Report: Global Overview 2014: People internally displaced by conflict and violence

Report: Global Overview 2014: People internally displaced by conflict and violence
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
Norwegian Refugee Council
May 2014 78 pages
Authors: Sebastián Albuja, Emilie Arnaud, Martina Caterina, Guillaume Charron, Florence Foster, Anne-Kathrin Glatz, Steve Hege, Caroline Howard, Johanna Klos, Frederik Kok, Vsevolod Kritskiy, Anais Pagot, Héloise Ruaudel, Elizabeth J Rushing, Wesli Turner, Nadine Walicki and Melanie Wissing

[Excerpt from Overview; Editor’s text bolding]
The Global Overview 2014 is IDMC’s flagship annual report, this year revealing a staggering increase in global displacement worldwide with a particular escalation in the figures in the Middle East and in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Global Overview 2014: people internally displaced by conflict and violence explores a number of key challenges including in terms of data collection, IDPs outside of camps, and the complexities around the compounding effects of natural hazards and conflict.

The report covers displacement occurring in 2013 and is based on data provided by governments, NGO partners and UN agencies. It documents the figures and analysis of internal displacement in five regions and in 60 conflict-affected countries and territories in 2013 – the year that IDMC celebrated its 15th year of global monitoring.

IDMC estimates that there were 33.3 million internally displaced people in the world as of the end of 2013. They were forced to flee their homes by armed conflict, generalised violence and human rights violations. This figure represents a 16 per cent increase compared with 2012, when we reported 28.8 million IDPs, and is a record high for the second year running.

In 2013, we marked our 15th year of monitoring internal displacement across the globe. In 1998, there were 19.3 million IDPs worldwide, and over the past decade there has been a longer term upward trend from around 25 million in 2001.

As of the end of 2013, sub-Saharan Africa had the largest number of IDPs with 12.5 million, followed by the Middle East and north Africa with 9.1 million. Sixty-three per cent of all IDPs globally come from just five countries affected by conflict: Syria, Colombia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sudan.

Report: Voice and Agency: Empowering women and girls for shared prosperity

Report: Voice and Agency: Empowering women and girls for shared prosperity
World Bank
May 2014 226 pages
From Executive Summary
This report distills an array of data, studies and evidence to shine a spotlight on the pervasive deprivations and constraints that face women and girls worldwide—from epidemic gender-based violence to laws and norms that prevent women from owning property, working, making decisions about their own lives and having influence in society. It identifies some promising programs and interventions to address these deprivations and constraints.

Policymakers and stakeholders need to tackle this agenda, drawing on evidence about what works and systematically tracking progress on the ground. This must start with reforming discriminatory laws and follow through with concerted policies and public actions, including multi-sectoral approaches that engage with men and boys and challenge adverse social norms. There is much to gain. Increasing women’s voice and agency is a valuable end in its own right. And it underpins achievement of the World Bank Group’s twin goals of eliminating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity for girls and boys, women and men, around the world.

Report: Maternity and paternity at work: Law and practice across the world

Report: Maternity and paternity at work: Law and practice across the world
ILO – Laura Addati, Naomi Cassirer and Katherine Gilchrist
13 May 2014 193 pages
978-92-2-128630-1[ISBN]
Overview
This report provides a picture of where we stand and what we have learned so far about maternity and paternity rights across the world. It offers a rich international comparative analysis of law and practice relating to maternity protection at work in 185 countries and territories, comprising leave, cash benefits, employment protection and non-discrimination, health protection, breastfeeding arrangements at work and childcare. Expanding on previous editions, it is based on an extensive set of new legal and statistical indicators, including coverage in law and in practice of paid maternity leave as well as statutory provision of paternity and parental leave and their evolution over the last 20 years.
The report also takes account of the recent economic crisis and austerity measures. It shows how well national laws and practice conform to the ILO Maternity Protection Convention, 2000 (No. 183), its accompanying Recommendation (No. 191) and the Workers with Family Responsibilities Convention, 1981 (No. 156), and offers guidance on policy design and implementation.
This report shows that a majority of countries have established legislation to protect and support maternity and paternity at work, even if those provisions do not always meet the ILO standards. One of the persistent challenges is the effective implementation of legislation, to ensure that all workers are able to benefit from these essential labour rights.
:: Full report – [pdf 16620KB]
:: Overview of the report – [pdf 4098KB]

Annual Report 2014: International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)

