the place of humanitarianism in war. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives

The author presents the views of Thailand's Population and Community Development Association (PDA - Thailand's largest NGO) about how to provide women attracted to the commercial sex industry (CSI) with economically viable alternatives to this accepted (in Thailand) type of `manual labour'. Research has shown that poverty is the major factor cited by voluntary commercial sex workers (CSWs) as influencing their move into the industry, and that economic development is their way out.

The Summit, held in February 1997 in Washington DC, involved participation from governments, UN agencies, corporations, NGOs and credit practitioners. The author reviews the discussion, much of it concerning the importance of distinguishing between development reasons for advocating and initiating micro-enterprise, finance and credit schemes and more general economic reasons for doing so. Other debates include whether income generation is a key strategy to combat poverty, whether microcredit really helps the poorest populations, how gender should be integrated into programme structures, and the value of credit for micro-enterprise compared to micro-finance.

While some recent conflicts have attracted international attention, other long-term conflicts with high accumulative death tolls have been relatively ignored. A decontextualised and partial view of conflict and violence is further encouraged by the separation between the emergency and development sections in many Northern aid agencies. Drawing on detailed case-studies of post-conflict experience in El Salvador, Peru, and Nicaragua, the author argues that conflict analysis, emergency intervention, and peace-building must be rooted within specific socio-historical contexts. The article ends with a critical reflection on the extent to which local-level capacities have in fact been able to influence the post-war situation and prospects for long-term and sustainable peace-building in these three countries. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives

This paper explores some of the reasons for the failure of the international community to act decisively in preempting the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. These are rooted both in long-distant history and in the dynamics of post-Cold War international politics. Drawing on a decade of experience in Central Africa, the author looks critically at the widely accepted explanations of the genocide and its aftermath as `simply tribal fighting', and considers the role of external agents - journalists and aid agencies alike - in fostering this view. The paper ends with a reflection on the complex challenges posed by `reconciliation' in the wake of genocide.

This symposium, co-hosted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) and the South Africa Office of Oxfam, drew together individuals and organisations working in the areas of violence, conflict and peace-building. Here, the author considers `alternative' ways of creating collective memories, used by countries and communities without access to the formal state frameworks of truth commissions or war-crimes tribunals. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Patronage.

This paper discusses the issues of reconciliation, truth commissions, and alternative ways of healing, focusing on what reconciliation means to different people and cultures, how reconciliation works in practice, what role truth commissions play in the process, and what alternative ways of healing have been used, specifically in Mozambique. The author bases his thinking, not on established theories, but on how people become reconciled with each other in practice.

This symposium, co-hosted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) and the South Africa Office of Oxfam, drew together individuals and organisations working in the areas of violence, conflict and peace-building. Here, the author discusses the impact of displacement (because of war) on families in Angola and Mozambique, and is specifically concerned with its effects on women and young people, who are believed to suffer the most profound psycho-social damage in these circumstances.

This symposium, co-hosted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) and the South Africa Office of Oxfam, drew together individuals and organisations working in the areas of violence, conflict and peace-building. The author here recounts her work with the Independent Projects Trust (IPT) in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, providing training in conflict-resolution skills. She describes the history of political violence and deprivation in rural areas, and discusses training for, and the essential qualities of, successful community-based peace-workers. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development, Women and War: Feminist Perspectives

This symposium, co-hosted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) and the South Africa Office of Oxfam, drew together individuals and organisations working in the areas of violence, conflict and peace-building. Here, Thompson presents a comparative study of reconciliation and reconstruction processes in post-conflict Central America and Southern Africa. She identifies successes and failures, suggesting alternatives, and particularly criticises the tendency of multilateral agencies, especially the UNDP and USAID, to apply reconstruction packages irrespective of context, and, in Central America, to neglect the parallel need for reconciliatory initiatives. The demobilisation and re-integration of ex-combatants is specifically considered.

Recent conflicts in the Balkans have been portrayed largely in terms of ethnic and religious divisions, with Western military and diplomatic intervention seen as essential to securing a positive outcome. However, these divisions are the consequence of a deeper process of economic and political fracturing. The re-structuring of the former Yugoslav economy, and the policies of the international financial institutions, have not been sufficiently emphasised. However, the author contends that, far from being the basis for social and economic reconstruction, the application of free-market policies in former Yugoslavia favoured the dismantling of social-welfare structures and contributed to the rapid decline in national economic capacity. The terms of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords suggest that a similar future is in store for the successor states of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Slovenia.

The author gives a personal view of her experiences in Guatemala in 1995, when she met with human-rights workers coping with the aftermath, and ongoing trauma, of the 36-year war. She describes the fear and disruption brought about by so many years of military violence and repression, and the processes which it is hoped can help rehabilitate affected communities, particularly focussing on the psychosocial implications of giving people the chance to talk about, and learn the truth about, their experiences. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Patronage.

The author describes and assesses the use of matrix-scoring as a participatory evaluation tool. Often used as part of the Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) arsenal of tools, here the author applies it specifically to evaluating the performance of the European Community/European Union (EC/EU) in the provision of aid to Ethiopia between 1976 and 1994. He describes the mapping technique, scoring/ranking system, and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of its use in this case (including tables of responses/results).

In English only

The paper addresses the question of the purpose of Rapid Rural Appraisal and Participatory Rural Appraisal (RRA/PRA). It outlines three broad contexts in which these are undertaken in practice. It then considers some of the challenges facing PRA. These include introducing and spreading PRA within communities; institutionalizing PRA into development organizations and their projects or programmes; assuring and maintaining quality, both of the PRA process and its facilitation; and, finally, the lack of a methodological critique of PRA. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections

The UNEP's Dryland Ecosystems and Desertification Control Programme Activity Centre (DEDC/PAC) is coordinating a programme through the Environmental Liaison Centre International (ELCI) to devise methods for the participatory evaluation and monitoring of projects, forming a useful corollary to Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). Community-integrated projects should allow for the community evaluation, as well as implementation, of programmes, and the author recommends a number of steps to incorporate successful participatory evaluation.

The first in a series of papers, this paper describes the rationale behind the Manicaland Business Linkages Project in Eastern Zimbabwe. The economic and development perspectives of buyers, suppliers, and the nation are considered, including the relevance of gender in small enterprise. Potential risks and problems are highlighted: imbalances of power between buyer and seller, government regulations and union demands, and access to linkage opportunities.

This paper takes an actor-oriented approach to understanding the significance for policy and practice of fieldworker experience at the interface between project and people. It is set in the context of an Indian project which aims to reduce poverty through sustainable, participatory agricultural change, based on low-cost inputs, catalysed by village-based project staff. Diaries kept by such staff are analysed to reveal how the social position of fieldworkers enables and constrains their interactions within and without the project, and the ways in which `street level bureaucrats' shape projects through their discretionary actions. They show the Village Motivators struggling to communicate project objectives, to establish their roles and distinguish themselves from other village-level bureaucrats, to negotiate participation, to overcome hostility to Participatory Rural Appraisal, to arbitrate access to consultants and seniors, to interpret project objectives and lobby for changes in these without admission of failure, and finally to develop a shared vocabulary of participation and belief in success. Some of the implications for participatory approaches are that there may be significant contradictions between sustainability and participatory development.

There has recently been unprecedented enthusiasm in Bangladesh for Social Forestry (SF). SF projects have been launched with the goal of involving local communities in managing forest resources. Proponents claim that SF has opened new scope for people's participation in forestry. Against such promises and claims, this paper attempts to evaluate the nature and extent of participation in an SF project in Bangladesh, which is currently receiving attention from government and donors. The paper uses a systematic theoretical framework to evaluate participation in the decision-making, implementation, benefit-sharing, and evaluation of the project. It concludes that people's participation has been insignificant, and marginal. People have virtually no major involvement in project-related decisions and evaluation, but perform within strict bureaucratic limits.

The author discusses the value of speech/talking as a communication tool, and the distortions that occur depending on the way speech is recorded and presented. During travels in India, de Caires asked one question of people he met along the way, recording their responses on paper and noting the influences on people's responses and his own impact on their choice of words. In relation to development, the point is made that face-to-face talk should be valued above other reported or mediated methods of communication, which can `amplify misunderstandings, and...alienate people from the fundamental process of sharing information.'

Since the 1960s, `partnership' has been a stated aim of NGOs, and the authors discuss how the concept of partnership has developed over the last 30 years. The type of relationship partners should have and the type of institution, government or group that Northern NGOs should seek to foster as partners, the authors argue, may be different in each specific instance. Both partners should agree on what they wish to gain from and can contribute to the relationship, building the mutual trust essential if partnerships are to flourish, be useful, and last.

Sixty per cent of Peru's urban workforce is employed within the small and micro enterprises (SMEs) which account for 95 per cent of all business in the country's manufacturing, commercial, and service sectors. But in spite of credit needs of some US$ 1,250 million, in 1994 the combined input from the formal financial sector, international development agencies, and NGOs met only five per cent of this demand. The author examines the six principal mechanisms through which credit is available to SMEs, and describes the work of a Peruvian NGO network - IDESI - which specialises in providing credit and related services to small businesses, and in making strategic linkages between the popular sector and the conventional banking system.

This article suggests that gender-oriented policies tend to evaporate within the bureaucracy of the typical international development agency. An agency is here interpreted as a `patriarchal cooking pot', in which gender policies are likely to evaporate because they threaten the internal patriarchal tradition of the agency, and also because such policies would upset the cosy and `brotherly' relationship with recipient governments of developing countries. The article aims to illuminate this process of policy evaporation. The reader is invited to peer into the patriarchal cooking pot. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development with Women.

In English only

The paper discusses some of the innovative ways in which the Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) has generated space for alternative critical feminist knowledge and analysis, which it sees as an essential basis for equitable development. The objectives of ZWRCN are briefly: to promote and strengthen inter-organizational networking activities for the exchange of information; to promote greater gender-awareness through information; to promote the adoption of gender-sensitive information systems; to repackage information in forms appropriate to relevant users; and to fill information gaps in both formal and non-formal ways. Strategies used by the ZWRCN include: documentation centre, thematic debates, talks on Gender and Development (GAD), gender training, a linkage programme, lobbying and advocacy, the GAD database, and book fairs. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development with Women. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

The author reports on this conference, held in Bradford, England in May 1996. Consultants, planners, activists, geographers, ecologists, and economists attended, presenting papers on diverse topics but with the intention of understanding different methodological approaches to choosing development options. Focussing on environmental impact-assessment, the report highlights the participants' fruitful discussion of the interaction between various methodologies, but the author argues that `progress towards more environment-friendly development paths remains problematic.'

The authors assess the 1995 CAS for Mexico, arguing that it fails to provide any coherent poverty-reduction strategies and maintains, incorrectly, that increased economic growth can alleviate poverty in and of itself. Also attacked is the way the CAS is developed without any consultation with civil society organisations in Mexico. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Patronage.

The Habitat International Coalition conducted research in 22 countries in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia, investigating public policy in housing and services since the 1950s. The findings are summarised here. Rural and urban development policies are considered, including housing shortages and types of housing, the consequences of relying on aid, and discussion of the different actors designing social policy. Finally, the author lists ingredients that seem to contribute to the success of housing and service provision.

It is noted that while multilateral development banks (MDBs) have significantly increased their lending for 'targeted' anti-poverty projects since the early 1990s, there are few systematic, independent, field-based assessments of their effectiveness; as such monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is necessary to provide feedback to development decision-makers and stakeholders regarding what kinds of anti-poverty programme work and why. Pro-accountability actors in civil society in both donor countries and developing countries share a common interest in greater transparency as a path towards greater accountability and more effective MDB anti-poverty investments. Issues discussed are: bringing in civil society; learning from below; building networks; producing reliable generalizations; building credibility both above and below; making findings public; institution building; and cost effectiveness. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Social Action.

The problem of inadequate housing and living conditions facing one quarter of the world's population is situated in this article within the framework of human rights, and of international recognition of the basic rights to a place to live, and to gain and sustain an adequate standard of living. The nature and scale of the housing crisis points to a failure of governance that leads to exclusion, dispossession, and violence becoming endemic to societies: the institutionalisation of insecure and inadequate housing and living conditions. The author draws on the experience of Habitat International Coalition (HIC) in developing and supporting a comprehensive range of actions at local, national, regional, and international levels; and suggests some of the elements required if changes are not only to be promoted and campaigned for, but also sustained.

Financial accountability is as important in development agencies as in other organisations, although providing expenses statements, keeping accurate accounts, and setting and monitoring budgets are often seen by development workers as excessively bureaucratic tasks. The author argues that a small amount of training in simple, workable accounting procedures can enable people to obtain useful data from their accounts, and help with planning future expenditure.

The author replies to Hasan Zaman's comments (in the same issue of the journal) about micro-credit organisations.

In 1994, the authors conducted research in the Iasi district of Romania, and present here findings about institutionalised children's aspirations, education, level of family contact and their assessment of the problems they face. The research provides some interesting pointers for those involved in programme planning, suggesting that better education and encouraging familial contact, where possible, throughout institutionalisation are more effective than strategies which seek to help the children when they leave. The article also questions the validity of the use of the term `orphans', when 80 percent of those questioned appeared to know the whereabouts of a family member.

This article describes the activities of an indigenous NGO in Ahmedabad, India in attempting to prevent communal violence. It attempts to explain why the use of religious symbols seems to be particularly potent in causing slum riots. Finally, it discusses various lessons learned for international and indigenous NGOs which are attempting to counteract communal violence. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Culture.

A notable absentee from the ten-point action plan set out by the 1990 World Summit for Children was the issue of street children. Yet such children are a common sight in cities of the developing world, and live in some of the most extreme conditions of poverty. The article looks at the experience of street children in the Mexican city of Puebla. It argues that current research neglects the moral and geographic dimension of work with street children. This has led to practice that regards street children as a welfare concern (as children), and pays less attention to their geographic context (the street). By contrast, the work of an NGO, JUCONI, indicates that a sensitivity to this distinction can offer critical insights. The article outlines JUCONI's approach and evaluates the implications for `best practice'.

A review is presented of the different principles and characteristics embodied in the two development philosophies (as briefly differentiated in the phrases 'top-down approach', and the 'bottom-up', or people-centered approach). Evaluation is discussed in terms of the two approaches: the subjective and the objective. Each one is examined, and whether they are mutually exclusive or compatible is discussed, and indeed whether evaluating project outcomes is worthwhile. It is concluded that the evaluation of each type f project can learn from each other, and that an amalgamation of objective and subjective approaches can lead to a more informed evaluation outcome, and an enhanced development project or process. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections

The authors describe how late rainfall, and the subsequent drought-recovery Food-For-Work (FFW) programme, undermined a long-term environment-protection project in Lesotho, South Africa. They argue emergency relief should be coordinated to complement disaster-prevention and capacity-building programmes - the FFW programme set a precedent for `payment' for essential conservation work - and the authors discuss how food distribution can be done as `developmentally as possible'.

In English only

The need for a comprehensive information service based at the rural level in Bangladesh is discussed, noting the demands of NGO activists who require reading materials, particularly in their own language, for updating their knowledge, developing skills, analysing social issues, and motivating communities. The establishment of the Community Development Library (CDL) in 1980 whose role is to cater to the information needs of development agencies and social workers, through an institution which would provide development workers with resource materials and up-to-date information on a variety of issues is discussed. The organization of the CDL is described, and additional services are noted: press clippings; current-awareness services; a reading circle; action research and publication; audio-visual programme; and development resource promotion. The CDL also maintains 30 regional, district, and local Rural Information Resource Centres (RIRCS). The impact and some restraints of the RIRCS are noted. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

The author researched women's experiences of domestic violence and abuse in Calcutta, India. She reports on their strategies for coping with and resisting this violence, noting that the majority of the women developed resistance strategies, and that in many cases these worked. A pragmatic approach is taken, since, the author argues, it is unhelpful to assume that the best course of action for these women would be to leave their partners. The women who were most successful in resisting violence were those who were least isolated; who had access to other family members, or other women through a variety of organisations.

Kishore Saint, one of Development in Practice's founding Editorial Advisers, shares his thoughts on the way forward for the journal as he prepares to stand down from his position.

Agrarian reform or land reform has virtually disappeared from the international development agenda since the 1980s. However, many people's organisations (POs) and NGOs in Third World countries are attempting to restore it as a development priority and policy imperative. The Philippines provides an example of agrarian reform that is currently being implemented within a democratic political framework which, while not without problems, presents an opportunity for a meaningful change for small farmers and landless peasants. In 1989, PhilDhrra, a network of NGOs in the Philippines, initiated a tripartite mechanism and programme among POs, NGOs, and government to facilitate the land reform process, which is showing encouraging results in several provinces.

The author discusses her involvement, as a member of the Indian Women's Movement (IWM), in campaigning for increased protection under Indian law for women, and children, from sexual assault of any kind. The law at present has large gaps in it, and is formulated with the joint aims of protecting `virginal' women and protecting men at risk from the false allegations of low caste, impoverished, sexually-aware women. The evolution of the current law is presented, with examples of injustices, suggested areas for future lobbying, and pleas to ensure that victims are not revictimised by lobbyists themselves. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Rights.

