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UNDP's Development Futures Series Briefs and Working Papers
UNDP’s Development Futures Series (DFS) is a series of papers penned by UNDP personnel from around the world sharing evidence and insights grounded in deep study, data and practice, while exploring new ideas, analysis and policy recommendations relevant for the future of development. The DFS aims to publish bottom-up and evidence-based knowledge aiming to reach and influence global, regional and country-level policy debates, with a focus on thought leadership, data and analytics on the top development issues of today — and tomorrow. The DFS publishes in two formats: Short Policy Briefs linking evidence to practical policy recommendations, and longer Working Papers presenting data analysis and in-depth research. UNDP’s DFS papers are especially valuable for policy makers, development practitioners, researchers, and specialized journalists.
1 - 20 of 22 results
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Fit for Purpose? Area-Based Programming in Contemporary Crisis and Development Response
Publication Date: December 2023More LessAmidst increasingly protracted and complex crises and ‘development emergencies’, the operational environment for development agencies like UNDP requires programming approaches that can be applied across the humanitarian development-peace nexus. These approaches must integrate interventions from multiple sectors and be truly locally owned. After decades of use in development practice, area-based programming (ABP) still has the potential to meet these simultaneous needs. This paper explores the unique characteristics of ABP and its applicability to complex development and crisis settings. It further proposes new frontiers of practice moving forward.
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What Are the Main Barriers to Formalizing Paid Domestic Work? Lessons From Paraguay
Publication Date: August 2023More LessPaid domestic work employs many women in developing countries. Paraguay, where 94 percent of domestic workers are women and more than 90 percent of these jobs are informal, represents an extreme case of a problem that is common throughout the globe. These workers lack access to social security and generally endure precarious working conditions. What are the different legal, institutional, social and gender barriers that prevent domestic workers from having greater access to social security? Drawing on different sources of data from Paraguay, including the voices of both domestic workers and their employers, this study shows how persistently low levels of social security coverage in this sector are a product of complex interlocking factors: discriminatory cultural and gender beliefs, lack of accurate information and knowledge about social security, the low bargaining power of informal domestic workers and the low capacity for labour inspection that prevail in the sector. Based on these observations, the conclusions lay out guidelines to design integrated public policies for the sector’s formalization.
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Harnessing the Potential of Human-in-the-loop Artificial Intelligence for Risk Anticipation and Violence Prevention
Authors: United Nations Development Programme, Fabio Oliva and Brian McQuinnPublication Date: August 2023More LessDevelopment organizations and conflict experts struggle to manage the magnitude, complexity and persistent volatility that characterize contemporary crises. Conflicts evolve at such a rapid pace that the amount of data produced by conflict or crisis situations is simply overwhelming. Because of the sheer amount of data and the pace at which they are being produced, human beings are unable to track crisis evolutions and manage effective decision-making processes. Under these radically changing circumstances, artificial intelligence (AI) can help us understand, and even anticipate, the outbreak and evolution of a crisis. Human-in-the-loop (HITL) AI combines the power of machine learning with human intelligence to address complex issues. This brief presents examples from Afghanistan and Ukraine to showcase applications of HILT artificial intelligence in the sphere of conflict resolution, particularly emphasizing risk anticipation and violence prevention.
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Unrealized Potential: Female Entrepreneurship and the Digital Gender Gap in Sub-Saharan Africa
Publication Date: August 2023More LessPromoting entrepreneurship, technology adoption, and gender equality is essential for economic growth. However, women still face significant hurdles in Africa, hindering their entrepreneurial pursuits. To overcome this, gender inclusive institutions are needed. This article focuses on challenges women encounter in entrepreneurship, including market systems favouring men and the widening digital gender gap in sub-Saharan Africa. Recommendations are provided to empower women through entrepreneurship, employment and digitalization, fostering a more equal economy and improved socio-economic conditions.
