News
Impunity, freedom of expression and social justice
There is an apparent low profile war going on against progressive circles in Honduras, and this edition of Envio magazine demands that the international community take notice. It reports on an international expert meeting in which Hivos teamed up with CEJIL, ERIC and Jueces por la Democracia to talk about impunity, freedom of expression and Justice. The goal of the event, held in october 2011, was to support Honduran human rights activism with reflextions and lessons from neighbouring countries.
The Singer not the Song
Trench warfare probably best describes the quality of conversation in the results-measurement debate on development. On the one side of the trench line, we find the advocates of ‘hard’ quantative data as the final judge of efficiency, impact and effectiveness. Riding the waves of the neoliberal project, they argue that the social sectors need to get their act together and deliver ‘value for money’ or else. On the other side, we find those who persistently argue that the social realm demands a...
The End or the And?
Can civil society organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa succesfully advocate, lobby and mobilize to fight poverty and corruption, and to bring development and democracy? Have citizens’ organizations in the new roles of policy making and participation in service delivery been able to realize the high hopes and aspirations surrounding their explosive growth. And how has international assistance promoted or hindered their struggle to catalyze social change and pro-poor development?...
Investing in the Immaterial
The heart of civil society work lies beyond what meets the eye, in the less visible qualitative dimensions of process, values and relationships. Yet, all over the world, practitioners find it increasingly difficult to secure the resources to honour the immaterial essence of development practice. ‘Investing in the immaterial’ is the central theme of CDRA’s first practice digest, a new platform for reflections on the practice of development.
Food for Thought // Knowledge Lunchbox #1
This box will provide you find Food for Thought via links we have gathered for you in our first "Knowledge Lunchbox". The aim of the Lunchbox is to quickly inform you about the latest online discussions and publications related to the fields of civil society, theories of change and development effectiveness. Topics range from people to politics, and from power to.. poop. It is up to you what you would like to digest, dislike, or disc...
Old Wine, New Bottles? How the NeXt generation prepares for a take over
“Old Wine should become better as it ages”,“Is New Wine good when it comes in plastic bottles?”“I’m Old Wine, so what I am going to say might be a bit acid”The proverb ‘Old wine in new bottles’ was tweaked and reformulated frequently on 24 March, when the Institute of Social Studies held the third and last debate in its Target 2020 series. Following the 2010 ISS debate series on the WRR report on development cooperation, this series discussed the way forward towards the year 2020, by looking...
Winds of Change: does development intervention help or hinder community action?
Are capacity development projects needed that support local leaders to enable social action to demand citizen rights? "Yes!", argue the organizers of the roundtable 'Winds of Change: Will they Bring a new paradigm to Development Assistance?'. Indeed, we wrote before that citizen action matters. But research findings from the Participation, Power and Social Change research team from IDS, Sussex, say that international (outside) actors at best can play a facilitat...
The governance gap in Acholi
How do citizens exercise agency and claim their rights in post-conflict settings? This is the central question in a research project by Marjoke Oosterom, which is supported by IDS, Hivos and ICCO. Marjoke is working with remote communities in Northern Uganda and is now adding a documentary to share some of the emerging insights and impressions more widely. The documentary is made in partnership with the Refuge Law Project and documentary makers Tim van der Maden and Esther Kool to make...
Citizen action matters!
Citizen engagement matters! That’s the three word conclusion from 10 years of research by the IDS Citizenship development research centre. Word of warning: Citizen action also sometimes backfires. Yet, the evidence from more than 150 case studies overwhelmingly demonstrates how citizen action makes a difference in processes on democratic development. Interestingly, the findings do not hold for stable contexts but also in fragile settings, topic for discussion in the remainder of this blog.
Does Big Philantropy Undermine Democratic Development?
On 3 March, Michael Edwards kickstarted our second Target 2020 debate by an inspiring talk on the role of philantropy in democratic development. Michael Edwards, former Ford-Foundation director, recently wrote 'Small Change, Why Business Won't Save the World'. In his presentation, he questioned whether the private sector, and its philantropic foundations, can play a positive role in democratic processes in developing countries. His main argument centred around notions of impact and accountabi...