Disability, Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals: Relevance, Challenges and Opportunities for DFID

[Excerpt] This report has been prepared as the final output of the Policy Project of the DFID Disability Knowledge and Research (KaR) Programme. The purpose of the Policy Project is to assist DFID to develop policies and processes to support the mainstreaming of disability and to ensure that the Disability KaR’s knowledge and research outputs are responsive to DFID’s needs and effectively communicated to DFID. The Policy Project has seen the placement of the Disability Policy Officer in DFID to provide DFID with technical support on disability issues. This report aims to build on the previous report, ‘DFID and Disability: A Mapping of the Department for International Development and Disability Issues’ (June 2004), by reviewing DFID’s progress on addressing disability issues during the last year and identifying barriers to and opportunities for taking work forward

Working on Disability in Country Programmes

[Excerpt] The World Bank estimates that 20% of the world’s poorest people are disabled. This means that disabled people comprise one of the largest single groups of excluded and chronically poor people in the developing world. Challenging exclusion is central to reducing poverty and meeting the MDGs. So promoting the inclusion, rights and dignity of disabled people is central to poverty reduction and to achieving human rights

The Lottery of Birth: Giving all Children an Equal Chance to Survive

Based on inaugural analysis of disaggregated data from 87 low and middle income countries around the world, this report reveals that in more than three quarters of these countries, inequalities in child survival rates are actually worsening, resulting in some groups of children making far slower progress than their better-off peers. In 78 percent of the countries covered in the report, at least one social or economic group has fallen behind and is therefore making slower progress in reducing child mortality, and in 16 percent of these countries, inequalities in child survival rates have increased across all social and economic groups. Save the Children's analysis suggests that, without a true step change in action, the lottery of birth will continue into the future, slowing progress towards the ultimate goal of ending preventable child deaths for generations to come. However, tackling this inequality is possible. Almost a fifth of the countries in the report, including Rwanda, Malawi, Mexico, and Bangladesh, have successfully combined rapid and inclusive reductions in child mortality, achieving faster progress than most countries, while at the same time ensuring that no groups of children are left behind.The agency calls for the international community to commit to ending preventable child deaths by 2030.The new development framework, which will replace the MDGs, will be agreed upon at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015. This framework must set out ambitious child and maternal survival targets and commit to working towards universal health coverage

Access to water, women's work and child outcomes

Poor rural women in the developing world spend considerable time collecting water. How then do they respond to improved access to water infrastructure? Does it increase their participation in income earning market-based activities? Does it improve the health and education outcomes of their children? To help address these questions, a new approach for dealing with the endogeneity of infrastructure placement in cross-sectional surveysis proposed and implemented using data for nine developing countries. The paper does not find that access to water comes with greater off-farm work for women, although in countries where substantial gender gaps in schooling exist, both boys'and girls'enrollments improve with better access to water. There are also some signs of impacts on child health as measured by anthropometric z-scores.Gender, Water Supply and Sanitation,Rural Labor Markets,Rural Water Supply and Sanitation,Access&Equity in Basic Education,Early Child and Children's Health

