Your search

The main focus of the report is the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic on democracy and freedom around the world. It looks at how the pandemic resulted in the withdrawal of civil liberties on a massive scale and fuelled an existing trend of intolerance and censorship of dissenting opinion (see page 14). The report also examines the state of US democracy after a tumultuous year dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and a hotly contested presidential...

Research has highlighted disparities in family planning outcomes by wealth and by region separately. This analysis examines regional disparities within specific poverty groups. Twelve USAID family planning priority countries with recent DHS or AIS surveys were selected for the analysis, including 11 DHS surveys (Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda Uganda, and Zambia) and one AIS survey (Mozambique). The measure of absolute...

The aims of this paper are: 1) to highlight how multi-stakeholder country platforms, built on development effectiveness principles, in line with the globally agreed recommendations of IHP+2, can be reinforced within the framework of the Global Strategy and its supporting mechanisms and are key to the Global Strategy’s successful implementation; and 2) to lay out key considerations for new multi-stakeholder country platforms, along with the relevant mechanisms and a minimum set of standards...

The Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health 2016-30 highlights the importance of adolescent health and well-being as being essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030. For adolescents to survive, thrive and transform their societies, the global community needs to invest in their health and well-being. Today’s adolescents are well-positioned to mobilize their peers, advocate for increased resources for sexual and reproductive health and...

The DHS Analytical Studies 71 examines subnational variations in fertility preferences and family planning outcomes associated with poverty in married women in 12 recent Demographic and Health Surveys. Poverty is measured based on a standard set of criteria for unsatisfied basic needs and the ownership of specific assets. Households are categorized into three poverty groups: not extremely poor, extremely poor but not asset poor, and extremely poor and asset poor. This brief summarizes the...

The implementation plan for the civil society engagement strategy (CSES) is developed to provide civil society organizations in countries (CSOs) with an operational framework to strengthen their engagement in the GFF process with a view to supporting the achievement of the objectives of the GFF and national investment cases. The plan reflects and builds on, and should be read in conjunction with the CSES. It is shaped and informed by GFF country implementation experiences to date, 12345 as...

Without much preparation, Indonesia, in 2000, at a stroke replaced the previous system of centralized government and development planning with a wide range of decentralization programs. The reforms gave greater authority, political power, and financial resources directly to regencies and municipalities, bypassing the provinces. The powers transferred include those of executing a wide range of responsibilities in the areas of health, primary and middle-level education, public works,...

The project’s objective was to improve access to lower secondary education, by constructing 4 schools and extending the capacity of existing schools and their facilities in the target areas of Maputo Province and Gaza Province, thereby contributing to improvement of the quality of education. The project’s objective coincides with the development policy of Mozambique, which emphasizes the expansion of access to secondary education at the time of planning and also ex-post evaluation. It also...

This report provides a brief examination of how and where gender analysis is incorporated into Political Economy Analysis (PEA). An initial review of the literature indicates that gender is not systematically included in PEA. This was also conveyed by a number of experts consulted for this report, who stated that few if any PEAs to their knowledge had included a gender analysis, with the issue usually treated only in passing. The report nevertheless highlights the existing examples of...

The development industry is increasingly pushing practitioners to achieve results, and to do better in demonstrating what works, what does not, and explaining why. There is a growing interest in going beyond the measurement of results to being able to understand the basis for success or failure. Consequently, the development of explicit theories of change (ToCs) is starting to be viewed as central to this process, as a key part of what constitutes ‘rigour’ in impact evaluations. Citizen...

Decentralization has been underway in Indonesia for more than ten years, but recently many have challenged the how effectively decentralization – and even democratization – is being implemented. Deterioration in the quality of public services, the many corruption cases involving local governments, and low economic growth rates in some regions have prompted discourse about whether the country is making a reversal away from decentralization and democratization. We recognize that the move...

This report is about how women entrepreneurs can contribute more to the quality and direction of economic and social development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Economic growth in the Middle East has been remarkable since 2004, mainly because of higher oil prices. Rapid job growth has followed, driven mainly by the private sector. Yet the region still faces two important challenges: the first is to create better jobs for an increasingly educated young workforce; the second...

This chapter aims to shed light on the nature of men’s and women’s enterprises in Africa, to assess the extent to which the constraints and obstacles faced by women and men entrepreneurs may differ, and to address whether the constraints and obstacles entrepreneurs face affect the productivity and performance of men’s and women’s businesses differently.We begin with a brief overview of gender in the economy, followed by a more detailed analysis of available Enterprise Survey data where key...

This report examines the legal, administrative, and regulatory barriers that are preventing women in Kenya from contributing fully to the Kenyan economy. Building on the 2004 Foreign Investment and Advisory Service (FIAS) report, “Improving the Commercial Legal Framework and Removing Administrative and Regulatory Barriers to Investment,” this study looks at the bureaucratic barriers facing women in Kenya through a gender lens. The report makes specific recommendations to address...

SDC has been implementing projects in support to decentralisation and local governance for about 15 years. Today, arounf 2/3 of SDC's country programmes include a support to local governance and/or decentralisation. For this reason, an independent evaluation of  SDC’s achievements on “Decentralisation  and local governance” took place in 2006‐2007. One of the recommendations of this evaluation  was to  carry out  a capitalisation of SDC’s experiences in this field. SDC’s  Governance ...

This report presents findings from the Social Sector Performance Qualitative Study (SSPQS). The SSPQS was designed as a follow-up to the Social Sector Performance Surveys (SSPS), which were public expenditure tracking surveys undertaken in the primary and secondary education and government health and family planning systems between 2004 and 2006. In many respects, the SSPS findings were positive, documenting that systems of health and education service provision were functioning. While there...

In 2001, Indonesia embarked on a decentralization process that has had a dramatic impact on the local political landscape, especially in relation to taxation and administrative processes. Rules and procedures that govern licensing, registration, some taxes and user charges have largely been devolved to local governments. A significant number of new licenses and charges have been created at the local level, and most licenses are issued through a complicated system of procedures and agencies....

This paper brings together gender analysis, small scale enterprise analysis, and gender budget analysis in a development context. The paper demonstrates that gender matters not only to the ownership of an SME, but also to its most likely principal activity, the stock of the assets that it possesses, the labour that it utilizes, the costs that it faces, the revenues that it generates, and the profits that it earns. In particular, lower earnings for female-owned SMEs can be attributed to the...