Annual Report 2014: International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)
IATI
07 May 2014 182 pages
Overview
This is the second IATI Annual Report to be published. IATI has reached critical mass in terms of membership and growth in publishers, now it is important to drive up the quality of data and ensure that it can be used to add value at country level. The IATI annual report highlights progress made in 2013…
:: Read the full report here.
From the Introduction
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is a key element of the agreed, common,
open standard for the electronic publication and reporting of timely, comprehensive and forward looking development cooperation information. The common standard was called for in the Busan Partnership Agreement1 and further defined by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and IATI and reflected in the agreement endorsed by the final meeting of the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness in June 2012.
This common standard consists of three complementary systems and processes: the OECD DAC Creditor Reporting System (CRS), which contains comprehensive historical statistical information; its Forward Spending Survey (FSS); and IATI.
Since the original IATI Accra Statement in 20082, IATI has already gained significant momentum. This accelerated before and following the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness3, which produced the Busan Partnership agreement.
Outside of the DAC membership, IATI is also used by many international and local NGOs, as well as several foundations, private companies and other development actors to report data on their activities.

Essay: Show Them the Money [UCT]

Foreign Affairs
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/
Accessed 17 May 2014

Essay
Show Them the Money
By Christopher Blattman and Paul Niehaus
May/June 2014
Excerpt
Every year, wealthy countries spend billions of dollars to help the world’s poor, paying for cows, goats, seeds, beans, textbooks, business training, microloans, and much more. Such aid is designed to give poor people things they can’t afford or the tools and skills to earn more. Much of this aid undoubtedly works. But even when assistance programs accomplish things, they often do so in a tremendously expensive and inefficient way. Part of this is due to overhead, but overhead costs get far more attention than they deserve. More worrisome is the actual price of procuring and giving away goats, textbooks, sacks of beans, and the like.

Most development agencies either fail to track their costs precisely or keep their accounting books confidential, but a number of candid organizations have opened themselves up to scrutiny. Their experiences suggest that delivering stuff to the poor is a lot more expensive than one might expect.

Take cows. Many Western organizations give poor families livestock, along with training in how to raise and profit from the animals. Cows themselves usually cost no more than a few hundred dollars each, but delivering them — targeting recipients, administering the donations, transporting the animals — gets expensive. In West Bengal, India, for example, the nonprofit Bandhan spends $331 to get $166 worth of local livestock and other assets to the poor, according to a report by the rating agency Micro-Credit Ratings International. Yet even this program sounds like a bargain compared to others. In Rwanda, a study led by the economist Rosemary Rawlins found that the cost of donating a pregnant cow, with attendant training classes and support services, through the charity Heifer International can reach $3,000.

Such programs surely reduce poverty: having a cow is undoubtedly better than not having one. But they also carry an opportunity cost, since the money spent on procuring and delivering the cows or other assets could instead go directly to the poor. Bandhan, for example, could give twice as many households cash grants equal to the local price of the livestock it now gives as it does actual livestock. And in place of each cow it provides, Heifer could give $300 — roughly half of Rwanda’s per capita income — to ten poor families.

Does the benefit of an in-kind donation to one family really outweigh the value of helping twice or even ten times as many households? For a growing number of antipoverty programs, the answer to that question appears to be no. New research suggests that cash grants to the poor are as good as or better than many traditional forms of aid when it comes to reducing poverty. The process of transferring cash, moreover, is only getting cheaper, thanks to the spread of technologies such as cell phones and satellite signals. And simply asking whether a given program is doing more good than it costs puts pressure on the aid sector to be more transparent and accountable. It’s well past time, then, for donors to stop thinking of unconditional cash payments as an oddball policy and start seeing them for what they are: one of the most sensible tools of poverty alleviation…

Amref Health Africa [to 17 May 2014]

Amref Health Africa [to 17 May 2014]

Amref Health Africa International Health Conference, November 24-26, 2014, Nairobi, Kenya
From November 24-26, Amref Health Africa will be holding its first international conference themed ‘From Evidence to Action: Lasting Health Change for Africa’ at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. The three day conference will focus on exchange of scientific results and debates on strategic ideas and application of knowledge to inform health care financing, human resources for health, community systems strengthening and the post 2015 health agenda. It brings together leaders, scholars, players and partners in African health development and advocacy. It is an important forum for discussions on how Africa can influence the global health agenda to improve health and health rights on the continent. For further information, please visit the conference website at www.ahaic.org.
:: Call For Abstracts
Amref Health Africa is calling for submission of abstracts for the conference under five tracks: Reproductive health and maternal and neonatal child health; HIV TB and Malaria; Environmental and water resource management; New and emerging health priorities: NCDs and NTDs and Innovation, technology and health. Read more>>

Casa Alianza :: Covenant House [to 17 May 2014]

Casa Alianza [to 17 May 2014]
Covenant House [to 17 May 2014]

Casa Alianza UK @CasaAlianzaUK • May 13
Director of Casa Alianza #Honduras beaten by police for highlighting murders of children: http://bit.ly/1g42fgW #Honduras #humanrights

Retweeted by Covenant House
Kevin Ryan @CovHousePrez 1h
This year we celebrated 25 yrs of @CovenantHouse in Mexico & NJ, & 15 yrs in Philly. Thx everyone who makes this possible for homeless kids.

