Decentralisation, or the transfer of decision-making power and funds from central to local governments, is one of the most important reform movements in Latin America. Recent constitutional changes in Ecuador have contributed to the democratisation and empowerment of municipal governments. Case studies of three municipalities in highland Ecuador examine new opportunities for NGO–municipal government collaboration. NGOs have considerable experience of working locally and can help municipalities with planning and capacity building. Municipalities offer NGOs the legitimacy and local accountability they may lack, as well as the means both to extend project activities beyond isolated communities and to maintain the results once NGO assistance ends.

Epidemiological combined with experiential evidence from communities can produce important and sometimes surprising insights into gender relations, to inform policies that address changing needs. CIET has standardised a community-based cross-design for the gender-sensitive collection and analysis of three types of evidence: impact, coverage, and costs. Five steps help to ensure that women's voices are heard in planning. Gender-stratified analysis of existing data is a starting point. Stratification of all responses by sex of the respondent prevents a numerical bias in favour of men translating into a gender bias in the analysis. Female focus groups inform survey design, interpretation, and appropriate strategies for change. Gender is a factor in risk and resilience analysis. Finally, gender-sensitive logistics ensure women's equal participation. First-order outputs include actionable gender data to advocate in favour of women. Second-order outputs include an enabling environment for equitable development, challenging the gendered patterns of economic marginalisation.

Knowledge in development has been perceived as a one-way commodity that developed nations could bring ‘down to’ the level of ‘developing countries’. Sharing knowledge is generally seen as a North–South operation. This vertical approach to knowledge in development echoes the vertical approach to development in general, whereby knowledge is perceived as an ingredient of the technical assistance given by those who have it to those who do not. However, no organisation can offer social transformation or knowledge sharing if it is not itself engaged in an internal learning process that systematically questions certainties, authorities, and decision making. Learning is a complex process of acquiring knowledge, both within the organisation that facilitates social change and among the subjects of and partners in social change.

Through an analysis of practical examples and key literature, this article considers what will enhance learning in and between NGOs and other development partners. The authors explore how the types and qualities of relationship currently evolving in the development sector affect learning, drawing predominantly on experiences of relationships between Northern and Southern NGOs. The article identifies those aspects of relationships that foster learning and those that inhibit it, and offers recommendations to strengthen learning. The authors highlight the relevance of, the challenges posed by, and the potential of partnership work, as well as the impact of accountability demands, procedures, and processes on organisational relationships and on learning.

As Tony Vaux points out in his Guest Editorial in this issue, the concept of humanitarianism applies to both war and general disaster, and is based on the principle that ‘in extreme cases of human suffering external agents may offer assistance to people in need, and in doing so should be accorded respect and even “rights” in carrying out their functions’. However, policy makers in humanitarian agencies, and aid workers on the ground, face a bewilderingly complex set of challenges in determining such ‘rights’. Gone are any comfortable certainties about what in the commercial sector is known as ‘the licence to operate’, and claims to the moral high ground of ‘neutrality’ have an increasingly hollow ring. Perhaps more to the point, such assumptions are of little practical use to frontline workers who may risk ambush, abduction, deportation, or even their lives as the result of their professional activities. Nor do outdated road maps help relief agencies to orient their decisions on whether to withdraw or continue providing material assistance in the knowledge that a proportion of it is fuelling the violence or lining the pockets of conflict profiteers. There are no standard ‘off-the-peg’ answers, because each situation must be considered on its own merits. And of course no aid agencies share an identical mandate, or have precisely the same expertise or history of involvement with the affected population – all factors that must be weighed up in deciding what is the appropriate course of action. For reasons of space, we have not sought to cover the areas of early warning, prevention, and mitigation associated with ‘natural’ disasters, although of course the two are always linked, as became very clear in wake of the Asian tsunami in Aceh and Sri Lanka. It has long been recognised that since catastrophic events disproportionately affect the poor and marginalised, they expose and may intensify existing social divides and structural injustice. For instance, in his seminal work on the 1943 Bengal famine, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (OUP, 1984) Amartya K Sen argued that such food shortages do not occur in functioning democracies. Similarly, Roger Plant's, Guatemala: Unnatural Disaster (Latin America Bureau, 1978) showed how the 1974 earthquake triggered an intensification in state violence that was to result in the death or disappearance of 200,000 Guatemalans and create ‘a nation of widows and orphans’. In accordance with the focus of this issue, we have given priority to publications and organisations that reflect on some direct involvement in humanitarian endeavour, rather than giving priority to more policy-oriented or scholarly works or academic institutions. We have included literature on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, since this was such a defining event for humanitarianism; and some recent publications concerning the US-led invasions of Afghanistan in October 2001 (‘Operation Enduring Freedom’) and Iraq in March 2003 (‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’), since these have significantly redefined the global landscape of policy and practice within which humanitarian agencies operate. Inevitably we can offer only a glimpse of the growing literature in these fields, but we hope in so doing that readers, and particularly those directly involved in humanitarian endeavours, will be encouraged to explore the issues further.

This article argues that those keen to characterise and harness the empowering potential of Information and Communications Technology [ICT] for development projects must understand that the very existence of this technology opens up alternative models of co-operation and collaboration. These models themselves necessitate breaking away from ‘traditional’ command-and-control models of management. One alternative is to persuade participants, or potential participants, to co-ordinate their efforts along the lines exemplified by the open-source software movement and the contributors to Wikipedia: models of co-ordination that ought not to work but appear to do so. The article offers a summary of this argument, and then suggests ways in which NGOs in particular might try to incorporate these insights into their strategies. This is particularly critical for organisations that rely on increasingly pressurised funding opportunities, and which also seek to develop and engender participation and determination from within and among specific target groupings.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have created new economic and social opportunities all over the world. Their use, however, continues to be governed by existing power relations whereby women frequently experience relative disadvantage. Amid this inequality are individuals and organisations that are working to use ICTs to further gender equality. These are the issues addressed by the BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and ICTs. The first section of this article consists of extracts from the Overview Report in the Pack. It describes ways in which women have been able to use ICTs to support new forms of information exchange, organisation, and empowerment. The second section, taken from the textbox ‘Telecentres: Some Myths’, describes three assertions which frequently lead to problems in all forms of investment in development-related information exchanges with poor or less powerful groups, not only those relating to telecentres and women.

Current debate tends to suggest that the protection of civilians is something ‘done to’ the passive recipients of international largesse. Whether in terms of macro-level interventions of the UN Security Council or micro-level attempts to reduce the negative side-effects of relief action, those in need of protection are rarely seen as key players in their own futures. Although this type of external intervention can be valuable, it fails to take complete account of how people manage to survive the effects of conflicts. This concept of protection seriously underestimates the resourcefulness of people who have no choice, and using it to define protection results in missed opportunities to help communities as they are being forced to adapt to their new realities. Effective humanitarian action will thus not only focus on the actions of those with a responsibility to protect, but will also support and strengthen the rational decisions that people themselves take to try to ensure their own safety in conflict.

The central argument of this article is that many of the tools developed to strengthen for-profit businesses can be applied to NGOs to make them more effective and accountable. The authors address a gap in the development literature by defining and describing how business tools can be effectively transferred to NGOs. They examine the implementation of ISO 9000 Quality Standard by one NGO, the Cambodia Trust. The experiences of the Cambodia Trust demonstrate that business tools have a place in NGO management. The article also questions the extent to which the Cambodian experience can be seen as best practice for NGOs.

This article identifies some key factors shaping the micro-enterprise sector in urban French West Africa. Drawing on interviews with micro-entrepreneurs and micro-finance practitioners in Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Togo, the study explores the needs, characteristics, motivations, and success factors for micro-entrepreneurship in the region, together with some of the impediments to the growth and success of micro-enterprise ventures. It was found that those operating micro-enterprises in the informal economy are entrepreneurs principally by necessity, and that their most basic needs tend to drive their business activities and behaviours. It was also observed that their success was constrained by a number of barriers, including poor access to capital, poor training, and general aversion to risk. As a result, the development of the micro-enterprise sector in urban French West Africa has been sub-optimal, and the authors conclude that this situation may persist unless broader economic and social barriers are addressed.