Remittance flows to post-conflict states: perspectives on human security and development

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Center Task Force Reports, a publication series that began publishing in 2009 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.Migrant remittances – that is, money or other goods sent to relatives in the country of origin– play an increasingly central role in post-conflict reconstruction and national development of conflict-affected states. Private remittances are of central importance for restoring stability and enhancing human security in post-conflict countries. Yet the dynamics of conflict-induced remittance flows and the possibilities of leveraging remittances for post-conflict development have been sparsely researched to date. This Pardee Center Task Force Report is the outcome of an interdisciplinary research project organized by the Boston University Center for Finance, Law & Policy, in collaboration with The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. The Task Force was convened by Boston University development economist John R. Harris and international banking expert Donald F. Terry, and social anthropologist Daivi Rodima-Taylor, Visiting Researcher at the Boston University African Studies Center, served as lead researcher and editor for the report. The Task Force was asked to research, analyze, and propose policy recommendations regarding the role of remittances in post-conflict environments and their potential to serve as a major source of development funds. The report’s authors collectively suggest a broader approach to remittance institutions that provides flexibility to adapt to specific local practices and to make broader institutional connections in an era of growing population displacement and expanding human and capital flows. Conditions for more productive use of migrants’ remittances are analyzed while drawing upon case studies from post-conflict countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The papers in this Task Force Report establish the importance of remittances for sustaining local livelihoods as well as rehabilitating institutional infrastructures and improving financial inclusion in post-conflict environments. Highlighting the increasing complexity of global remittance systems, the report examines the growing informality of conflict-induced remittance flows and explores solutions for more efficient linkages between financial institutions of different scales and degrees of formality. It discusses challenges to regulating international remittance transfers in the context of growing concerns about transparency, and documents the increasing role of diaspora networks and migrant associations in post-conflict co-development initiatives. The Task Force Report authors outline the main challenges to leveraging remittances for post-conflict development and make recommendations for further research and policy applications

An Excel-based program to teach students quick ergonomic risk assessment techniques with an application to an assembly system

Governments force companies to stabilize ergonomic risk levels of the manufacturing environment and keep it below an acceptable risk level in order to prevent aftermaths. As a result, companies need more manufacturing engineers who are aware of ergonomics risk analysis. Thus, undergraduate students in the 3rd year in Industrial Engineering at Dokuz Eylul University are invited to take part in a real-life experience. This paper introduces an Excel-based program which is called Quick Ergonomic Assessment Techniques (QEAT); in order to support teaching students ergonomic risk assessment techniques; facilitate understanding characteristics of different techniques, and enable to compare the results of them. Three of the well-known ergonomic risk assessment techniques are coded in QEAT and applied on an electronics company which manufactures TV. The proposed QEAT procedure is easy to apply in various manufacturing environments and is suitable to be implemented in undergraduate engineering laboratories in order to support and encourage ergonomics study. The results show that by using the combination of three techniques in QEAT, an ergonomic risk assessment which covers most of the body areas could be presented and manufacturing environment could be reanalyzed easily if it is needed due to the changes in production processes. (C) 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc