User:Ditto2

Capacity Development

The term capacity development has become central to development assistance. It is a concept integrating other ideas related to activities financed by technical assistance such as institution building, development management and/or strengthening and human resources development.

UNDP defines Capacity Development as “ the process through which individuals, organizations and societies obtain, strengthen and maintain the capabilities to set and achieve their own development objectives over time.”

While the World Bank and OECD/DAC put emphasis on having capacity and defines Capacity Development as the process whereby people, organizations and society as a whole unleash, strengthen, create, adapt and maintain capacity over time. This definition is also used by the United Nations Development Group.

Moreover, the Development Assistance Group under OECD specify in the Paris Declaration from 2006 that Capacity development is the responsibility of partner countries with donors playing a support role.

Thus capacity development as a concept centers around an inherent ability to pursue own development goals with some external support and focus on three dimensions; i) human capacity, ii) organizational capacity and iii) broader institutional capacity. It is synomous with competency.

In practice capacity development is brought down one notch and focus mainly on capacities of institutions or sectors. Individual capacity development strategies are then predicated upon findings of capacity gaps derived from a capacity assessment exercise. These capacity gap can related to ability to deliver on goals/mission or as the UN System Staff Colleagues reflects in its training material that the that the gaps refer specifically to gaps of claim holders to claim their rights and duty bearers to meet their duties.

Capacity development differentiate itself from the concepts of capacity building in the sense that capacity development is the broader processes of receiving assistance in the form of capacity building interventions.

See Also

Capacity Development Group of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Capacity Development Resource Center of the World Bank (WB)

OECD

--Ditto2 (talk) 15:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)