Health
Enhancing Southern capacity: rhetoric and reality
Enhancing southern capacity: does the rhetoric match the reality?
Authors:
M. Couldrey (ed); T. Morris (ed)
Publisher:
Forced Migration Review, 2007
Virtually every humanitarian agency talks about their commitment to building Southern capacity and, increasingly, this discourse has been focused on forming ‘partnerships’ with Southern organisations. In this edition of Forced Migration Review, researchers and practitioners from around the world examine how far the rhetoric of capacity-building is matched by the reality. In particular, they explore whether North-South partnerships really enhance the capacity of Southern recipients, and how far they help to redress imbalances of power in humanitarian relationships.
The collection of papers includes both sector-specific and country case studies, as well as general discussion papers. Titles include:
- Impact of the tsunami response on local and national capacities
- Participatory capacity building in action in Colombia
- Building capacity in Sierra Leone
- An African perspective on capacity building
- Bold advocacy finally strengthens refugee protection in Kenya
- Who owns and drives capacity building?
Although conclusions vary, many of these papers point to a gap between the rhetoric of partnership and operational realities, and argue that that humanitarian action remains driven largely by international NGOs. However, there are also examples of effective models of capacity-building and recommendations for improving the quality of partnerships.
In addition to these theme-based papers, there are also a number of general papers on forced migration and related topics.
