Held in Paris each May to coincide with the annual OECD Ministerial
Council Meeting, the OECD Forum has emerged as a major
international stakeholder summit. Leaders from all sectors of civil society
gather to debate the most pressing social and economic challenges confronting
society. Together with current and former heads of state and government, Nobel
Prize winners, top CEOs, leaders of key non governmental organisations and
trade unions, and prominent members of academia and media ... YOU TOO can play
your part in helping shape responses to global challenges.
The big question at this year’s OECD Forum
is
‘what is the greatest challenge we face today – jobs, inequality,
economic growth?’
A great deal was packed into
the two days so we hope this article helps you to identify your areas of
interest and navigate your way through the different sessions.
Welcome to another Week in Review! This week’s post includes a ‘Resource Governance Index’, a ‘World
Health Statistics’ report and World Telecommunication & Information
Society Day.
State of Civil Society Report 2013 by CIVICUS calls for an enabling environment for civil society, it includes nearly 50 contributions from experts and civil society leaders from around the world. These experts highlighted good practices and challenges on the horizon for citizens and civil society globally.
"57% of the world’s population live in countries where basic civil liberties and political freedoms are curtailed"State of Civil Society Report 2013
The
2013 Resource Governance Index Report measures the quality of governance in the
oil, gas and mining sector of 58 countries. The RGI scores and ranks the
countries, relying on a detailed questionnaire completed by researchers with
expertise in the extractive industries. According to this year’s study there is
a major governance deficit in natural resources around the world, and the
deficit is largest in the most resource- dependent countries, where nearly half
a billion people live in poverty despite that resource wealth.
Wikigender
Special Focus: Women and Elections – As part of our focus on Governance,
Wikigender is currently spotlighting the critical role that women have to play
in elections to have their voice heard, both as voters and elected representatives.
This ‘Special Focus’ looks at the role of women in elections, drawing on
articles from various situations around the world.
World
Health Statistics 2013 – this report contains WHO’s annual compilation of
health-related data for its 194 Member States, and includes a summary of the
progress made towards achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) and associated targets.
World
Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD) is on 17 May - The purpose of WTISD is to help raise
awareness of the possibilities that the use of the Internet and other
information and communication technologies (ICT) can bring to societies and
economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide. Make sure you follow the#WTISD for updates!
Finally, don't miss World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development - The day provides us with an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the values of cultural diversity and raise awareness about the importance of intercultural dialogue, diversity and inclusion.
We look forward to checking in
next week to bring you more highlights from the world of well-being and
progress.
“Education
is our top priority but, once educated we want to be trained, enabled – and
funded – to take action to address the challenges faced by our generation
through youth-led development. We want, in Gandhi’s words, to ‘be the change’
we want to see in the world…” World
Youth Congress, Hawaii, 1999
On the
same day that the Bank of England upgraded its economic forecast, stating that
inflation is expected to drop within the next two years, the Trades Union
Congress reported that UK unemployment figures grew by 15,000 in the first
three months of 2012 to 2.52 million. Rising employment numbers in the latter
months of 2012 had offered a level of respite for the British government
following a bruising financial year, however, today’s findings show that
joblessness is still extensive.
The issue
remains embedded among young people, with jobless rates soaring towards the one
million mark and standing at 21.2% across the country. The TUC is concerned that while
employment prospects for older workers have been improving, those for young people are far worse, and have deteriorated further since mid-2010. The damaging
effects of unemployment on young people are well documented, and there is an
increasing risk that the UK’s current 15-24 year olds will suffer lasting damage to their
earnings potential and job prospects throughout their lives.
Global
figures are equally gloomy. Over the last few years we have been inundated with statistics on the deteriorating
situation in Europe (particularly Spain) for young job seekers and in Africa
well over half of 15-24 year olds are currently out of work. According to a UN led report released last week, the weakening world wide recovery has further
aggravated the youth job crisis and as a result the problem will continue
growing over the next five years. The International Labour Organization’s ‘Global Employment Trends forYouth 2013: A generation at risk’ estimates that 73.4 million young people (12.6 percent) are expected to be out of work in 2013, and by 2018, this will have reached
12.8 percent.
Graph taken from ILO Report 2013
The
report stipulates that young people face persistent unemployment, a proliferation of temporary
jobs and growing discouragement in advanced economies; and poor quality,
informal, subsistence jobs in developing countries:
“The economic and social costs of
unemployment, long-term unemployment, discouragement and widespread low-quality
jobs for young people continue to rise and undermine economies’ growth
potential,” ILO - Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013 report.
Despite
vocal concern around the issue, it seems that governments and organisations
have struggled to find an effective means of combating youth unemployment. The
recent World Economic Forum in Davos touched upon the subject on a number of
occasions with some leaders suggesting that a global fund for unemployment be
implemented. Yet there have been murmurings among critics that such steps are
simply inadequate when faced with the ‘tidal wave’ of jobless young people
sweeping the world’s nations. Lynda Cratton of the London Business School
believes that in a similar way to global warming, the sheer complexity of the
challenge renders it almost impossible to solve.
Following
the release of ‘A generation at risk’ the ILO’s assistant director-general for
policy José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs stated, ‘These
figures underline the need to focus policies on growth, massive improvements in
training systems and targeted youth employment actions’.