Leveraging Administrative Data for Policy and Programmatic Interventions on Gender Specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The call for a data revolution expressed in the report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons in the lead-up to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has generated specific attention on the role of data in driving and monitoring sustainable development. Indeed, the availability of and access to high-quality, timely, disaggregated, gender-responsive and reliable data, supplemented with contextual information for its interpretation and use, are fundamental to successful monitoring and reporting of the 2030 Agenda and the Leave No One Behind commitment. In 2016, UN Women launched its flagship initiative to stimulate sustained production and dissemination of quality gender statistics for monitoring the gender-specific Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators. As part of this initiative, UN Women is vigorously pursuing practical, convenient, cost-effective ways to track these indicators. The Flagship Programme Initiative, Making Every Woman and Girl Count (MEWGC), which UN Women launched in September 2016, has stimulated the search for practical, convenient, cost-effective ways to monitor strategic goals aimed at achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. The initiative is directly linked to the targets set for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, achieve gender equality and empower women and girls, and other gender-specific SDGs. To assess the direct effect of the SDG commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment, 54 gender-specific indicators need to be regularly tracked globally. Better production and use of gender statistics for evidence-based localization of the SDGs is UN Women’s strategy to address the pressing need for better and more gender statistics. In general, the various UN Women regional teams are expected to adapt and implement the global initiatives between 2016 and 2021 by providing direct technical support to countries in their regions–including in pathfinder and selected non-pathfinder countries–(based on demand) and working closely with regional partners to help promote and support country-led plans to localize and monitor the SDGs. The outcome objectives of the MEWGC project are to strengthen the policy and financial environment to enable gender-responsive national adaptation and effective monitoring of the SDGs; improve production of gender statistics to enable monitoring of national policies and reporting commitments under the SDGs; improve the use of gender statistics by different players to inform advocacy, research, policies and programmes; and generate knowledge on cost-effective ways to provide statistical capacity-building in gender statistics in different contexts. Ensuring the availability, accessibility and use of gender statistics to monitor progress in delivering gender equality and women’s empowerment commitments in the SDGs and to inform policymaking, advocacy and accountability in any region requires well-coordinated, responsive, effective data systems.Traditionally, there are three approaches to data gathering: censuses, sample surveys and administrative data collection. These approaches have evolved with the data revolution, particularly in response to the complex needs and demands of the SDGs. Various factors inform the choice of a specific method, including quality, coverage, timeliness, cost and purpose. This is especially true for administrative data, which agencies and institutions primarily collect for non-statistical reasons – i.e. to provide overviews on registration, transactions and record keeping. For example, administrative records are maintained to regulate the flow of goods and people across borders, to respond to legal requirements of registering events such as births and deaths and to administer benefits such as pensions or obligations such as taxation. Given their importance in the data production process, this study focused solely on administrative data systems. The UN Women 2018 report, Turning Promises into Action: Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, uncovered a number of bottlenecks in the production and use of gender statistics, which invariably affect or are affected by data quality and timeliness. This study explored the potential of using administrative data to produce gender statistics for monitoring the SDGs. As such, UN Women regional Office for East and Southern Africa has documented six good and promising practices that are replicable and are feasible within the framework of leveraging use of administrative data for monitoring and reporting on gender specific Sustainable Development Goals. These are just but a few selected examples of how these governments in Africa have used administrative data and civil and vital statistics to accelerate progress towards realizing the gender specific SDGs. The compendium defines a good practice within the guideline provided for in the Guide-Documenting good practices on gender equality developed by UN Women in 2015. A good practice is “an intervention, business practice, process or methodology that is responsive to the needs of women and girls, replicable, scalable, and succeeds in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. The essence of identifying and sharing a good practice is to learn from others and to encourage the application of knowledge and experience to new situations as they relate to GEWE. A good practice need not be viewed as prescriptive; it can be adapted to meet new challenges, becoming better as improvements are discovered.” Keywords: SDGs, Administrative data, research, UN Women, East and Southern Africa, good practices, gender equality. DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/10-8-03 Publication date:August 31st 202

A Labor Market Approach to the Crisis of Health Care Professionals in Africa

This paper adopts a labor market economics perspective to understanding the crisis of healthcare professionals in Africa. Five challenges resulting from this crisis are identified: a production challenge, an underutilization challenge, a distributional challenge, a performance challenge, and a financing challenge. Differences between the labor market approach and others used in the health field are noted. We conclude that more empirical data, a full labor market analysis, and the use of social benefit-cost criteria are all needed before policy recommendations to address any of these challenges can be confidently offered