The insecurity of land tenure in Uganda has been a critical issue in the economic development of the country. The development of an equitable land distribution policy is discussed. Information is presented on: the historical background of land tenure systems (noting the difference in land tenure systems: Mailo, freehold, leasehold, the Busulu (ground rent) and Envujo (commodity rents) law, and the 1975 Land Decree); the work of the Technical Committee; and issues raised by the proposed reform (land as a technical question, over-riding economic considerations, avoidance of social issues, the sale of land, compensation, the plight of rural pastoralists, a ceiling on land acquisition, a uniform land tenure system, and the timing of implementation). It is concluded that the proposed land reform in Uganda does not promise to balance technical, economic, social, and political criteria. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

The development of an unionized work force in the north-east of Brazil is described. The area has seen considerable growth in the export markets for grapes and mangoes which provides significant employment; other areas of employment are in labour-intensive crops, for example tomatoes and onions. The paper discusses: some new union strategies, improvements for wage labourers, and some of the limited victories that have been achieved with the work of the NGO, Oxfam. It is argued that there are limits to this kind of development model given the low value of the wages earned by the workers. The conclusion proposes considerable networking amongst unions and NGOs with the aim of providing information that may allow them to define and implement new directions for development. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Social Action.

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. It concludes by drawing out key lessons for donors who support indigenous NGOs operating in complex political emergencies. An updated version of this article is freely available as a chapter in Development NGOs and Civil Society.

In 1994, the UN Volunteers programme (UNV) and UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) collaborated on a research project, Volunteer Contributions to Social Integration at the Grassroots: the Urban or `Pavement Dimension'. The author describes how the researchers hope to contribute to understanding of how global forces erode community structures, including the way governments increasingly privatise public services, and highlights the challenges and potential rewards for communities which voluntarily pull together to change their circumstances.

The Kebkabiya project was the first of Oxfam's operational development projects instigated during the 1980s to initiate a handover to community management. It therefore offers a possible model to other operational projects considering their eventual future. This article analyses the processes of handover into those affecting operational control of service delivery, management control, and the project's financial base. It argues that a handover, if it is to be successful and sustainable, must be treated as a complex set of activities requiring a long time framework, much like any other developmental process.

New communication technologies may be a mixed blessing for tropical African states. They could foster development, by promoting health, education, agriculture, entertainment, business and tourism; and also enhance international trade and regional Cupertino. However, these technologies might accentuate the gap between the rich and poor, creating a society characterised by an information-rich elite and an information-poor underclass. In an age when information is power, this could devastate countries that are facing the problems of poverty, disease, hunger, and political instability. Ultimately, these technologies might also jeopardise the sovereignty, security, human rights and, consequently, the development of countries in tropical Africa.

An examination is presented of an NGO project in Zambia, focusing on its approach, its specific consequences for local participation, potential for sustainability and its ability to hold the government accountable for how its uses public resources. Sections focus on: channeling food aid; and food for work programmes. It is concluded that unless aid projects make it a priority to establish or reinforce mechanisms by which existing, locally available resources are mobilized and used effectively in resolving the problems of the poor, they cannot contribute to laying a basis for further development. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development, NGOs, and Civil Society. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development NGOs and Civil Society.

An analysis is presented of the expansion of the NGO, the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) in Gujarat, India following the approval of a #10 million grant for rural development from the European Union. The challenge facing the NGO is to scale up the kind of community based development which it has been successful at to a size that has an impact on a larger number of people. The grassroots approach adopted by the AKRSP is examined and the need to maintain this approach despite the increase in programme size highlighted and the problems this creates are outlined. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

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.

This article challenges the recent uncritical enthusiasm for the potential of micro-finance institutions to reduce poverty. It is argued that, although understanding about how to design anti-poverty financial intermediation has improved, the current campaign to increase resource allocation in this sector may undermine the very sustainability that is being sought. Further, studies of the impact of micro-enterprise credit suggest that it is not necessarily beneficial to very poor people. Interventions in the provision of financial services should not be made without locally specific analysis of the functions of existing savings and credit facilities. An emphasis on scale acts as a disincentive to such analysis, and increases the risk of the re-emergence of a `blueprint' approach to anti-poverty action.

The author comments on research into poor urban women's survival strategies done in Zambia in 1994, funded by the Natural Resources Department of the British government's Overseas Development Administration. Chilimba is an informal savings and credit system, one variation of the ROSCAs (Rotating Savings and Credit Associations) successfully in use throughout Africa and elsewhere. The author discusses the potential for intervention designed to enable those with no capital or regular income to participate, and to increase and widen the benefits gained from participation.

In Bangladesh, government organisations and non-governmental organisations are implementing programmes and energy-saving projects in an effort to save the environment. This article examines such programmes in the specific area of improved stove technology. It shows that inadequate assessment of the environment by environmentalists and development practitioners has led them to select inappropriate technology that has resulted in the failure to incorporate women in the energy-saving movement. It identifies the reasons behind women's rejection of a technology that was imposed rather than based on an appreciation of their distinct problems, culture, and ecology.

The policies of the apartheid regime prematurely destroyed the peasantry in South Africa, leaving millions of people without land or jobs. The abrogation of racial laws that reserved 87 per cent of the land for whites makes it possible to launch policies addressing the needs of black farmers. Efforts to promote the emergence of black commercial farmers risk worsening conditions for much of the rural population. While it cannot neglect commercial agriculture and food security, South Africa also needs to revive peasant agriculture, which can play a role similar to that of the informal sector in urban areas.

The paper defines financial sustainability; why financial sustainability is a valid objective; how it can be measured; and what can be done to improve levels of financial sustainability. The discussion is situated within the context of NGOs managed credit schemes, operating in developing countries. The following issues are considered: importance of savings; gender; appropriate loan size; realistic interest rates; repayment periods and intervals; security and collateral; group loans versus group businesses; separation of finance from other support; systems; measurement; incentives; and scale. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

A case study is presented of the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in Gujarat, India, which has taken on responsibility for providing marketing support to the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas groups in the Banaskantha district. It is the first time a voluntary organisation has been involved directly in business activities in an open market environment. A brief introduction of the SEWA experiment is presented, followed by a discussion of the group process in marketing; links with external agencies are presented, and some lessons are noted. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

In English only

The paper argues that education should be a crucial part of relief operations which respond to emergencies in developing countries. In practice, however, educational needs in emergencies have been neglected in competition with the demand for more conventional relief. An example from southern Sudan demonstrates how the need for education can be addressed in an emergency. Indigenous initiatives for the re-establishment and improvement of educational provision have been supported by a group of agencies working as part of the emergency operation. A flexible system of teacher education is the focus of a programme which invests in people rather than buildings. It emphasizes the crucial importance of the involvement of local communities, on whom the success of rural primary school education depends. The scheme has also recognized the importance of schools for conveying information and stimulating discussion on topics such as health, psycho-social needs, and girls' education, and integrating these cross-cutting issues into teacher education. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development in States of War. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

Against a background of reduced government funding of African universities, the International African Institute in London co-ordinated a study in 1995 to evaluate university libraries, in terms of their sustainability, now that many survive on (usually short-term) funding from donors. Through structured interviews and questionnaires, the researchers discovered libraries are becoming marginalised and decentralised within universities, and many are not providing the most basic services for students and staff.

This article reviews the extent to which the educational system has acknowledged the importance to women of the informal sector of the economy, and the extent to which it has sought to prepare them for employment or self-employment within it. It assesses the record of both formal and non-formal education in providing women with the necessary skills to compete with men for employment, and concludes that both have generally failed to assist women to obtain skilled, well paid, and secure jobs, leaving them in overwhelming numbers in subsistence-level activities in the informal sector. Within the non-formal approach to education, the article examines training in income-generating projects, which are a major conduit for assistance to poor women in developing countries. Some recommendations for improved strategies of education and training provision are presented. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development with Women.

The paper notes that there are substantial differences between women's studies/women in development and gender studies/gender and development. It suggests that the differences between women in development, and gender and development is such that the focus changes from one of equity to one of efficiency. Within gender and development, there are a number of different loci: gender studies (the conceptual part of the process, during which models are developed and refined through research, debate and networking); gender training (a technical part of the process which involves passing on practical skills for implementing gender-sensitive policy, planning, and training in specific circumstances); and gender planning (the practical application of the skills that have been acquired through gender studies and gender training). The paper examines some of the specific problems encountered in each of these areas, the need to develop effective courses within Africa, the scope of training currently available and the impact of gender studies and gender training as a positive change in the lives of marginalised groups of women. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

Recent years have seen development NGOs making significant efforts to show how they are performing, a trend impelled by three factors: stricter requirements attached to official aid, which is a fast-growing proportion of NGO funds; doubts about NGOs claims to be more effective than governments; post-Cold War shifts in the role of NGOs, which increase their own needs to know what is being achieved, in order to manage the processes of organisational reorientation and transformation. Almost without exception, NGOs are finding it very difficult to come up with sound, cost-effective methods to show the results of their development activities, or even to demonstrate their effectiveness as organizations. These difficulties arise from both key features of the aid system, and from the nature of 'non-profits'. The paper summarizes the difficulties in each of these two areas, and considers solutions that are emerging from recent experience. A concluding section explores the link between accountability and performance, and speculates on the range of approaches which NGOs might use in the future to prove that they are valuable and effective agents of development. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

The UK Development Studies Association is a voluntary body of academics and practitioners concerned with economic and social development. The author highlights the `added value' of academics and practitioners sharing their expertise, and discusses the climate of mutual respect in which Cupertino can be most productive.

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. This article explores these developments and examines in particular one aspect that has been relatively ignored - the relationship between governments and the NGO sector within the health field. It concludes by looking at practical steps that can be taken to improve such relationships.

There is a recognised tension between the development practitioner's need for timely intelligence on key topics, and the normal routines of academic development studies. Closing that gap involves, amongst other things, elaborating new ways of organising and doing research. This article, by an academic, is concerned especially with how to combine interactive rapid-appraisal methods with inputs from more conventional styles of research in ways that bridge the `macro-micro' divide; that is, shed light on national policy trends by exploring community and household responses. It describes two pieces of team research carried out in Tanzania and Zambia at the instigation of the Swedish official agency, SIDA.

The author considers the coping strategies used by the newly poor households of the now-independent nation-state Kyrgyzstan. Like other former members of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan has fared badly economically since the disintegration of both the Union and complex economic links with it. In 1994, Save the Children Fund (SCF) carried out research into these coping strategies, the findings of which are briefly presented here. Full details can be obtained from SCF in a report entitled `Coping with the Transition: Household Coping Strategies in Kyrgyzstan' (SCF, December 1994).

The author responds to Mike Powell's article in Development in Practice 5(3), and argues that it is not only those interfering in cultures as 'outsiders' who face difficulties and accusations of cultural subjectivity, but also those challenging norms as a member of that culture. Those presenting views which go against traditional social structures, such as the author's views about the treatment of women in South Asia, should not allow accusations of cultural relativism to dissuade them - rather, development practitioners should 'use culture to open up intractable areas of gender relations'. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Culture.

What opportunities are there, within Primary Health Care (PHC) programmes, for village communities to become involved with the process of conceiving, constructing and maintaining their own health facilities? This paper looks at three PHC projects in Sierra Leone and Uganda involving NGOs, governments and host communities in the construction of health buildings; one each from those supported by Save the Children Fund, Action Aid and Oxfam. These examples are used to draw out issues which require monitoring and evaluation within those PHC programmes aiming to promote community involvement in the process of producing and sustaining village level health buildings.

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 article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development for Health.

A survey in the Rakai District in 1989 put the number of orphans at 25,000; by 1991 a population census counted 44,000, a growth the author attributes to the AIDS pandemic. The Child Social Care Project (CSCP) in Rakai works with widows and orphans to address their property rights, seeking to reduce the vulnerability of women and children under both customary and statutory law. The author discusses the work of the Project, and advocates continued processes of education and sensitisation to change attitudes, accompanied by legal reform. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development for Health.

In English only

From 1989, an attempt to improve agriculture by directly addressing ignorance and fatalism has been developed in Benin by an Italian NGO, Mani Tese, based on attempts to provide traditional peasant farmers with better qualifications and greater motivation. The approach consists of funding a network of school-farms, or Centres of Rural Promotion (CRPs) dedicated to teaching modern agricultural techniques in an appropriate and local context. The main aim of the strategy is to create a new kind of peasant farmer: one who has a good technological/cultural background, and is able to exploit all the locally available resources in a sustainable way. The paper discusses the importance of employing local personnel, and some of the problems that still need to be met (such as developing effective post-training assistance). It is concluded that this form of development aid allows the NGO to entrust the ultimate beneficiaries with as much responsibility as possible, and therefore allow the project to become autonomous. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

In 1992 and 1993 fieldwork was done in the Eastern Region of Ghana to examine why hybrid cocoa, introduced by cocoa institutions, was adopted by some farmers and not others. This report discusses the problems encountered when collecting data, including the low-level of farmers' education, and the lack of official records and sampling possibilities.

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. The author argues against approaches which are not culturally familiar to working people. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Culture.

Until the early 1980s, despite paying lip-service to the central role of `human capital', most decision makers were obsessed by physical development and the rate of increase of Gross National Product. Like other Third World countries, Egypt followed suit. Ten years ago, however, with accumulating external debts and social disintegration, it became clear that the returns on investments in these infrastructural schemes were meagre or even negative. Culture, community, and organic leadership were rediscovered as the missing links in the development process. These and other forms of associational life are sometimes subsumed under the concept of 'civil society'. Development has come to be defined as a process in which human potentialities are optimised at the individual and collective levels. This article illustrates the interaction among these variables by reference to examples of community-based development.

The paper presents two brief case studies to illustrate the potential problems that exist for 'outside' experts who attempt to change a society's values and reality without, in advance, understanding what already exists, or what the community wants, or is prepared to accept. Both case studies are based in Tanzania. The first examines a situation in which an NGO agent attempted to change the gender relations of a village by introducing new styles of mills for the women to grind millet and sorghum. The second case study is of a foreign-NGO implemented water provision project. The project failed to carry out a cultural feasibility study prior to implementation, with the result that many of the (male) newly-trained water attendants immediately left the village to obtain jobs in the town, resulting in more training having to be provided to women, who were willing to stay in the village. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

The Nilgiris Adivasi Welfare Association (NAWA) was founded in 1958, in Tamil Nadu, India, to work for the integrated welfare of the six Nilgiri tribes, all displaced and dispersed by the invasion of their forest homelands by incoming non-tribal peoples. The paper describes the original founding of the Paniya Rehabilitation Farm colony for 25 families who were bought out of bonded labour by the founder. After initial hope that the project would succeed in becoming self-reliant, the paper discusses the areas of the project which lost momentum, the lack of outside funding, the increased involvement of NAWA in supporting the Paniyas, and their seeming long-term dependency on NAWA. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

In English only

This Note reports on research into differences in the contractual agreements made by workers and employers, offering insights into the working of markets (particularly for labour and credit) and, using case studies, showing the constraints on the free movement of rural workers because of indebtedness to employers. The researchers use socio-economic analysis frameworks and the author argues their use of local conceptualisations and their concentration on workers rather than employers makes their work more useful than conventional economic analysis.

Ageing populations, already a well-established phenomenon in the countries of the North, are also a growing issue in the South. This demographic transition is, however, occurring in the South without of the rising affluence which accompanied industrialisation in the North. This article examines a variety of dimensions of the problem in the South, including older people's socio-economic and health situations, and their roles in family and community. It questions whether changes in the status of older people are due to modernising forces, or to structural inequalities (differences in wealth and social position) which exist in all societies, but are particularly prevalent in the poorer countries of the South.

The author presents his views on the essential ingredients of development, comparing the development ideal with its reality. Development is about change for the better, which must be appropriate (culturally, economically, technologically etc.) if change is to take root, and gain the participation of beneficiaries. Equity and justice are at the heart of any change for the better, as is sustainability. True development cannot be measured in solely economic terms, but must also include changes in the quality of lives, which are less tangible. Development as a process is not just a `Third World' issue but a universal concern, encompassing responses to over-development as well as under-development. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Social Diversity.

The phenomenon of Mozambican refugees in Malawi dates back to the time of Portuguese colonial rule. However, it is the spectacular magnitude of today's influx which has attracted national and international attention. By the close of 1992, Malawi was hosting over one million Mozambican refugees in 12 of the 24 districts. The paper grew out of an ethnographic study, with the overall objective of examining the motives for and the impact of the provision of humanitarian assistance on the refugees and host-country populations. The central argument of the paper is that by applying traditional ideas about men's and women's roles to the recruitment of trainees for income-generating activities, women's development potential remains largely untapped. Alternative approaches to working with women have to be actively sought, to ensure that the process of development is fruitful as well as gender-fair. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader [13]Development and Social Diversity. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

The author discusses Alan Gibson's article of the same name (Development in Practice 3(3)). Nyamugasira expands on Gibson's discussion (limited, according to the author) of the problems faced by practitioners forced to balance the adoption of more business-like operations with continuing to benefit the greatest possible number of people.

This article explores the prospects for indigenous and foreign NGOs in post-Mao China. The structural complexity of the emerging NGO sector in China is illustrated by a typology of the new social organisations which have flourished in the last ten years. The author considers the factors favouring the expansion of this intermediary sector of quasi- and non-governmental activity, but also analyses the factors constraining the emergence in the near future of a vibrant NGO sector. Foreign NGOs eager to develop links at the forthcoming UN International Conference on Women should be prepared to work in conjunction with the Party/State and semi-official social organisations.

The accountability, performance, programming and legitimacy of NGOs in the so-called New Political Agenda of economic privatisation and `democratisation' was the subject of a conference in June 1994, jointly organised by Save the Children Fund (SCF) and the Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester. The author discusses participants' attitudes towards the best targets for NGO resources and effort, the problem of NGOs' increasing concern to be accountable to donors at the expense of their accountability to beneficiaries, the pressure (often State pressure) on NGOs to become service-providers, and the difficulties of relying on official donors. The lack of reference to gender-based inequalities in the formal sessions was an area of concern.

Reporting on a large gathering of international and Cuban NGOs and other agencies, this article explores the issues faced by Cuban society in undergoing rapid economic change; and examines why the New World Order has not led to any significant involvement with Cuba, either by the inter-governmental agencies, or by independent NGOs. It describes the roles of State-sponsored bodies in maintaining the major development gains of the last 30 years; and argues that NGOs that see their role as promoting `democratisation' must avoid falling into simplistic and inappropriate assumptions about the distinction between the State and `civil society'.

As the wars in Central America have subsided, the region is undergoing extensive and far-reaching changes in its economies, and in the role of the State, in particular in the growth of the maquila (assembly plant) industry, and the reduction of the public sector. However, poverty has increased, and has been associated with high levels of violence and delinquency, as well as with a decline in food security. The challenge facing the social forces within the region, as well as NGOs such as Oxfam, is to develop a self-sustaining alternative, while also responding to the needs of the present.

The World Bank's reliance on market forces when trying to achieve economic growth produces problems when implementing the Bank's strategies. The author puts forward his view that poverty should not merely be defined in terms of income, and that the struggle against poverty should respect the culture and views of the poor themselves, building into programmes the flexibility to respond to their views and enhance their political influence.

The use of the `development limited liability company' (LLC) is expanding. There are important differences between the broad social goals of development and the narrow economic ones of the LLC: they are concerned with people and profit respectively. The author discusses the problems likely to arise when NGOs attempt to use LLCs directly, as part of their administrative or funding arrangements.

This paper surveys street publications that are members of the International Network of Street Papers. Street publications can empower the homeless though numerous endeavours that can lead to social change. Empowerment can be achieved by being employed, such as magazine vendors and/or as workers in socially oriented companies. It can also occur by recovering self-esteem and acquiring knowledge and abilities though training courses, rehabilitation therapy, and other endeavours such as the university of the homeless. Empowerment also comes by giving ‘voice to the voiceless’, allowing the homeless to publish their experiences, ideas, and opinions in street magazines. Collective empowerment occurs by creating local networks in solidarity with the magazines and building an international homeless community that strengthens these endeavours and encourages social-change activities

What are the implications for NGOs of the increasingly unpredictable environment in which they work? This article highlights lessons from the natural sciences and from private-sector management. If development is about the process of change, then we need a more refined analysis of what change is. Food crises and conflicts are about struggles over power and rights and are, therefore, but moments in continuing processes of change. Strategic intervention demands an understanding of such change if it is to trigger wider transformations. It also demands a different style of management and an increased degree of collaboration with other agencies.

The last few years have seen a major rethinking of some of the hallowed assumptions of range ecology and range-management practice. The usefulness of terms such as 'vegetation succession', 'carrying capacity', and 'desertification' is being reassessed, particularly for the dry rangelands which are dominated by highly variable rainfall and episodic, chance events such as drought. This article examines the management and policy implications of this thinking for pastoral development in dryland areas. It briefly examines the consequences of environmental variability for pastoral development planning, range and fodder management, drought responses, livestock marketing, resource tenure, institutional development, and pastoral administration. By offering new directions for development workers, researchers, and policy planners, the article illustrates, in practical terms, a future for pastoral development in dryland Africa that recognises both the importance of pastoral livelihoods and the significance of environmental variability.

In 1979, the Government of Norway pledged financial support to launch an Integrated Rural Development Programme in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, which aimed to increase income, employment and production as well as improvement of social conditions and living standards of the people in the area, with special emphasis on the poorest groups. The process involved data collection, establishment of target groups, definition of the problem, project identification, project formulation and project implementation. Staff attempted to involve local people in all these stages. The projects fell into three categories: community social development; individual social development; and income/employment generation. Local-level participation helped the project staff to identify the problems and real needs of the people and to formulate appropriate projects. This helped certain socially deprived groups to highlight their needs. Social development projects benefited the people most. But they did not contribute directly to alleviating poverty through income-generation, because such work was done with voluntary labour. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

The article consists of a consensus document, The Rio Statement, produced at `Reproductive Health and Justice: International Women's Health Conference for Cairo `94'. This conference was held in Rio de Janeiro in January 1994, in preparation for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) to be held in Cairo in September of the same year.

Peter Coleridge discusses issues raised by Brian O'Toole and Geraldine Maison-Halls ([12]Development in Practice 4(1)) outlining the use of community-based rehabilitation (CBR) in providing services to disabled people in low-income countries. The author outlines his own experiences researching the use of CBR, consisting of interviews with disabled people living in various circumstances and ranging from leaders of disability movements to mothers of children with mental impairments, in Zimbabwe, Zanzibar, India, Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Jonathon Benthall also replies to criticism of his book Disasters, Relief and the Media.

In Southern Africa, a major drought during 1992-3 threatened devastating consequences for poor rural populations in the region. The article describes the unconventional approach to disaster mitigation undertaken by Oxfam in Zambia. This both enabled people at the local level, with little prior organisational experience, to establish effective dialogue with government officials in the country; and laid the foundations for longer-term development activities. The role of local lobbying, as well as campaigning on an international level, was crucial. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Advocacy and in Development and Social Action.

While there is considerable documented experience of decentralisation of health services in rural areas of developing countries, the decentralisation of health services in the urban context is rarely analysed. Urban development literature usually fails to address health issues, while the literature on decentralisation of health services tends to ignore the urban sector. This article addresses the relationship between a Ministry of Health and a City Council and identifies key issues to consider in the decentralisation of urban health activities: roles and responsibilities; legislation; co-ordination and communication; and resource constraints. The case study from Maseru, Lesotho highlights aspects of planning which need to be considered by national and local governments which are trying to strengthen urban health activities by decentralisation.

This paper develops issues raised in Hans Buwalda's article `Children of war in the Philippines'. It examines issues in training ethnic workers in areas of recent or on-going armed conflict, in mental health work. It explores the possibilities of combining Western therapeutic techniques with the local and culturally appropriate ways of working. It stresses the need to acknowledge and address the emotional impact of the work and participants' own concerns, and discusses the kind of support workers need. It looks at teaching methods and course content, with a view to creating a safe atmosphere and an interesting programme, taking into account cultural considerations. Finally it suggests ways of developing models of training for the future. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development for Health.

In 1989, Save the Children Fund (UK) began an experimental project to plant mangroves along a coastal estuary in the Thach Ha district of Ha Tinh province in northern central Vietnam. It was designed and managed by the district forestry and water management officials and implemented through the commune People's Committees. This article looks at the project's goals, with environmental and production oriented views. Its sustainability is judged and the longer-term issues of sustainability, including financial support, ownership rights and enforcement of protection are also addressed. The project has been a basis for a sustainable model of environmental protection and income generation. There are both economic and general benefits, including: protection against salination of fields through flooding; a reduction in time spent on dyke repairs; increased potential for aquaculture in the area; protection against the wind for houses and boats; increased fishing activities; sale or use of seedlings; and increased availability of wood for fuel. It is hoped that this project will promote similar work in other parts of Vietnam. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

In real development, information can sometimes be more important than funding, but has to be accessible and appropriate for it to work. Field-level development can be frustrating and difficult; the mass of information may be overwhelming as well as limited in practical detail or real application. There is often a limited institutional memory and therefore a lack of history. This article seeks ways of dealing with the problem and examines information flows to the south and suggests that they should be traded rather than given as overseas aid. Ways of passing information to development workers are suggested. It is the responsibility of those working in development to promote change in the south and to organize flows of information in such a way that meets needs. Examples given include: co-publishing, creating a market for books, improving communication between development workers and use of non-print media. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

In English only

This article discusses the difficulties of reaching relatively poor populations with labour saving technologies. Taking the case of milling and dehulling technologies in Senegal and The Gambia, it presents a simple analytic model that helps to explain why the vast majority of these labour saving machines are under-utilised in rural areas. Though donors continue to widely support such projects, in few cases do they provide significant benefits to the broad population in the short term, and neither are they sustainable in the longer term. The key constraint is the lack of effective demand due to rural women's limited income-generating opportunities. In the time saved using a machine to dehull or mill their coarse grains, they are unable to earn enough money even to pay the fees to use the machine, much less to gain a surplus.

In 1981, Nicaragua was awarded UNESCO's Nadezhda K Krupskaya prize in recognition of the success of the 1980 National Literacy Crusade (CNA) through which, it was claimed, three quarters of the country's illiterate had been taught to read and write. This article reports the follow-up of several hundred female CNA graduates. It finds that, a decade later, a significant proportion of them are no longer able to read or write; and that of those who can, many had previously attended formal schooling as a child for several years. An assessment of national census and survey figures suggests that about 9 percent of the population became literate solely as a consequence of Nicaragua's ambitious adult education interventions in the l980s. Other benefits, such as its impact on child health and survival, have yet to be quantified.

From December 1987 to January 1988, a team of medical personnel from the Korle-Bu teaching hospital undertook an epidemiological study in the Krobo district to study the efficiency and potency of a Korean and Zairean herbal preparation. Findings showed that: more people with HIV/AIDS remained undetected in their homes than the number who reported in the hospitals; the disease was recognized as one for those who traveled outside the country; some related HIV infection to evil spirits; and certain hospitals were afraid of being labeled as having AIDS in the hospitals. Community, church and NGO involvement in case-identification, mobilization, education, treatment and support was stressed. St. Martins clinic at Agomanya took in many of the HIV/AIDS sufferers in the area. The clinic tried to involve the community in the education and support of sufferers, to provide home-based nursing care, counseling services, social and pastoral support and provide income-generating activities for young people in the area. The services provided were: outpatient care; home care; pastoral care and social services. The programme was evaluated to judge whether the needs of the community and patients were met by the services provided and to draw lessons for the future. Between 1988 and 1991, there was an increase in the number of people living with HIV/AIDS and receiving home-based care. Some recommendations were put forward, including: the importance of political involvement to support in the areas of personnel, finance and material from the national, regional and district levels; employment opportunities for young people in rural areas; and educational programmes on HIV/AIDS in existing activities. It is also suggested that churches and Christian families should play a leading role in promoting sex education and moral values. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

In English only

Two debates dominated the WCHR: whether human rights are universal or can be culture-specific, and whether respect for human rights is a factor in economic development. The author concentrates particularly on Oxfam's contribution to the Conference, organising two workshops about economic and social rights. The Conference was a qualified success, the final document taking forward some crucial issues, most notably recognising the importance of gender in human rights abuses.

Empowerment of poor people is the declared aim of many NGOs and official development agencies. However, the failure to recognise the culture of poor people, and to use their own forms of organisation as a point of departure, means that many such programmes are in fact counter-productive. NGOs which wish to support people's empowerment need to demonstrate their faith in poor people by respecting and supporting their own decisions.

There was a split between North and South over environmental issues at the 1992 Earth Summit. A similar rift may re-emerge as British ODA opens management of its training programmes to competition in 1993. Emerging environmental training institutions in Asia have the advantages of similar environments, relevance and lower costs. As these increasingly realise that ODA funding for third country training is not tied to British Universities, they will compete with UK training institutions. The existing one way student traffic to UK institutions can benefit from competition. Modern information communication systems now allow training networks to interlink among institutions in both the North and the South. The UNCED commitment to increased training on environmental issues provides an opportunity for a major new environmental training project managed by an independent academic - development institute or NGO.

The MOC (Movement for Community Organisation) is an advisory centre for community organisations in the Feira de Santana region of north-east Brazil. Oxfam (UK and Ireland) has provided funds towards their work since 1972, and in 1990/91 commissioned a Brazilian institution to conduct an evaluation. This Note describes how it felt to be evaluated, and suggests lessons to be learned for all those involved in an evaluation process, which the MOC felt should involve greater mutual understanding between evaluators and those they evaluate, especially when agreeing assessment methodologies and objectives. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Patronage.

The Annual General Assembly of Women in Development Europe (WIDE) took place in Madrid in March 1993. WIDE has members from 13 countries, mainly EC member states. The conference focused on `Women, Human Rights and Development' and the author briefly describes how the main speakers were concerned with the lack of international protection for the human rights of women, from the rise of fundamentalism in Magreb and wars in Eastern Europe through prostitution and trafficking in Asia.

In English only

This paper makes the case that emergency relief programs to pastoral areas of Africa do little to relieve the fundamental effect of famine, which is destitution. It argues that traditional mechanisms of coping with drought are often disrupted by food aid programs especially Food-For-Work. Three case studies from Sudan and Kenya are used to support the argument. The paper concludes by making policy recommendations for emergency programs to be more effective in meeting the primary need of pastoralists following severe drought, which is to rebuild herds and therefore their livelihoods.

In September 1992, women's health advocates representing women's networks in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, the U.S. and Western Europe met to discuss how women's voices might best be heard during preparations for the 1994 Conference on Population and Development and in the conference itself. The group suggested that a strong positive statement from women around the world would make a unique contribution to reshaping the population agenda to better ensure reproductive health and rights. The group drafted a `Women's Declaration on Population Policies,' which was reviewed, modified and finalised by over 100 women's organisations across the globe. The Declaration calls for a fundamental revision in the design, structure and implementation of population policies, to foster the empowerment and well-being of all women. It lists minimum program requirements and ten ethical principles which should underpin population policies so that they are responsive to women's needs and rights.

Release of the Poor Through Education (ROPE) is a small development organization operating in a rural area of Tamil Nadu, Southern India. ROPE has chosen to focus and concentrate its efforts on upgrading the education, health and quality of life of the 5000 people resident in six small villages, as well as a nearby refugee village. This paper considers the rationale for the project, noting the central aim of using indigenous knowledge and skills to develop a self-reliant socioeconomic system. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI.

In September 1992 a workshop was held in Oxford, bringing together activists, researchers and academics with the joint aims of sharing diverse perspectives on South Asia's population policies as well as revising a research proposal on all aspects of women's reproductive health. The most tangible outcome of the workshop was a proposal for a project addressing the question of how women are taking decisions about reproduction, and providing a forum designed to facilitate exchanges between activists, NGOs and academics.

In English only

The Nicaraguan National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG) in 1992, alongside local and international delegates, put together a document that was later called the Managua Declaration. The author highlights the general content of the declaration and the initial process proposed to gain international Cupertino for the agrarian model of development put forward in the document. The document endeavours to foster worldwide networks of farmers working to develop practical alternatives to neo-liberalism, from the perspective of both established farmers and the landless rural population.

As part of the global drive to achieve Universal Child Immunisation by l990 (UCI9O), Somalia launched a national immunisation programme for women and children. While access to it improved, actual demand for immunisation remained low. This paper reports the findings of a study to identify the factors influencing acceptance of immunisation in two Somali communities. A retrospective, qualitative approach was adopted to assess individual and community experience both with immunisation and with the immunisation programme. Data were derived from focus group discussions, informal interviews and observation. The research findings provided programme managers and health workers with information for redesigning both the overall approach of the immunisation programme; and the content and style of health messages.

This paper examines the importance of culture and participation in development efforts. In this regard, it looks at the problems which have arisen as the result of those receiving aid, being regarded as objects rather than subjects with their own culture and behavioural patterns. The paper looks at why research into culture is important, and examines the relevance of participatory development. Abstract supplied by kind permission of CABI. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Culture.

The ultimate objective of any AIDS/HIV intervention project is to reduce the spread of AIDS by promoting safer sexual behaviour. It is misleading to evaluate individual projects in terms of their success in achieving this because behavioural changes are influenced by a range of external factors. When measuring success, then, indicators should be carefully chosen to assess real changes in attitude; for example, measuring the likelihood that sex-workers make use of condoms, rather than simply monitoring the number of contraceptives distributed. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development for Health.

A conference of health-rights activists was held in Nicaragua in 1991, the theme of which was `Health Care in Societies in Transition'. The participants, in response to concerns that health care is being eroded by the widening gap between rich and poor, decided to launch the IPHC `to contribute to the fight for health and social justice'. The Council is an informal network of groups and movements committed to this goal.

In English only

Population-control programmes can violate basic human rights and be a form of violence against women. The author presents her views on family planning as a form of social control arising from a neo-Malthusian world view which blames poverty and environmental degradation on population growth while obscuring the real causes: the increasing control of economic, political and environmental resources by a growing international elite. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development for Health.

