Most international aid engagement in conflict-affected places is premised around the concept of capacity building. The term ‘state-building’ assumes a process of building the states’ capacity to deliver services and to develop more resilient and less fragile systems. However, the empirical evidence on whether or not state capacities are actually being built is thin. This panel will present SLRC research from Sierra Leone, Nepal and Pakistan on the successes and failures of attempts to build capacity and how international aid works in practice with local-level institutions.

Chair: Dr Rachel Gordon, SLRC-ODI

This panel is part of a recovering from conflict conference sub-stream convened by The Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) in collaboration with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI). SLRC is a six-year global research programme exploring livelihoods, basic services and social protection in conflict-affected situations. Funded by UK Aid from the UK government (DFID), Irish Aid and the European Commission (EC), SLRC was established in 2011 with the aim of strengthening the evidence base and informing policy and practice around livelihoods and services in conflict. SLRC’s research focuses on eight conflict-affected countries: Afghanistan; Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); Nepal; Pakistan; South Sudan; Sri Lanka; Uganda; and Sierra Leone. The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) is a partner institution and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is the lead institution. www.securelivelihoods.org

Abstracts:

On state capacity to tackle malnutrition and teenage pregnancy in Sierra Leone

Mr Richard Mallett, SLRC-ODI

On the SLRC global capacity synthesis paper

Mr Paul Harvey, SLRC and Humanitarian Outcomes

Capacity building through drinking water service: performance narrative of LGCDP in post-conflict Nepal

Gopikesh Acharya, SLRC Nepal and NCCR

Nepal experienced a decade-long armed-conflict that begun from 1996 and is still suffering grievances of past in post-conflict era. The insecurity and vulnerability challenges of basic service provisions are yet to be responded. Though partial, government and international partners' initiatives to build service delivery capacity in post-conflict era have yielded some positive results, there is still a lot other capacity factors to be assessed. Thus it is quite natural to question whether the capacity building initiatives brought any transformative upshots in to the individual, organizational and system level.

This paper utilizes scope of the study carried out to assess the LGCDP intervention on DWS service regarding capacity building in Ilam Municipality, Nepal. To assess the impacts of the intervention on DWS service delivery and capacity building, a variety of qualitative methods were used to gather information and evidence. KIIs, IDIs, and FGDs were conducted among local government officials, service providers, and service beneficiaries/non-beneficiaries.

LGCDP intervention on DWS service has influenced community participation in local governance, development and state-society relations, while the intervention has also contributed in building state capacity to deliver DWS service. Concerned to this hypothesis, a set of two categories, (a) participation, and (b) changes in service provider and community's capacity, have been tested in this paper. The study has focused three particular DWS programmes as research units [namely, Bhalubase (Upper), Devithane and Bhalubase (Altharabesi)] intervened by LGCDP. This paper employs the SLRC RQ 2 Analytical Framework (Mallett et al., 2014) which concerns five capabilities to (1) achieve coherence, (2) self-organize and act, (3) generate development results, (4) establish supportive relationships, and (5) adapt and self-renew at the individual, organizational and system levels.

The study has found the challenges are not about availability of resource but is about the poor designing of the infrastructures and week governance, and is about the lack of willingness to transfer/share the built capabilities between the individual, organizational and system level, which as a whole could built state capacity. The DWS quality/quantity related challenges are not exclusively the result of lack of government capacity as the activities of local people are also observed contributing to these challenges. There is less evidence available that the above five capabilities have improved. However, it is found noteworthy that the community's capacity to share their knowledge and opinion has been quite improved. The study indicates the capacity built at individual and organizational level is not transformed to system level.

Effective capacity building in education sector in Kenya

Dr Mirza Jahani

Local institutions in conflict-affected Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Mr Qasim Shah/Dr Abid Suleri, SLRC Pakistan and SDPI