Kevin Ryan @CovHousePrez • May 13
Jon Bon Jovi discusses his 1st glance at the kids of @CovenantHouse more than 30 years ago, and why he wrote Runaway https://www.facebook.com/CovenantHouse

Heifer International [to 17 May 2014]

Heifer International [to 17 May 2014]

Heifer International @Heifer • 17h
.@HeiferCEO discusses the importance of Heifer’s #FeastInField event & helping Arkansas farmers w/ @KATVNews

Heifer International @Heifer • May 16
Read an Q/A with Judith Schwartz about how cows are restoring soil and healing the Earth http://hefr.in/1jnYkfA

Heifer International @Heifer • May 16
After the Nepal Civil War tore her family apart, Sobha found new hope with Heifer: http://hefr.in/1jnNSVw

Heifer International ‏@Heifer
See how Heifer is working with @GreenMtnCoffee to help empower coffee growers: http://hefr.in/1sXzPrg pic.twitter.com/Lb6241aoIT

Heifer International @Heifer • May 15
Heifer is partnering with U.S. farmers like Ann Rose to help end hunger in Appalachia. http://hefr.in/1jkp9RP

HelpAge International [to 17 May 2014]

HelpAge International [to 17 May 2014]

Retweeted by HelpAge
Charles Njanga @CNjanga • May 16
@helpage SIDA programme Annual Review and Planning Workshop in Nairobi, Kenya from 13th – 17th May 2014.

HelpAge @helpage • May 15
“@Age_Int makes strong case for tackling people of all ages in #post2015 framework” Comments from @UKHouseofLords http://ageinternational.org.uk/news-and-views/Latest-news/Age-inclusive-post-2015-recognised-by-Peers-and-MPs/ …

Retweeted by HelpAge
Toby Porter @tobyhporter • May 14
At launch of @helpage ambitious social protection project in Myanmar with Minister HE Dr Daw Myat Ohn Khin

International Rescue Committee [to 17 May 2014]

International Rescue Committee [to 17 May 2014]

Seven Steps to Assisting the People of South Sudan: Statement by Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs)
12 May 2014

IRC Statement
12 May 2014 – The IRC welcomes the announcement of the joint The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces and the Free Syrian Army “Communiqué to Eliminate Sexual Violence”, signed on 30 April 2014 by Syrian Coalition President Ahmad al Jarba and Supreme Military Council Chief of Staff General Abdulilah al Bashir.
All parties to the conflict – the Syrian government and the opposition – must take the necessary steps to keep women and girls safe.
An important next step is that all parties allow unhindered humanitarian access within Syria, so that humanitarian agencies such as International Rescue Committee can reach women and girls with life saving services.

Retweeted by Intl Rescue Comm IRC
OPIC.gov @opicgov • May 16
Featured #photo: @theIRC, recent winner of OPIC’s Impact Award for Development Impact http://www.opic.gov/blog/?p=4666

Intl Rescue Comm IRC @theIRC • May 16
IRC brief on UN Mission mandate in #SouthSudan: http://bit.ly/1lq6q2Q

Intl Rescue Comm IRC @theIRC • May 16
An initial frame of reference towards becoming a more demand-responsive aid agency, on #FastSlow: http://bit.ly/1mZ1V67

Intl Rescue Comm IRC ‏@theIRC
IRC in #Mogadishu #Somalia is responding to health needs of thousands of people fleeing conflict in Lower Shabelle

Retweeted by Intl Rescue Comm IRC
WakaWaka @WakaWakaLight • May 13
A first-hand account of how effective WakaWakas are in #Syria, distributed by the IRC: http://bit.ly/1ab14JK

Intl Rescue Comm IRC @theIRC • May 13
Humanitarian impact bonds: Pipe dream or possibility? http://bit.ly/1lsz06I

Intl Rescue Comm IRC @theIRC • May 10
ALERT: Women fleeing Nigeria cite fear of abduction, reports @theIRC. http://bit.ly/1mILElE #BringBackOurGirls

MSF/Médecins Sans Frontières [to 17 May 2014]

MSF/Médecins Sans Frontières [to 17 May 2014]

Five MSF Staff Held in Syria Released
May 15, 2014
Abduction forces closure of three MSF medical facilities providing care to 150,000 Syrians.