This article is written from the perspective of a health activist engaged in research on women's health. It lays out a methodological framework for studying issues concerning women's health, and goes on to describe a range of tools for collection of qualitative and quantitative information from the field. The article ends with a call for activist involvement in research to generate information that genuinely reflects women's needs and concerns, and could facilitate women's informed involvement in changing the circumstances that contribute to their poor health status. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development for Health.

Literacy gives people a framework for critical thinking and informed action. A number of peasant farmers' organisations have developed in the wake of economic restructuring in Honduras, Central America. The authors describe and assess the Literacy Programme of the National Office of Agricultural Workers (Central Nacional de Trabajadores del Campo, CNTC), which aims to provide farmers with the tools to have a say in their own futures in the changing social and economic climate of the country.

The author reports on a conference organised by Intermediate Technology and The New Economics Foundation held in London, England in April 1992. The conference was convened in response to concerns over the decrease in worldwide biodiversity, to examine the threat to food security and develop strategies for NGOs to contribute to solutions. Participants were primarily concerned with trade, from the perspective of international politics and at the community level.

The 1992 International Workshop on the Evaluation of Social Development took place in Amersfoorst, the Netherlands. Representatives from international NGOs, academics, and planners sought clearer guidelines on methods NGOs can use to evaluate programmes and their impact. The first half of the workshop was based on case-studies, the second on drawing up guidelines based upon these concrete experiences. Customised methods of evaluation are needed for development NGOs to ensure the interests of the organisations, their `clients' and their donors are all considered.

Despite their increasing numbers and size, the impact of NGO activity on development is usually localised and often transitory. In consequence, NGOs need to analyse the strategies by which they may be able to `scale up' their contribution to development. This article summarises the proceedings of a recent Workshop at the University of Manchester which explored such strategies through a large number of case studies. While it is not feasible to produce prescriptions from these materials a number of lessons and key issues can be identified and are highlighted in the paper. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development NGOs and Civil Society.

The Peace Agreement signed between the Government and FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador marks the end of a decade of civil war. As both sides of the conflict and the international donor community begin to add up the costs of reconstruction, the human, social, and psychological costs are carried mainly by the poor of El Salvador. Social organisations and NGOs who became strategists of survival today face the challenge of transforming their accumulated experience into alternative proposals for the building of a more just society and a prosperous nation. This article explores the practical complexities of transition from war to peace; and from emergency aid to sustainable development based on the participation of communities, social organisations, NGOs and international agencies and building on their experience.

The work of international non-profit-making NGOs challenges them to adopt a decentralised structure. We know little, however, about how this decentralisation is organised, and even less about its impacts on NGO performance. Based on studies southern Africa, this article identifies the gains and loses associated with the choice to decentralise. It goes on to pose questions about decentralisation as a critical variable for the organisational design of NGOs which need to be answered by more systematic comparative study.

In the Dindigul district of Tamil Nadir, southern India, the number of leather tanneries is increasing. Effluent from existing tanneries has polluted water supplies used for agriculture and drinking, contributing to drought, crop failure, and illness and birthing problems in the local population. The author argues that no more licences should be granted for new tanneries, and that those already running be forced to adhere to pollution-control regulations. This article also appears in the Development in Practice Reader Development and Patronage.

It is now two years since the Government of President Fernando Collor de Mello took office in Brazil. This article assesses its effectiveness in implementing its environmental policies and resolving social conflicts in the Amazon in the run-up to the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development. It examines some of the political and economic problems which have beset the new environmental programme, and gives an account of the response of Brazilian NGOs to some of the Government's main initiatives.

Evaluation is now recognised as an essential component in planning and implementing projects, and is one important means by which recipients can participate in the design process. In Vietnam, the liberalisation of the economic and social life of the country in the last few years has allowed Oxfam the scope to consider long-term development plans. As a first stage, a review was undertaken of the impact of an Oxfam project on the community, paying particular attention to the situation of women. Parts of the findings are explored in this paper to show that one infrastructural input, in this case a pumping station, will have a broad range of consequences for the community concerned. Contrary to expectations, increased production is tending to encourage co-operation between men and women, out of shared interest in strengthening the stability of the household, now recognised, in place of the collective, as the prime economic unit in Vietnam.

The Fundacion El Taller organised a third Think Tank in November 1991, held in a village near Santiago, Chile, and attended by representatives of over 50 development NGOs from around the globe. It was agreed that NGOs should maintain their autonomy from governments but work closely with civil society to best further NGOs' aims. Strong South-South dialogue is vital, and North-South relations should be founded on equality in the process of development.

A brief report of a conference held in Kenya in July 1991 bringing together specialists from a UNRISD research programme examining the national and regional implications of deforestation for the livelihood and living conditions of the poor in rural and urban areas. The preliminary findings include identifying the major role that public policies have played in the deforestation, the way weaker sections of the population have been disproportionately affected, and how official measures to rectify the spiralling situation have been inadequate.

During the 1980s, armed conflict devastated an increasing number of the world's poorest countries. NGOs engaged in relief and development were hard-pressed to determine their most effective response to situations where normal development became meaningless, and yet short-term projects failed to deal with these `permanent emergencies'. This article describes the nature of these conflicts, their impact on the poor, and the evolution of NGO programmes in response. It explains why some NGOs have attempted to do development in the face of on-going violence, sometimes employing risky strategies and desperate measures. It argues the need for NGOs to play a part in building a civil society which can help break the cycle of violence.

The nature of the Mozambique `emergency' and its institutional context pose a significant challenge to NGO aid strategies, as these organisations seek to reconcile objectives of short-term effectiveness and accountability with goals of long-term capacity-building and sustainability. The increasing emphasis on the former within the Zambezia Province Emergency Programme may be prejudicing the government's capacity to stimulate economic and social rehabilitation once the Emergency Programme aid declines. Many NGOs working within the Province have shifted from a strategy of executing relief and rehabilitation programmes through existing institutional channels to one which relies heavily on the development of their own parallel structures. The shift has been motivated by the perceived weak executional capacity of the government institutions; however, it is unclear whether the modest gains in aid effectiveness and efficiency offset the lost opportunities for institutional change and learning necessary for programme sustainability and for the longer-term rehabilitation of the economic and social infrastructure in the province.

These Notes are based on research carried out as part of a World Bank/World Food Programme study into food aid in Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors use economic analyses to establish a framework for considering the cost-effectiveness of food aid compared to financial aid, and they apply this framework to the Wollaita food aid project. Food aid is shown to be less cost-effective than financial aid if the cost/benefit analysis is confined to monetary considerations. Problems arise when trying to quantify other variables that may affect the analysis, for example nutritional costs/benefits and increased/decreased production (the Wolliata project is a food-for-work (FFW) scheme).

In English only

The purpose of this paper is to review the experience of social action groups in the Indian sub-continent over the past fifteen years or so. There are tensions between their stated objectives and their actual practice, and conflicts arising from their role in the political sphere. The author considers the practical problems and some philosophical and conceptual issues arising from these tensions, and concludes with some recommendations for non-governmental funding agencies.

Drought-induced inflation of cereal prices and the consequent turning of the terms of trade against livestock upset existing exchange entitlements and contributed to higher than normal mortality rates among the rural Beja population in Red Sea Province in the early to mid-1980s. The Beja are agropastoralists who raise goats and sheep, and sow some sorghum. Their staples of consumption are goat milk and a prepared dish made with sorghum called asayda. They do not grow enough sorghum for household consumption, but they sell male goats in local markets in order to purchase sorghum. They also engage in a variety of minor activities to generate income for the purchase of sorghum. In this article, data from two markets on cereal and livestock prices for the years 1980 to 1989 are examined. The objectives of the study were to examine market performance, especially that associated with drought and famine in the mid-1980s in Red Sea Province, and to examine how the inflationary period from 1988 to 1990 differed or resembled the early to mid-1980s.

In November 1990 the South-North International Conference on Linking For Development was held in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, involving 100 participants from local authorities and NGOs from 21 countries. The representatives unanimously agreed on an Appeal, `From Dependency To Justice', and insisted on greater initiative from agencies and authorities in the South. The conference identified four priorities for future linking initiatives: development education, training, mutual development Cupertino, and working for change.

The number of NGOs involved in development in the North and the South has increased dramatically over the last ten years, provoking calls for new partnerships between them. But Southern NGOs have often been disadvantaged in the search for true NGO partnerships, because they know too little about their Northern counterparts. This article therefore describes some important features of Northern NGOs. It then goes on to identify critical issues involved in negotiating partnerships with them. Finally, the need for equitable NGO partnerships is considered in the broader context of strengthening the third sector in civil society.

Pastoralism in Sudan has produced complex and varied livestock management systems, finely adapted to local environmental conditions. The isolation of pastoral communities has made it difficult for development agencies to form working relationships with them, and mistakes have been made when donors attempted to introduce unsuitable breeds and crops. The author advocates post-drought restocking with camels because of their high tolerance of drought and low susceptibility to disease, and with goats, which are not labour-intensive and reproduce at a fast rate. This article traces the social consequences of evicting pastoralists from range lands to make ways for cash crops like cotton, and the environmental consequences of overgrazing. It describes Oxfam's programme of rehabilitation among pastoralists, with its emphasis on the use of locally-trained para-vets, and community participation in the management of animal health services.

The author provides an overview of a seminar on the promotion of small enterprises, organised by the Aga Khan Foundation (UK). Representatives from official agencies, the private sector and NGOs discussed barriers to NGOs working effectively in this sector, and how these can be overcome, as well as best practice in the provision of credit and technical assistance, and the potential support role of other public and private institutions.

Until now, most discussions on the place of LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) people in global civil society have focused on their access to citizenship, rather than their socioeconomic rights and role in development processes. This article argues that an alternative vision of development should challenge heteronormative family structures; build alternative, queer communities; wage activist, sexually emancipatory campaigns on concrete social issues (as the Treatment Action Campaign has done on HIV and AIDS in South Africa); and rethink existing models of democratic participation. It emphasises the paradoxes of LGBT organising in the context of neo-liberalism and globalisation, with an eye toward queering, or challenging heteronormativity in, global social justice movements.

This article arose from work undertaken on behalf of a UK-based NGO developing a policy response to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It looks at GATS as a key to locating development NGOs (NGDOs) within the broader field of development aims and practices, examining the long-term implications of GATS with respect to the idea of a ‘fourth position’ for such NGOs. It is argued that this theoretical position fails to take into account changing imbalances of power between NGDOs and their Southern counterparts that began under structural adjustment, as a consequence of which many NGDOs now occupy a position from which effective mediation between civil society, the state, and the market would be difficult if not impossible. In addition, GATS represents a step-change along the evolutionary path towards a market-oriented ideology whose verticalist worldview represents a profound contradiction to the avowedly progressive aims of most NGDOs.

This article critically examines an HIV/AIDS development and research project in Mwanza, Tanzania. A group of women produce a type of probiotic yoghurt that has evidence of lowering the incidence of HIV infection. The yoghurt is consumed by the women, their family members, and local citizens living with HIV/AIDS; surplus is sold within the community. While the project’s multi-partner, multidisciplinary composition allows for varied expertise and insights, it also requires open and collaborative dialogue. This article discusses the project’s challenges, positive outcomes, and some of the socio-cultural issues that need to be addressed if it expands in size and/or scope.

The story of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the way women engaged with it, gaining from its overall liberatory calls, as well as its political independence from the UN and other multilateral agencies, is relatively unknown in the world of development and women; and yet it is an important multilateral space. This article argues that the NAM, and its engagement with women, has the historical and strategic potential to be the platform from which to launch an inclusive growth paradigm

Development cooperation has traditionally been the playing field of governments, multilateral institutions, and established development NGOs. In the last decade however, other actors in Northern countries (such as businesses, migrants’ organisations, professional groups, and schools) have shown active interest in development-related activities Although they do not belong to the epistemic community of development specialists and are often overlooked in the discourse and literature on development cooperation, their number and importance are growing. These novel approaches to development cooperation give rise to some important reflections about their methodologies, potential impact, and fundraising. Based on the authors’ experiences and research in Belgium, the article raises some issues about what they term the fourth pillar of development cooperation with the aim of stimulating the academic and policy-oriented debate

In August 2007, the Government of Tanzania committed to doubling the number of training places for skilled midwives following a five-year campaign by the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood in Tanzania (WRATZ), which culminated in the first television screening of a participatory film, ‘Play Your Part’. With contributions from a range of health professionals, communities, a pop singer, and the Minister of Health, the message was that everyone at every level has a part to play in saving mothers’ lives. WRATZ was successful because it was able to champion its message in a way that provides a model for advocacy, combining the reactive creativity of journalism and the methodological rigour of participatory video that to bring about a tangible impact.

 By active citizenship, we [Oxfam] mean that combination of rights and obligations that link individuals to the state, including paying taxes, obeying laws, and exercising the full range of political, civil, and social rights. Active citizens use those rights to improve the quality of political or civic life, through involvement in the formal economy or formal politics, or through the sort of collective action that historically has allowed poor and excluded groups to make their voices heard. [….] 

At an individual level, active citizenship means developing self-confidence and overcoming the insidious way in which the condition of being relatively powerless can become internalised. In relation to other people, it means developing the ability to negotiate and influence decisions. And when empowered individuals work together, it means involvement in collective action, be it at the neighbourhood level, or more broadly. Ultimately, active citizenship means engaging with the political system to build an effective state, and assuming some degree of responsibility for the public domain… (Green 2008:12,19)

Introduction
On 3 July 2007 over 120 people came together for a one-day conference at Monash University in Melbourne entitled ‘Active Citizenship: Making Bottom–Up Accountability Work’. The conference represented a partnership between the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) and several Melbourne-based universities, and aimed to create a forum for development workers, activists, academics, and postgraduate students to discuss and debate the very latest approaches to active citizenship and social accountability. This special issue presents some of the ‘cream of the crop’ from that conference.

The quotes above from Duncan Green’s recent publication on Oxfam’s approach to development sum up the broad consensus on active citizenship at the conference. We see the concept of active citizenship as bringing together at least three domains of development theory and practice that have been very prominent during the last few decades. The first of these – participation, especially ‘bottom–up’ participation in the domain of civil society – features as a key theme in almost all of the articles here. Successful community development interventions that have sustained impact generally require a high-level of community participation. There has therefore been an important focus on incorporating community members into the decision-making process. Over time, this participation has increased from a passive attendance at ‘consultative’ meetings to an active engagement and ownership of the development intervention itself. Participation and ownership leads to relationships between community members and the intervening agency (most likely an NGO, but possibly government agency or other body charged with the task of working with the community) being built on trust and therefore being more robust and lasting.

While ‘participation’ itself is considered to be best practice in terms of development, there is no wider consensus on what is the best practice in achieving this participation. It is known that the poor are the hardest to involve in participatory approaches, as these approaches are time-consuming and time is a precious commodity for those struggling to earn to a daily living. The intervening agency must allow all community stakeholders to be involved at times and locations that best suit their own circumstances. This usually means meeting in the evening and during times of the year when workloads are lower (after harvest and planting seasons, for example). Contention remains as to the benefits or otherwise of paying community members to participate (either directly with cash or in-kind in the guise of meals, etc.).

Participatory development has been re-framed in terms of active citizenship in recent years in an attempt to explicitly address important critiques of participation as ‘tyranny’ (Cooke and Kothari 2001), that is, as severely constrained by the relations of power in which it is enabled, and its goals and terms of reference defined. The concept of active citizenship explicitly acknowledges unequal relations of power, especially the power of the state and state agencies. In so doing, the approach also acknowledges a long-standing critique of civil-society participation that, compared with state agencies, NGOs and community-based organisations (CGOs) have very limited access to material or economic resources; local development efforts, to be effective, need to able to mobilise the support and resources of state or multilateral agencies.

This brings us to the second important influence on concepts and practices of active citizenship – rights-based development. ‘Citizenship’ explicitly invokes the idea that individuals and groups are members of national political communities with legally and morally enforceable rights in relation to the state. States, in this view, have a moral responsibility to protect the human rights and improve the well-being of their citizens, especially those who are poor and marginalised. ‘Active’ citizens are agents in such a process, enacting and claiming their legal and human rights as a pathway to social change and development.

These rights-based approaches to development have often been closely linked with concepts of good governance as a necessary aspect of poverty alleviation and development. ‘Good governance’ as an approach and goal of development interventions is the third domain of development theory that strongly influences current thinking about active citizenship. It is a central theme in several of the articles here which explore and present case studies of ‘social accountability’ where citizens have engaged in local processes to try to make government officials more transparent, accountable, and responsive in the provision of services.

Thus, active citizenship draws together ideas of participation, rights-based development, and recognition of the importance of good governance and the role of the state in responding to and supporting development programmes and interventions. It emphasises and seeks ways for citizens, especially poor and marginalised groups, to exercise their rights and engage with state and other agencies in doing development. Participation leads to active citizenship when communities begin to organise themselves out of the traditional ‘development project’ and look to influence local, national, or international policies or decision making. Active citizenship may be more effective at the local level where citizens make claims on ‘duty bearers’ as ‘rights holders’. Importantly, active citizenship, like participatory development, is a collective process implying citizens acting as part of a political community with human rights and political rights in relation to the state.

