This is an interview with Benoît Fontaine (Advisor with the King Baudouin Foundation) who is working on developing GuideStar in Belgium. He talks about:

* The civil society sector in Belgium
* The reason for GuideStar interest in Belgium
* The main partners for the initiative
* Where the data for GuideStar Belgium will come from

The latest GuideStar International Newsletter is now available (April 2009). In it you can find an update on GuideStar International, news from our partners and relevant articles about what is happening in the CSO sector.

This briefing paper focuses on why and how Civil Society Organizations (CSO) can engage more effectively in policy processes in international development. Section 1 sets the scene and highlights the opportunities and challenges facing CSOs policy work. Section 2 focuses on why evidence matters for CSOs’ work in international development. Section 3 provides a framework that matches the engagement mechanisms and evidence needs to the critical stages of policy processes. Section 4 summarizes stra more...

'The development finance system is becoming increasingly complex. New actors and instruments are being created with enormous speed and ingenuity. Yet the multilateral development banks still account for a large share of the public resources used for development finance. Of these, the World Bank and the three regional development banks (RDBs) – the Asian Development Bank (AsDB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) – play the most important roles.'

The present report to the fifty-third session of the Commission on the Status of Women and the tenth session of the Human Rights Council, documents the activities undertaken by UNIFEM in 2008 as administrator of the Trust Fund as well as its programming on violence against women.

'Despite demonstrable benefits, the rapid ascendancy of Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches (SLA) in the mid to late 1990s was followed by their quick demise among some donors, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and development agencies, as a result of internal politics and other factors.'

Chief-of-Staff for President Obama Rahm Emanuel's quote of the year, 'you never want a serious crisis to go to waste' sounds glib taken out of context. But he is right. It takes extreme situations to force decisions that go against normal short-term political interests.

So it is that governments such as the UK and the US are saddling their taxpayers with vast debts to bail out their banks and finance sector, spending unthinkable amounts of money for normal times (at least $8.4 trillion and c more...

2008 is an important year for development financing and an opportunity to move the international community to a more equitable, people-centered and democratic governance system. Today 1.4 billion people live under the new poverty line of US$1.25, and the majority of them are women. The current financial, food, energy, and climate change crises make evident the urgency for action.

Accra is an opportunity to advance towards a broader agenda of development effectiveness. The High Level Forum in more...

'On 4 March, the government of Sudan expelled 13 international NGOs and revoked the licences of three national NGOs.1 In all, 7,610 aid workers – 308 internationals and 7,302 nationals – have been directly affected in Northern Sudan (including Darfur), where these agencies accounted for 40% of aid workers, delivering more than half the total amount of aid. NGO services – access to water, health and medical services, food rations – have been jeopardised. Assistance to Darfur’s 2.7 milli more...

'How can civil society and NGOs be supported by donors? This paper reviews experiences in Tanzania, looking at different models for supporting civil society and investigating possibilities for improving and increasing effectiveness of direct support to NGOs/CSOs. The authors consider how this can be done through country level support models and consider different examples of donor joint funding, which is helping other donors who might not have capacity to deliver their programmes to CSOs directl more...