Food Security in the South Pacific Island Countries with Special Reference to the Fiji Islands

This paper analyses the status of food security in selected South Pacific Island countries

The Application of a Geographically Weighted Principal Component Analysis for Exploring Twenty-three Years of Goat Population Change across Mongolia

The dzud are extreme weather events in Mongolia of deep snow, severe cold, or other conditions that render forage unavailable or inaccessible, which in turn results in extensive livestock deaths. Mongolia is economically vulnerable to extreme events due to an increase in nonprofessional herders and the livestock population, brought about by a deregularized industry. Thus, it is hugely informative to try to understand the spatial and temporal trends of livestock population change. To this end, annual livestock census data are exploited and a geographically weighted principal component analysis (GWPCA) is applied to goat data recorded from 1990 to 2012 in 341 regions. This application of GWPCA to temporal data is novel and is able to account for both temporal and spatial patterns in goat population change. Furthermore, the GWPCA methodology is extended to simultaneously optimize the number of components to retain and the kernel bandwidth. In doing so, this study not only advances the GWPCA method but provides a useful insight into the spatiotemporal variations of the Mongolian goat population

A step forward for understanding the morbidity burden in Guinea: a national descriptive study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Little evidence on the burden of disease has been reported about Guinea. This study was conducted to demonstrate the morbidity burden in Guinea and provide basic evidence for setting health priorities.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A retrospective descriptive study was designed to present the morbidity burden of Guinea. Morbidity data were extracted from the National Health Statistics Report of Guinea of 2008. The data are collected based on a pyramid of facilities which includes two national hospitals (teaching hospitals), seven regional hospitals, 26 prefectural hospitals, 8 communal medical centers, 390 health centers, and 628 health posts. Morbidity rates were calculated to measure the burden of non-fatal diseases. The contributions of the 10 leading diseases were presented by sex and age group.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In 2008, a total of 3,936,599 cases occurred. The morbidity rate for males was higher than for females, 461 versus 332 per 1,000 population. Malaria, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, helminthiases, and malnutrition ranked in the first 5 places and accounted for 74% of the total burden, respectively having a rate of 148, 64, 33, 32, and 14 per 1,000 population. The elderly aged 65+ had the highest morbidity rate (611 per 1,000 population) followed by working-age population (458 per 1,000 population) and children (396 per 1,000 population) while the working-age population aged 25-64 contributed the largest part (39%) to total cases. The sex- and age-specific spectrum of morbidity burden showed a similar profile except for small variations.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Guinea has its unique morbidity burden. The ten leading causes of morbidity burden, especially for malaria, respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, helminthiases, and malnutrition, need to be prioritized in Guinea.</p

Financial Self-Help Associations among Far West Nepalese Labor Migrants in Delhi, India

Labor migration to India is the most important source of income for people in Far West Nepal. To better understand the effects of labor migration, a research analyzing why and how migrants invest their money in financial self-help organizations was undertaken. Fieldwork was conducted in the communities of origin in Nepal and migrant communities in India. Based on the study, the paper provides an overview of the existing financial self-help associations, their strengths and weaknesses, accessibility and possibilities of benefits and losses for the migrants and their families. The major conclusion is that migration helps to improve income or security but can also undermine a household's financial situation by perpetuating debt and dependency

Cultural specificity versus institutional universalism: a critique of the National Integrity System (NIS) methodology

This article provides an assessment and critique of the National Integrity System approach and methodology, informed by the experience of conducting an NIS review in Cambodia. It explores four key issues that potentially undermine the relevance and value of NIS reports for developing democracies: the narrowly conceived institutional approach underpinning the NIS methodology; the insufficient appreciation of cultural distinctiveness; a failure properly to conceptualise and articulate the very notion of ‘integrity’; and an over emphasis on compliance-based approaches to combating corruption at the expense of the positive promotion of integrity. The article seeks to offer some pointers to how the NIS approach could be adapted to broaden its conceptualisation of institutions and integrity, and thereby provide reports that are more theoretically informed as well as being more constructive and actionable

Explaining varieties of corruption in the Afghan justice sector

© 2015 Taylor & Francis. Judicial reform in Afghanistan is seriously undermined by systemic corruption that has resulted in low legitimacy of the state and weak rule of law. This article reviews the main shortcomings in the Afghan justice system with reference to 70 interviews conducted in Kabul. Building on legal pluralism and a political economic approach, the shortcomings and causes and consequences of corruption in the Afghan justice sector are highlighted. These range from low pay, resulting in bribery; criminal and political intrusion into the judiciary; non-adherence to meritocracy, with poorly educated judges and prosecutors; and low funding in the judicial sector resulting in weak case tracking and human rights abuses in the countryside. This is followed by sociological approaches: understanding corruption from a non-Western approach and emphasis on religion, morality and ethics in order to curb it

Professional development and sustainable development goals

Professional development is defined as a consciously designed systematic process that helps professionals to attain, utilize, and retain knowledge, skills, and expertise. It is simply a process of obtaining skills, qualifications, and experience that help in advancement in one’s career. In the field of education, it is defined as the process of improving staff skills and competencies needed to produce outstanding performance of students. It also refers to a process of improving an organization’s staff capabilities through access to education and training opportunities for better output. Professional development can include a variety of approaches such as formal and informal education, vocational, specialized, or skill-based training, or advanced professional learning

Involving Local Fishing Communities in Policy Making: Addressing Illegal Fishing in Indonesia

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing has been identified by the UN as one of the seven major threats to global maritime security; it causes loss of economic revenue, severe environmental damage, and far-reaching livelihood implications for coastal communities. Indonesia, by far the biggest archipelagic state, faces enormous challenges in all aspects of IUU fishing and addressing those is one of the current Indonesian Government’s top priorities. This article addresses the under-researched dimension of how IUU fishing affects fishing communities. With the use of collage making focus groups with fishermen from different Indonesian fishing communities, the research highlights the interrelated environmental (depletion of resources), socio-economic (unbridled illegal activities at sea), cultural (favouritism) and political (weak marine governance) dimensions of IUU fishing as experienced at the local level. However, the research also indicates a strong will by fishermen to be seen as knowledge agents who can help solve the problem by better dissemination of information and cooperation between the local government(s) and the fishing communities. The article concludes by arguing for the involvement of local fishing communities in national and international policy making that addresses IUU fishing

Neoliberalism and the revival of agricultural cooperatives: The case of the coffee sector in Uganda

Agricultural cooperatives have seen a comeback in sub‐Saharan Africa. After the collapse of many weakly performing monopolist organizations during the 1980s and 1990s, strengthened cooperatives have emerged since the 2000s. Scholarly knowledge about the state–cooperative relations in which this “revival” takes place remains poor. Based on new evidence from Uganda's coffee sector, this paper discusses the political economy of Africa's cooperative revival. The authors argue that donors' and African governments' renewed support is framed in largely apolitical terms, which obscures the contested political and economic nature of the revival. In the context of neoliberal restructuring processes, state and non‐state institutional support to democratic economic organizations with substantial redistributional agendas remains insufficient. The political–economic context in Uganda—and potentially elsewhere in Africa—contributes to poor terms of trade for agricultural cooperatives while maintaining significant state control over some cooperative activities to protect the status quo interests of big capital and state elites. These conditions are unlikely to produce a conflict‐free, substantial, and sustained revival of cooperatives, which the new promoters of cooperatives suggest is under way