Column by Alan Fowler: Aided development is a language industry

Aided development is a language industry. This opening sentence draws on the important messages to be found in Paul Hoebink’s column for the previous Newsletter. It does so from a novel and challenging way of looking at development cooperation which is emerging from the civic driven change (CDC) initiative hosted by the Institute of Social Studies.

Promoting pluralism? Diminish the donor dependency!

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, human rights activist and researcher on Islam and secularism, has been fighting for decades to promote the acceptance of human rights in Muslim countries. Foreign donors can only play a limited role, he thinks.

MoU Small Producers Agency in the Globalized Market Programme signed

On 21 January a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Hivos and the International Institute for Development Cooperation for the Knowledge Programme Small Producers Agency in the Globalized Market. Explicit statements of demand from organisations across various sectors suggest that there is a distinct and urgent need to integrate and synthesise existing bodies of knowledge – both scientific and practitioner knowledge – produced and disseminated in a way that strengthens the capacity especially in smallholder organisations and federations.

Thoughts on Dutch Development Cooperation

Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 16 April, 15.45

Inaugural Lecture by Paul Hoebink at Radboud University Nijmegen. He holds a special professorial chair in Development Cooperation, instituted by HIVOS and Oxfam Novib (www.oxfamnovib.org), at the Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen (CIDIN) at the Radboud University Nijmegen.

For details see the CIDIN Website.

The Power of Civil Society

Hivos and ISS jointly organised a Network Seminar for the fourth time on 27 November and 9 December 2008. The case studies presented explored the diversity of roles and strategies employed by civil society organizations based on the recent field research of four ISS MA students supported by the Civil Society Building Knowledge Programme in 2008. The aim of these seminars was to better understand the power of civil society to influence the state around issues such as HIV/AIDS, women’s rights, reproductive rights, and intellectual property rights.

Rivers and Stones

Does the condition of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) affect the way that they live their citizenship and participation? What are the challenges and possibilities of participation as full citizens for PLHA? A case study on the Global Fund in Peru helped to answer this question.

Henry Armas presented the findings of his research, as part of the CSB programma, at the INTRAC conference last year. A summary of his presentation has been published in the latest INTRAC Newsletter.

Demographers do not see a ‘clash of civilizations’

Demographic data suggest that the world is not facing a ‘clash of civilizations’ between the Muslim and western world, according to Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd. In their book, Courbage and Todd compare trends in Islamic nations with those of other countries. Gerd Junne reviews Le Rendez-vous des civilisations by Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd (2007) in the framework of the Knowledge Programme Civil Society in West Asia.

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