This issue introduces the challenges in achieving active citizenship but also some of the benefits that success can bring in improving the lives of the poor. Three broad areas are explored using various case studies and reviews of innovative NGO practice:
· giving poor communities a real voice in shaping their development priorities
· monitoring the effective delivery of public services and development projects at the grassroots level
· enhancing local participation in government processes, beyond just taking part in elections.

Active citizenship in theory and practice has implications in both developing and developed countries. This issue of Development in Practice on active citizenship and social accountability therefore includes case studies from both poorer and wealthier countries, including Asia, the Pacific, and Australia.

Overview
This issue contains eight papers that consider various aspects of active citizenship and social accountability. The papers can be broken into three broad sections. The first section contains three articles (Cox, George, and Malik) that discuss and develop the concept of active citizenship. They do this by situating the discussion in three geographical locations and political settings. The second section (with articles by Schultz et al., Roche, and Walker) provides case studies of the experience of three international NGOs of active citizenship and social accountability. The two articles (Matthews and Missingham, and Clarke) in section three present a cautionary tale of the difficulties of achieving active citizenship. One is based one experience in a developed country, while the second reflects on experiences in a developing country.

Solomon Islands is the context for John Cox’s discussion of active citizens. Solomon Islands is located in the Pacific Ocean and comprises approximately 1000 islands. While 300 of these islands are populated, 80 per cent of the country’s 533,000 people live on a small number of larger islands (including Guadalcanal, Choiseul, Santa Isabel, Malaita, San Cristobal, and New Georgia). These larger islands are mountainous, and thickly forested, occasionally skirted by thin coastal plains that provide fertile but limited agricultural land (less than one per cent of land is presently under cultivation). The total land area is 28,370 km2 whereas the total sea area of Solomon Islands is 1.35 million km2. The Solomon Islands is the third largest archipelago in the South Pacific. The vast majority of the population are Melanesian who settled the islands over 3000 years ago, but over 100 languages are spoken throughout the country. Progress in Solomon Islands has stalled in recent years due to recent civil unrest. This civil strife, roughly drawn along ethnic lines, has disrupted the achievement of the MDGs quite considerably with the government being unable to function in an effective manner during this time, thereby disrupting the provision of education, health and other social services throughout the country. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Solomon Islands have played an important role as alternative providers of social services in the absence of a functioning public sector. Cox discusses the frustrations faced though in these circumstances of achieving a level of participation. He notes that within Solomon Islands, it is not appropriate to assume that there exists a ‘untapped’ sense of citizenship nor that traditional leadership structures can be relied upon to seek out egalitarian redistribution of resources. Cox argues that the power dynamics within Solomon Island communities is more complicated than this. To better understand how citizenship might be understood within Solomon Islands, Cox firstly considers clientelism and patronage networks. He demonstrates how the system of clientelism is direct conflict with the notion of citizenship. In contrast to citizenship, clientelism requires ‘deference and submissiveness’ of those without power to those with power. Cox argues that it is unlikely that within the dominant system of clientelism that demand for good governance (which underpins citizenship) will naturally emerge. It is more likely that individuals will seek to gain personal advantage over community benefits. Cox notes that Solomon Island is a unique country with its own particular circumstances. There is very little sense of nationhood or nationalism, with most basic allegiances remaining to the family and clan, not to the nation. Cox argues therefore that there are limited opportunities for active citizenship to flourish in a society in which access to basic services is less dependent upon the state and more contingent upon relationships with patrons. This is not necessary cultural but a simple artefact of the prevailing political dynamics. Cox suggests that attempts by NGOs to support participation or citizenship will not flourish until the experience of the state is stronger and directly challenges the dominance of clientelism.

Nicole George explores issues of active citizenship through an account of women’s organising and activism in Fiji from the 1960s to the present. For George, ‘active citizenship’ means women’s activism, popular mobilisation and organising within the realm of civil society. In her account of the vibrant recent history of Fiji’s women’s movement, George emphasises two themes that are very relevant to the nature and scope of active citizenship more broadly. First, as George writes, ‘the politics of ethnicity or race overlays many debates taking place in the public domain’ and has had a deep and lasting impact on gender-based activism and organising in Fiji. Many women’s organisations remain based in ethnic and religious constituencies and pursue the ethnically-defined, locally-based interests of their members. George shows how some women’s organisations, in particular the Fiji YWCA, have challenged such ethnically-based divisions and promoted a more inclusive notion of citizenship and gender solidarity. Second, George shows that both the national and international political contexts have influenced women activists’ understandings and purposes of their gender-based advocacy. Activists drew on international discourses of human rights, democracy, gender equality, and radical critiques of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and the global causes of poverty, but have had to negotiate such discourses and find locally acceptable ‘paradigms’ to promote debate and mobilise women’s support. In the wake of each of the military coups women’s activists have often faced oppressive responses by the state and the military to their criticisms and campaigns, and have found the opportunities for civil society activity and active citizenship to be severely limited.

George’s contribution shows how active citizenship needs to be understood within the specific historical circumstances in which citizens act, and the political economic context shaping both opportunities and constraints. Nadeem Malik also sets out to highlight significant constraints to active citizenship, but in this case those inherited from colonial and pre-colonial pasts. Malik’s critique has particular importance to the recent promotion of decentralisation throughout the developing world as a way of improving and democratising local governance and the provision of public services, especially in rural and regional areas. His argument is based on a finely detailed, ethnographic study of the day-to-day practices of local government in a community in rural Pakistan. The policy of decentralisation initiated by the Musharif government in 1999 aimed to make local government more democratic and accountable to local people, bring women into local government in significant numbers, and make local elected officials subject to depersonalised, bureaucratic rules and procedures. Malik shows how powerful local landowners have subverted these intentions in a number of ways. For instance, the new laws mandated that 33 per cent of local seats would be reserved for women, what often happens is that elected women are represented by a male family member and local elite justify the practice in terms of local cultural and family values. Powerful landowners gain elected office through local patronage, and legitimate their position through ‘traditional’, personalised cultural practices, which further and strengthen their power. Ultimately, Malik vividly demonstrates how economically powerful groups can mobilise culture and manipulate invented traditions to severely limit opportunities for active citizenship and social accountability.

In the first of the case studies, Oxfam Australia’s Director of Development Effectiveness, Chris Roche, presents a broad-ranging discussion of Oxfam’s experience with ‘bottom–up’ accountability as a way of empowering local people in relation to state bureaucracies and development agencies. Roche grounds his discussion in two case studies of Oxfam-supported social accountability projects. The first describes a project in rural Vietnam where Oxfam worked with villagers to use participatory video to make the local school and its teachers more accountable to the local community. In the second case study, Roche presents the Gender Watch action group in Sri Lanka. Gender Watch was a group of local women, who collaborated with NGOs working on post-Tsunami recovery, to monitor problems affecting women, such as sexual harassment, rape, and discrimination, and address the problems they identified through social accountability. Roche draws out a number of lessons from his case studies, broader Oxfam experience, and the literature. He emphasises issues such as the importance of people knowing their entitlements and rights to be able to even assess if these are being met, the need for safe and effective mechanisms for people to express their grievances, and people’s need for certain skills and capacities to voice their grievances effectively and take appropriate measures to pursue them. Roche then proposes changes that he argues need to take place at individual, organisational, and sectoral level in order to make social accountability happen effectively.

Lisa Schultz, José Roberto Guevara, Samantha Ratnam, Ani Wieringa, Johanna Wyn, and Charlotte Sowerby provide an interest reflection of how young people can be engaged as active citizens within both a developing and developed country (Indonesia and Australia). They note that the simultaneous conversion of two long-term events – globalisation and changing technologies – have resulted in young people becoming increasingly required to engage with the broader world beyond their local and national communities. This increased engagement raises pertinent questions as to the ways, spaces, and tools, and resources young people require in order to engage in as active citizens. This article reflects on these questions and evaluates a schools-based programme implemented by Plan Australia in both Indonesia and Australia. The Global Connections Program is a youth-led global learning initiative developed to provide opportunities for young people in those two countries to connect with one another. The programme had a number of explicit objectives, including to: 1) assist young people form personal bonds with other young people from another country; 2) increase their understanding of issues faced by young people in other countries; 3) develop certain planning and leadership skills; 4) disseminate information about issues faced in other countries, in their own country; 5) develop solutions to joints issues of concern; and 6) assist Plan to work more closely with young people. Scultz et al. report that the programme was considered successful as it largely achieved these goals. Young people reported they felt more engaged with the global community and saw themselves has having a great role in finding solutions to common problems. A key to its success was its cross-country aspect, allowing young people in very different circumstances communicate on a more personal level and find similarities in their own lives. While Schultz et al. note some difficulties with the project’s implementation, none of these difficulties could not be overcome. Schultz et al. conclude that it is possible to develop notions of active citizenship within young people by combining exposure to counterparts in another country (developed to developing and developing to developed) with skill building and knowledge about global issues. Those that participated reported increased self-esteem and a desire to be participants rather than disinterested observers in the new global community.

Bill Walker provides a case study of work being undertaken by the international World Vision of assisting communities to hold their local political elites to account through Community-Based Performance Monitoring (CBPM). Walker takes as his starting point the notion of accountability, which has become increasingly popular in recent times. CBPM is underpinned by two principles – the principle of ownership and the principle of affected rights. The first principle involves ‘rights of prior authority based on relevant ownership by citizens and is thus linked to concepts of democracy’. The second principle ‘involves the principle that those whose rights have been adversely affected by the actions of someone else have right to hold that person to account for the way they have been treated’. Walker argues that these two principles are the basis for active citizens holding political leaders to account. Moreover, these principles also give authority to citizens to hold the state accountable. Citizens must call those in political authority to account for the decisions they make and the activities they implement. Further, citizens must hold to account these same decision makers and make them responsible for their decisions. Finally, if citizens deem decisions have been made inappropriately, they must seek redress (in varying forms). Indeed, it is this final action that largely determines how successful active citizens are in their community. If they are actually able to successfully demand redress, they have achieved a high level of accountability. Walker argues further that active citizens, particularly the most marginalised in society need a ‘voice’ in order to express their empowerment. The second half of Walker’s article sets out in more detail precisely what the CBPM is and how it is established within a community. Walker first notes that CBPM is a hybrid community-based monitoring tool. It combines selected elements from three other social-accountability approaches: social audit, community monitoring, and citizen report cards. The purpose of the CBPM is to facilitate and support ‘constructive dialogue’ between the political decision makers and citizens at a local level. The local level is purposely chosen as it is an intimate pace that allows a variety of voices to be heard around issues that are mutually understood and where it is deemed reasonable to claim that a social contract exists. Walker further explains that the central pillar o the CBPM is a planned gathering of the community that encompasses all key stakeholder groups, especially the poor and marginalised. These gathers are facilitated and seek to assess the quality of services being delivered by the state or should be delivered. These gatherings also then set out plans as to how services can be better provided often with the assistance of the communities themselves. This latent citizenship is contrasted with the political system of clientelism found in Solomon Islands as discussed by Cox. Walker concludes by stating that World Vision’s experience of CBPM has had five positive outcomes in terms of enhancing active citizenships. First, the focus on the local allows those involved to feel an immediacy of issues being discussed. Secondl it assists citizens appreciate the rights they have and opens channels for claiming these rights. Third, it assists in diagnosing what is failing in local service delivery and how this can be overcome. Fourth, it emphasises immediate response and joint decision making by both citizens and political decision makers. Finally, it supports and unifies communities delivering a sense of solidarity and mutual support.

In the third section, the difficulties of achieving active citizenship are explored in two articles. Popular participation in natural resources management has been a leading area in the theory and practice of active citizenship. Community Forest Management (CFM) has become a global movement promoting and enabling local people to take active roles in the decision-making and management of their forest resources. While CFM has been most influential in less-developed countries it has also influenced forest policy in industrialised nations in Europe and North America. In their contribution, Nathanial Matthews and Bruce Missingham examine the Wombat Community Forest Management initiative that was launched in the Australian state of Victoria in 2003. The Wombat CFM was the first official effort to develop and support a CFM processes in Australia, with real efforts to mobilise active citizens to participate in developing policy and managing the forest. Despite a highly optimistic start, the trial fell apart by the end of 2006. Matthews and Missingham describe in detail the community development and organising processes through which the Wombat CFM initiative was developed, and analyse the causes of its failure. In particular, they examine how ‘community’ was represented and constructed – who participated. In this case, the community was able to define itself and local people, as well as a diverse range of ‘outside’ interest groups, got involved. Consequently a sense of community or common purpose that could overcome entrenched ideological and socio-economic conflict over the sustainable use of the forest was never established. Matthews and Missingham also draw attention to power relationships within the newly formed CFM governing body, and between the CFM body and the government forestry department – the terms of participation. They show that the purpose and goals of CFM remained ambiguous in government directives and policy statements. The CFM governing body was not empowered to make legal decisions about Wombat forest management or use and power remained largely in the hands of forestry department officials. These unequal power relationships exacerbated conflict and inequalities within the CFM governing body, and ultimately lead to it being disbanded. The case study holds some important implications for participation in natural resources management and sustainable development throughout the world, notably that popular participation and active citizenship are often enacted in highly unequal relations of power may severely limit the terms of citizens’ participation.

Matthew Clarke calls for some caution in seeking all communities to assume the role of active citizens. Clarke agrees in his article that active citizens can become a powerful driver of development by holding to popular account those that traditionally hold decision-making power at the local and national levels. He notes that active citizenship draws from a long history of understanding the importance of community participation and ownership of development interventions. But at this point Clarke departs from the rest of the contributions to this special issue by arguing that spite of its inherent strengths, active citizenship may not be a possible or optimal outcome in all circumstances. Clarke argues that participation has been fetishised within the development sector, blinding some to the potential hazards of seeking all to become active citizens. Clarke focuses his argument on one specific sub-population within Thailand – illegal Burmese migrants – and argues for the realistic expectation of active citizenship and indeed participation for these migrants. Clarke notes that the estimates of the number of illegal migrants within Thailand vary between 800,000 to 1.5 million but that the overwhelming majority of these migrants are Burmese seeking to escape the political regime in Burma and improve their material standard of living. NGOs working with these illegal Burmese migrants face many challenges that exacerbate the normal development needs that would be expected in any poor community, such as limited access to health services, economic insecurity, inadequate housing, etc. The complexity of working with these communities are exacerbated by the precarious existence these migrants have in Thailand, which in turn hinders their ability to actively engage in the development process. Clarke draws on his work with one specific NGO that has worked with illegal Burmese communities for over 15 years. He discusses the unique strengths and weakness of these illegal communities before exploring the appropriateness of seeking to engage such communities as active citizens. The major implication for NGOs working with such communities is that they may have to assume a new role when working with these communities. Clarke introduces a new typology describing the unique role NGOs must play in these circumstances: advocate–guardians. He argues that within this typology, NGOs must assume the role of active citizen on behalf of the community in question and simultaneously provide development interventions and advocate on their behalf. Clarke cautions against the blanket expectation of participation from these communities as it actually endangers the lives of community members and is therefore an inappropriate expectation or requirement. The extent to which the circumstances of illegal Burmese migrants are mirrored by other illegal migrant groups will determine how widespread the adoption of Clarke’s new typology will be.

Conclusion
Active citizenship is an important concept that brings together three well established principles of best-practice within development, namely the importance of participation; rights-based approaches to development; and good governance. There is little doubt that active citizens are a powerful force for ‘good’ change, and the focus on active citizenship will affect future development at the local, national and regional levels.

The 2007 conference in Melbourne demonstrates the importance which community representatives, development practitioners, researchers, and donors assign to this notion. Moreover, it is a concept that traverses both developed and developing countries. We believe the contributions presented in this special issue of Development in Practice will go some way in adding to the current debate and practice around active citizenship.

References
Cooke, B. and Kothari, U. (2001) Participation: The New Tyranny? London: Zed Books.
Green, D. (2008) From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World, Oxford: Oxfam International.
 

This article examines a 40-year history of women’s organising in Fiji in order to show how the political goals pursued by active citizens can be shaped by an interplay of domestic and international political contingencies. This approach challenges the common and somewhat idealised definitions of active citizenship that focus upon actors’ capacity to mobilise collectively behind political goals independent of those that motivate the state or the market. Rather, active citizenship is viewed as a realm of political activity constituted in ways that both reflect and contest contingent factors prevailing globally and locally.

Oxfam’s experience suggests that ‘bottom–up’ accountability can be an important mechanism whereby men and women living in poverty can hold others to account. The first section of this article illustrates this with two examples of Oxfam experience in Vietnam and Sri Lanka. The second section draws out some of the lessons from these, and attempts to situate them within the broader debate about approaches to accountability. In the third section some suggestions are put forward about what would need to change if active citizenship and ‘speaking truth to power’ were to become the renewed focus of accountability.

Amid growing interest in forms of participatory and decentralised governance, increasing efforts are being made to increase the accountability, responsiveness, and relevance of the state through active citizenship. Drawing on the theoretical basis for social accountability, this article explores bottom–up views of active citizenship which highlight the importance of the intrinsic as well as the instrumental value of participatory social accountability and thus of active citizenship. One approach to social accountability, Community-Based Performance Monitoring (CBPM), is used to demonstrate these instrumental and intrinsic values in practice, in relation to local public service delivery.

