The term development means different thing to different people in different places. The definition of the concept of development governance does not exist in literature, but this training attempted to define development governance as “as a process of making a collective decision by all stakeholders in order to bring about fundamental and substantial changes in the society that meets a people’s need(s)”.

Needs has a very strong connection to human rights because when a peoples’ needs are not met, their rights have already been violated. Human Rights-Based Approach is able to recognize poverty as injustice and include marginalization, discrimination, and exploitation as central causes of poverty.  Governance is one of the most important instruments needed to ensure that people are recognized as key actors in their own development as opposed to being passive recipients of goods and services and strategies to be employed must empower the people. Development must be locally-generated and locally-owned. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches are used in a mutually reinforcing manner so as to create positive, mutually empowering and mutually complementing efforts.