What are the main dedicated climate funds that focus on adaptation finance, who receives the money and what kinds of adaptation projects are funded? This brief examines these issues.Key findings:The largest sources of approved funding for adaptation projects are currently the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) of the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds and the Least ...» more
Library
This e-library contains more than 4500 external publications on governance, social development, conflict and humanitarian issues. It includes academic and grey literature selected for its basis in good quality research and coverage of a range of perspectives. Policy-oriented summaries of each document are provided, plus links to the full text.
The South Asia Women’s Resilience Index: Examining the role of women in preparing for and recovering from disasters
This report discusses the findings of the South Asia Women’s Resilience Index (WRI).The WRI draws upon a range of indicators in four categories—Economic, Infrastructure, Institutional and Social—to assess the capacity of a country to adapt to and recover from quick onset events that fall outside the range of those that are normal or anticipated.Key findings:Most South Asian ...» more
Girls’ Education and Gender Equality
This literature review investigates the kind of interventions that can help expand and improve girls’ education and gender equality. All relevant literature published since 1991 was identified and systematically reviewed by a team of experts. A Theory of Change (ToC) was developed for the review which distinguishes between three kinds of interventions, namely those focusing ...» more
2013/4 Education for All Global Monitoring Report: Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all
This Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report underlines the fact that people in the most marginalised groups have continued to be denied opportunities for education over the decade. It argues for an accelerated progress in the final stages of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and proposes a robust global post-2015 education framework to tackle unfinished business ...» more
Better Value for Money: An organising framework for management and measurement of VFM indicators
This paper provides an organising framework that attempts to provide a means to better understand, express and enable judgements to be reached on Value for Money (VFM) in development programmes.The framework is based on, but evolves around the 4Es approach (Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness and Equity). It aims to do two things: bring the dimensions of value ...» more
ICT Pathways to Poverty Reduction: Empirical evidence from East and Southern Africa
Do ICTs result in poverty reduction? This book looks at the links between ICTs and poverty reduction. The links are considered at three main levels: 1) access to ICTs and the relationship of such access to poverty; 2) impact of ICTs on poverty reduction; and 3) use of ICTs as potential pathways to poverty reduction. Impact is assessed both in terms of the causal relationship ...» more
East African prospects: an update on the political economy of Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda
Under what conditions are equity- and productivity-enhancing reforms likely to prosper in sectors of the East African economy? How likely is it that these conditions will be present in the next decade? What specific features of the current political-economic situation are most relevant from the perspective of practical organisations committed to supporting progressive changes? ...» more
Armageddon or Adolescence? Making Sense of Microfinance’s Recent Travails
This paper reviews the triumphs and troubles of the microfinance industry. It then sets forth a frame for assessing the impact of microfinance, one that helps put the recent challenges in perspective. It offers some thoughts, in light of these difficulties, about key tasks going forward. It concludes that microcredit stimulates small-scale business activity, but the best ...» more
Economic strengthening activities in child protection interventions: An adapted systematic review
This paper is part of a broader research and networking programme that aims to strengthen linkages between action on poverty, development and child protection. It reports on an adapted systematic review that examines the contribution of anti-poverty programmes to child protection interventions in four areas – child marriage, sexual violence, physical violence and inadequate ...» more
Peace Education and Conflict Transformation
This paper looks at the contribution peace education can make to conflict transformation, focusing on the one hand, on the theoretical foundations of peace education and, on the other, on developing context-appropriate practical approaches.The paper develops a basic concept of internationally oriented, context-related and process-oriented peace education. It also presents a ...» more
Progress on women’s empowerment: From technical fixes to political action
What progress has been made in women’s empowerment and what factors have enabled this? This paper looks at the structural causes of women’s oppression and lack of power. It examines empowerment, and the programme-related implications of its various interpretations. The paper also provides an overview of the main factors that have enabled women and their allies to challenge ...» more
Counter-terrorism laws and regulations: what aid agencies need to know
What are the practical and legal consequences of counterterrorism laws for humanitarian action? This paper provides an overview of some of the most salient questions that humanitarian actors are grappling with in planning effective, principled, and lawful operations in high-risk environments. It highlights several factors which seem to indicate significant and possibly ...» more
Humanitarian Innovation: The State of the Art
By creating shared definitions and principles, identifying good practices, and lifting barriers to ethical, user-led innovation, humanitarian actors can help transform the sector and meet the challenges of an ever-changing world. This paper sets out to develop a common language and framework as a basis for dialogue, debate, and collaboration. The paper looks at the rise of ...» more
Fragile Reforms: World Bank and Asian Development Bank financing in fragile and conflict-affected situations
Drawing from research into the delivery of five bank-financed projects covering infrastructure and other sectors, this study highlights a range of insights and opportunities to enhance how the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) approach project financing in fragile and conflict-affected situations.The study documents how conflict-sensitive approaches are and are ...» more
To be well at heart: women’s perceptions of psychosocial wellbeing in three conflict affected countries
This article presents the results of a participatory study utilising ethnographic methods to develop a phenomenological understanding of how women in three conflict-affected settings understand, experience and operationalise the term ‘psychosocial well-being’. The study was conducted in three countries (Burundi, Nepal and Uganda), where CARE Österreich (an international relief ...» more
Lessons on Lessons: Why we haven’t learnt anything new for 68 years
This lessons brief is a summary of a workshop given by Dr. Robert Lamb in conjunction with the Stabilisation Unit. The workshop discussed how to identify recurrent systemic failures in lesson learning within fragile states and consider how they can best be addressed. The presentation systematically reviewed ‘lessons’ research since 1949 and established that researchers have ...» more
Votes and Violence: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Nigeria
This paper investigates the 2007 Nigerian election violence based on a nationwide field experiment based on anti-violence campaigning. The campaign was randomised across neighbourhoods and villages of six states of Nigeria. These states represent the main socio-economic regions of the country. The campaign was conducted in half of those locations before the 2007 elections by a ...» more
The role of informal service providers in post-conflict reconstruction and state building
This chapter argues that current debates on state building are flawed because they employ a European and Weberian conception of state building premised on the conception of the state as a legal personality, an ordering power, and a set of formal arrangements that institutionalise power. This conception is not well adapted to service delivery and state building in most ...» more
Community Security: A Vehicle for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding
It is now broadly recognised that in the long term there cannot be security without development, nor development without security. This briefing explains the concept and practice of ‘community security’, an innovative and effective approach that builds security from the bottom up by empowering communities, authorities and security providers to work together to find local ...» more
Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth
This paper examines the relationship between inequality, redistribution and growth. Earlier work on the inequality-growth relationship has generally confounded the effects of redistribution and inequality. The focus of this study is on the medium and long term, both growth over five-year periods and the duration of growth spells. This paper is the first to make use of a ...» more