Active citizens can become a powerful driver of development by holding to popular account those who traditionally hold decision-making power at the local and national levels. Active citizenship draws from a long history of understanding the importance of community participation and ownership of development interventions. However, in spite of its inherent strengths, active citizenship may not be a possible (or optimal) outcome in all circumstances. This article argues for the realistic expectation of active citizenship (and indeed participation) of one specific sub-population in Thailand, where of the estimated 800,000 to 1.5 million illegal migrants, the overwhelming majority are Burmese. Their precarious existence as illegal migrants compounds the development needs that face any poor community. This in turn hinders their ability to actively engage in the development process. This article reviews the lessons learned by a Thai-based NGO that has worked with illegal Burmese migrants for over 15 years. It discusses the unique strengths and weakness of these illegal communities, the appropriateness of seeking to engage them as active citizens, and the implications for NGOs working with such communities. It suggests that the unique role NGOs must play in cases where their public participation could endanger the lives of community members, is that of advocate-guardians, whereby they assume the role of active citizen on behalf of the community in question and simultaneously provide development interventions and advocate on its behalf.

The present article reviews the adaptation of the popular farmer field school (FFS) approach to integrated watershed management in several Indonesian provinces, under the auspices of a major environmental management project. Indonesia is the site of origin of the FFS concept, developed to promote integrated pest management (IPM) in rice during the 1980s. Since the conclusion of the National IPM Programme in 1999, FFS alumni groups and approaches have continued to evolve in Indonesia, and the FFS model has been taken up in scores of developing countries around the world. The present article provides a sympathetic appraisal of some recent developments.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.634176

This paper examines Congolese children's experiences of war and displacement in the context of the material, social, and relational aspects of their lives in Dar es Salaam. It argues that the challenges, privations and indignities of daily life in urban Tanzania were characterised by feelings of loss, deprivation and hardship so intense they were felt by many to be as or more devastating in their brutality than was life in the midst of war. In so doing, the paper raises profound questions about what kind of ‘protection’ we are providing to children in these circumstances, and for what purpose.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.672958

Volunteers who travel abroad on short-term (three- to six-month) assignments represent a growing trend in international development work. Many of the short-term volunteers abroad employ funds earmarked for poverty alleviation and development. This article examines the perceived impacts of international volunteering in the developing world of 50 Canadian youth. The findings demonstrate an awareness of modest and, at times, negative effects in international development. The primary focus in the youth reflections was on personal growth as a positive impact; thus raising questions about the goals and desired outcomes for international development funding for volunteer abroad programmes.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.630982

 

Post-tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction activities in Aceh have been criticised as focussing on vertical reporting at the expense of lateral coordination, leading in some cases to ‘overlaps and redundancies, mis-targeting and hastily planned and implemented programs’. Our experience is that effective coordination between implementing agencies, linked to appropriate Indonesian government agencies, can effectively improve the delivery of services, in this case to coastal aquaculture farmers in Aceh. Most importantly, in an environment where numerous agencies are undertaking rehabilitation activities across a broad geographic area, this approach enables the provision of a consistent and standardised technical message to farmers.

The full article is available here:

 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.630984
 

Although herders in Mongolia are embracing modernity, their livelihoods remain largely dependent on the weather and resulting grassland conditions. In recent years, natural resource degradation has made livestock production more risky. Severe weather events such as storms, droughts, and extremely harsh winters have been on the increase. Timely and adequate weather forecasts could help herders to cope more effectively with these changing circumstances. The Erdenedalai weather and early warning network in the Gobi desert represents a unique initiative to read the weather more carefully. Through collective action, the network is contributing to reduce risks and improve pastoral management practices.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.630986

 

Since their rise to prominence in the post-World War II period, NGOs have grown exponentially in size and stature. This growth has occurred most notably under the New Policy Agenda, with Western donor states emphasising the role of NGOs in democratisation and service provision. Donors have gained the power to set the development agenda and NGOs have slowly become Trojan horses for global neo-liberalism. The present review surveys the principal ways in which NGOs have become a part of the promotion of Western hegemony in the developing world and presents some ideas for change.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.634230

 

This article examines the role of context-specific factors that help to perpetuate the vulnerability of conflict-affected people. The discussion revolves around key concepts of household livelihood security, resilience building, income diversification, market access, and armed non-state actors. It is argued that, while conflict-affected households develop adaptive strategies to sustain their livelihoods amid the commonly observed vulnerabilities, the governance arrangements of the parties to the conflict can place stress on local initiatives, confining them to subsistence level and so reinforcing their vulnerability. Deeper analysis of the sources of vulnerability and implications of policy processes could help to inform intervention strategies.

This article identifies the opportunities and constraints faced by female construction workers in urban India, citing empirical research conducted in the city of Ahmedabad. The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) conducted three surveys in 1998, 2003, and 2007 to learn more about the needs and priorities of construction workers in the context of economic globalisation. While enthusiastically endorsing the role that training and certification can play in providing skilled women with opportunities for quality employment, the author emphasises the need for wider policy intervention at the state and national levels to ensure that such programmes have replicable, sustainable, and gender-equitable results.

Rickshaw pulling is a large, labour-intensive, unorganised sector in India, involving 8 million individuals belonging to the lowest social strata. The article describes an initiative to increase the daily earnings of rickshaw pullers by training them to retail branded products, on a 'bulk-buying retail-selling' model. The article reports on a project that began with 30 rickshaw pullers in Jaunpur, a semi-urban district of eastern India. Critical issues related to the sustainability and future of such projects on a large scale are discussed.

This article explores post-conflict reconstruction in Cambodia through an analysis of both the dangers of liberal peace building and the positive role that training in capacity building plays in war-torn societies. The central question addressed is how insider-outsider dynamics influence Cambodia's post-conflict reconstruction projects; and what assumptions do international workers and Cambodian NGO staff make about 'the good life' that will be constructed? The article offers an overview of Cambodia's history and cultural context to situate its analysis of liberal peace building and foreign donors, as well as the behavioural characteristics of international peace builders operating within Cambodia. It assesses the potency of elite capture of insider-outsider partnership, specific NGO management practices, and the role of gender to better illuminate the challenges for post-conflict reconstruction. The article concludes with recommendations for improving future partnerships between insiders and outsiders in Cambodian peace-building projects.

Gender studies in general, and Gender and Development (GAD) in particular, through their belief in a cultural conditioning of gender behaviour, use the idea of 'culture' in a restrictive sense which perpetuates a conceptual difference between men and women, and also between First World and Third World women. There is a tendency among gender experts to magnify the difference between men and women, and categorise them into two radically different realms. This article argues for a gender project based on the idea of culture as lived experience. It approaches gender not as a category of exclusion but as a problematic construct that is constantly restructuring itself.

It has been two years since the World Bank launched its World Development Report (WDR) 2008. The Report made a number of observations, based on research papers and reports contributed by various economists and scholars. This review essay assesses the prospects and problems associated with Indian agriculture in the light of the Report.

Over the past two decades Development in Practice has published a great many articles on approaches to and methods of managing development assistance, including two complete issues dedicated to the topic, as well as several titles in our book series (in particular Eade et al. 2000; Roper et al. 2003; Eade 2003). While conventional aid-management tools such as log frames have consistently earned contributors' disapproval, in particular for their formulaic view of causality, this is not to imply that participatory 'bottom-up' methods have remained immune from criticism. On the contrary, the critiques of 'participation' are too numerous to cite - 350 at the last count - although Anacleti (1993), Craig and Porter (1997), Jackson (1997), Leal (2007), Mompati and Prinsen (2000), Ngunjiri (1998), Simon et al. (2003), and White (1996) are worthy of particular note.

For the most part, as one would expect, our contributors have focused on the practical implications flowing from the adoption of one or another orthodoxy or methodology. The current issue therefore represents something of a departure in focusing more on the theoretical frameworks and assumptions that underpin the ways in which 'aided development'1 is approached.

Sarah C. White examines the concept of wellbeing, which, she argues, is a social process that is both material and subjective, but is most importantly embedded in people's relationships with each other and with the state. This view implies that, rather than being a simple target or an 'outcome to be sought', wellbeing is both a means and an end; and that if wellbeing shapes and is shaped by the ways in which people engage with the world, then it follows that working for the wellbeing of people who are poor and excluded is indeed a transformational project. Alexandre Apsan Frediani looks at the influential work of Amartya K. Sen on human capabilities, and in particular his emphasis on multi-dimensionality, agency, and empowerment, but he argues that this as yet lacks comprehensive application beyond the field of development economics. Compared with other approaches, namely the Rights-Based Approach and the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, the Capability Approach does, however, have the potential to challenge existing paradigms and provide a grounded alternative to 'business as usual'. Adam Fforde also suggests that the 'one size fits all' orthodoxy has lost its authority, because the empirical failure of predictive policies - policy X will necessarily lead to outcome Y - has made their intellectual bankruptcy abundantly clear. At the same time, there is a need for development practice to understand inconsistency, to distinguish between the types and degrees of inconsistency that really matter, and by extension to organise itself around the insight that knowledges are socially constructed. Hans Peter Ulrich looks instead to Systems Thinking as a way to understand development as a kind of supra-system that both encompasses numerous layered sub-systems and is itself embedded in or affected by many dimensions that are outside what is conventionally considered to fall within the realm of development and international co-operation. He locates the shortcomings of the aid architecture in a lack of adequate mechanisms of control and accountability throughout the entire system.

Other contributors examine the place of formal and informal learning in development practice. Karim-Aly Kassam describes the transformation of a university course of development studies from a reliance on book learning, or 'knowing that', to engagement with the socio-cultural and ecological contexts, or 'knowing how'. The linking of education to the social consequences of that learning entails understanding 'the consequences of action', and the students therefore become ethically engaged 'citizen-scholars'. As the author concludes: 'This type of learning may not achieve knowing how in the sense of the “development expert”, but it articulates a process for students who aspire to excellence in professional engagement and civil life'. Edward R. Carr recounts his own experience in Ghana to illustrate the tendency of 'formal' development to discount informal local narratives, different ways of knowing what is needed and of interpreting the meaning of aid interventions; and a corresponding tendency to treat them as a source of 'local colour' to enliven stolid reports, or as anecdotes to liven up the classroom (and in so doing to assert the teacher's global experience). He argues that genuinely listening to and reflecting on such narratives is an essential step towards decentring the ways in which development is defined, articulated, and practised. Using precisely such a narrative, Linje Manyozo illustrates his claim that when theory emerges from and is embedded in practice - praxis - it can be affirming and liberating; but that when development experts come in with their own ideas about how things should be done, it is time to 'start writing an obituary for that development intervention'. Oluwatoyin Dare Kolawole drives this point home in his article on the importance of drawing on a wide range of disciplines, not only in development studies but more importantly in shaping development practice. Yi-Lee Wong shows what can go wrong when well-intended donors and their operational partners attempt to import their own solutions to problems as they have defined them - in this case solutions from the West being applied to post-Soviet higher education systems - rather than taking the time to look, listen, and learn.

Bejoy K. Thomas likens the emergence of the Free and Open Source Software movement, including developments such as wikis and Open Access, to participation 'at the top', as distinct from the development nostrums of bottom-up participation. A synthesis between the two could point to new ways to conceptualise development in the Knowledge Society. Claire Heffernan and Jun Yu introduce the example of a software programme designed to enable policy makers and researchers to envisage the specific impacts of particular interventions on poor farmers - vaccination against common livestock diseases, for instance. User-generated content means that information can be shared and therefore acted upon almost as soon as it is available. Simon Starling describes efforts to monitor and evaluate NGO advocacy in campaigning organisations that tend not to reward learning and reflection, concluding that to be useful these activities need to mirror the iterative and adaptive processes of the campaign, rather than being seen as rigid plans. All three of these contributors thus point to the need to see knowledges as emergent 'where people have seized upon spaces where things are not well defined, or where things can happen when someone else is not looking' (Craig and Porter 1997: 236).

References

1. Anacleti, Odhiambo (1993) Research into local culture: implications for participatory development. Development in Practice 3:1 , pp. 44-48. [informaworld]
2. Craig, David andPorter, Doug (1997) Framing participation: development projects, professionals, and organisations. Development in Practice 7:3 , pp. 229-236.
3. Eade, Deborah Eade, Deborah (ed) (2003) Development Methods and Approaches: Critical Reflections Oxfam GB , Oxford
4. Eade, Deborah , Hewitt, Tom andJohnson, Hazel Eade, Deborah , Hewitt, Tom andJohnson, Hazel (eds) (2000) Development and Management: Experiences in Value-based Conflict Oxfam GB, in association with The Open University , Oxford
5. Ellerman, David (2005) Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance University of Michigan Press , Ann Arbor, MI
6. Fernando Udan (2009) Review of Alan Fowler and Kees Biekart (2008) Civic Driven Change: Citizens' Imagination in Action, The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, Development and Change 40 (4): 804-6.
7. Jackson, Cecile (1997) Sustainable development at the sharp end: field-worker agency in a participatory project. Development in Practice 7:3 , pp. 237-247. [informaworld]
8. Kaplan, Allan (1996) The Development Practitioners' Handbook Pluto Press , London
9. Leal, Pablo Alejandro (2007) Participation: the ascendancy of a buzzword in the neo-liberal era. Development in Practice 17:4&5 , pp. 539-548. [informaworld]
10. Mompati, Tlamelo andPrinsen, Gerard (2000) Ethnicity and participatory methods in Botswana: some participants are to be seen and not heard. Development in Practice 10:5 , pp. 625-637. [informaworld]
11. Ngunjiri, Eliud (1998) Participatory methodologies: double-edged swords. Development in Practice 8:4 , pp. 466-470. [informaworld]
12. Roper, Laura , Pettit, Jethro andEade, Deborah Roper, Laura , Pettit, Jethro andEade, Deborah (eds) (2003) Development and the Learning Organisation Oxfam GB, in association with the Institute of Development Sudies and Oxfam America , Oxford
13. Simon, David , McGregor, Duncan F. M. , Nsiah-Gyabaah, Kwasi andThompson, Donald A. (2003) Poverty elimination, North-South research collaboration, and the politics of participatory development. Development in Practice 13:1 , pp. 40-56. [informaworld]
14. White, Sarah C. (1996) Depoliticising development: the uses and abuses of participation. Development in Practice 6:1 , pp. 6-15. [informaworld]
 

Notes

I thank Udan Fernando (2009) for this useful term, which highlights the fact that, despite the dominant discourse, development (and indeed humanitarian assistance) is not defined by the aid industry. Indeed it has been argued, by commentators from grassroots practitioners to former World Bank political economists, that sustainable development takes place despite rather than thanks to external intervention (see for example Kaplan 1996; Ellerman 2005).
 

Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach is increasingly influential in the literature of development economics. It has contributed to development discourse by strengthening the multidimensional approach to poverty analysis and stressing the importance of focusing on agency and empowerment. Nevertheless, the Capability Approach has not yet been applied comprehensively beyond development economics. This article assesses the contribution of the Capability Approach to the field of development planning, by comparing it with the rights-based approach (RBA) and the sustainable-livelihoods framework (SLF). The article argues that by focusing on the capability space, power relations, and participation, the Capability Approach has the potential to become a normative framework to radicalise development practices.
 

Howis book-learning at university made relevant to societal needs?What pedagogical framework helps to transform students from those who know about major challenges of the twenty-first century to those who know how to respond to such challenges in a particular socio-cultural and ecological context? This narrative about the practical experience of Canadian students in two separate international-development classes shows that learning is ultimately about linking the education of students to its consequences for communities and society. The students’ maturation from a community of enquirers to a community of social practice is not just an intellectual transformation from ‘knowing that’ to ‘learning how’, but also the development of a heightened ethical awareness of the consequential link between freedom and responsibility.

The article primarily seeks to show the interconnectedness of diverse academic disciplines and their crucial role in development practice. It sheds light on the meanings of developmentrelated concepts and seeks to delineate between the four inter-related concepts of multi-, inter-, trans-, and cross-disciplinarity. It argues that while inter-disciplinarity is desirable for a broad-based discipline such as Development Studies, the appropriateness of the concept when juxtaposed with trans-disciplinarity seems somewhat inadequate. Buttressing the importance of the contributions of all disciplines and of course development initiatives to Development Studies, case studies of failed water and agricultural projects – which never incorporated vital and cognate expertise – in the South are, thus, provided in the discourse.

Every day 25,000 people die of hunger and hunger-related causes. While it is recognised that the international development system is not as effective as it should be, years of endeavours to achieve greater harmonisation of international aid and to create an effective architecture pass by without adequate results. The article introduces a framework for enhancing the effectiveness of the international development system, based on fundamental concepts of Systems Thinking. It discusses the complex systemic challenges to development and suggests that more effective control is a key precondition for greater effectiveness in development as a whole.

The possibilities and limits of participation at the ‘bottom’ (represented, for example, by PRA and PLA) have been well articulated in development literature. However, the emergence of the Knowledge Society has opened up spaces for what we could call participation at the ‘top’ (free software, wiki, open access), the implications of which Development Studies is only beginning to grapple with. Building upon recent debates on the issue, we take the cases of the free software movement and participatory development, arguing that they share common ground in several ways. We aim to offer a few pointers on conceptualising development in the Knowledge Society.

