Negotiating Thorny Paths: SID in the 1990s and 2000s
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Negotiating Thorny Paths: SID in the 1990s and 2000s
WENDY HARCOURT, ARTHUR MULIRO AND STEFANO PRATO
ABSTRACT Wendy Harcourt, Arthur Muliro and Stefano Prato look at the Society for International Development’s (SID) activities during the last 15 years. They argue that SID as one of the first international nongovernmental organizations found itself in considerable difficulty during this period as it had to renew itself in a time of questioning and challenging of development particularly of the UN as the primary focus of international debate and policy. As insiders of the SID working at the SID International Secretariat, they outline how SID took in these years an important new direction as it began to confront the challenges raised by globalization. KEYWORDS UN conferences; sustainable livelihoods; scenarios; gender; civil society
Introduction From our vantage point working at the Society for International Development (SID) International Secretariat based in Rome, Italy, we present our analysis of the different programmatic issues and the paths chosen by SID in the last 15 years. We see these last years in SID as the ones of intense dialogue and debate focused largely on the directions civil society should or could take globally. During this period, SID responded to the many complex external factors of the post-Cold War era, which threw into question the earlier development paths. Beginning from an era of civil society, hopes and expansion with the big 1990s’ UN Conference, we look at how many unfinished human development agendas led to new types of development concerns and pathways.We would argue that SID found in this difficult period a need to renew itself as global development was questioned. As insiders of the SID process, we aim to show in this essay how SID took important new directions in the mid-1990s as it began to confront the challenges raised by globalization. The programmes that evolved on sustainable livelihoods, women and the politics of place, scenarios, and indeed the journal Development as the core place for dialogue for the network, signalled new forms of engagement by SID in the struggle for social justice. It must be said at the outset that SID’s programmatic focus during these years necessarily built on the earlier strengths of SID but ones that given the climate of multiplying civil society organizations were considerably less visible than the high-profile style of Development (2007) 50(S1), 72–79. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100391
Harcourt et al: SID in the 1990s and 2000s earlier SID activities and personalities. Our choice of being less highly profiled was deliberate and reflected a new form of engagement by a rapidly emerging global civil society. This was also evident in the methodologies and frameworks chosen as we undertook projects on sustainable livelihoods, scenarios in East Africa, reproductive rights, new communication technologies, resource conflict, women and politics of place and political conflict among other projects. Essentially, SID needed to shif
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