The Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI 2014): Measuring the Political Commitment to Reduce Hunger and Undernutrition in Developing Countries

This report presents the Hunger And Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) 2014. It seeks to: 1. Rank governments on their political commitment to tackling hunger and undernutrition; 2. Measure what governments achieve and where they fail in addressing hunger and undernutrition – providing greater transparency and public accountability; 3. Praise governments where due, and highlight areas for improvement; 4. Support civil society to reinforce and stimulate additional commitment towards accelerating the reduction of hunger and undernutrition; 5. Assess whether improving commitment levels leads to a reduction in hunger and undernutrition. The report builds on the HANCI 2012 and the HANCI 2013 (launched in 2014) by incorporating new data collated for the period January to December 2014.UK Department for International Development; Government of Irelan

Assessing the Policy Impact of ‘Indicators’: A Process-Tracing Study of the Hunger And Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI)

In recent years, the global literature on reducing hunger and malnutrition has come to view progress as much an outcome of a political process as of (nutrition) technical interventions. Political commitment is now seen as an essential ingredient for bringing food and nutrition security higher up on public policy agendas. As a consequence, a range of new indicators and scorecard tools have proliferated seeking to promote accountability and transparency of policy, legal and spending efforts and outcomes in the battle to reduce hunger and malnutrition. While a literature on indicators is emerging and underlining their governance and knowledge effects, relatively little is known about if and how indicators affect public policy. Accordingly, the policy impact of well-established annual metrics such as the Global Hunger Index, the Access to Nutrition Index or The Economist’s Global Food Security Index is often assumed but rarely explored. This report innovatively applies a process-tracing approach to understand the policy impact of indicators and contributes to debates about assessing the impact of development research. It focuses on the case of the Hunger And Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI). The HANCI project publishes annual indices of countries’ political commitment to reduce hunger and undernutrition, as well as complementary knowledge products (e.g. expert surveys and community voices).UK Department for International Development; Government of Irelan

Inclusive Urbanisation and Cities in the Twenty-First Century

In academic and policy discourse, urbanisation and cities are currently receiving a great deal of attention, and rightly so. Both have been central to the enormous transformation the world has been going through during the past few centuries. Many parts of the world have experienced and are experiencing an urban transformation. While these processes have taken distinct regional forms across Latin America, East and South Asia, and Africa, it is clear that, globally, the urban transformation has coincided with major societal and ecological changes. Some of these developments have been heralded as progress – notably millions of people being lifted out of poverty – while others, such as entrenching inequalities and accelerating climate change, are alarming. In recent years the pro-urban voices have been louder, but accounts of the wonders of cities need to be balanced with a recognition of the violence, inequity and environmentally destructive forces that cities can embody and reproduce. Equally important is to explore how cities and urbanisation can be made to contribute more to human wellbeing and to international and local development goals. This report is particularly concerned with whether and under what conditions more inclusive urbanisation and cities can support these development goals.UK Department for International Developmen

Urban re-settlement in Colombo from a wellbeing perspective : does development-forced resettlement lead to improved wellbeing?

Abstract onlyFor almost a decade, Colombo has been the site of a massive urban regeneration programme driven by the public and the private sectors. One of the main components of this regeneration programme has been the involuntary acquisition of land from slum communities and subsequent resettlement of slum dwellers in multi-storied housing complexes. How does such rapid resettlement in high-rise apartments impact the slum dwellers who are subjected to such treatment. This article tries to determine how resettlement and associated social, cultural and economic transformations impact on beneficiaries’ sense of wellbeing in the medium term. While the concept of wellbeing is broad and has been applied by scholars in various fields of scholarship, this article utilizes the concept in the specific context of development-forced displacement and resettlement (DFDR). We examine how displacement and resettlement determine material, relational and subjective dimensions of wellbeing among the affected communities