Displaying items by tag: Development

Strengthening Policy and Practice: meeting the challenges of working in complex environments is designed to draw on the experience and practice of participants, working in development, humanitarian aid or peacebuilding to influence internal policies and programmatic approaches. The course will identify how organisations can strive to balance their organisational mandate with the demands of working in complex and rapidly changing political contexts. Course aims The course will enable participants to contribute to developing constructive organisational and programmatic policies that will guide practical responses in the development, humanitarian and peacebuilding fields. It will draw on the experience of participants and tutors…

EPFL is pleased to announce the Call for Applications for the Certificate of Advanced Studies in Management of Development Projects (MaDePro). This programme, organised by EPFL proposes an integrated and interdisciplinary approach and targets professionals in both Northern and Southern countries who wish to pursue a career in development or international cooperation and/or individuals from government, NGOs, IOs, IGOs, or the private sector who want to broaden their understanding of development issues; acquire tools to assess and manage development projects; who want to combine important elements of development and management.

This week, yet again, the spectre of famine in the Horn of Africa has reappeared on our television screens and in our newspapers. Across large parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, livestock are dying in huge numbers because they cannot get water and pasture. Ominously, no rains are due until September, so even if the next rainy season is a good one pasture won’t recover until October at the earliest. Until then things can only get worse, and the cruellest irony of all is that the first rains bring a cold shock that many of the undernourished surviving animals won’t…

La relation entre les désastres naturels, le relèvement et la réduction de la pauvreté est en passe de devenir une question scientifique, économique et politique cruciale.  Il est maintenant généralement reconnu que certains désastres « naturels » sont le produit de structures économiques et sociopolitiques et de processus de développement.  A leur tour, les désastres mettent en relief de façon frappante les inégalités socioéconomiques et créent une pression pour un changement.  Et pourtant la reconstruction reproduit habituellement les vulnérabilités.  Ainsi, le processus de développement contribue au nombre et à l’échelle des désastres ; les désastres retardent le développement, augmentant la vulnérabilité et sapant…

Le tremblement de terre massif qui frappa Haïti le 12 janvier 2010 eut un effet dévastateur sur le secteur de l’éducation.  Quatre vingt pour cent des écoles – près de 4.000 – furent endommagées et on estime à 1,26 million le nombre d’enfants et de jeunes gens affectés ; un grand nombre de professeurs et autres personnels enseignants furent tués ou blessés.[1] Par rapport à d’autres secteurs de sauvetage vitaux tels que l’alimentation, les abris et la santé, l’éducation a généralement bien du mal à se rendre visible et à obtenir des financements dans le contexte d’une opération de réponse d’urgence. …

Michal Lyons began by highlighting that we are at the moment in a time of flux with regard to what is considered the best way to go about reconstruction – there is potential to change things now. She brought out a number of points in her presentation. People-centred reconstruction (PCR) has a number of advantages: it often costs less, livelihoods can be rebuilt earlier, local political structures are engendered, and there are fewer complaints from users. How can PCR be scaled up? The best method is to work in clusters, with participation and work being carried on at the local…

As part of its role as a neutral forum for debate, the Humanitarian Practice Network convened a public meeting on 26 October 2010 to discuss some of the lessons arising from the response to the earthquake in Haiti in January this year. The three speakers were Sir John Holmes, Director of the Ditchley Foundation and former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator; Ross Mountain, Director General of DARA International and Director of Director of DFID’s Humanitarian Emergency Response Review; and Linda Poteat, Director for Disaster Response in the Humanitarian Policy and Practice Unit at InterAction. The…

22 October 2010 13:00-15:00 (GMT+01 (BST)) - Public event, Overseas Development Institute and screened live online In the first of three events in the series Stabilisation, development and humanitarian action, this event launches the supplementary Theme Issue of the journal Disasters States of Fragility, considers the implications of stabilisation for international humanitarian action. The guest editors and some of the contributors to the supplementary Theme Issue will present the key findings of the articles, critically assessing the discourses, policies and practices associated with stabilisation. They consider whether stabilisation efforts that combine military, political, development and humanitarian responses have reduced ‘humanitarian…

The relationship between natural disasters, recovery and poverty reduction is becoming a key scientific, economic and political issue. It is now widely accepted that some ‘natural’ disasters actually arise from socio-economic and political structures and processes of development. In turn, disasters bring socioeconomic inequalities into stark relief, creating pressure for change. Yet reconstruction usually reproduces vulnerabilities. Thus, development processes contribute to the number and scale of disasters; disasters set back development, increasing vulnerability and undermining future recovery and development. This article explores the mechanisms by which post-disaster reconstruction following the earthquake in Haiti may succeed in achieving developmental objectives, in…

The massive earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January 2010 had a devastating impact on the education sector. Eighty percent of schools – almost 4,000 – were damaged, and an estimated 1.26 million children and youth were affected; large numbers of teachers and other education personnel were killed and injured.[1] In relation to more obvious lifesaving sectors such as food, shelter and health, education typically struggles to achieve visibility and funding within an emergency response operation. In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, however, education was accorded a surprisingly high priority. Given the scale of the disaster and the…