The World Bank's (post-)conflict agenda: the challenge of integrating development and security

Linkages between security and development, and the need for national and international organizations to integrate these areas and concerns in policy, are widely recognized. It is, however, less clear how to practically accomplish this. Different policies will address different security and development concepts and aspects, and choices on focus and priority need to be made. This can generate tensions and resistance within organizations, resulting in limited integration. A case study of the World Bank's attempt to be more ‘conflict-sensitive’ demonstrates this dynamic. This attempt has had various positive aspects, but the integration of conflict concerns in its programmes and policies remains uneven and somewhat limited. While there is certainly room for improved integration, this should not be pursued beyond the point where the Bank's comparative advantage is undermined and resources from its core mission of combating human poverty diverted.     

Empowering women at home and beyond: applying Japanese experiences for poverty alleviation

The problem of poverty pockets in middle income countries has been identified as a major constraint for realising the Millennium Development Goals. There is an international need to develop programmes that alleviate poverty of identified populations without incurring their dependency on external aid. Aiming at developing such a programme, this article introduces the Japanese post-war Life Improvement Program and analyses the potential of its application to contemporary developing countries for poverty alleviation in a self-sufficient manner, intending to empower women. Issues such as gender relations, evaluating impacts, and linking practices to larger programmes and policies are also discussed.     

Taking sustainability from policy to practice: Bringing poverty concerns into the project cycle

The concept of sustainability has evolved and expanded to include more than just environmental issues. Development practitioners now address questions linking sustainability to population and, in particular, to poverty alleviation. Environmentally sustainable development cannot be achieved, let alone maintained, unless poverty is reduced. Thus, the connection between sustainability and poverty reduction must be properly understood if economic assistance for the poor is to be successful. These questions can be confusing and difficult to address satisfactorily in practice. How can poverty reduction programmes and projects be designed for sustainability? How can the elements of sustainable poverty reduction be built into all stages of the project cycle? These issues are examined and a set of guidelines and minimum standards proposed. Relevant examples are cited to illustrate how the inclusion of poverty alleviation concerns into the project cycle can be achieved.     

The dynamics of contemporary local-government policies and economic development in West Papua

There have been enormous political, economic, and social changes in West Papua. Every governor of West Papua has designed programmes to boost economic development and reduce poverty. The influx of migrant workers under the ‘transmigration programme’ into West Papua has limited the job opportunities for indigenous people in the labour market. This article concludes that the local government's strategies failed to deliver suitable development programmes to the local people, which resulted in increased poverty, the continuing poor development of the education system, and the deterioration of the population's health condition, with a rise in the number of Papuans infected with HIV and AIDS.     

Reflections of an evaluator navigating between community development and welfare paradigms

This practical note discusses some of the challenges evaluators face when their values clash with those of their employer. A case example where the author was commissioned to complete an evaluation for a community development project within a welfare-minded NGO highlights evaluation issues for welfare-minded NGOs attempting to deliver community development programmes. A fundamental issue is the differing interpretation of key terms including evaluation, participation, and empowerment. The note discusses how the author attempted to navigate between maintaining community development principles in the evaluation process while at the same time fulfilling quantitative evaluation requirements mandated by the organisation and funders.     

Lessons from selected development policies and practices

This article identifies 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.     

‘Bread and butter’ human rights: NGOs in Fiji

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.     

A journey towards development: the impact of local NGO programmes on women living in the char lands of Bangladesh

Both national and international policy-making institutions have acknowledged the contribution of NGOs in alleviating poverty, through empowering the poor and continuing to support their endeavours. In Bangladesh NGOs are working at national and local levels, but very few are working with the poorest and most vulnerable groups who live in the riverine and coastal areas, known as the char lands. These areas are unlike other parts of the country in terms of their physical, economic, and social structures, and they require a different approach in order to address the unique set of problems facing those who live there. Using experimental and innovative programmes, a small number of local NGOs have begun to make an impact in an area where government interventions and success are rare.     

Northern NGO advocacy: Perceptions,reality, and the challenge

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 for further research on the policy impact of the Washington Advocacy office of Oxfam International. Based on the survey findings, the author challenges Northern NGOs to evaluate more thoroughly 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.     

World Heritage and Public Works: Development Co-operation for Poverty Alleviation

On 29 August 2008, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee and the Japan Bank for International Co-operation co-organised a one-day seminar entitled ‘World Heritage and Public Works: Development Co-operation for Poverty Alleviation’, held at the United Nations University in Tokyo. The seminar focused on the role of World Heritage Sites in promoting development and poverty alleviation, balancing public works that sustain community life and preserve World Heritage properties with development co-operation programmes – especially those of international finance organisations – that include culture and development projects.     