MSF International @MSF • May 16
#CARcrisis: One year of displacement. The conflict told through the testimonies of displaced people in PK12 and Mpoko http://bit.ly/1nWot4I

MSF International @MSF • May 15
#MSF requests privacy for 5 staff released from #Syria. #MSF will provide no further info beyond the statement http://bit.ly/1k5EbcQ

MSF International @MSF
A glimpse into the world of DR-TB patients and staff at an #MSF clinic in Mumbai http://bit.ly/1jx3IqL #TBmanifesto pic.twitter.com/Jh0E3khwk2

MSF International @MSF • May 14
“The situation is untenable”. Read the interview with Emmanuel Lampaert on #MSF in #DRC http://bit.ly/1v4gGpy

MSF International ‏@MSF
“Family and sexual violence is too common in #PapuaNewGuinea”. #MSF Read the article: http://bit.ly/1jBRdzg pic.twitter.com/ev76NN1kgE

MSF International @MSF • May 12
Want to see what we did last month? Watch the highlights for #MSF’s activities over the past month: A Month in Focus http://bit.ly/1mhrhtc

Operation Smile [to 17 May 2014]

Operation Smile [to 17 May 2014]
Upcoming Mission Schedule
May 14 – 18 | El Bagre, Colombia
May 15 – 21 | Liangshan, China
May 15 – 21 | Huangshi, China
May 17 – 24 | David, Panama
May 23 – 31 | Lima, Peru

May 14, 2014
A Chance Encounter in Mexico

May 14, 2014
Operation Smile Volunteer Impacts Medical Care at Home

May 13, 2014
Operation Smile to host think tank of international medical teams and industry thought leaders during NEXT Medical Conference

Operation Smile @operationsmile • 20h
Every 3 mins a child is born with a cleft. http://ow.ly/wL8EU

Operation Smile @operationsmile • May 16
Health care providers from 45 countries in rare meeting to advance #GlobalSurgery. #NEXTCleftCare @Covidien http://prn.to/RHJQvb

Partners In Health [to 17 May 2014]

Partners In Health [to 17 May 2014]

May 15, 2014
A Nurse Accompanier in Rwanda
A Boston-based oncology nurse reflects on her time working in Rwanda.

May 15, 2014
Chief Nursing Officer Raises the Bar for Nursing in Haiti
University Hospital’s chief nursing officer believes empowering nurses will improve patient care.

May 12, 2014
PIH’s Chief Nursing Officer Takes Questions on Twitter
As part of our celebration of nurses, PIH chief nursing officer Sheila Davis answered your questions about global nursing.

May 12, 2014
Empowering Nurses to Improve Care in Haiti
Partners In Health and Zanmi Lasante open a Nursing Center of Excellence. ▸

Retweeted by Partners In Health
Stephanie Garry @sgarry • May 16
Inspiring video about @PIH nurses around the world – http://bit.ly/RIwUF8 #GlobalNursesChat

Partners In Health @PIH • May 14
Congratulations to our colleagues at Zanmi Lasante on the opening of the Nursing Center of Excellence! http://bit.ly/1iUFWJQ

SOS-Kinderdorf International [to 17 May 2014]

SOS-Kinderdorf International [to 17 May 2014]

Children’s Villages @sos4children May 12
@VincentKompany, SOS Int’l Ambassador, in this weekend’s Observer newspaper http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/may/10/vincent-kompany-calm-and-ready-to-collect-manchester-city …

Children’s Villages @sos4children May 11
“We urge the abductors to free the girls immediately.” – R. Pichler, SOS Children International #bringbackourgirls #Nigeria

Tostan [to 17 May 2014]

Tostan [to 17 May 2014]
Tostan’s work on the longstanding practice of begging by young Koranic school students in Senegal – the talibe — and efforts being made to end the forced labor and abuse involved are featured on a PBS Newshour [U.S.] broadcast on May 2nd: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365238551/

May 14, 2014
Press Release: Tostan Receives Its Sixth Consecutive 4-Star Rating from Charity Navigator
“This exceptional designation from Charity Navigator differentiates Tostan from its peers and demonstrates to the public it is worthy of their trust.” Ken Berger, President

Tostan @Tostan May 16
“@Tostan’s work has led to changes in social norms. Individuals are…embracing the good” pg. 32 @Worldbank
http://bit.ly/1ljBwdY

Tostan @Tostan May 16
Imam Magid, a well respected Islamic figure, visited Tostan & shared his positive reviews on our devpt model. Read: http://bit.ly/1qIi69H

Tostan @Tostan May 16
#FGC not #FGM: @fiztweets praises Tostan founder @MollyJMelching’s approach to ending harmful traditional practices http://huff.to/1mzpbF6

Tostan ‏@Tostan May 13
We’ve been busy this month. Catch up on child protection, economic empowerment, and more, with our May newsletter! http://bit.ly/14VnE3y