The world is witnessing a marked rise in violence within states, as more societies experience violent conflict globally. In response to this worrying trend, Interpeace and the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) have renewed their partnership to reduce violence in fragile and conflict affected societies. The new commitment reflects current shared priorities to build [...]
Article published in Swiss Peace Supporter, by President of Interpeace, Scott M. Weber, entitled “Capacity Building – turning knowledge into practice”.
Gambian President Adama Barrow announced a four-year development plan to lay the foundations for sustainable economic growth. The main objective of the 2018-2021 National Development Plan (NDP) is to “deliver good governance and accountability, social cohesion, national reconciliation and a revitalized and transformed economy for the wellbeing of all Gambians.” On May 22, 2018, the [...]
‘Technical Cooperation’ or ‘Technical Assistance’, mostly in the form of international experts and advisors, and loans and grants for ‘institutional reform’ constitute a huge share of official development assistance. Yet a growing body of comparative and cumulative evaluations, further bolstered by academic research, show that its overall effectiveness in terms of better functioning governments, is [...]
Social and economic development, organizational development and institutional reform, statebuilding and peacebuilding, the delivery of social services and other public goods etc. are not solely ‘technical’ challenges. Around each of these and related issues we find competing interests, power asymmetries, perceptions about who benefits and loses from the status quo and from possible or proposed [...]
‘Capacities’ can exist at different levels: that of an individual (which we then will call ‘competencies’), a team, a unit within an organization, an organization as a whole. We are looking here at ‘capacity’ for an organization as a whole.
This document explores the importance of public participation and citizen engagement on issues of public importance.
Anyone interested in ‘change’ has an interest in understanding ‘power’, because ‘power’ is both one of the constraining factors to change and one of its enablers. This paper discusses the importance of understanding and working with power in multi-stakeholder processes.
This document focuses on the ‘3Ds’ of ‘Doing Development Differently,’ in other words on how development (state and institution building and institutional reform) is done.
Asking powerful, compelling questions that matter is a central skill of an adviser, mentor or coach, or of a thought leader, seeking to catalyze in others the energies to develop competencies and capacities and to move towards a stronger future. This paper looks at the art of asking catalytic questions as a key element of [...]