Archive of posts filed under the Capacity Building category.

Sharing Experiences of Effective Development Cooperation in Myanmar

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Hyun Jee[i] The Myanmar development context Since the opening of the Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (Government of Myanmar) in 2011, and its concurrent launch of four waves of national reform – political, economic, public administration, and private sector reforms – Myanmar has re-emerged as a member of the international community …

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What of the NGO? Working in Black, White and Grey

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A few months ago, a rather controversial article – ‘NGOs – Do They Help’ – was published in the New Internationalist (http://newint.org/features/2014/12/01/ngos-keynote/. The author proposed some blunt arguments – that NGOs had compromised their values and mandates in order to ensure funding; and rather than fighting against the perpetrators of human rights violations or exploitation, …

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You must always ask, ‘Capacity development for what?’ – Interview with Dipa Bagai

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The first in our series of interviews with practitioners, we chatted with Dipa Bagai, a capacity development specialist who has more than 15 years of experience across a number of UN agencies and the Indian Civil Service. She is currently a Capacity Development Specialist with UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Asia-Pacific Region. TiP:       …

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Local Government Technical Twinning: It Really CAN Work

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Lauren Oakey The technical twinning model for capacity building has had much success in developing local governments in the Pacific Region, and is championed by Local Government Managers Australia (LGMA) and its partner organisations such as the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) and the International City/County Management Association (ICMA – United States). LGMA began its …

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The Perils of Broad-based Studies as Evidence of ‘Good Practice’ and ‘Lessons Learned’

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There was an interesting report released earlier this year on approaches used to reduce deforestation. It was fairly eye-opening: so much of our ‘conventional wisdom’ was torn apart to demonstrate that success in one instance does not mean we can extrapolate to assume success more generally in other contexts. For example, there are global arguments …

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Outsourcing the Legal Framework: Consultants, catch-all clauses, and agenda pushing in Solomon Islands law

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Melanie Phillips Introduction To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally accepted that a country in the pains of ‘development’ must be in want of an advisor. This may be overstating it, but it should not come as an overstatement to those working in developing countries that independent advisors and consultants are two a …

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Accelerated Development: Who Benefits?

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Denika Blacklock Karim The modern human development paradigm, with its focus on growth and modern lifestyles, has been introduced as a standard against which the development level of a local community is measured in stages. This paradigm has produced a sense of urgency, whereby development needs to be accelerated as though the speeding up of …

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