The Concept of Political Settlement in Development Policy, and Why it'ss Useful: Political Settlement: Part 1

The ‘political settlement’ concept has been around for a long time, but like any smart virus it has morphed along the way to suit its various hosts. It appeared first and has its widest currency in the international relations and peace literature, where it describes a negotiated settlement to conflict which spells out how power is to be distributed and managed in the post-conflict state.1 Its next relevant incarnation, for the purposes of this paper, was in the mid-1990s in the writing of Mushtaq Khan, who used the concept to challenge the explanations offered by new institutional economics for state failure in developing countries (Khan 1995). Don’t just focus on the institutions, he argues, but look to the political settlement.AusAI

J Am Mosq Control Assoc

Despite the major impact of mosquitoes on human health, knowledge gaps exist regarding their natural population dynamics. Even the most basic information-such as spatiotemporal abundance-is mostly unavailable. In the USA, municipalities have created agencies for mosquito control and monitoring, yet no national open-access repository for mosquito surveillance data exists. Vectors, and the pathogens they transmit, know no jurisdictions. We identify >1,000 mosquito control agencies and identify those which make their population abundance surveillance data publicly available. We directly survey Floridian mosquito districts to estimate, from one state alone, the potential amount of hidden data. We generate a large, standardized data set from publicly available online data and demonstrate that spatiotemporal population abundance can be reconstructed and analyzed across data generators. We propose that the ensemble of US mosquito control agencies can, and should, be used to develop a national-and potentially international-open-access repository of mosquito surveillance data, generating the data capital needed to gain a mechanistic understanding of vector population dynamics, and identify existing digital infrastructure that could be leveraged for digitizing and collating extant and future surveillance data for such a repository.DP5 OD023100/OD/NIH HHS/United StatesHHSN272201400029C/AI/NIAID NIH HHS/United StatesU01 CK000510/CK/NCEZID CDC HHS/United States2019-08-26T00:00:00Z31442186PMC67095996723vault:3387

Authorship Equity and Gender Representation in Global Oncology Publications

Purpose: Authorship gender disparities persist across academic disciplines, including oncology. However, little is known about global variation in authorship gender distribution. Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study describes the distribution of author gender as determined from the first name across variables such as authorship position (first, middle, and last), country region, and country income level. The 608 articles with 5,302 authors included in this analysis were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Global Oncology, from its inception in October 2015 through March 2020. Primary outcome measure was author gender on the basis of first name probabilities assessed by genderize.io. World Bank classification was used to categorize the country region and income level. Odds ratios were used to describe associations between female last authorship and representation in other authorship positions. Results: Although female authors were in the minority across all authorship positions, they were more under-represented in the last author position with 190 (32.1%) female, compared with 252 (41.4%) female first authors and 1,564 (38.1%) female middle authors. Female authors were most under-represented among authors from low-income countries, where they made up 21.6% of first authors and 9.1% of last authors. Of all the regions, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia had the lowest percentage of female authors. Compared with articles with male last authors, those with female last authors had odds ratios (95% CI) of 2.2 (1.6 to 3.2) of having female first authors and 1.4 (0.9 to 2.1) of having 50% or more female middle authors. Conclusion: There are wide regional variations in author gender distribution in global oncology. Female authors remain markedly under-represented, especially in lower-income countries, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. Future interventions should be tailored to mitigate these disparities

Land Reform as Conflict Prevention: the Case of Rwanda

A decade ago, Rwanda embarked on a major land reform programme. The authorities claimed that the new Land Law, and the Land Policy document in support, would contribute to social equality and the prevention of future conflict. The Land Law was finally passed in May 2005.This paper provides a contextualized reading of key aspects of the law. Attention is also paid to other forms of recent legislation, especially villagization (imidugudu) and the new property law that regulates women's inheritance. The argument is in three parts. First, I document and argue that the 2005 Land Law has more potential for generating future conflicts than promoting peace. The law's emphasis on the need to consolidate fragmented family plots, and especially the likelihood/threat that up to half a million households may lose what little land they still own, will cause tension and opposition to the nouveaux riches who are involved in land speculation. I also pay attention to the state authorities' right to confiscate land not 'properly' managed.Second, some of the potential for future violence may be reduced by the fact that Government is bound to allow some flexibility in the way the land law is locally interpreted and applied. As can be seen with other fonts of state interventions in Rwanda- e.g. the restitution of property to repatriates who returned after the genocide; the villagization programme (imidugudu); or today's gacaca trials - the state imposes firm parameters. but gives local administrators some discretion in how to apply them.Third, looking to the future, I contend that it remains to be seen whether the recent, pro-women inheritance legislation will fed champions (politicians, administrators) willing and able to take on the full force of the language of public morality, which prevents women from exercising their legal rights. This may not happen. Although the Land Law declares a commitment to gender equity with regard to ownership (Article 4), the rest of the law is conspicuously silent on land in relation to gender

The Kenya UK Breast Cancer Awareness Week: curriculum codesign and codelivery with direct and lived experience of breast cancer diagnosis and management