Two recentWikichildSpotlight reports look at tackling youth unemployment through effective governance.
- Developed
byUNICEFandSave the Children,
Children's Rights
and Business Principlesprovides a comprehensive
framework for understanding and addressing the impact of business on the rights
and well-being of children. The Children’s Rights and Business Principles are
built on existing standards and practices and helps to explain the opportunities
for business of investing in children.
- First
published in Nairobi last year, UN-HABITAT’s State of the Field
in Youth Development sheds light on how youth are positively
impacting communities around the world. As part of wider series, this
particular report stresses how young people can be beneficial to communities,
and how local, national and international governments can implement, engage and
support youth and youth led initiatives.
Both
reports look to brand young people as ambassadors of change. ‘Children’s
Right’s and Business Principles’ recognizes that children are among the most
marginalised members of society, yet when provided with the agency to
participate, they have shown that they can offer vital alternative viewpoints
and make effective contributions. Similarly, ‘State of the Field’ emphasizes
the need to have faith in the power of young people to contribute
constructively to the good of society. It seems that both publications hope to
change the attitude of governing bodies towards young people by showing that
they themselves have placed youths at the center of their own projects. The
‘State of the Field’ report lists countless examples of how initiatives led by
young people have positively benefited society.
Youth
unemployment is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges facing governments this
century and will worsen as populations swell and education becomes more readily
available. However, the two publications featured provide hard facts about
how the integration of young people in a country’s workforce can catalyse economic
prosperity. With the development of more projects similar to the ones mentioned
in the ‘State of the Field’ it seems that we can go someway to combating the
problem.
"Communities
in rural areas and urban settlements must be empowered to increase their
resilience through access to safe water, improved sanitation and effective
hygiene promotion." Getting the Balance Right, International Federation of Red Cross, 2013
This post follows on from Wednesday's blog on the dangers of diarrhoea by focusing on the disease’s chief causation:
poor sanitation. Currently 3.4 million people die each year from water, sanitation and hygiene-related causes (Water.org). An
estimated 2.5 billion do not have access to basic sanitation and 1.1 billion of
those people practice open defecation. This is not only degrading but a severe
health risk as fecal matter-oral transmitted diseases cause at least 1.5
million deaths per year in children under the age of five (Getting the Balance Right). As Gary White and Matt Damon so bluntly put it, by the time you’ve read
this paragraph, another child will have died from something that is eminently
preventable.
In the same way that inequality has reared its head in the post-2015 discussions, forcing global
leaders to consider how poverty reduction might be carried out more equitably
in the future, it is evident that we need to addresswater and sanitation issues. The "Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation 2012" report by the WHO and UNICEF highlights that, although the MDG target of halving the
number of people globally without access to improved water source will be fulfilled by the MDG 2015 deadline, the target for sanitation is unlikley to be met.
More often than not aid donors and development agencies have aimed at providing clean and safe water supplies
rather than making sanitation a priority. As it stands, sanitation only
receives 12 percent of global aid put towards combatting water and sanitation
related issues. In the short term this trajectory make sense, since water is
usually in more immediate demand, however, if diarrhoea and other hygiene
related illnesses are to be dealt with, access to sanitation facilities must be
increased. The ‘Getting the balance right’ report emphasizes that ‘neither
water nor sanitations is more important: both elements are required to maintain
and improve health and dignity.’
Water.org argues that the inability of philanthropic efforts to efficiently deal
with the problem of poor sanitation has been a problem in the past. Even the money that has gone towards
solving the issue has largely missed the goal of providing relief for those
most in need. The organization recognized that if local communities were to
make progress, independent of donors, then they must be
viewed and view themselves as the owners of the project. Community ownership is
the linchpin of Water.org’s philosophy. Without an active engagement from
communities from the start of a project to its completion there is a strong
likelihood that previously entrenched social norms such as public defecation will
continue.
The ‘Getting the Balance Right’ report
delivers a similar message, and uses a number of examples of community-based
initiatives that have succeeded in improving sanitation. In Eritrea, a country
where only three percent of its rural population has access to sanitation, the IFRC and the EU implemented a program focused on mobilizing and educating women
in hygiene knowledge that reached a total of 145,000 people in 120 villages. By
empowering these local women and providing them with information,
the program motivated them to become promoters of sanitation within their own communities.
The Water.org website also lists various bottom to the top initiatives that
have shown remarkable success rates. An Emory University review of a Water.org
community based ventures in Lempira, Honduras reported that 100 per cent of the project sites were still operational after 10 years with 98 per cent of
respondents satisfied with the system.
Since poor sanitation is now firmly in the
crosshairs of policy makers and aid groups, it seems that the Water.org and
IRFC have laid out a fairly effective framework for combating the problem. Changing intrinsic social norms from the routes of a
community appears a far more effective means of catalyzing change than large,
trickle down cash injections. The flow of international water aid must of
course be rebalanced towards sanitation, but organizations, governments and
NGOs need to go further and ensure that it reaches the right groups and
individuals. The stark reality of IRCF’s report brings to light the
vital role that sanitation plays in human health and dignity:
"Let
us speak clearly; the single largest cause of human illness globally is faecal
matter. A society – regardless of how many clinics or water supply points it
has – can never be healthy is human waste is not safely disposed of." Getting the Balance Right