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The Human Cost of Inaction: Poverty, Social Protection and Debt Servicing, 2020–2023
Publication Date: July 2023More LessTwenty-five developing economies, the highest number since 2000, spent over 20 percent of their government revenues in 2022 on total external debt servicing. The average low-income country spends about 2.3 times more on interest payments than on social assistance. Due to the economic shocks during 2020-2023, we project that 165 million people fell into poverty using the $3.65-a-day poverty line—the entirety of those living in low- and lower-middle-income economies. A pause in debt payments would allow developing economies weighed down by debt to mitigate some social effects of these shocks, using resources earmarked for debt servicing. This policy brief presents simulations that show that the annual cost of mitigating the additional 165 million poor would reach US$14.24 billion, or 0.009 percent of global GDP and a little less than 4 percent of total public external debt service in 2022—if the income losses among the already poor prior to the shocks are also included, the mitigation cost would reach US$107.11 billion, or 0.065 percent of the world’s GDP and around a fourth of total external public debt service.
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Responsible Digital Payments: How to Prioritize Women for Financial Equality and Inclusive Economies
Publication Date: July 2023More LessThis policy brief outlines the power of responsible digital payments in promoting financial inclusion for women. Despite the progress in recent years, 740 million women still lack access to financial services. The factors behind this are a lack of access to formal types of ID, limited financial capability and inadequate service design, among many other constraints against women. This brief emphasizes the opportunity and the importance of removing the structural barriers to women’s economic and financial participation. It offers actionable recommendations for the key steps that policymakers and other stakeholders can take to prioritize women in their efforts toward digital financial inclusion.
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We are the First Spark: The Quest of Women Peacebuilders in Iraq for a More Peaceful and Equal Society
Publication Date: July 2023More LessThis brief examines how the women members of peace groups, established through a UNDP initiative in Iraq, overcame traditional barriers to play the role of peacemakers and social developers in their communities. From their perspective, the brief highlights the opportunities made available in post-conflict Iraq and identifies three realms that remained key in assuming their new roles in society: family dynamics, interactions with male community members and the media. Thus, it provides an understanding of the pathways through which women in traditional and conflict-affected societies like Iraq assumed the responsibility to rebuild their communities and initiate a structural shift in gender equality and social norms.
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Women as Agents of Change for Greening Agriculture and Reducing Gender Inequality
Authors: United Nations Development Programme and Meeran JamalPublication Date: June 2023More LessThe policy brief highlights the essentiality of women in agriculture and their potential role in shifting to sustainable agriculture, increasing food security and increasing agricultural productivity when they have access and ability to adopt innovative agriculture techniques such as climate-smart agriculture practices (CSA). This policy brief identifies key actions that can remove barriers or women in agriculture, including collection of gender disaggregated data for gender-sensitive planning, research analysis, advocacy for equitable access to productive assets, capacity building and awareness raising, and cross-sector collaborations to enable gender-equitable access to infrastructure, financial capital, productive assets and other services.
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Durable Transformation and Structural Changes for Gender Equality Through PFMS and Budgetary Circles
Publication Date: June 2023More LessThis paper showcases how a model that uses gender-responsive budgeting as a tool to promote gender equality, developed in the context of the Programme for Consolidating Economic Governance and PFMS in the PALOP-TL countries, Pro PALOP-TL SAI, leads to transformational and structural changes in PFMS and, consequently, results in more gender-equal economies and gender equality in the referenced countries (and could also be applied to other countries or at regional/global levels).
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Multidimensional Poverty Index with a Focus on Women: A proposal for Latin America and the Caribbean
Publication Date: June 2023More LessThis paper aims to draw attention to the need to create an innovative measure that allows us to devel into women's poverty and its specificities. Only by performing an accurate analysis of women’s multidimensional poverty will it be possible to respond to their specific needs, identify the bottlenecks that prevent them from escaping poverty and make policy recommendations that are gender-sensitive in that regard. This paper presents a proposal for a Multidimensional Poverty Index with a focus on women in Latin America and the Caribbean, including results for 10 countries: Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Dominican Republic, and Uruguay. Estimates show that 28 percent of women in the analysed countries are multidimensionally poor. Uruguay and Chile exhibit the lowest incidence, below 10 percent, while in Honduras and El Salvador, more than 62 percent of adult women are multidimensionally poor.
