Participatory Development: A Sustainable Approach for Reducing Inequality and Fighting Poverty? The Example of Disability Policies in Afghanistan

Abstract

International development efforts have increasingly been criticised for failing to take into consideration the voices of the most vulnerable groups within a given context. Despite well-intended claims of international frameworks and actors, ownership and empowerment have been misused and misrepresented in development theory and practice. At the theoretical level, the concept of empowerment is often not viewed in terms of challenging the power dynamics. As a consequence, in practice, the absence of well-defined principles to operationalize participation and to trigger a real change in fragile contexts has affected progress towards improving the lives of aid 'recipients' and poses serious threats to sustainability of programmes. These persistent impediments have also considerably hindered national policies in fragile and conflict-affected contexts such as Afghanistan.Taking the example of a decade of disability policies in the country, the present chapter puts forward strong arguments for involving the 'recipients of aid' at all phases of the planning and implementation process to avoid waste of resources and poor impact. In order to move beyond viewing empowerment mainly as a consultation and communication issue there is an urgent need for mechanisms of transfer of power and enhancement of agency.

Enhancement of Access to Primary Education under Implementation of School Education Sector Plan & Roadmap for Sindh 2019-2024 Perceptions of Head Master's District Umerkot, Sindh

“…Compared to the human capital approach, it gives more thought to the purpose of education itself. According to Bakhshi et al, (2004), education plays a significant part in the capacity approach because it teaches people how to deal with new obstacles in daily life, how to complete common tasks in novel ways, how to start over, and how to coexist with others who have different perspectives.…”