Global health education holds a paradox: the provision of global health degrees focusing on challenges in low-income and middle-income countries has increased in high-income countries, while those in these low-income and middle-income countries lack access to contribute their expertise, creating an ‘information problem’. Breast cancer is a pressing global health priority, which requires curriculum design, implementation, ownership and leadership by those with direct and lived experience of breast cancer. The Kenya-UK Breast Cancer Awareness Week was conceptualised following the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Kenyan and UK governments launching the Kenya UK Health Alliance. This alliance aims to promote health cooperation to address Kenya’s breast cancer challenge. Here, we present the first of the collaborative’s initiatives: a breast cancer global health education programme designed, implemented, owned and led by Kenyan stakeholders. We present the utilisation of the Virtual Roundtable for Collaborative Education Design for the design and implementation of a nationwide virtual breast cancer awareness week delivered across eleven Kenyan medical schools. By involving partners with lived and/or professional experience of breast cancer in Kenya in all stages of the design and delivery of the awareness week, the project experimented with disrupting power dynamics and fostered ownership of the initiative by colleagues with direct expertise of breast cancer in Kenya. This initiative provides a platform, precedent and playbook to guide professionals from other specialties in the design and implementation of similar global collaborative ventures. We have used this approach to continue to advocate for global health curricula design change, so that those with lived experiences of global health challenges in their contextualised professional and personal environments are given leadership, reward and ownership of their curricula and further to highlight breast cancer as a global heath priority

State capacity and elite enrichment in Uganda's northeastern periphery

In the mid-2000s, Uganda's authoritarian National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime set out to extend state control over Karamoja, a long-neglected region in the northeast of the country. This effort has involved large-scale deployment of security personnel, investment in an expansive administrative system used to subdue the local population, and construction of physical infrastructure that connects Karamoja with the rest of Uganda and facilitates the exploitation of the region's natural resources by members of the political elite. Government bodies in Karamoja capably perform functions that benefit the NRM elite and regime; other government responsibilities, notably for public service provision, have been assumed by non-state organisations. This article shows that the unevenness of state capacity in the region is the result of a coherent strategy that the regime has implemented across Uganda; developments in Karamoja illuminate this strategy and, thereby, help to account for the apparent incongruity of the country's political system.Mitte der 2000er Jahre machte sich das autoritäre NRM-Regime Ugandas daran, die staatliche Kontrolle über Karamoja, eine lange vernachlässigte Region im Nordosten des Landes, auszuweiten. Zu diesem Zweck wurden in großem Umfang Sicherheitskräfte eingesetzt, Investitionen in ein ausgedehntes Verwaltungssystem getätigt, das der Unterwerfung der lokalen Bevölkerung dient, und eine physische Infrastruktur errichtet, die Karamoja mit dem Rest Ugandas verbindet und die Ausbeutung der natürlichen Ressourcen der Region durch Mitglieder der politischen Elite erleichtert. Staatliche Stellen in Karamoja erfüllen Funktionen, die der NRM-Elite und dem Regime zugute kommen; andere staatliche Aufgaben, insbesondere die Bereitstellung öffentlicher Dienstleistungen, wurden von nichtstaatlichen Organisationen übernommen. Dieser Artikel zeigt, dass die Ungleichmäßigkeit der staatlichen Kapazitäten in der Region das Ergebnis einer kohärenten Strategie ist, die das Regime in ganz Uganda umgesetzt hat; die Entwicklungen in Karamoja beleuchten diese Strategie und helfen so, die scheinbare Inkongruenz des politischen Systems des Landes zu erklären

Bamboo and cane vulnerability and income generation in the rural household subsistence economy of Bjoka, Zhemgang, Bhutan

Little qualitative and quantitative information is available on bamboo and cane ecology and management. Harvesting of these two nonwood forest products (NWFPs) takes place on a substantial scale, exacerbated by commercialisation, thereby exerting pressure on supply with a significant detrimental impact on the species. This article examines the resource availability of bamboo, Neomicrocalamus andropogonifoliu

The Constitutional Monarchy and Modernization: Kang Youwei’s Perspectives on “Keeping the Emperor and the Royal System in China”

At the end of the 19th century, China opened up its age of democratic revolution. Kang Youwei, a senior intellectual, advised Emperor Guangxu to establish the Constitutional Monarchy system in China as England and Japan did. However, his thoughts were condemned as “conservative”, “anti-revolutionary” by those radicals in his time. In this article, the author makes a deep exploration of the Constitutional Monarchy system in different countries in today’s world, the social roles of kings and monarchs, and the economic positions of today’s Constitutional Monarchy countries in the world. It is found that nearly all these countries are developed countries which gained political stability and economic prosperity by establishing the constitutional monarchy system and account for a large percentage in the world’s most developed countries. Compared to those democratic republican countries of the same period, they developed in a more stable and rapid way. The kings and queens play important roles in keeping the country stable and prosperous. Thus, history has proven that the Constitutional Monarchy is a great democratic system and Kang Youwei’s proposal of “keeping the emperor and the royal system” and establishing the Constitutional Monarchy system was the most suitable choice in terms of the situation of China at his time

Improving the effectiveness of Ugandan water user committees

This article outlines issues affecting the functionality of Ugandan water user committees responsible for managing communal water and sanitation (WASH) services. Research undertaken demonstrated that their effectiveness is compromised by poor understanding of their rights and responsibilities by stakeholders within and outside the committees. Following the research, a handbook was produced that explained the rights and responsibilities in a form that is accessible to all community members. Preliminary feedback from committees that have used the handbook suggests that it has the potential to improve the functionality of the water user committees, thereby helping to improve the local management of WASH services in Uganda