International cooperation

Over the last two decades, all major international fora - from the UN Multilateral Environmental Agreements, the Millennium Summits, the biennial High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness and a host of governmental and non-governmental initiatives - have concurred that donor harmonization and alignment is one of the key pillars in achieving sustainable development goals .

Despite such widespread consensus, however, aid partnerships remain inherently unequal, with financial, decision-making and professional power unevenly distributed.

The editors of the recently published resource volume Capacity Development in Practice (Earthscan, 2010) identify four specific challenges associated with the international cooperation sector that must be addressed if capacity development to truly come of age as a professional practice.

• A fixation on short-term projects, quick results, and the latest buzz words, as opposed to a long-term, focused and quality-oriented engagement that is critical for achieving capacity development;
• Linking the 'management for results' logic to outcomes of social change processes, which underplays the importance of understanding different ways in which results have, or could have been achieved;
• A proliferation of actors in the sector - from multi-lateral and bilateral institutions, international NGOs and stakeholders within recipient countries - each pursuing their own agenda and with little consultation or coordination of efforts;
• A tendency for development activities to be overseen by generalist foreign service professionals who may not be conversant with, or able to stimulate, professional rigour and innovation for capacity development.

This section aims to highlight initiatives and best practice that offer a way forward in tackling these issues, and to showcase efforts 'from below' to hold donors and development service-providers accountable.