Week in Review

Hello,

We are glad to share a few headlines with you after another busy and eventful week. This week, highlights include: corruption, terrorism, volunteerism and a video interview with Nic Marks.

Corruption
Transparency International released the 2012 edition of the Corruption Perceptions Index on Wednesday. The index scores 176 countries with high levels of corruption, scored at 100 to low levels of corruption scored at 0. The index shows that two thirds of the countries ranked scored below 50, meaning they are significantly corrupt. 

See 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index

Terrorism
The Institute for Economics and Peace released the inaugural Global Terrorism Index this week that ranks 158 countries according to the impact of terrorism. The research shows that since the Iraq invasion, the number of terrorist incidents have increased by over 460%, however the number of deaths caused by terrorism has decreased. 

See Global Terrorism Index

Are terrorism and corruption related?

Rank*	Corruption Perceptions Index	Global Terrorism Index
1	Somalia	Iraq
2	North Korea	Pakistan
3	Afghanistan	Afghanistan
4	Sudan	India
5	Myanmar	Yemen

*  the country suffering the most from corruption or suffering the largest impact from terrorism

Volunteerism
On Wednesday, the world celebrated the International Day of the Volunteer. Wikis rely on volunteers to create and share information. According to Internet guru Clay Shirky, a wiki is a hybrid of tool and a community. On behalf of this Wiki family (Wikiprogress, Wikigender and Wikichild) we would like to thank every one who have taken time to write, edit, create and share information.

Number Crunch
If volunteers were a nation they would be the 10th largest country in the world. That's 140 million volunteers.

16% of people worldwide volunteer their time for an organisation

Nic Marks
Nic Marks is a key progress thinker and one of the champions of the well-being movement. In this interview he talks about the need for a system where the economy serves human well-being, not the other way around.



Yours in Progress,
Philippa Lysaght

Davos: African economies essentially rely on women

This post by Angela Luci first appeared on Gender Debate.

Guinea’s president Alpha Condé, who came to this year’s World Economic Forum at Davos before participating at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, discusses the crisis of capitalism and new business models for Africa. He sees giving women better access to micro-credits and therewith enhancing their economic empowerment as a major step towards more economic and social development in Africa.

                                                           image: www.genderdebate.com

Alpha Condé said to “Le Monde”:

“L’Afrique a des problèmes très concrets. La base de notre développement c’est l’agriculture : il faut d’abord donner à manger. L’énergie est aussi un problème, car sans énergie on ne peut pas développer un pays. L’éducation, la santé, le rôle des nouvelles technologies. En Afrique, nous devons essayer de mettre en commun notre politique pour l’énergie, les infrastructures, le commerce intérieur. […] Il faut donner une nouvelle image de l’Afrique. Une des tares de l’Afrique, qu’on nous reproche beaucoup, c’est la corruption. Il faut d’abord agir sur la gouvernance,  appliquer la transparence, et que les ressources de l’Afrique profitent réellement aux populations africaines, particulièrement aux femmes et aux jeunes. […] L’économie africaine, pour l’essentiel, repose sur les femmes. L’homme peut  émigrer, laisser les enfants, mais la femme est obligée de rester pour donner à manger aux enfants. Ensuite, les femmes sont plus honnêtes. Quand vous donnez du micro-crédit, le taux de remboursement chez les femmes est de 90 %. Le développement de certains secteurs, comme l’artisanat, repose sur les femmes. Notre objectif c’est de transformer  le secteur informel productif en PME. Les femmes sont plus honnêtes, plus sensibles, plus travailleuses, mais elles n’ont pas assez accès au crédit. »

“Africa has very concrete problems. The basis of our development is agriculture: it is first necessary to have enough food resources. Energy is also a problem because without energy you cannot develop a country. Education, health and new technologies also play an important role. In Africa, we must try to harmonize our policy for energy, infrastructure and internal trade. [...] We must give a new image to Africa. One of the flaws of Africa we are accused of is corruption. We must first develop governance, apply transparency, and make sure that the resources of Africa actually benefit the African people, especially women and young people. [...]
The African economy essentially relies on women. Man may emigrate and leave children, but women are obliged stay to raise their children. In addition, women are more honest. For micro-credits, the reimbursement rate for women is 90%. The development of certain sectors, such as handicrafts, is primarily based on women. Our goal is to transform the productive informal sector into small and medium businesses. Women are more honest, more sensitive, harder working, but they do not have enough access to credit.”

Source: Le Monde, 31/01/2012

Related articles on this blog:

Lessons from Davos: Gender quota urgendly needed!

Empowering women by microfinance!?

See more and contribute to the Wikigender article on Women and African Economic Development

Social media for anticorruption: lessons from the trenches

By Francesco Checchi from the United Nations Development Programme in Europe and CIS. 

This post first appeared on the UNDP Voices from Eurasia blog.

Real time map of trends on Twitter

As anticipated in a previous post (Social media for anticorruption? Exploring experiences in the former Soviet block), we have been putting quite a lot of thought into the use of social media for anticorruption in our region.

How can we use social media to capitalize on existing efforts by ordinary citizens and NGOs to enhance accountability of public institutions? How can we harness the amount of information concerning corruption scandals and maladministration shared on the Internet by the independent websites, media and bloggers? How can we move beyond the hype of well publicized cases to get into the mechanics of what works and doesn’t work?

We quickly came to the conclusion that the most useful contribution we could make to the debate was to provide some in-depth case studies focusing on the experiences of those who are working “in the trenches” – from the Georgian version of FixMyStreet to Moldova’s crowdsourcing platform Alerte.md, from an in-depth look  at the work of celebrated Russian blogger Alexey Navalny to the use of Ushahidi to monitor elections in Kyrgystan.

