Freedom in the World contains both comparative ratings and written narratives and is now the standard reference work for measuring the progress and decline in political rights and civil liberties on a global basis.
Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 192 countries and a group of select territories are used by policy makers, the media, international corporations, and civic activists and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. Press accounts of the survey findings appear in hundreds of influential newspapers in the United States and abroad and form the basis of numerous radio and television reports. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development. Freedom House is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights.
Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016 is the first of an annual flagship report that will inform a global audience comprising development practitioners, policy makers, researchers, advocates, and citizens in general with the latest and most accurate estimates on trends in global poverty and shared prosperity. This edition will also document trends in inequality and identify recent country experiences that have been successful in reducing inequalities, provide key lessons from those experiences, and synthesize the rigorous evidence on public policies that can shift inequality in a way that bolsters poverty reduction and shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. Specifically, the report will address the following questions: • What is the latest evidence on the levels and evolution of extreme poverty and shared prosperity? • Which countries and regions have been more successful in terms of progress toward the twin goals and which are lagging behind? • What does the global context of lower economic growth mean for achieving the twin goals? • How can inequality reduction contribute to achieving the twin goals? • What does the evidence show concerning global and between- and within-country inequality trends? • Which interventions and countries have used the most innovative approaches to achieving the twin goals through reductions in inequality? The report will make four main contributions. First, it will present the most recent numbers on poverty, shared prosperity, and inequality. Second, it will stress the importance of inequality reduction in ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity by 2030 in a context of weaker growth. Third, it will highlight the diversity of within-country inequality reduction experiences and will synthesize experiences of successful countries and policies, addressing the roots of inequality without compromising economic growth. In doing so, the report will shatter some myths and sharpen our knowledge of what works in reducing inequalities. Finally, it will also advocate for the need to expand and improve data collection—for example, data availability, comparability, and quality—and rigorous evidence on inequality impacts in order to deliver high-quality poverty and shared prosperity monitoring.
Every year, the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) features a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 WDR—LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise—is the first ever devoted entirely to education. And the time is right: education has long been critical to human welfare, but it is even more so in a time of rapid economic and social change. The best way to equip children and youth for the future is to make their learning the center of all efforts to promote education. The 2018 WDR explores four main themes: First, education’s promise: education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies—both within and outside the education system. Second, the need to shine a light on learning: despite gains in access to education, recent learning assessments reveal that many young people around the world, especially those who are poor or marginalized, are leaving school unequipped with even the foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. And too often these shortcomings are hidden—so as a first step to tackling this learning crisis, it is essential to shine a light on it by assessing student learning better. Third, how to make schools work for all learners: research on areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, and school management has identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, teachers are both skilled and motivated, and other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, how to make systems work for learning: achieving learning throughout an education system requires more than just scaling up effective interventions. Countries must also overcome technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and taking an adaptive approach to reform.
Following the first international workshop on the economics of ocean acidification organized by the Centre Scientifique de Monaco and the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2010, a second international workshop was held in November 2012, which explored the level of risk, and the resilience or vulnerability of defined regions of the world ocean in terms of fishery and aquaculture species and economic impacts, and social adaptation. This report includes the findings and recommendations of the respective regional working groups and is the result of an interdisciplinary survey of ocean acidification-sensitive fisheries and aquaculture.
Indonesia's President Soeharto led one of the most durable and effective authoritarian regimes of the second half of the twentieth century. Yet his rule ended in ignominy, and much of the turbulence and corruption of the subsequent years was blamed on his legacy. More than a decade after Soeharto's resignation, Indonesia is a consolidating democracy and the time has come to reconsider the place of his regime in modern Indonesian history, and its lasting impact. This book begins this task by bringing together a collection of leading experts on Indonesia to examine Soeharto and his legacy from diverse perspectives. In presenting their analyses, these authors pay tribute to Harold Crouch, an Australian political scientist who remains one of the greatest chroniclers of the Soeharto regime and its aftermath.
"Science tends to generalize, and generaliza tions mean simplifications . . . . And generaliza tions are also more satisfying to the mind than details. Of course, details and generalizations must be in proper balance: Generalizations can be reached only from details, while it is the generalization which gives value and interest to the detail:' . . . (A. Szent-Gyorgy, Science 1964) The first edition of this book, published in German as Tabak abhiingigkeit in 2001, was prompted by the fact that no single volume was available in Germany or elsewhere summarising the adverse repercussions of cigarette smoking on human health. As far as my own research was able to ascertain, the last comprehensive work dealing with this subject was writ ten in Germany by the Dresden internist, F. Lickint, whose Tabak und Organismus was published in 1939 by the Hip pokrates-Verlag. All subsequent monographs in this field have tended to focus on detailed aspects, and there has been no shortage of publications on subjects such as how smokers can quit smoking, healthy eating for smokers etc. Friends and colleagues abroad have urged me to prepare an English language version of Tabakabhiingigkeit. In gladly complying with this suggestion, I have intentionally prepared an up dated and slightly enlarged new edition, taking account of the rapidly proliferating literature on the subject up to the start of 2002. The harmful sequelae of smoking are played down by politicians in many industrialised countries, including Ger many.
When the Indonesian New Order regime fell in 1998, regional politics with strong ethnic content emerged across the country. In West Kalimantan the predominant feature was particularly that of the Dayaks. This surge, however, was not unprecedented. After centuries of occupying a subordinate place in the political and social hierarchy under the nominal rule of the Malay sultanates, Dayaks became involved in an enthusiastic political emancipation movement from 1945. The Dayaks secured the governorship as well as the majority of the regional executive head positions before they were shunned by the New Order regime. This book examines the development of Dayak politics in West Kalimantan from the colonial times until the first decade of the 21th century. It asks how and why Dayak politics has experienced drastic changes since 1945. It will look at the effect of regime change, the role of the individual leaders and organizations, the experience of marginalization, and conflicts on the course of Dayaks politics. It will also examine ethnic relations and recent political development up to 2010 in the province.