The growing crisis of external indebtedness in the South has become the focus not only of multilateral policy debate, but also the subject of an increasingly vocal international anti-debt campaign, the influence of which was clear at the abortive World Trade Organisation at Seattle in late 1999. Though effective, the anti-debt campaign encompasses a range of different positions, which result in diverse strategies and tactics. This paper examines the reasons for and implications of such differences, particularly in relation to North-South solidarity and action, and makes the case for Northern campaigners and lobbyists to take their principal lead from anti-debt groups that are mobilising public opinion in the South.

Participatory methods are increasingly being used in development work at grassroots level in Africa. Western liberal concepts like 'one person one vote' underlie these methods. However, such concepts may not be easily compatible with a grassroots reality in which ethnicity (i.e. superior and subordinate ethnic identities) is an important factor shaping the social order. This article provides insights into the socio-political realities of ethnicity at village level in Botswana. The tension between participatory methods and the ethnically structured village reality are illustrated with examples from a project that tested the relevance of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in Botswana. The authors identify problems and opportunities of participatory methods in addressing the inequalities in ethnically divided communities.

NGO advocacy is sometimes portrayed in a heroic light, but efforts to influence World Bank-supported economic policies confront considerable ambiguity. Influence is difficult to demonstrate, but advocacy should be more rigorously assessed in the interest of transparency and effectiveness. Two (partial) solutions to this ambiguity are to focus on the process of NGO campaigns themselves; and to monitor impact on component parts of a model of institutional change at the Bank. This article assesses a recent advocacy campaign by testing it against five criticisms of NGO campaigning, then proposes that NGO advocates develop a practical model of policy change and monitor and evaluate their efforts with reference to the model's component parts.

There is considerable focus nowadays on the involvement of communities in planning their own projects. Much of this involvement is in the form of verbal communication whereby villagers inform development workers of their problems and how they propose to solve them. Drawing on experience from two projects in Uganda and Ethiopia, this article argues that the starting point for any project planning in a community context is the current practice of that community. It is argued that if one looks at the community's practice, beliefs, and knowledge, one has a firmer foundation on which to build a project.

The author argues that the distinctive values common to many NGOs give them a particular advantage over other types of organisation. This perspective should be seen in the context of donors' increasing willingness to fund non-traditional development actors, including the military, parastatals, quangos, private service contractors, and consultancy firms. To distinguish themselves from other recipients of aid funding, NGOs need to identify, articulate, and nurture their core values and identity. The paper identifies some of the key indicators that best reflect values and organisational capacities that distinguish NGOs from other agencies. The concern is that if NGOs lose their core values they lose their role.

ABANTU for Development embarked on a regional programme to strengthen civil society capacities for engaging with policy from a gender perspective. An early programme activity involved an in-depth study of NGO capacities for policy engagement which ABANTU carried out in Nigeria during the recent period of military rule. In keeping with ABANTU's commitments as a regional human resources network dedicated to promoting development and gender equality from an African perspective, the local research team used a participatory action methodology to gather and interpret the findings in a way that privileged local NGO perspectives and understandings of gender and policy. The exercise generated hitherto unavailable information and experiential case study material, and simultaneously identified and involved a core group of NGOs in the development and planning of the subsequent training programme. More importantly, it also furnished the regional training network with an understanding of indigenous cultures and local gender politics. These were found to be infused with diverse local cultural dynamics, as well as with the contradictory legacies of the military's state-driven programmes for women, both of which constrain the extent of gender activism, especially when this is monitored through instances of direct policy engagement.

This paper examines the application of the Local Capacities for Peace framework in field operations in Sudan, and identifies lessons learned about planning and implementation in the World Vision programme over a 20-month period.

The conventional (but false) dichotomy between humanitarianism and development, hitherto grounded in the perceived differences between international humanitarian law and international human rights law, respectively, is not merely unhelpful in practical terms but also serves to diminish our understanding of the shared issues underlying the two discourses. There are welcome signs, however, of a growing recognition that all development and relief work is essentially rights-based, and of efforts to integrate thinking and practice under one common set of principles.

The question of how development agencies should assess their impact has no simple answers and so is often either unasked, or is framed in terms that privilege time-bound and quantitative findings. Describing a council estate neighbourhood project in the UK, the author probes the understandings and perceptions of different stakeholders concerning what they believe has changed over the life of the project, and to what they would attribute those changes. The findings suggest that the impact of development interventions is always contingent upon many factors and can only be properly viewed over time; and that many of the most critical factors in shaping change are intangible and have to do with a wide range of social relations and with human motivation and drive, both individual and collective. The author does not present a 'blueprint' for how to conduct impact assessment, but offers some insights into how to frame the questions and interpret the answers.