Organisation and participation in workshop, seminar, course: Hope and Insufficiency (Event)

Capacity building in research ethics has been a European priority since the early 2000s. Prompted by the increase in internationally sponsored clinical trials taking place in emerging economies and developing world settings, a range of training programs and initiatives were put in place to ensure the protection of human subjects participating in research. Drawing on fieldwork with the Forum for Ethics Review Committees of Asia and the Pacific, I explore two distinct forms taken by capacity building within the organisation as they support and train ethics review committees and their members. I am working with the distinction between ethics as capacity, and capacity for ethics. The first, with an emphasis on standards and measurability aims to assure international accountability for clinical trial research. The second turns to how the organisation goes about persuading trainees to see and do ‘ethics’ differently. In this paper, I seek to explore the implications of the contrast, and explore the consequences for what will count as ‘success’ in capacity building.