To Respect or Not to Respect.. Ethical Dilemmas of INGO Development Practitioners

Abstract

Most development practitioners would agree respect for local people and their culture is a paramount value that underpins our work. In one form or another it is embedded in INGO codes of conduct and effectiveness standards, as well as emerging from program evaluations as a critical element in the success of any development interventions. It is a truism to state that development programs must genuinely engage communities in determining their own priorities and needs in order to establish the minimum conditions for relevance and sustainability.2 More recently debate has centred on how to strengthen NGO accountability to communities not only to make participation meaningful, but for the achievement of agreed outcomes.