Rethinking poverty alleviation: a ‘poverties’ approach

This article argues that the practice of poverty alleviation is greatly limited by a vision of poverty that fails to capture the locally specific causes of and solutions to the challenges that threaten human well-being. This problematic vision of poverty takes real-world form in such initiatives as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. It is a key reason why this and other contemporary poverty-alleviation efforts do not show greatly improved results compared with previous efforts. By reframing our understanding of the challenges to human well-being from poverty to ‘poverties’, however, we might envisage a new approach to policy development in relation to poverty that moves us towards a truly sustainable development.     

印度尼西亚政府克服贫困的新举措——家庭希望计划(PKH)

印度尼西亚政府于2007年建立了家庭希望计划,该计划属于有条件现金转移支付项目,它要求受助家庭把获得的救助金用于家庭中儿童的人力资本发展,因此,相应条件的设定主要集中在教育、营养和健康方面,体现了明显的促进发展的功能。虽然该计划还存在一定问题,但计划已初见成效,印度尼西亚的贫困问题尤其是儿童贫困问题通过该计划的实施得到了缓解,这对中国社会救助的发展完善具有一定的启示意义。     

Private-sector development in a transition economy: The case of Vietnam

Since Vietnam introduced its Doi Moi reform policy in 1986, the development of the private sector has been a main policy concern for the government and the ruling Communist Party. The main development challenge for Vietnam is how to sustain economic growth and reduce poverty as the labour force continues to expand. It is envisaged that the private sector will play a major role in that respect. This article looks into the issue of whether the private sector can live up to widespread expectations. High and stable economic growth indicates that reforms have been consistent but also that private-sector initiatives have moved ahead of formal institutional changes. Private-sector development is new in Vietnam and starts from a low level. The public and foreign investment sectors are major players compared to the domestic private sector, which comprises many small firms. Poverty reduction has been impressive but it is only now that private-sector development is becoming an important contributor. Stemming the growth in inequality remains a challenge where the private sector's contribution to increasing public revenue has yet to materialise.     

The Paung Ku model: encouraging change through learning

It is well known within international development practice that the terms “capacity building” or “capacity development” are often used but infrequently (and inconsistently) defined; whether in funding applications, program strategies, staff training programmes, or field work. This article outlines the way in which one development organisation working in Burma/Myanmar wrestled with the issue of meaning, and practice, in relation to capacity development; it also reports on the resulting “Paung Ku model: encouraging change through learning.”     

Operationalising participatory research and gender analysis: new research and assessment approaches

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 on the theme of ‘operationalising participatory research and gender analysis’. The purpose of this 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.     

Building pathways out of poverty through climate smart agriculture and effective targeting

One focus of agricultural development is climate smart agricultural technologies and practices (CSA). Development practitioners invest in scaling these to have wider impact. Ineffective targeting stymies CSA’s contribution to poverty reduction by excluding many of the poor and/or including those for whom agriculture is not a pathway out of poverty. This viewpoint proposes the need to recognise differentiated livelihood pathways within smallholder agriculture, linked to farmers’ differential capacity to engage in climate risk management. A farmer and livelihoods typology provides a framework to improved targeting of CSA and to identifying where alternative interventions, such as social protection, are more appropriate.     

Trading and trade-offs: Women's livelihoods in Gorno-Badakhshan,Tajikistan

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, has 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. The article 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.     

Gold mining and corporate social responsibility in the Wassa West district,Ghana

Despite a boom in gold mining in Ghana's Wassa West district (WWD), unemployment and poverty have deepened, partly due to loss of farmland to surface mining but more so because of the limited opportunities for wage employment in the district's ‘revived’ gold-mining industry. However, the large-scale mining companies are implementing some alternative livelihood programmes (ALPs) as part of their corporate social-responsibility (CSR) agenda. While the ALPs have provided some employment and income-earning opportunities and skills training, the prospects for their sustainability depend on how the challenges confronting the various programmes are addressed. This will require a well-coordinated approach involving all the key stakeholders.     

Expensive English: an accessible language approach for Papua New Guinea agricultural development

Language used in capacity development programmes is usually that of the donor country, often English. However, research shows that the language used can be detrimental to the success of the programme. Little attention has been given to the issue of language, yet it is important that programme participants fully understand the capacity development programme’s concepts to ensure that the programme achieves its full potential. This article explores an accessible language approach to a Papua New Guinea development programme. Arguments are based on an in-country research project designed to provide women and men with deeper understanding of gender equity.