Pro-poor decision making depends on an understanding of the complexities and interrelationships between household livelihood, demographic, and economic factors. This article describes the design and implementation of the Poverty Assessor, a software programme to assist practitioners, policy makers, and researchers in visualising the direct impacts on poverty of specific livelihood factors and events among populations living in poverty. The software enables users to upload their own data and profile households in relation to the national poverty line, by selecting from a range of demographic and livelihood indicators. The authors present findings from the programme, using a dataset from Bolivia.

'The myth of community' permeates both the understanding and the practice of participatory development. Yet the idea that communities exist as coherent units of people who inhabit bounded geographic spaces and are ready to be mobilised for development restricts the very agency that participation promises. This article offers an alternative model of community: one that is more compatible with the ideal of people-centred, participatory development. Using Etienne Wenger's concept of 'communities of practice', and drawing on narrative theory and cognitive approaches to policy analysis, the article argues that community should be created and sustained around shared meanings.

Although global influences - in the form of international finance coupled with discourses of partnership, participation, good governance, and democracy - exercise an increasing influence on national and local governance arrangements worldwide, comparative studies across the traditional South/North divide remain extremely rare. Drawing on findings from a comparative study of Malawi's PRSP and Ireland's national Social Partnership process, this article demonstrates that a shifting of conceptual boundaries beyond traditionally delineated geographic borders is not just valid but essential, in that it helps to reveal new perspectives on the politics underlying globalised development processes and the transformative potential of those processes.

Providing cash transfers to vulnerable groups reduces vulnerability and chronic poverty; but delivering cash to remote, rural locations can be expensive and insecure. Alternative delivery systems using technology are thus being piloted. This article uses examples from southern Africa to highlight the opportunities and risks involved in using technology to deliver social protection, with particular focus on two schemes in Malawi. It concludes that there is great potential for the use of technology in delivering social protection, especially if employed at a national scale and taking advantage of the full spectrum of uses to ensure cost-efficiency.

Relations between the Ugandan government and NGOs engaged in gender-focused NGO advocacy tend to keep NGOs visibly engaged but do not necessarily alter the status of poor women. These relations manifest themselves in government advising NGO advocacy work; sympathising with the NGOs; co-opting NGOs and individuals; publicising gender issues; and de-legitimising gender-focused NGO activities. The article links these phenomena to the government's wish to appear receptive to the concerns of civil-society organisations, of which NGOs are a major component. This is important to its image in the international aid community, where it projects itself as generally democratic and supportive of good governance.

Africa Rice Center (WARDA) facilitated the development and translation of 11 rice videos. From 2005 to 2009, WARDA partners translated them into more than 30 African languages. Open-air video presentations enhanced learning, experimentation, confidence, trust, and group cohesion among rural people. The videos strengthened capacities of more than 500 organisations and hundreds of thousands of farmers. WARDA's integrated rural learning approach also helped women to access new markets and credit. Learning videos allow for unsupervised learning; unleash local creativity and experimentation; facilitate institutional innovations; and improve social inclusion of the poor, youth, and women.

Native species of trees and shrubs contribute significantly to farmers' livelihoods by supplying food, medicinal products, fodder, and wood. In the case study reported in this article, this contribution to farmers' annual revenue varied from 26 per cent to 73 per cent, and was as high as US$ 650 a year for households for which agroforestry products were the primary source of revenue. Household consumption was not quantified in the study, but farmers' comments confirmed that native trees also played an important role in assuring food security, especially in the 'hunger period' when grain stores are low and farmers are waiting for the next harvest.

The term 'partnership' can be considered something of a Trojan Horse, disguising the reality of the complex relationships in imbalances of power and inequality, often expressed through the control of one 'partner' over the other. With particular reference to the experience of a small, UK-based NGO working in Uganda (Hives Save Lives - Africa), this article highlights how power is manifest within donor-NGO partnerships through the control and flow of money; and illustrates that NGOs pursuing funding from donors face many challenges that reinforce this imbalance of power.

Emerging trends in reforms of education-sector plans indicate a shift not only in how foreign aid is disbursed, but also in how civil-society actors engage in new policy and advocacy roles. This contribution examines these changing civil-society roles in four countries: Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania. While sector-wide approaches have created new opportunities for civil-society participation at the national level, this research suggests that sector reforms have also presented significant challenges for engagement with government and donors. This research emphasises the need for a transparent, regularised, and democratic process for the inclusion of civil-society organisations at the policy table.

This contribution reviews ten case studies of complementary education programmes conducted by the USAID-funded Educational Quality Improvement Program 2. The state-non-state relationship in each case is explored to reveal the arrangements that permit non-state providers to extend the reach and improve the effectiveness of education, particularly for populations that are underserved by the state system. Non-state providers improve on the standard models of state schooling by changing the mix of inputs at the school level, altering the institutional incentives that govern how schools operate, and setting up political accountability relationships closer to the points of service delivery.

This contribution examines the Government of India's proposed public-private partnership (PPP) strategies in education in its Tenth and Eleventh Five Year Plans. The analysis aims to ascertain the state's role as financier, manager, and regulator of education in view of the proposed PPP strategies. The analysis shows that strategies strongly link PPPs in education with privatisation, and further, that despite assertions of 'a greatly expanded role for the state', the proposed strategies result in a diminished role for the state in education financing, management, and regulation.

Popular-education programmes conducted by social movements are reshaping politics and education in Latin America. Negotiating with governments, they promote social justice while educationally challenging 'neo-liberal' educational standardisation. Moving from a defensive towards an offensive strategy, some movements support themselves economically while developing new educational strategies. They encounter both support and opposition from the social democratic governments in the region. They are at odds with the international bilateral and multilateral organisations that promote neo-liberal top-down policies, and some of these new social movements have moved beyond social action in specific regions and national borders creating regional alliances for their struggle.

This viewpoint uses evaluation reports from Nepal, Afghanistan, and Yemen in order to learn lessons about how donors and governments can work more effectively with non-state actors to deliver education in fragile states. The evaluation framework draws on the Development Assistance Committee principles for good international engagement in fragile states. The analysis concludes that a more effective partnership requires better regulation of non-state actors, increased efforts to build community capacity to hold schools and local government to account for the quality of services, and more upfront and systematic analysis of the conflict dynamics of investment in the education sector.

The Kenyan government introduced free primary education in 2003 in order to universalise access to primary education. Although the policy allows universal coverage, it ought to benefit the poor most as they are the ones who were excluded from the education sector before the policy was introduced. Using household-survey data collected in Nairobi, this contribution assesses the impact of the policy on schooling outcomes of the poor. The findings reveal that the free primary-education policy in Kenya still excludes the poorest of the poor.

Whether Northern NGOs have willingly embraced or tried to stand out against the New Public Management orthodoxies that have increasingly dominated development and humanitarian assistance over the past 20 years, the assumption remains that their interventions make a sustainable difference to people living in poverty, excluded from decisions and processes that affect their lives. Some NGOs deliberately channel their assistance through local organisations, while others are quicker to take an operational role; some define their interventions in terms of human rights (or rights-based approaches) and gender equity, or issues of class; others would emphasise the inequalities that lie at the heart of capitalist globalisation. They would tend to argue that unless they conform to the demands and expectations of their own donors, they could not raise the money required in order to do their work. There have been attempts at NGO self-regulation, most obviously in the humanitarian sector with initiatives such as the Sphere Project and the Humanitarian Accountability Project, with their roots dating back to the 1994 Code of Conduct for The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief; and organisations such as Keystone are looking at accountability for social change (see, for example, Wilford and Jacobs 2010). But the sector overall seems to take for granted that it is basically on the right tracks.

It is, then, particularly opportune for Jenny Pearce to ask whether it is possible for Northern NGOs to fund social change in the South and, if so, what they might need to do differently. She argues that the answers will not be found in imposing more and tighter reporting schedules on local counterpart organisations, but in refining NGOs’ conceptualisations of social transformation, which will in turn shape the kinds of relationship that they form, and the role of resource transfer within them. She further argues that theoretical and political clarity about transforming power, not merely ‘doing empowerment’, will also determine how robustly an NGO will resist or modify bureaucratic pressures that run counter to such an agenda. Such a position may, of course, result in reduced budgets, as there will almost always be amore compliant NGO to step in: would any Northern NGO still claim that its goal is to make its own existence unnecessary? Rosemary McGee writes about the difficult balance to be struck between the headquarters of a Northern NGO and its country offices – in this case in Colombia. While it is understandable that such agencies wish to establish organisation-wide policies and procedures, interpreting them will require flexibility in each specific context, in order to keep faith with the underlying principles. The ‘radical practice of partnership’ is indeed the only meaningful way to work in situations that are marked by complex political violence. Moire O’Sullivan pursues the partnership issue in her article about the realisation by Concern Worldwide of the discrepancy between its definition of partnership and the range of relationships in which it was actually involved; she describes how the agency mapped these relationships in order to help staff to be clearer, and therefore more discerning, about the nature of their engagement with local organisations. Barry Cannon describes an Active Citizenship programme in El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, which comprised a number of initiatives aimed at strengthening the capacity of local civil-society organisations
(CSOs) to engage in public action to influence the policy process, and which also included an NGO diploma. This again highlights the importance of having clear theoretical positions regarding, for instance, the definition and role(s) of civil society, and a well-informed sense of the political space within which civil society and CSOs specifically can operate – although recent events in Honduras took even seasoned observers by surprise. Richard English presents brief examples from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, where collective action has successfully brought about change via well-researched advocacy or has by the power of example influenced national policy.

A further set of articles focuses on economic issues with reference to Latin America. Jason Spellberg and Morgan Kaplan attribute the failure of US policies to eradicate the cocaine trade to the lack of viable economic alternatives for Andean coca producers. This results in the intensification of US military efforts, which further alienates small farmers without achieving the principal objectives. The authors call instead for USAID and other donors to enable local producers to form co-operative industries that would make selling high-quality processed products to international markets sufficiently profitable for them to abandon coca production voluntarily. William F. Waters addresses the current interest in conditional cash transfers as a means of fostering social development, in particular health and education, focusing his attention on their application among indigenous communities in Panama. The lessons drawn from his qualitative research are that, to be effective, programmes depending on co-responsibility need first and foremost to respect and be imaginative about how to incorporate cultural norms and expectations, must be properly explained in the local language, and then should be consistently available to the intended beneficiaries; he argues also that conditional cash transfers are only part of a far wider picture and are not in themselves a development solution. Hugo Santana de Figueirêdo Jr and Bryanna Millis assess the impacts of regulatory reforms on the Brazilian cashew-nut industry, using a value-chain approach to identify constraints and to develop a consensus on necessary reforms, specifically tax and credit regulations, required to make the industry more competitive internationally.

Joel F. Audefroy compares experiences of emergency and post-emergency housing programmes in Latin America and Asia, particularly following major catastrophes, highlighting good practices in relation to the design of temporary shelter and permanent housing, use of local materials, skills, tools, and technology, and the encouragement of participatory processes of decision making and evaluation. Traffic accidents are responsible for 1.2 million fatalities a year worldwide and are a leading cause of avoidable death. Ruth Salmon and William Eckersley argue, however, that much education on road safety is inappropriate and impractical; they present a pioneering community-managed programme in Ethiopia which might be adapted for use in other settings. Finally, Matt Grainger reports on the November 2009 World Summit on Food Security, concluding that despite its obvious failings there was one breakthrough that could, if it gains sustained international support, ensure a co-ordinated global approach to food security. But whether governments will ever voluntarily put the needs of the world’s majority above the demands of their domestic constituencies remains a moot point.

Reference
Wilford, Robyn and Alex Jacobs (2010) ‘Listen First: a pilot system for managing downward accountability in NGOs’, Development in Practice 20 (7), forthcoming.
 

Certain contexts render particularly challenging the disjunctures and discontinuities between international NGO (INGO) headquarters and in-country operations, as this Christian Aid case demonstrates. Torn loyalties result when seeking to discern how best to work with partners in a human-rights crisis in a middle-income country. Navigating these challenges requires a critical interrogation and radical practice of partnership. With many INGOs partially or wholly decentralising operations, and in anomalous and complex INGO programme contexts like this, it is vital to analyse the disjunctures and to support in-country staff to respond creatively to them, to do justice to programme potential and partnership principles.

From United Nations emergency responses involving tent camps, to the reconstruction approach of FUNDASAL in El Salvador and the post-disaster provision of housing by Caritas in Asia, it is clear that a giant step has been taken in thinking about emergency shelter, as well as about how prevention and reconstruction are managed. This article evaluates some current good practices in Asia and Latin America in post-disaster emergency shelter that use local skills, materials, and tools, and participatory processes.

Since the 1980s, the USA has fought cocaine in the Andes with carrots and sticks: interdiction and crop eradication wield the sticks, while Alternative Development (AD), which offers economic assistance to farmers who voluntarily abandon illicit cultivation, provides the carrots. Yet cocaine continues to permeate US streets, and rural Andean communities remain isolated from the legitimate economy. Many critics blame US belligerence for compounding the Andean drug war. The underlying problem with the existing strategy, however, might not be the aggressiveness of its military sticks, but the flimsiness of its development carrots. The inability of AD to persuade farmers to abandon coca cultivation may be causing US policy makers to over-apply military solutions – often inflaming rural communities and exacerbating regional instability in so doing. Few legal crops can match the earning power of coca. The article therefore suggests that the US carrot could be made more attractive by adopting a Venture Development model which helps rural farmers to process their legal produce into highquality finished goods that command premium prices. Such a strategy could conceivably choke the cocaine engine by applying market-based forces to address market-based realities.

It is very motivating to see vulnerable people becoming strong advocates for their own rights and persuading their government to act; or to see passionate young economists influencing the state and effecting positive change for tens of thousands of poor households. It is impressive to see dedicated work by a national NGO to build successful community health-care programmes that influence the health services of a whole country. The three stories from the Caucasus presented in this article show what can be done when people become strong advocates for their own rights or for the rights of others living in poverty.

Despite its adoption of a partnership approach within its countries of operation, Concern Worldwide has struggled to match its definition of partnership with the range of relationships in which it actually engages on the ground. A relationship-mapping diagram conceived during its Partnership Policy formulation workshop has now helped to bridge this gap between theory and reality. Country programmes have also found that the process and result of such mapping exercises help them to recognise what relationships they have, and in turn which relationships they need, in order to achieve results.

In 'The F-word and the S-word - too much of one and not enough of the other', by Cassandra Balchin (Development in Practice, volume 17, numbers 4 & 5: 532-8, DOI: 10.1080/09614520701469500), a statement on page 535 read as follows:

Meanwhile, gender specialists working in international development and human-rights NGOs continue to find acceptance for the simple message that fundamentalism is bad for women's health.

It should have read:

Meanwhile, gender specialists working in international and human-rights NGOs still find it hard to get acceptance for the simple message that fundamentalism is bad for women's health.

Deborah Eade, the Editor-in-Chief, takes full responsibility for this error, for which she offers her sincere apologies to the author and to readers.
 

This special issue on child protection reflects a growing awareness among many researchers and practitioners of the sheer numbers of boys and girls in developing countries who continue to be exposed to poverty and other related adversities, despite recent concerted efforts to improve children's survival and well-being. There is evidence that too often our efforts to protect children are not as effective as we hope and, worse, there have been nagging suspicions that they are sometimes even misguided and counterproductive. It has gradually become clear that the challenge to understand why and how children become vulnerable flows into the challenge of understanding why and how our efforts to protect them succeed or fail. It is that question that this journal issue addresses.

The Oak Foundation was concerned to better understand some of the numerous risks confronted by children in developing countries, taking into account as far as possible boys' and girls' own perspectives, and to propose ways forward for policy: to this end, the Foundation was keen to initiate an exchange between researchers and practitioners by funding a workshop hosted by the Young Lives study in Oxford in May 2011. Independent scholars and Young Lives staff were brought together to share findings from their research with children in diverse contexts and consider the implications for policy. The contributors are all experienced researchers and practitioners who have worked for many years with children in developing countries. It soon became apparent in the workshop that participants shared a critical perspective on current policies and a consensus was reached on the need for new approaches. The articles presented here reflect this critical perspective and offer suggestions for reform based on empirical findings around a range of child protection concerns, including children's work, independent migration, family separation, early marriage, and military occupation. The introduction and concluding reflections, co-authored by Michael Bourdillon and William Myers, who also facilitated the workshop, draw out the key messages. Together, these contributions provide an important body of knowledge which is applicable to humanitarian and development policy and practice.

Young Lives' involvement in this work has been motivated by evidence emerging from the study that poverty is a key indicator for multiple risks in children. Building on a multidisciplinary perspective and using a mix of survey and qualitative data, the study is tracking 12,000 children, their households, and communities over 15 years, in Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru, and Vietnam. The boys and girls in the sample are in two age groups, one born around 2000–2001 and the second, 1994–1995. They were drawn randomly from approximately 20 poor rural and urban sites in each country that were selected to reflect country diversity in terms of livelihoods, ethnicity, religion, and other social determinants. 

