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Begin New Search Content Type Policy Brief Publishing Institution United Nations University

81. Poverty, International Migration and Asylum

Author:
Christina Boswell and Jeff Crisp
Publication Date:
02-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
In recent years, the issues of international migration and asylum have risen to the top of the international agenda. The pressures and opportunities linked to the process of globalization have led to an increase in the number of people moving from one country and continent to another. At the same time, insecurity and armed conflict in many of the world's poorest and economically marginalized states have triggered new waves of displaced people.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Poverty, and United Nations

82. e-development? Development and the New Economy

Author:
Matthew Clarke
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The world economy has recently changed. A new world economy has emerged over the last decade as two long-run broad trends, globalization and advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have converged. This 'new economy' is significantly different to the 'old economy', as knowledge has replaced traditional productivity inputs, such as labour and natural resources, as the primary ingredient for economic growth. A new landscape exists and countries must adapt their approaches and policies for development to achieve progress in the future.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, International Political Economy, and Science and Technology

83. Africa's Recovery from Conflict: Making Peace Work for the Poor

Author:
Tony Addison
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The period 1990-2000 saw 19 major armed-conflicts in Africa, ranging from civil wars to the 1998-2000 war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Peace has been elusive, and the term 'post-conflict' is often a sad misnomer.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa, Ethiopia, and Eritrea

84. Work In Progress: Introducing the UNU Inter-Linkages Initiative: Focusing on the Implementation of Sustainable Development

Author:
Jerry Velasque and Uli Piest
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Embedded in the United Nations University's Environment and Sustainable Development Programme (ESD), the Inter-linkages Initiative is an innovative approach to managing sustainable development. Based on the recognition that environmental management is strongly related to human behaviour at all levels of natural and human interaction, it promotes greater connectivity between ecosystems and societal performance. On a practical level, the inter-linkages initiative is based on the assumption that improving the implementation of existing environmental mechanisms does not necessarily require new instruments but, rather, a greater level of coherence among the tools already available. In this regard, Interlinkages represents a time- and cost-effective approach to strengthening the existing systems of managing sustainable development.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, International Cooperation, and United Nations

85. Work In Progress: The Peace and Governance Programme: At the Interface of Ideas and Policy

Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The mission of the United Nations University is to contribute, through research and capacity building, to efforts to resolve the pressing global problems that are the concern of the United Nations, its Peoples and Member States. The work of the Peace and Governance Programme is a core element of this mission, and one that is complex and demanding. The concept of peace and security is evolving and broadening considerably, both in the worlds of academia and policy. Traditionally, national and international security were mainly defined in military and territorial terms, in an international system characterized by interaction among states. The UN Charter, while ultimately working in the interests of “the peoples,” is predicated on the relationship between unitary states in the maintenance of international peace and security. Within this system, the challenge was traditionally seen as mediating between liberal internationalist and power-political “realist” forces.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, International Organization, and United Nations

86. Governing Globalization: Issues and Institutions

Author:
Deepak Nayyar and Julius Court
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
It is now more than fifty years since the United Nations system and the Bretton Woods institutions were created. However, the world has changed dramatically during the second half of the twentieth century. The technological revolution in transport and communications has eroded the barriers of distance and time. National economies have become ever more closely integrated through cross-border flows of trade, investment and finance. In the political realm, communism has collapsed and capitalism has emerged triumphant. The context has obviously changed. But thinking about development is also very different. And there is now a myriad of new actors—from transnational firms to NGO—participating in the global economy and polity.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, Migration, and United Nations

87. Inequality, Growth and Poverty in the Era of Liberalization and Globalization

Author:
Julius Court and Giovanni Andrea Cornia
Publication Date:
11-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Eradicating poverty has become the international community's number one development objective. The overriding target—endorsed at the recent United Nations Millennium Summit by virtually all world leaders—is to reduce the incidence of income-poverty in developing countries from 30 percent to 15 percent between 1990 and 2015. The problem is that that further progress has stalled and the number of people living in poverty has remained at around 1.2 billion people—a fifth of the world's population.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, International Cooperation, and Poverty

88. Access to Land and Land Policy Reforms

Author:
Alaine de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Who should have access to land? What is the optimum definition of property rights and use rights in each particular context? Is government intervention justified to influence who has access to land and under what conditions? These questions remain, in most developing countries, highly contentious. It is indeed the case that land is all too often misallocated among potential users and worked under conditions of property or user rights that create perverse incentives. As a consequence, investments to enhance productivity are postponed, and responses to market incentives are weakened; many poor rural households are unable to gain sufficient (or any) access to land when this could be their best option out of poverty; land remains under-used and often idle side-by-side with unsatisfied demands for access to land; land is frequently abused by current users, jeopardizing sustainability; and violence over land rights and land use is all too frequent. With population growth and increasing market integration for the products of the land, these problems tend to become more acute rather than the reverse. As a result, rising pressures to correct these situations have led many countries to reopen the question of access to land and land policy reforms. While large scale expropriative and redistributive land reforms are generally no longer compatible with current political realities, there exist many alternative forms of property and use rights that offer policy instruments to alter the conditions of access to land and land use. A rich agenda of land policy interventions thus exists to alter who has access to land and under what conditions for the purposes of increasing efficiency, reducing poverty, enhancing sustainability, and achieving political stability.Historically, the most glamorous path of access to land has been through statemanaged coercive land reform. In most situations, however, this is not the dominant way land was accessed by current users and, in the future, this will increasingly be the case. Most of the land in use has been accessed through private transfers, community membership, direct appropriation, and market transactions. There are also new types of state-managed programmes of access to land that do not rely on coercion. For governments and development agents (NGOs, bi-lateral and international development agencies), the rapid decline in opportunities to access land through coercive land reform should thus not be seen as the end of the role of the state and development agents in promoting and altering access to land. The following paths of access to land in formal or informal, and in collective or individualized ownership can, in particular, be explored (Figure 1): (1) Intra-family transfers such as inheritances, inter-vivo transfers, and allocation of plots to specific family members; (2) access through community membership and informal land markets; (3) access through land sales markets; and (4) access through specific non-coercive policy interventions such colonization schemes, decollectivization and devolution, and land market-assisted land reform. Access to land in use can also be achieved through land rental markets (informal loans, land rental contracts) originating in any of these forms of land ownership. Each of these paths of access to land has, in turn, implications for the way land is used. Each can also be the object of policy interventions to alter these implications of land use. The focus of this policy brief is to explore each of these paths and analyse how to enhance their roles in helping increase efficiency, reduce poverty, increase equality, enhance sustainability, and achieve political stability.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
United States

89. Social and Economic Policies to Prevent Complex Humanitarian Emergencies

Author:
Jeni Klugman
Publication Date:
01-1999
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Complex humanitarian emergencies have caused widespread death and suffering over the last two decades. While recent tragedies in Bosnia, Rwanda and Angola have made the world more aware of the terrible human toll involved, the international community has yet to develop effective policy responses to stem such crises.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Development, Economics, Genocide, Human Rights, Migration, and Politics
Political Geography:
Bosnia, Rwanda, and Angola