Transition Assistance Practice Group

Transition assistance deals with the specific subset of international technical and financial aid aimed at facilitating transitions to democracy and peace. IFIT seeks to improve the way recipients and providers of transition assistance work together in affected countries, with a focus on supporting recipients.

Over the past three decades, helping countries emerge from authoritarian rule or war has become a central activity of international aid providers. There has been enormous growth in the number of organisations involved, each offering a vast array of financial and technical assistance. But as observed in publications by IFIT and others, this aid has often been difficult for recipients to understand or use effectively, as time and again they struggle to make sense of the avalanche of actors, their motivations, their terminology, and their methods.

Comprised of a select group of leading international experts, the Transition Assistance Practice Group addresses this problem head on. It provides impartial, creative, and practical advice to the recipients of transition assistance on how to engage external aid providers in more skilful ways, thus helping achieve aid effectiveness from the inside-out. It also carries out original research and writing to advance knowledge and practice in the field.

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In countries transitioning out of war or authoritarian rule, the key to aid effectiveness lies in empowering locals to develop strategies to prepare for and direct the incoming aid.

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