ABSTRACT

Capacity building can be deconstructed into many categories. Five that are explored in this chapter are development, trade and regional economic interests, the role of international regimes in protecting the environment, the international human rights framework, and security, cooperation, and humanitarian affairs. As institutional development is shifting its focus to this diversity, efforts have been channelled into increasing capacity building in all regimes. Capacity building emerged as an offshoot of international trade. Although international trade and globalization are not new phenomena, following the globalization of the 1990s, the world was transformed largely into a market economy as Soviet communism collapsed. The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established in the mid-1990s to replace the General Agreement of Tariff and Trade (GATT), and made helping developing countries and LDCs to take advantage of a globalized economic and trading system one of their mandates. Furthermore, the Doha Declaration was set up to stress the role of capacity-building programmes, sparking discussions on capacity building in developing countries.