Volume 7

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'.