Between Light and Shadow

Between Light and Shadow

Author: Mac Darrow

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2003-03-20

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1847310346

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Much has been written on the human rights relevance and impacts of the policies and activities of the World Bank and IMF --or International Financial Institutions (IFIs). However while many of the human rights-based critiques of the Bank and Fund purport to link broadly defined reforms with obligations under international human rights law,rarely has this been carried out through a rigorous and in-depth application of international legal rules governing the proper interpretation of the institutions' mandates, and rarely have the policy consequences and practical possibilities for human rights integration been explored in any detail. These are the principal gaps that the present book aims to fill, by reference to a sample of the IFIs' most important and controversial contemporary activities.


Poverty and Social Impact Analysis of Reforms

Poverty and Social Impact Analysis of Reforms

Author: Aline Coudouel

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 9780821364864

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Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) is an approach used increasingly by governments, civil society organizations, the World Bank, and other development partners to examine the distributional impacts of policy reforms on the well-being of different stakeholders groups, particularly the poor and vulnerable. PSIA has an important role in the elaboration and implementation of poverty reduction strategies in developing countries because it promotes evidence-based policy choices and fosters debate on policy reform options. 'Poverty and Social Impact Analysis of Reforms' presents a collection of case studies that illustrate the spectrum of sectors and policy reforms to which PSIA can be applied; it also elaborates on the broad range of analytical tools and techniques that can be used for PSIA. The case studies provide examples of the impact that PSIA can have on the design of policy reforms and draw operational lessons for PSIA implementation. The case studies deal largely with policy reforms in a single sector, such as agriculture (crop marketing boards in Malawi and Tanzania and cotton privatization in Tajikistan); energy (mining sector in Romania and oil subsidies in Ghana); utilities (power sector reform in Ghana, Rwanda, and transition economies, and water sector reform in Albania); social sectors (education reform in Mozambique and social welfare reform in Sri Lanka); taxation reform (Nicaragua); as well as macroeconomic modeling (Burkina Faso).


Handbook on Human Rights Impact Assessment

Handbook on Human Rights Impact Assessment

Author: Nora Götzmann

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published:

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 1788970004

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Human rights impact assessment (HRIA) has increasingly gained traction among state, business and civil society actors since the endorsement of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights by the Human Rights Council in 2011. This timely and insightful Handbook addresses HRIA in the context of business and human rights.


Social Impact Assessment

Social Impact Assessment

Author: Reidar Kvam

Publisher: Inter-American Development Bank

Published: 2018-06-01

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13:

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This note provides an overview of good practice standards in Social Impact Assessment (SIA). It has been prepared by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to provide guidance to practitioners and decision-makers. By applying the approach presented in this note, it is expected that the quality, consistency, and operational relevance of SIAs will improve. SIA facilitates the systematic integration of social issues in the planning and implementation of projects. It improves the quality and sustainability of projects, supports and strengthens national requirements, and enhances project acceptance and local ownership. The SIA helps to identify and manage potential adverse social impacts a project may cause or contribute to, and to maximize benefits to local communities and other groups.


Shock Waves

Shock Waves

Author: Stephane Hallegatte

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2015-11-23

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1464806748

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Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.


Communities in Action

Communities in Action

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-04-27

Total Pages: 583

ISBN-13: 0309452961

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In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.


Human Rights Indicators in Development

Human Rights Indicators in Development

Author: Siobhan McInerney-Lankford

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2010-10-26

Total Pages: 94

ISBN-13: 0821385763

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Human rights indicators are central to the application of human rights standards in context and relate essentially to measuring human rights realization, both qualitatively and quantitatively. They offer an empirical or evidence-based dimension to the normative content of human rights legal obligations and a provide means of connecting those obligations with empirical data and evidence, and in this way relate to human rights accountability and the enforcement of human rights obligations. Human rights indicators are important both for assessment and diagnostic purposes: the assessment function of human rights indicators relates to their use in monitoring accountability, effectiveness and impact, while the diagnostic purposes relates to measuring the current state of human rights implementation and enjoyment in a given context, whether regional, country-specific or local. This paper offers a preliminary review of the foregoing in the development context, and a general perspective on the significance of human rights indicators for development processes and outcomes. It is not intended to be prescriptive and does not provide specific operational recommendations on the use of human rights indicators in development projects. Nor does it advocate a particular approach or mode of integrating human rights in development, or argue for a rights-based approach to development. This paper is designed to provide development practitioners with a preliminary view on the possible relevance, design and use of human rights indicators in development policy and practice. It also introduces a basic conceptual framework about the relationship between rights and development, including in the World Bank context and surveys a range of methodological approaches on human rights measurement, exploring in general terms different types of human rights indicators and their potential implications for development at three different levels of convergence or integration.


Handbook on Impact Evaluation

Handbook on Impact Evaluation

Author: Shahidur R. Khandker

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 082138029X

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Public programs are designed to reach certain goals and beneficiaries. Methods to understand whether such programs actually work, as well as the level and nature of impacts on intended beneficiaries, are main themes of this book.


World Poverty and Human Rights

World Poverty and Human Rights

Author: Thomas W. Pogge

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2023-02-10

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1509560645

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Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five. However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong. Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it. Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this classic book incorporates responses to critics and a new chapter introducing Pogge's current work on pharmaceutical patent reform.


Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020

Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020

Author: World Bank

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2020-12-23

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1464816034

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This edition of the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity report brings sobering news. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and its associated economic crisis, compounded by the effects of armed conflict and climate change, are reversing hard-won gains in poverty reduction and shared prosperity. The fight to end poverty has suffered its worst setback in decades after more than 20 years of progress. The goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, already at risk before the pandemic, is now beyond reach in the absence of swift, significant, and sustained action, and the objective of advancing shared prosperity—raising the incomes of the poorest 40 percent in each country—will be much more difficult. Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune presents new estimates of COVID-19's impacts on global poverty and shared prosperity. Harnessing fresh data from frontline surveys and economic simulations, it shows that pandemic-related job losses and deprivation worldwide are hitting already poor and vulnerable people hard, while also shifting the profile of global poverty to include millions of 'new poor.' Original analysis included in the report shows that the new poor are more urban, better educated, and less likely to work in agriculture than those living in extreme poverty before COVID-19. It also gives new estimates of the impact of conflict and climate change, and how they overlap. These results are important for targeting policies to safeguard lives and livelihoods. It shows how some countries are acting to reverse the crisis, protect those most vulnerable, and promote a resilient recovery. These findings call for urgent action. If the global response fails the world's poorest and most vulnerable people now, the losses they have experienced to date will be minimal compared with what lies ahead. Success over the long term will require much more than stopping COVID-19. As efforts to curb the disease and its economic fallout intensify, the interrupted development agenda in low- and middle-income countries must be put back on track. Recovering from today's reversals of fortune requires tackling the economic crisis unleashed by COVID-19 with a commitment proportional to the crisis itself. In doing so, countries can also plant the seeds for dealing with the long-term development challenges of promoting inclusive growth, capital accumulation, and risk prevention—particularly the risks of conflict and climate change.