International Capacity Building in the Western Balkans and the Horn of Africa: Lessons on Coherence and Coordination
This report dissects how fragmented coordination among international and local actors undermines capacity-building efforts across the Western Balkans and the Horn of Africa, drawing lessons from five comparative case studies. It argues that coherence, leadership, and early-stage coordination are decisive factors in effective and sustainable interventions.
Executive summary
Capacity building comprises an array of activities, across multiple policy areas, together addressing wider peacebuilding and conflict prevention efforts. This also involves interaction amongst and between international and local organisations and individuals. As a result, capacity building programmes encompass numerous actors, projects, relationships and partners in complex contexts. This in turn implies the requirement for coordination to avoid duplication whilst encouraging complementarity and coherence in the delivery of programmes. However, this also presents a series of challenges.
Coordinating across a complex range of actors and projects is difficult. Few international capacity building programmes take place under the auspices of a single directing authority, able to plan and integrate activities from the top, though in some cases, there may be a lead organisation tasked with a coordination and deconfliction role. Even in the case of a single entity such as an international organisation, state or government department, coordinating multiple capacity building projects, or coordinating between the centre and field, can be challenging. Such challenges often manifest as technical problems – of sequencing, duplication and deconfliction, for example. Still, they are generally underpinned by a more deeply rooted series of obstacles, which will be unpacked in this report.
The challenges identified in this report centre on the capacity of international actors to coordinate in such a way as to promote horizontal, vertical and inter-institutional coherence. For any hope of coherence, however, a lead coordinator must be designated. For instance, in the cases highlighted in this report, it is clear that EU Delegations are worthy candidates when it comes to coordinating EU capacity building programmes on the ground. In terms of vertical coherence, the cases surveyed indicate that efforts on the part of international and local actors respectively must be improved. International actors such as the EU must be proactive and yet flexible in their approach to coordinating the range of actors present in any post-conflict environment. Yet, sometimes internationals are not given an opportunity to coordinate due to late notifications about programmes. On the other hand, for local actors, realities including handling competing political priorities and budgetary and human resource constraints will mean that they will struggle to coordinate between donors. Better communication in both directions is therefore necessary, but building local capacity for coordination must be a priority; in all the cases studied, this did not occur to a sufficient extent. In terms of horizontal and inter-institutional coherence, consistency in approaches is key to sustainable capacity building. To be clear, there is no issue with multiple actors working on the design and/or implementation of any given programme, but without pre-established coordination and a clear mission, such approaches are likely to diverge, having a negative impact on effectiveness.
Keywords
- Coordination; Coherence; Capacity building; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Ethiopia; Horn of Africa; Kosovo; Serbia; European Union; United Nations; NATO; OSCE