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Towards Resilient and Equitable Development in Costa Rica with Women and Nature at the Forefront
Publication Date: June 2023More LessIn recent years, the Government of Costa Rica has recognized the importance of promoting gender equality and women empowerment in the conservation and sustainable use of forests. Costa Rica recognizes that promoting gender equality implies not only mentioning the issue as a priority or as a principle, but also prioritizing the identification of relevant gender inequalities and proposing concrete actions to address them. This brief examines how the Government of Costa Rica, with support from UNDP, is addressing prevalent gender gaps, empowering women in the environmental sector, and comprehensively integrating gender into environmental policies, governance and finance. This, in turn, has resulted in an innovative and gender-responsive offer of environmental incentives in the country that are scaling up results at an influential level, simultaneously increasing women’s economic empowerment, promoting sustainable use of forests and combating climate change.
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Global Decarbonization in Fossil Fuel Export-Dependent Economies: Fiscal and Economic Transition Costs
Authors: United Nations Development Programme and Lars JensenPublication Date: May 2023More LessThis paper takes a closer look at the potentially huge economic and fiscal transition costs of global decarbonization in fossil fuel export-dependent economies. The paper identifies 40 heavily fossil fuel dependent economies. It is estimated that these countries will lose more than 60 percent in oil rents alone during the period 2023-2040 under a net-zero 2050 global decarbonization scenario compared to a ‘business as usual’ scenario reflecting stated policies. Local projections analysis provide evidence in support of possibly large adverse impacts on growth, government revenue and debt from a rapid fall in global fossil fuel demand in net-exporting emerging markets and developing economies. Finally, the paper discusses the mitigating domestic and international policy options to help countries.
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Who Picks (Y)our Waste? Evidence-based Observations and Policy Priorities for Equitable Development
Authors: United Nations Development Programme, Amee Misra and Daksh BahetiPublication Date: April 2023More LessWaste-pickers are one of the most crucial yet often ignored segments of the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programming. These workers often labour in hazardous conditions under the uncertainty of informal employment but are the key to keeping the environment clean and our cities (particularly urban spaces) safe. Challenges these workers face - such as limited earning capacity, increased risk of falling into poverty and insecurities of food, income, work and livelihood - have been further accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges have been noted to be worse for women - who are more vulnerable to significant impacts on their health - with potential intergenerational impacts. This brief, drawing from broad themes of socio-economic insecurity among informal workers across developing nations, presents on-ground evidence on demographic, employment, identification, housing and social security characteristics of waste pickers from across ten states in India. It also discusses some policy directions to ensure structural transformation towards resilient and equitable development for this cohort.
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Policy Implications of the Gender, Inclusion and Climate Change Nexus: Experiences from Sri Lanka
Publication Date: April 2023More LessDevelopment discourse has long acknowledged the disproportionate impact of climate change and its implications for women and other marginalized social groups and has called for gender-responsive and inclusive climate action in international, national and local arenas. However, some countries are still pursuing development trajectories that fall short on gender sensitivity and social inclusion, worsening the impacts on women and marginalized groups while hindering resilience-building efforts. Given Sri Lanka’s heightened climate vulnerability and the exacerbated climate risks on women and other socially excluded demographics, and responding to the call for action in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this brief examines the level to which Sri Lanka’s development and climate policies and strategies integrate a gender and social inclusion approach in comparison to regional peers. Drawing on this work, this brief then provides recommendations to improve the climate policy landscape of Sri Lanka, including the gender-responsiveness of such work, to inform the country’s ongoing National Climate Change Policy revisions.
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Building Blocks out of the Crisis: The UN’s SDG Stimulus Plan
Publication Date: February 2023More LessThe UN’s SDG Stimulus Plan, which calls for additional liquidity, effective debt restructuring and the expansion of development financing, has the potential to free up significant fiscal space in developing economies. For 52 most debt-vulnerable economies, a 30 percent haircut of 2021 public external debt stock could lower debt service payments in 2022–2029 by between US$44 billion and $148 billion, depending on the participation of various creditor classes. For all developing economies, a 40 percent “refinancing” of their 2021 bond debt stock to average official creditor rates could amount to a $121 billion savings on interest payments in 2022–2029. Against the backdrop of growing economic and geopolitical fragmentation, this policy brief describes building blocks for exiting the crisis.
