How can we ensure that the actions we know are required to strengthen resilience are actually taken? This report addresses this question by setting out a vision of a resilient future in Asia and the Pacific and then working backwards to identify potential pathways to its achievement. It highlights the importance of coordinated action, and the links between progress across ...» 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.
Taxation and Livelihoods: A Review of the Evidence from Fragile and Conflict-Affected Rural Areas
This literature review notes that the evidence base on tax and livelihoods in low-income rural areas – particularly those affected by fragility and conflict – is extremely thin. However, the evidence it reviews suggests that, in many developing country contexts, a variety of forms of taxation take place at once. These involve multiple actors, operate at formal and informal ...» more
Youth Unemployment and Political Instability in Selected Developing Countries
This paper finds that youth unemployment is significantly associated with an increase of the risk of political instability. It uses fixed-effects regression with instrumental variables on a sample of 24 developing countries over the period 1980-2010. The authors suggest that exceptionally large youth unemployment rate, associated with socioeconomic inequalities and corruption, ...» more
Securing Communities: the what and the how of community policing
This paper examines the definitions, objectives, models and influencing factors of community policing (COP). It draws on broad academic and policy literatures, and empirical examples. The paper finds little consensus on the definitions, objectives and models of COP, but notes that the form COP takes is connected to histories of state-society relations. Community policing can ...» more
Who’s in Charge Here? A Literature Review of Approaches to Leadership in Humanitarian Operations
This report goes beyond analysis of individual skills and abilities to consider the role of the organisation and of the group in ensuring effective humanitarian leadership. It is the result of a review of documentation from international humanitarian organisations and from other fields, such as civil defence, the military, and emergency medicine. The review identifies three ...» more
The Design of Pro-Poor Policies: How to Make Them More Effective
This paper focuses on the micro-level impact of aid-funded projects and how the design of such projects can maximise their impact on poverty alleviation. It draws on the literature and on field research among sex workers in Kolkata, India, that provides evidence about the impact of raising aspirations in a marginalised, stigmatised community. Findings include the ...» more
Scoping study: What works in protection and how do we know?
Relief organisations have found it easier to measure the impact of their interventions in relation to material needs than activities geared to enhancing protection. This study, commissioned by DFID, undertakes a review of the literature to summarise what we know about what works in protection and to suggest further areas for research. The review studied 173 documents including ...» more
Social Protection Pathways: Shaping Social Justice Outcomes for the Most Marginalised, Now and Post-2015
Social injustice arises from structural inequalities which lead to unequal capabilities and outcomes for excluded and marginalised groups. There is a growing consensus that social justice requires addressing not just income deficits but also structural vulnerabilities and power hierarchies. This Background Note develops a conceptual framework at a number of scales from ...» more
Understanding and Tackling Violence Outside of Armed Conflict Settings
Understanding and tackling violence that occurs outside of armed conflict settings is essential to improving the wellbeing of some of the world’s poorest communities. Whilst advances have been made in terms of designing policies that address violence in fragile or conflict-affected countries, progress has been slower in relation to dealing with violence happening outside of ...» more
What is the evidence of the impact of initiatives to reduce risk and incidence of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict zones and other humanitarian crises in lower and middle-income countries? A systematic review
This review finds that implementation of conflict and crisis related-sexual violence initiatives on the ground remains very limited. It also highlights an acute lack of evaluation of such interventions, leading to insufficient evidence for the effectiveness of any interventions to address or prevent sexual violence in conflict or crisis. However, it notes that strategies appear ...» more
From Shared Risk to Shared Value – The Business Case for Disaster Risk Reduction
This 2013 edition of the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction examines how public regulation and private investment shapes disaster risk. It finds that direct disaster losses are at least 50 percent higher than internationally reported figures. Total direct losses in 40 low- and middle-income countries amount to US$305 billion over the last 30 years; of these ...» more
A Critical Review of Community-Driven Development Programmes in Conflict-Affected Contexts
This study finds that the record of Community-Driven Development / Reconstruction (CDD/R) in conflict-affected contexts is mixed and, overall, disappointing in terms of reaching the ambitious goals set out. The study draws on: a review of five rigorous evaluations of CDD/R programmes in Afghanistan, DRC, Indonesia (Aceh), Liberia, and Sierra Leone; a broader literature review; ...» more
The Role of Men in the Economic and Social Development of Women: Implications for Gender Equality
This paper is a critical review of the literature on the issue of how male behaviour affects female outcomes in the promotion of gender equality. It employs the family as the main unit of analysis because a large part of gender interactions occurs within this institution. This survey first summarizes recent studies on the distribution of power within the family and identifies ...» more
Enterprising Women : Expanding Economic Opportunities in Africa
This book brings together new household and enterprise data from 41 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to inform policy makers and practitioners on ways to expand women entrepreneurs’ economic opportunities.Sub-Saharan Africa boasts the highest share of women entrepreneurs, but they are disproportionately concentrated among the self-employed rather than employers. Relative to men, ...» more
How can Safety Nets Contribute to Economic Growth?
The paper provides an up-to date and selective review of the literature on how social safety nets contribute to growth.The evidence is carefully chosen to show how safety nets have the potential to overcome constraints on growth linked to market failures, and is organized into 4 distinct pathways: encouraging asset accumulation by changing incentives and by addressing ...» more
Financial Inclusion and Legal Discrimination against Women: Evidence from Developing Countries
This paper documents and analyzes gender differences in the use of financial services using individual-level data from 98 developing countries. The data, drawn from the Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) database, highlight the existence of significant gender gaps in ownership of accounts and usage of savings and credit products. Even after controlling for a host of ...» more
Violent Conflict and Gender Inequality: An Overview
Violent conflict has lasting impacts on human capital, and these impacts are seldom gender neutral. Death and destruction alter the structure and dynamics of households, including their demographic profiles and traditional gender roles. Attention to the gender impacts of conflict has tended to focus on sexual and gender-based violence. The authors suggest that a wider set of ...» more
It’s All About MeE: Using Structured Experiential Learning (“e”) to Crawl the Design Space
This paper argues that within-project variations in design can serve as their own counterfactual, reducing the incremental cost of evaluation and increasing the direct usefulness of evaluation to implementing agencies. It suggests combining monitoring (‘M’), structured experiential learning (‘e’), and evaluation (‘E’) so as to facilitate innovation and organisational capability ...» more
Managing Famine Risk: Linking Early Warning to Early Action
This document is the final report of a Chatham House research project on the barriers that hinder appropriate response to early warning of slow-onset food crises. It finds that famine risk is well understood but badly managed. Famine early warning does not lead to early action, often because of governments' perceptions of political risk: changing the status quo requires that ...» more
Post-Conflict Traditional Justice: A Critical Overview
This paper examines the debates surrounding recent attempts to introduce local accountability mechanisms into structures of transitional justice in politically fragile and post-conflict situations. It notes that we still know remarkably little about the role and impact of informal justice processes in post-conflict situations. Better assessment and monitoring are required. ...» more
