Nation-Building Elevated

[Dayuhan]

Unfortunately this is one of the too often encountered problems with development projects.

Just prove us that back ground, context, creative solutions are the best. Only limit being: you cannot expect having non political policies in development.
And trying to change the political environment seems a little out of our range.

Sometimes you need to just look the local authorities in the eye and say "no, we will not fund that project". If the circumstances on the ground are not conducive to development tossing money into ill-conceived projects is not going to accomplish anything.

There's a difference between "humanitarian aid" and "development aid". Humanitarian aid is about keeping people alive in extreme conditions; it's what we're trying to do in Haiti and in parts of Africa. Often in these conditions it's simply not possible to bring development aid into play effectively. Development aid to me is something that has to be carefully applied and used in plces and times where there's an opportunity. Tossing it around loosely ends up with the old paradigm of "poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries", which is not what we want to do.

Steve, when I ask "what's the goal, I guess the core of the question is this: are we working toward recovery after a disaster? Are we trying to mitigate an existing insurgency situation or prevent a potential one? Or is it a pure development problem? It will make a huge difference in how we proceed...