Praxis Note 54. Capacity Development in Humanitarian Crises: Practice and lessons learnt about strengthening civil society organisations

The January 2010 crisis in Haiti led to renewed attention to the dilemmas of humanitarian action and its relationship with development. Northern international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) supporting capacity development of civil society organisations (CSOs) in the South are confronted with many additional challenges when working in the context of humanitarian crises.

This Praxis Note summarises the lessons learnt from five years of PSO support to capacity development of CSOs in crises, and looks at the trends of capacity development practice in the Dutch INGO members of PSO. What did the PSO association learn and how did it deal with the many challenges? The note summarises the authors’ understanding of the insights from the many evaluations and reports that resulted from these activities.

This Praxis note is based on an initial paper presented at the World Conference on Humanitarian Studies in Groningen in 2009, and updated with new insights and valuable inputs received from ICCO/Kerk in Actie and INTRAC.