Evaluating International Efforts on Local Capacity Building
This report evaluates international efforts in CB in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Serbia and Somalia. It examines both the concept of CB and its implementation in practice.
Executive Summary
After the failures that accompanied the UN interventions of the early 1990s, ‘the local’, (local) capacity building (CB) and local ownership have become matters of concern for the international community. This interest in the local stems from the fact that its inclusion is increasingly understood to be essential to successful peacebuilding, providing the crucial element in the search for effectiveness and legitimacy in international peacebuilding initiatives. CB programmes, including training activities, mentoring and advising, and the provision of equipment and large infrastructure have also become a key means of strengthening capabilities at the individual and organisational level. CB has undoubtedly had a positive impact in some areas. But the success of these activities has been limited and uneven.
This report evaluates international efforts in CB in five geographical areas: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Serbia and Somalia. Overall, the findings of the report show that CB programmes have been able to strengthen pockets of capacity in specific organisations and institutions, but they have done so in a manner that has not always been well coordinated with other donor activities or local priorities, and in an environment of wider political, economic and institutional weaknesses that have constrained their impact and on which they have been dependent. Given the enormity of the challenge and the timescales in which such activities have taken place, it is perhaps not surprising that they have struggled to be transformative in nature. Yet, as discussed in this report, there are marked differences between what the international community has been able to achieve in the Horn of Africa and in the Western Balkans. The level of success has obviously varied depending on the local context and the level of resources channelled into each of these cases, with the Western Balkans benefiting from a more intensive international intervention in the 1990s and 2000s. The prospect of EU and NATO membership has also acted as a catalyst in the Balkans, although not without its difficulties.
Nevertheless, there was an agreement among the interviewees about the fact that international CB activities have taken place in the absence of local involvement at the levels of problem identification, and project development and evaluation. This deficit has led to a ‘thin’ rather than ‘thick’ legitimacy amongst local actors, and has exacerbated existing problems of relevance, duplication and sustainability.
In the case of the Western Balkans, however, increasing capacities at the local level, a greater involvement of local civil society actors and regional cooperation has narrowed the gap between the rhetorical commitment to local ownership by international actors and its implementation in practice. In the Horn of Africa, this gap remains to be filled.
The final section of this report concludes that, while CB has had a positive impact in some areas, the success of such activities has been narrow and uneven, due largely to a lack of local ownership on the one side, and problems of sustainability on the other.
Keywords
- Capacity building (CB); Capacity development; Effectiveness; Local ownership; Sustainability; Legitimacy