For more information about Young Lives, visit www.younglives.org.uk. Longer versions of several of the articles in this special issue can be found on the Young Lives website (searchable at www.younglives.org.uk/our-publications).

To access the pdf version, please follow the link below:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2012.672963

 

Many claims are made for the role of research in development, their proponents divided very broadly into those who focus on its potential influence on policy and those more concerned with its impact on practical outcomes. A further divide exists between 'professional' researchers, whose careers and reputation are dependent on what they produce, versus those who emphasise a more iterative approach, among whom there are many co-producers, including people with no academic ambitions or credentials, none of them claiming sole ownership. And of course there are all sorts of researchers or knowledge-brokers who cross over these boundaries, or fall between them. Central to such considerations are the familiar questions of whose knowledge matters, but also how such knowledge is packaged and for what purpose(s) it is intended.

An example from my own experience will serve as illustration. We now know that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has, among other things, undermined Mexico's previous self-reliance in the production of staple grains and accelerated the decline of subsistence and self-provisioning agriculture. These processes were already well under way in the far more fragile Central American states in the mid-1980s, although peasant farmers' unions were barely aware of the inexorable shift away from predominantly agrarian economies, and were certainly in no position to see the whole picture. Academic research into the cattle and maize sectors brought these issues to light, but not of course in a form that could be comprehended outside academic departments of economics. The researchers were passionately concerned to convey their findings to the people most affected, via unions representing the rights and interests of peasant farming communities. It is rare, however, that academics - in addition, in this case, foreigners - can communicate their findings in a way that semi-literate rural communities can readily understand and act upon. Most researchers have difficulty even in producing the 'one-side-of-A4' that government officials and policy makers require. Rather than pretending that it was feasible to expect them to do this, a two-pronged approach was taken. On the one hand, a local journalist published a series of newspaper articles highlighting the findings and their implications, which he followed up with interviews with politicians and government officials - effectively sensitising urban public opinion and also creating the environment for social mobilisation. On the other hand, the essential facts were portrayed in narrative form and used as post-literacy material for participants in the union's adult-literacy campaign, serving the dual purpose of provoking new thinking about how they should strategise (specifically, whether it still made sense to promote land seizures, often violent affairs) and creating material that would really engage new readers' interest and thus reinforce their literacy. Nobody would claim that agrarian policies turned around as a result: political and economic forces had always been stacked against such a utopian outcome. But what is clear is that a range of communicators needed to be engaged from the beginning, not to 'dumb down' or sensationalise, but to make development research truly relevant to the shapers of policy and practice - which, I would argue, is fundamentally an issue of accountability to those who are supposedly intended to benefit from development.

A number of articles in this issue focus on development research, and particularly on the values that underpin it. Birgit Habermann and Margarita Langthaler consider different concepts of what development research should set out to achieve, and therefore how it should be conducted. They find an increasing gap between those who assert that the role of research is to provide the evidence base for policy, and should therefore tailor its approach, presentation, and language accordingly; and those who believe that the best way to contribute is to maintain a critical distance from policy and practice and become a 'pure' academic discipline. Cathrine Brun and Ragnhild Lund offer a candid account of the difficulties as well as the successes of academic-NGO collaboration, based on the experience of applying a Real Time Research methodology to post-tsunami work in Sri Lanka. Sam Wong also reflects in a refreshingly honest way on the fact that the 'right to safety' of local NGO staff is often compromised by external researchers' 'right to know', where the power relations between them make it hard for the local people even to feel that they have the right to negotiate. The author suggests some basic principles for taking account of emotional aspects of safety in research ethics.

Alex Jacobs and Robyn Wilford describe a pilot scheme for improving downward accountability in NGOs, where the mechanisms - and mindsets - have traditionally focused on being upwardly accountable to donors, a trend generally replicated in the tendency for field offices to be accountable to the headquarters, rather than the other way around. Chris Mowles' article on NGO management, including what is considered 'evidence' and how this is validated, again touches on the issue of how social change comes about, arguing for a more subtle understanding of the ongoing social and political processes of human interaction in shaping beliefs and practices.

Beliefs and practices often diverge, however. The orthodoxy of rights-based development is challenged in the article by Mary Llewellyn-Fowler and John Overton, who examine how local NGOs in Fiji understand and use human rights for development, demonstrating the tensions involved in translating 'universal' approaches to human rights into local contexts. In a fascinating longitudinal study, Sidney Ruth Schuler, Farzana Islam, and Elisabeth Rottach return to earlier work on women's empowerment in Bangladesh and find that while the enormous social and economic changes that have since taken place render some previous indicators less relevant, continuing gender inequality leaves no room for complacency. Kirsty Martin and Michael Wilmore present an account of community radio in Nepal and efforts to be responsive to local views in developing programme content. Again with reference to Nepal, Bishnu Maya Dhungana and Kyoko Kusakabe look at the somewhat patchy success of self-help groups of women with disabilities in surmounting the social and practical constraints affecting their potential employability and their actual ability to secure paid employment: as is well known in other contexts, women's organisations tend not to take disability into account, while the disability movement is dominated by men, and tends not to take on board issues specific to women. Encouragingly, however, Sue Coe and Lorraine Wapling describe the early stages of World Vision's initiative to become disability-aware, following its commitment to principles of inclusion. The issue closes with a brief presentation by Alasdair Cohen of a methodological tool for measuring rural poverty.
 

Development research has been through many stages over the past few decades and during this time has experienced fluctuating appreciation by development practice. There is an increasing gap between different ways of doing development research. For some, the purpose of development research is primarily to influence policies, and in order to do this development research has to reframe its whole approach, language, and methodology. Others maintain that development research needs to distance itself, maintain an analytical and even critical approach towards development practice, and become an academic discipline in its own right.

This article reports on a research project intended to develop systematic ways of managing downward accountability in an international NGO. Innovative tools were developed and trialled in six countries. The tools comprised a framework, defining downward accountability in practical terms, and three management processes. They were successfully used to (a) encourage staff to improve downward accountability in ways relevant to their context; (b) hear beneficiaries’ assessments of the level of accountability achieved and the value of the NGO’s work; and (c) generate quantified performance summaries for managers. Taken together, they form a coherent draft management system. Areas for further research are identified.

While ‘rights-based’ approaches to development – those in which development and poverty alleviation are viewed through the lens of human rights – have become the language of choice among the international development community, less is known about how human rights are used for development at the local level. Using a case study of Fiji, this research investigates how local NGOs understand and use human rights for development. It demonstrates some of the tensions involved in translating broad and supposedly universal approaches to human rights into local contexts.

The literature on self-help groups (SHGs) shows a mixed record on empowering women both economically and socially, while the literature on Women with Disabilities (WWDs) highlights the problems of isolation that exacerbate their disadvantages. This article, asking whether SHGs can empower WWDs, is based on a study conducted in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. It concludes that being an SHG member is useful for gaining employment that leads to better recognition in the family and society. However, employment opportunities and organisational experiences mean that the benefits are not equally shared among all members.

This article considers early lessons learned from the inclusion of disabled people, based on socially inclusive principles, in World Vision programming work in Angola, Armenia, Cambodia, and Senegal. Externally led reviews and evaluations conducted between July 2007 and April 2008 drew out seven key lessons. In summary: the substantial effect of stakeholders’ attitudes on practical implementation; the importance of authentic consultation with a range of disabled people; appropriate budgetary considerations; and a need for caution regarding livelihoods work.

It is particularly pleasing to end our twentieth-anniversary volume with an issue devoted to the theme ‘Rethinking Impact: Understanding the Complexity of Poverty and Change’, compiled by guest editors Nina Lilja, Patti Kristjanson, and Jamie Watts. Their call to legitimise what they describe as the ‘boundary-spanning work’ whereby researchers give first priority to linking the knowledge generation with practical action echoes precisely the aims and objectives of Development in Practice, summarised in our strapline ‘Stimulating Thought for Action’. They argue for a diversity of methods for the production and sharing of knowledge, to enhance capacity, and to evaluate the impact of such efforts. However, as they emphasise, such multidisciplinary and embedded ways of working need ‘to be recognised and rewarded, and sufficient resources dedicated to [them]’.

This issue is also my last as Editor-in-Chief of Development in Practice. Although readers and contributors may not have noticed, in January 2010 Oxfam GB sold the journal to the publisher, Taylor & Francis. The new owner is committed to maintaining the unique identity of Development in Practice as a practice-relevant and Southern-focused journal. The change of ownership, however, brought significant operational changes, including my departure from Development in Practice and from Oxfam GB. Having led Development in Practice for two decades, and having created more than 20 titles in the associated book series, I have been succeeded by a new editorial team, based at INTRAC (International NGO Training and Research Centre), which takes over from 2011.

When I was appointed in 1991, towards the end of the journal’s first year, the editorial cupboard was almost bare – containing just one article, written in ‘Spanglish’ – a mixture of English and Spanish – requiring sensitive interpretation simply to unravel the language and get it to pre-publication standard. From my first day, a willingness to identify, encourage, and actively assist writers whose work might otherwise never see the light of day has been one of our hallmarks. Many of those whose articles we published when they were still firsttime or relatively inexperienced authors are now university professors and senior aid-agency officials, some with lengthy publication lists, others proud to have appeared in a peer-reviewed journal and to exert influence over the long term by being cited on reading lists. The ability to attract and work with a mix of seasoned and new authors, and in particular those who ‘span boundaries’ – whether professional, cultural, or linguistic – is one of the characteristics that sets Development in Practice apart from other development journals.

I cannot leave Development in Practice without honouring just a few of my long-standing friends and former colleagues who have in various ways played an important part in making the journal what it is today. The first debt is of course to the founding editor, Brian Pratt, without whose insistence Oxfam GB would never have imagined establishing a journal. Over the many years of our collaboration, Caroline Knowles’ combination of intellectual creativity and down-to-earth wisdom contributed to our most significant strategic developments, while making sure to keep our feet on the ground: the decision to include abstracts in translation and to go online in 1995, to found the book series in 1996, to move to Carfax (the predecessor of the new owner) in 1997, to establish a multilingual website in 2000 to celebrate our tenth anniversary: all these decisions bear Caroline’s mark. Robert Cornford has accompanied Development in Practice from its early infancy through adolescence to adulthood and has been a constant source of ideas, support, and good humour – always able to tease out something positive from the most hostile circumstances. Finally, Mike Powell, who first got to know Development in Practice in 1993, when he was brought in as external evaluator to help the senior management of Oxfam GB to decide whether or not to continue with the journal, must be thanked. He convinced us to establish a transparent business plan, setting all costs (including the hidden ones!) against income. Most importantly he helped me to understand that editorial development and marketing cannot sit in separate compartments: to produce a practice-relevant publication without knowing, engaging with, seeking feedback from – and being prepared to change in response to – existing and intended audiences is either dishonest or self-indulgent, or both. Since then he has worked alongside Development in Practice, always supportive but never complacent: the ideal critical companion.

Successive Editorial Advisers have generously lent their experience to Development in Practice and enhanced its reputation. Many others, too numerous to mention by name, have been part of what has come to be known as ‘The DIP Project’. I would, however, like to acknowledge our regular translators – Isabelle Fernández, Maria Beatriz Lessa Guimarães, and Miguel Pickard – our long-standing copy-editor, Catherine Robinson, and everyone at ELDIS and the GreenNet Collective.

But of course my deepest gratitude must be to the hundreds of authors and referees and tens of thousands of readers, who together are what keep Development in Practice alive. Today, despite the increase from three to eight issues a year under my direction, the editorial cupboard is full to bursting, and article downloads and document-delivery requests remain exceptionally high. These are sure signs of confidence and good health. I therefore trust that the journal and its associated projects will continue to go from strength to strength under the new editors at INTRAC.
 

This article reports on an ex-ante impact study in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia. The study, guided by a livelihoods approach, developed a spatial-mapping methodology based on secondary data for 18 variables which served as indicators of the five livelihood classes of assets (natural, physical, financial, social, and human). The overall livelihood-asset index showed a significant and strong negative correlation (R = –0.65, P = 0.00) with the national poverty line, with poverty peaking in districts where the assets base was lowest, and vice versa. The livelihood assets approach has broader application, for example for ex-post impact assessment.

Can agricultural research help to enlist smallholders and their resources for global food security? The Convergence of Sciences (CoS) research programme in Benin and Ghana (2002–2006) tested the impact of technology development, using a pathway for impact which featured ‘technographies’, diagnostic studies, and farmer-experimenter groups to ensure appropriateness. Within the existing small windows of opportunity only marginal improvements proved possible. The CoS team realised and partly tested the notion that innovation is predicated upon change of the institutions that frame opportunity. The sequel to CoS (2008–2013) uses an innovation system approach to pursue cross-system institutional change.

Many agricultural research and development projects seek to achieve pro-poor outcomes through policy change. However, policy processes are complex, and a strategic approach to enhancing impact at policy level is often not applied. This article describes two case studies of actual policy change – on dairy marketing in Kenya, and on urban agriculture in Kampala – with analysis of the policy-change processes. It draws lessons which could be applied to enhance policy-level outcomes from other projects, and highlights two key matters: the role of ‘user voice’, through links with civil society and user groups; and the value of strong links with ‘formal’ policy-process actors.

This article argues that the managerial approaches to development need to be reconstituted through a more comprehensive understanding of how institutional and behavioural change processes occur. Drawing from a case study in Nepal, and by exploring the largely unintended consequences of project actions, this article argues for viewing change as a complex social phenomenon based on people’s interests, motivations, relationships, and actions that are embedded in their historical and cultural situations. In the final analysis, it is argued that the effectiveness of managerial approaches cannot be understood or applied outside an understanding of change processes.

The following individuals served as referees for articles received or published in 2010, or supported us in other ways.

Kiikpoye Aaron
Haleh Afshar
Kwame Akyeampong
Bryant Allen
Ghartey Ampiah
Marta Arango
Colin Bangay
Owen Barder
Rebecca Barnes
Simon Bell
Mario Biggeri
Joseph Bock
David Bright
John Brohman
Lene Buchert
John Burstein
Charlie Buxton
Mary Calveri
Stuart Cameron
Deirdre Casella
Milindo Chakrabarti
Rachel Christina
Matthew Clarke
Susan Coe
Marc Cohen
Anne Coles
Stephen Commins
Sarah Cummings
Anirban Dasgupta
Rick Davies
Peter Devereux
Stephen Devereux
Charles Dhewa
Jan Kees van Donge
Alan Doran
Robyn Eversole
Anna Feldman
Jacques Forest
Bob Frame
Marie Gaarder
Michele Ruth Gamburd
Janice Giffen
Jane Gilbert
Dominic Glover
Jonathan Goodhand
GreenNet Collective
Isabelle Guerin
Maria Beatriz Lessa Guimaraes
Asha Gupta
John Hailey
Joanna Ha¨rma¨
Vandra Harris
Jon Hellin
Andy Higginbottom
Thea Hilhorst
Joanna Hoare
Susan Holcombe
Françoise Hollande
Frances Hunt
Chris Jackson
Alex Jacobs
Zellynne Jennings-Craig
Susan Jolly
Angella Kail
Liam Kane
Dean Karlan
Nancy Kendall
Nicole Kenton
Simon Kisara
Caroline Knowles
Patti Kristjanson
Tao Kong
Linda Kreitzer
Mona Lena Krook
Yianna Lambrou
Alexa Lamm
Rachael Lammey
Peter Laugharn
Carlisle Levine
Nina Lilja
Amy Lind
Sarah Macbeth
Ian Macpherson
Graeme Macrae
Firoze Manji
Guy Manners
Ellen Martin
Susan Maur
John M Mbaku
Kevin McLure
M Miles
Amanda Milligan
Judi Minost
Rooba Moorghen
William Moseley
Melanie Muro
Francesca Musiani
Shafiq Najeeb
Valerie Nelson
Mary Njenga
Mario Novelli
Michael O’Donnell
Moses Oketch
Masumi Owa
Jaddon Park
Mike Parnwell
Jenny Pearce
Lee Pegler
Jethro Pettit
Karen Pfeiffer
Miguel Pickard
Mike Powell
Meena Poudel
Brian Pratt
Martin Prowse
K Pushpanath
Ranjita Puskur
Sarah Radcliffe
Dinah Rajak
Bernadette Resurreccion
Catherine Robinson
Chris Roche
Alan Rogers
Pauline Rose
James Rowland
Frances Rubin
Issa Sanogo
Professor Savyasaachi
Yusuf Sayed
Sidney Schuler
Ahmad Seyf
Judith Shaw
Rajendra Prasad Shrestha
Hugo Slim
Melinda Smale
Alan Smith
Isabelle Sol Fernández
Andy Storey
Jane Strachan
Martha Thompson
James Thomson
Graham Tipple
Meera Tiwari
Barbara Trapani
Anand Vadivelu
Tony Vaux
Fabio Veras
Robin Vincent
Hugh Waddington
Caleb Wall
Tina Wallace
Jamie Watts
Wave Co-operative
David Westendorff
Howard White
Sarah White
Peter Williams
Fiona Wilson
Jacqueline Wood
Paul Yankson
Sarp Yeletaysi