We therefore commissioned a report on The role of social media for enhancing public transparency and accountability in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States: emerging models, opportunities and challenges. 

In addition to case studies, the report contains a review of the growing literature on the topic of social media for transparency and identifies three emerging models of implementation (information sharing, crowdsourcing and crowd-to-community).

Perhaps more importantly, the report focuses the attention on some criteria than can be identified as a predictor of success for social media for anticorruption efforts, based on the experience of the practitioners interviewed. These include, for instance, a well established reputation in the field, the use of cross-media promotion (going beyond online), and, importantly, citizen reporting – including NGO verification and the involvement of public authorities.

The report is meant to be a live document, to be updated as we come across new experiences in the region (See: Social media for anticorruption: from “why” to “how to” and Ushahidi comes to Kyrgyzstan) and, equally importantly, to test our own findings through projects on the ground. So watch this space for updates.

We warmly welcome comments, critics and contributions to make this study as useful as possible to practitioners and organizations working in the area of anticorruption and public transparency.

The week in review

Week in review 09.12.2011
Hello, glad you could join us for the Wikiprogress week in review - a handful of headlines that have caught our eyes over the last week. You can find all news articles and blog posts on the progress community in the  Wikiprogress Community Portal. 

On measuring progress
Government drafts 'happiness indicators' to supplement economic data  (The Japan Times 06.12.2011)
At the Asia-Pacific Conference on Measuring Well-Being and Fostering the Progress of Societies, Japan’s Cabinet Office announced a set of indicators designed to gauge well-being based on three major factors — socioeconomic conditions, physical and mental health, and relationships.
See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on The Asia-Pacific Conference on Measuring Well-Being and Fostering the Progress of Societies

On inequality
OECD inequality report: how do different countries compare?  (Guardian Data Blog 05.12.2011)
The OECD report on inequality: Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising, released this week shows a rise in the share of top-income recipients in total gross income over the last 30 years in all countries.
Read more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on inequality

On UK happiness
Richard Layard: And so begins the strange era of feel-good politics... (The Independent 07.12.2011)
Leading progress thinker, Richard Layard, writes about the future of basing policy on how it affects the well-being of the people. He argues that the value lies not in finding the average happiness of the nation, but in what causes people to be happy or unhappy.
See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on measuring happiness in the UK

On gender equality

Women and Work – This house believes that a woman’s place is at work (Economist Debate)
Defending the motion in this week’s Economist debate is Linda Basch (President of National Council for Research on Women), who argues work is right for families, communities, the economy and women. Against this motion is Christina Hoff Summers (American Enterprise Institute), who believes women should not have an assigned place and questions what is wrong with the 5 million American women who are full-time mothers.
See more and contribute to the Wikigender article on women and work.



On growth in India
Putting Growth in its Place (Outlook, November)
Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze co-author this essay on growth and development in India stressing that growth should be a means to development but not an end in itself. India is a unique case, even after 20 years of growth it is still among the world’s poorest nations.
See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on progress in India

In the Spotlight: Global Corruption Perception Index reflects Arab Spring unrest
That’s all from us this week. We hope you tune in the same time next week. In the meantime, if anything interesting passes your desk that you would like to see in the next Wikiprogress week in review, please tweet it to us  @Wikiprogress  or post it on our  Facebook page.  

Yours in progress,

Philippa Lysaght

The week in review

Hello, glad you could join us for the Wikiprogress week in review - a handful of headlines that have caught our eyes over the last week. You can find all news articles and blog posts on the progress community in the Wikiprogress Community Portal. 

On data

Global corruption index reflects Arab Spring Unrest (Reuters 30.12.2011)

The 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index released this week found that levels of  awareness of corruption have risen significantly for Arab nations involved in the uprisings. One of the leading nations involved in the Arab Spring, Tunisia, fell to 73^rd place from 59^th last year.

See more and download the 2011 CPI

On happiness

Happiness Index: how happy are you - and David Cameron? (Guardian data blog 01.12.2011)

The Office of National Statistics in the UK has released findings of a national consultation established as part of  David Cameron’s Happiness Index. The findings show 76% of adults in Great Britain rated their own life satisfaction, with a score of 7 or more out of 10. 

See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on Happiness

On gender equality

Busan skirts gender equality (IPS 01.12.2011)

The 4^th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Busan this week has been criticised by gender champions from around the world for the lack of inclusion of key gender equality issues in the Forum’s outcomes document. Although a Joint Busan Action Plan on Gender Equality and Development is one of the outcomes of the conference, it is considered to be limited. 

See more highlights from the Busan conference in the Wikigender Community Portal

On progress in Australia

Measuring well-being is still in the too hard basket (Sydney Morning Herald 30.11.2011)

Over the past few years the global progress movement has gathered momentum as broader indicators of well-being has become an increasingly popular topic. In Australia, Measures of Australia’s Progress (MAP) is at the forefront of this movement with their work on measuring national well-being and determining whether or not life in Australia is getting better.

See more and contribute to the Wikiprogress article on Measures of Australia’s Progress

In the Spotlight:  4^th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness

That’s all from us this week. We hope you tune in the same time next week. In the meantime, if anything interesting passes your desk that you would like to see in the next Wikiprogress week in review, please tweet it to us @Wikiprogress or post it on our Facebook page. 

Yours in Progress,

Publish Post

Philippa Lysaght