Just as emergency relief activities are crucial to saving lives by responding to the most urgent human needs, integrating an early recovery approach within humanitarian operations is crucial to the first efforts of a community to recover. It prepares the ground for an effective ‘exit strategy’ for humanitarian actors and contributes to ‘durable solutions’ by establishing the ...» more
Library
This e-library contains more than 4500 external publications on governance, social development, conflict and humanitarian issues. It includes academic and grey literature selected for its basis in good quality research and coverage of a range of perspectives. Policy-oriented summaries of each document are provided, plus links to the full text.
Trends and challenges in humanitarian civil–military coordination: A review of the literature
How does the relationship between humanitarian organisations and militaries function during humanitarian response? This paper explores how recent global developments have affected the relationship between military and humanitarian actors. It identifies key trends emerging from the literature on civil–military coordination in conflicts and natural disasters.The paper also ...» more
Mutual Accountability Lessons and Prospects for Afghanistan Post-Tokyo
This brief first reviews some lessons from international experience with conditionality associated with policy-based financial support to developing countries. It then looks at experience with mutual accountability efforts in Afghanistan over the past decade, focusing on the Bonn Agreement of December 2001, the Afghanistan Compact of early 2006, and budget support operations ...» more
Time to Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of International Aid
This study represents the cumulative evidence of five years gathering evidence from people living in societies that are recipients of international aid. CDA's Listening Project organised teams of 'listeners' across 20 countries and contexts to gather the voices, insights, and lessons from people both inside and outside the aid system. The Listening Project held conversations ...» more
From Combatants to Peacebuilders: A case for inclusive, participatory and holistic security transitions
There has been a tendency to view all armed actors as ‘spoilers’ to be fought at all costs or, at best, pacified through disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR), rather than as agents of change who can play constructive roles in securing peace and building more legitimate states.The purpose of this report is to present key policy-relevant findings from a two-year ...» more
Development Consequences of Armed Conflict
The consequences of war extend far beyond direct deaths. In addition to battlefield casualties, armed conflict often leads to forced migration, refugee flows, capital flight, and the destruction of societies’ infrastructure. It also creates a development gap between those countries that have experienced armed conflict and those that have not.This paper conducts a statistical ...» more
Theories of change in anti-corruption work: A tool for programme design and evaluation
The paper presents a user-friendly five-step methodology for building a theory of change for an anti-corruption programme or project. It highlights the importance of preconditions, factors that must be in place for the intervention to work as intended, distinguishing between those preconditions that can be addressed by the programme design and those that cannot. Finally, the ...» more
All Quiet on Election Day? International Election Observation and Incentives for Violent Manipulation in African Elections
This paper analyses election related violence during African elections in the 1990-2009 period to examine the role of international election observations. The paper tests three hypothesis: 1) The presence of credible international observer organisations increases the likelihood of election-related violence in the pre-election period; 2) The presence of credible international ...» more
Check my school: A Case Study on Citizens’ Monitoring of the Education Sector in the Philippines
This case study sheds light on the design and implementation features of the first pilot cycle of Check My School (CMS) in public schools across the Philippines. The case study discusses the general political background and operating environment of the CMS project, its concept and operating principles, the roles and incentives of the major stakeholders involved in its design ...» more
Citizens and Service Delivery: Assessing the Use of Social Accountability Approaches in the Human Development Sectors.
In theory, if citizens have access to information about their rights and the type and quality of services that they should expect, and if they have opportunities to use this information to affect the behaviour of providers and the decisions of policy makers, they can influence service delivery. This book looks at how this works in practice.This book looks at the use of social ...» more
Gendered politics of securing inclusive development
This paper interrogates the nature of gendered political settlements through analysing selected country cases studies of the gendered nature of political and policy-making processes. It identifies the different contextual and structural factors that promote gender inclusive development policies and outcomes. The paper argues that a political settlement framework stands to gain ...» more
Women Empowerment and Economic Development
Women empowerment and economic development are closely related: in one direction, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, empowering women may benefit development. Does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion?This paper reviews the literature on both ...» more
Strengthening Capacity for Conflict-Sensitive Natural Resource Management
This Guidance Note focuses on the role of natural resources in triggering, escalating or sustaining violent conflict. Its aim is to provide practical guidance on the role that the UN and EU can play in early warning and assessment, structural conflict prevention (long-term measures) and direct conflict prevention (short-term measures). It is meant to provide a combination of ...» more
Supporting Infrastructure Development in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States: Learning from Experience
This study examines the available evidence on the experience of international support to improving infrastructure in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. It draws on a literature review and case studies (focusing on DFID supported infrastructure programmes in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal and South Sudan).The study identifies the main causal relationships ...» more
Social protection and basic services in fragile and conflict-affected situations
In an effort to generate better understanding and to identify useful lessons and findings for researchers and decision makers working on and in fragile and conflicted-affected situations, this review synthesises and assesses the available evidence on social protection and basic services (health, education and water) in fragile and conflict-affected situations. Relevant ...» more
Peace dividends: contributions of administrative and social services to peacebuilding
The international policy community is increasingly recognising the untapped potential of administrative and social services to restore peace and stability. This multi-partner United Nations (UN) study seeks to determine whether the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) should increase its support to administrative and social services, and if so, to what types of programming. The paper ...» more
Strengthening the roles of political parties in public accountability: A case study of a new approach in political party assistance in Kenya
This paper contributes to the body of knowledge on the role of political parties in promoting public accountability. It assesses how and to what extent the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy’s (NIMD) approach using Centres for Multiparty Democracy (CMD) as national platforms for and by political parties, assists political parties in their key roles between citizens ...» more
Why politics matter: Aid effectiveness and domestic accountability in the health sector
This paper looks at the impact of different modalities of aid on domestic accountability, by focusing on the health sector in Zambia and Uganda. It examines how aid and mechanisms around aid have interacted with domestic accountability relationships, as well as with information flows between donors and governments and outwards to citizens. In particular, it compares and ...» more
How To Guide to Conflict Sensitivity
Conflict Sensitivity Consortium comprises 35 humanitarian, development, peacebuilding and multi-mandate NGOs operating in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and the UK, who all share a commitment to being more conflict sensitive. With support from a four-year project funded by the UK Department for International Development – ‘Conflict Sensitivity – from concept to impact’ – the ...» more
Climate-Responsive Social Protection
This paper sets out the case for climate-responsive social protection (SP) and proposes a framework with principles, design features and functions that would help SP systems evolve in a climate-responsive direction. The principles comprise climate-aware planning; livelihood-based approaches that consider the full range of assets and institutions available to households and ...» more