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Synergies in Jointly Addressing Climate Change, Health Equity and Gender Equality
Publication Date: February 2023More LessClimate change is already impacting negatively on the health and well-being of individuals across the globe, and this burden is likely to become more important and debilitating over time. Due to deep-rooted systemic inequalities, the growing negative consequences disproportionately affect diverse women, girls and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. The same structural and cultural factors that render them more vulnerable also limit their meaningful participation in mitigation and adaptation planning and marginalize their needs. This policy brief argues the case that to enable gender-transformative, intersectional and rights-based approaches, climate change, gender and other social determinants of health must therefore be considered and addressed jointly where possible. A systems-based approach can improve the understanding of important synergies and co-benefits, feedback loops, trade-offs and unanticipated consequences that are critical to priority-setting and effective responses. It can also foster critically needed cross-sectoral collaboration among the policymakers and advocates who work on climate, health and gender equality.
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Choosing Your Tomorrows: Using Foresight and Anticipatory Governance to Explore Multiple Futures in Support of Risk-Informed Development
Authors: United Nations Development Programme, Paul Conrad, Sahiti Sarva and Rebecca SmithPublication Date: February 2023More LessThe future is full of complex uncertainty and unknown risk; with this in mind, how we can achieve meaningful, sustainable development which is not undermined by crises? Foresight and the concept of working with alternative futures grants policymakers and decision-makers the ability to become anticipatory and to support both risk-informed and forward-looking development. By embracing foresight as a key component of the risk-informed development process, we can foster governance processes that are genuinely risk-conscientious and ready to take on the challenges of our different tomorrows.
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Stepping Forward: Parliaments in the Fight Against Hate Speech
Publication Date: January 2023More LessThis brief provides an overview of the background, drivers, enablers and the impact of hate speech and identifies strategies to counter it, with a focus on the role of parliaments as a positive force for change. Of particular relevance are the concrete actions parliaments can take to address and mitigate the prevalence and impact of hate speech on those who are most vulnerable in society, including women, minorities and other underrepresented groups. The objective of this brief is to provide meaningful and practical guidance for parliaments and parliamentarians, as well as those who programmatically support them, on steps they can take to reduce and counter hate speech while fostering peace, constructive dialogue and trust.
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Collaborative Dispute Resolution: An Effective Out-of-Court Remedy in Syria
Publication Date: December 2022More LessThe crisis resulting from over a decade of violent conflict and ensuing economic crisis in Syria has resulted in over half of the population displaced, fragmentation of the country and breakdown of many important social networks and institutions. Communities and families continue to suffer increasing interpersonal conflict related to housing, land, divorce and domestic challenges, and rights of women. On a larger scale, these disputes are destabilizing and may prevent Syria’s overall recovery. International experiences and best practices from similar crisis contexts have demonstrated that the institutionalization of collaborative dispute resolution (CDR) mechanisms provide an efficient approach to enable disputing parties to exercise their rights while increasing trust and cohesion at the community level. This paper presents research conducted by UNDP to improve the understanding of existing and accepted types of community mediation. The piloting of the CDR mechanism has proven the value of an out-of-court mechanism through which disputes may be resolved in an efficient manner while enabling many Syrians to embrace their rights and engage in peaceful resolutions, contributing to improved social cohesion and longer-term recovery for the community. It illustrates how building social cohesion through improved access to justice and community-based resolutions effectively contributes to overall peace.
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Cryptocurrency in Africa: Alternative Opportunities for Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals?
Authors: United Nations Development Programme, Ankun Liu, Orria Goni and Aiaze MithaPublication Date: December 2022More LessThe compounding crises of the COVID-19 pandemic, unchecked climate change and the war in Ukraine have caused severe negative economic, social and environmental consequences across the globe. We are facing a risk of a sharply diverging world with inequalities widening between developed and developing countries and within developing countries themselves, between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, men and women. This is especially true for the African continent, which has already suffered a loss of almost a decade of development gains. But, consistent with the findings of the UN Secretary-General’s Task Force on Digital Financing ‘People’s Money: Harnessing Digitalization to Finance a Sustainable Future’, the pandemic has put a spotlight on the role of digital finance and its accelerated applications in response to the crisis. A key question in this regard is how to use digital finance to improve economic participation, agency and resilience of people, facilitate cross-border trade and support sustainable development while addressing the risks of the widening digital divide. This paper will present the emerging applications of cryptocurrency in Africa, examine the evolving regulatory landscape and key accompanying risks and suggest potential policy considerations for leveraging this nascent, innovative instrument towards the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the continent.
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