Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) now play a prominent role in UN peace-keeping operations, mainly in the areas of humanitarian relief, demobilization and resettlement, support for elections, and mine-clearance. This reflects the preference of major donors to use NGO channels for their own aid. This article examines the challenges this expansion poses both to the agencies involved and to the government of the country in question, with particular reference to the 1992-1995 peace-keeping process in Mozambique. The author describes the many practical difficulties facing NGOs in a politically charged post-war environment, and concludes that there is a need for a sharper definition of appropriate roles and minimum operational standards if NGOs are to implement such programmes in ways that neither compromise their integrity nor jeopardize the longer-term reconstruction process.

There is a widespread perception that Southern non-governmental organizations (NGOs) best represent the authentic voices of the Southern poor. This article challenges this perception, arguing that poor people in general, and children and women in particular, continue to be disenfranchised, while NGOs-both Northern and Southern-offer a poor imitation of their voices. It argues that what is needed, given the current global economic paradigm, is an authentic 'joint venture' between NGOs in the North and the South and the authentic voices of poor people themselves, that would bring the poor into the mainstream; and a new approach to capacity-building that would seek to empower them better to advocate for themselves. It concludes that, to achieve this, economic advocacy should perhaps take greater precedence over political advocacy.

'Multilateral debt is not a widespread problem for Severely Indebted Low Income Countries' wrote the World Bank in September 1994. Two years later, the International Financial Institutions-the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund-agreed to a proposal to bring the debt of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) to sustainable levels. While imperfect, the proposal went some way to meeting the demands of NGOs which, with progressive forces both within the World Bank and among creditor countries, have played a crucial role in this process. While the multilateral debt problem is now too great to ignore, the authors maintain that it has been the persistent pressure of these players that has been responsible for the enormous progress made by the IFIs.

Official aid funding for the development NGO sector grew fast in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These halcyon days are over. Thinkers within the NGO community are concerned with how to adapt to the end of the funding boom, and to correct its adverse effects. However, in spite of many calls to reorganize, re-think, and professionalize, one major set of issues has been largely ignored: the scope for introducing collective self-regulation of the organizational structure and procedures of NGOs in developing countries. The authors argue that this could make a major contribution to solving several problems currently faced by NGOs.

Since the late 1980s, democratic institutions and an active civil society are being prescribed as important ingredients and preconditions to reduce poverty, social exclusion, and violent civil strife. Multi-party systems and elections are seen as the most important expressions of formal democracy. This paper argues that more attention is needed to substantive democracy, which requires a greater understanding of the various legal-political variants within a democratic framework. The paper discusses in some depth the crisis of governance in Belgium. The analysis raises questions about the relationship between 'political' and 'civil society', and between social movements and political parties.

Using data from a recent ethnographic study in rural Bangladesh to explore relationships between men's violence against women in the home, women's economic and social dependence on men, and microcredit programmes, this paper suggests that microcredit programmes have a varied effect on men's violence against women. They can reduce women's vulnerability to men's violence by strengthening their economic roles and making their lives more public. When women challenge gender norms, however, they sometimes provoke violence in their husbands. Male violence against women is a serious, widespread, and often ignored problem world-wide. By putting resources into women's hands, credit programmes may indirectly exacerbate such violence; but they may also provide a context for intervention.

The authors begin to outline the epic now unfolding at the grassroots, arguing that pioneering social movements are groping for their liberation from the 'Global Project' being imposed upon them. Going beyond the premises and promises of modernity, people at the grassroots are re-inventing or creating afresh new intellectual and institutional frameworks. As is clear from the recent rebellion in southern Mexico, ordinary men and women are learning from each other how to challenge the very nature and foundations of modern power, both its intellectual underpinnings and its apparatus. Explicitly liberating themselves from the dominant ideologies, fully immersed in their local struggles, these movements and initiatives reveal the diverse content and scope of grassroots endeavours.

The Gender Quality Action-Learning (GQAL) Programme of BRAC, a large rural development NGO in Bangladesh, is described and analysed. This Programme works with male and female field-staff and managers in a process of issue-analysis, action planning, and implementation (the GQAL cycle) to address organizational change and programme quality concerns in a way that is informed by an understanding of gender. Gender, meaning women or the relations between men and women, is sometimes lost as deeper issues of power and instrumentality surface. The greatest challenge for the Programme now is to explore the gendered nature of both, and find ways to change gender bias along with other organizational, structural, and process features that promote gender inequity both within BRAC and in the delivery and impact of its social change objectives.

Worldwide concern for the environment has spawned a new field of interest and expertise within the development assistance industry. Environmental projects have become the new 'darling' of the foreign aid community with donors and practitioners vying for suitable 'eco' projects to support. While this support for the environment mimics the attention the development industry has paid to women (and later, gender), concern for these equally fashionable issues has not always been synchronized. Many development practitioners promote environmental projects which accord nominal concern to gender issues. Drawing on a case study of eco-timber production in the Solomon Islands, this article demonstrates how environmental sustainability and gender equity should be seen as complimentary project goals.

Victimizing women as witches is prevalent in the tribal regions of South Bihar. As a result, from 1991 to 1994, over 60 women are known to have been killed in West Singhbhum district alone. The main reasons behind this persecution are to maintain women in economic and social subjugation, to exploit them sexually, and to wrest property from their families. This article examines the issues behind this form of socially sanctioned violence, analyses their implications on development work, and suggests appropriate methods of intervention.