Lessons Learned on Gender Equality

The purpose of this evaluation study is twofold: Firstly, to compile lessons learned from Danida evaluations, evaluation studies and other evaluation publications, and secondly, to distil a set of recommendations relevant to the roll-out of The Right to a Better Life (2012), more particularly the planned update of Danida's strategy, Gender Equality in Danish Development Cooperation (2004). The evaluation study was carried out between June and September 2013. The methodology is based on a desk review of Danida evaluation publications carried out between 2004 and 2013, and comprises three interconnected phases:1. Screening of a long list of 104 evaluation publications2. Analysis of 26 shortlisted evaluations3. Reporting findings and recommendatio

Childhood mortality in sub-Saharan Africa : cross-sectional insight into small-scale geographical inequalities from Census data

Objectives To estimate and quantify childhood mortality, its spatial correlates and the impact of potential correlates using recent census data from three sub-Saharan African countries (Rwanda, Senegal and Uganda), where evidence is lacking. Design Cross-sectional. Setting Nation-wide census samples from three African countries participating in the 2010 African Census round. All three countries have conducted recent censuses and have information on mortality of children under 5 years. Participants 111 288 children under the age of 5 years in three countries. Primary and secondary outcome measures Under-five mortality was assessed alongside potential correlates including geographical location (where children live), and environmental, bio-demographic and socioeconomic variables. Results Multivariate analysis indicates that in all three countries the overall risk of child death in the first 5 years of life has decreased in recent years (Rwanda: HR=0.04, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.09; Senegal: HR=0.02 (95% CI 0.02 to 0.05); Uganda: HR=0.011 (95% CI 0.006 to 0.018). In Rwanda, lower deaths were associated with living in urban areas (0.79, 0.73, 0.83), children with living mother (HR=0.16, 95% CI 0.15 to 0.17) or living father (HR=0.38, 95% CI 0.36 to 0.39). Higher death was associated with male children (HR=1.06, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.08) and Christian children (HR=1.14, 95% CI 1.05 to 1.27). Children less than 1 year were associated with higher risk of death compared to older children in the three countries. Also, there were significant spatial variations showing inequalities in children mortality by geographic location. In Uganda, for example, areas of high risk are in the south-west and north-west and Kampala district showed a significantly reduced risk. Conclusions We provide clear evidence of considerable geographical variation of under-five mortality which is unexplained by factors considered in the data. The resulting under-five mortality maps can be used as a practical tool for monitoring progress within countries for the Millennium Development Goal 4 to reduce under-five mortality in half by 2015

Supporting non-state providers in basic education service delivery

Basic education is commonly regarded as a state responsibility. However, in reality, non-state providers (NSPs) have always been involved in basic education service delivery, and there is often a blurring of boundaries between state and non-state roles with respect to financing, ownership, management, and regulation. In recent years, the focus on the role of non-state providers (NSPs) has intensified within the context of the move towards achieving Education for All (EFA). The paper considers this shift, with particular attention towards service delivery to 'underserved groups', defined as those for whom access to affordable government services of appropriate quality is most problematic. In some cases, this refers to particular sub-groups of a population within a country. In other cases (notably fragile states), it can refer to large sections of the country’s population. The paper indicates the wide range of NSPs that exist to serve different underserved groups. It notes that NSPs are commonly viewed as having a comparative advantage over state provision - in terms of quality, cost-effectiveness, choice, accountability to citizens etc. However, in reality there is very limited robust analysis to support some of these claims. The paper then considers the ways in which non-state providers engage with the state in education service delivery, including with respect to contracting, policy dialogue, and regulation - and the role that donors play in this relationship. The paper concludes that relations between NSPs and the state are not straightforward given the range of different providers involved in education service delivery, with those serving the better-off tending to dominate engagement with government. This can be at the expense of smaller-scale, informal providers aiming to support those otherwise under-served by government provision. As such, the paper argues that there is a need for ‘real’ on-going dialogue which recognises the diversity amongst NSPs, to ensure collaboration between NSPs and government benefits the underserved and so assists in moving towards the achievement of EFA goals