The principle of “the best interest of the child” should guide decisions by politicians whenever
children are affected. This is one of
...
the basic ideas in the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child. Decision makers should assess the consequences for children before taking
action. Today, this principle is not fully respected in European countries in relation to migrant
children.
more
The COVID-19 pandemic’s immediate costs, measured in lives lost and damaged, have been appalling and continue to rise. In addition, its effects on individuals’ livelihoods and economies around
...
the world have been deep and are likely to be long lasting. While saving lives was the near-exclusive focus during the first phase of the crisis, governments are now trying to strike a delicate balance between preventing further economic damage by reopening parts of their economies, while managing the obvious health risks of doing so.
In the international mobility and migration arenas—policy areas enormously affected by the health and economic effects of the pandemic—this reflection considers both how these fields have fared thus far and the challenges that lay ahead
more
AidData has developed a set of open source data collection methods to track project-level data on suppliers of official finance who do not participate in global reporting systems. This codebook outl
...
ines the version 1.1 set of TUFF procedures that have been developed, tested, refined, and implemented by AidData researchers and affiliated faculty at the College of William & Mary and Brigham Young University.
In the first iteration of this codebook, AidData's Media-Based Data Collection Methodology, Version 1.0, we referred to our data collection procedures as a “media-based data collection” (MBDC) methodology. The term “media-based” was misleading, as the methodology does not rely exclusively on media reports; rather, media reports are used only as a departure point, and are supplemented with case studies undertaken by scholars and non-governmental organizations, project inventories supplied through Chinese embassy websites, and grants and loan data published by recipient governments. In the interest of providing greater clarity, we now refer to our methodology for systematically gathering open source development finance information as the Tracking Underreported Financial Flows (TUFF) methodology. This codebook outlines the set of TUFF procedures that have been developed, tested, refined, and implemented by AidData staff and affiliated faculty at the College of William & Mary and Brigham Young University.
more
Advances have been made through expanded interventions delivered through five public health approaches: innovative and intensified disease management; preventive chemotherapy; vector ecology and management; veterinary public health services; and the
...
provision of safe water, sanitation and hygiene. In 2015 alone nearly one billion people were treated for at least one disease and significant gains were achieved in relieving the symptoms and consequences of diseases for which effective tools are scarce; important reductions were achieved in the number of new cases of sleeping sickness, of visceral leishmaniasis in South-East Asia and also of Buruli ulcer.
The report also considers vector control strategies and discusses the importance of the draft WHO Global Vector Control Response 2017–2030.
more
The transformation of the humanitarian landscape has already made a significant impact on the op
...
erational security of INGOs and other humanitarian actors. This report serves to inform strategic policy priorities and approaches to security planning and coordination, and addresses three main questions: 1. What are the emerging trends, developments and drivers of change that are likely to affect or change security issues and considerations in the humanitarian environment of the future? 2. How will the humanitarian sector need to adapt in order to continue to deliver programmes within this changing operational context? 3. How prepared are organisations for this future, and what might they need to do differently in order to be prepared?
more
This report seeks to uncover the extent to which global goals crowd in international financing, inform domestic policy priorities, and navigate progress toward development outcomes in low- and middle
...
-income countries (LICs and MICs). Our report:
Provides a historical perspective on how ODA financing was aligned with the MDGs, and the perceived influence of global goals in shaping domestic priorities
Offers a baseline of ODA financing to the SDGs and a forward-looking perspective in translating past lessons learned from the MDGs era into actionable insights
Using a pilot methodology developed by AidData, we analyze ODA flows during the MDGs era (2000-2013) and approximate baseline financing for each goal prior to the adoption of Agenda 2030 in September 2015. The dataset used in the report, Financing to the SDGs, Version 1.0, provides project-level data on estimated Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from 2000 to 2013. In this report, we also draw upon the responses of nearly 7,000 public, private, and civil society leaders from AidData’s novel 2014 Reform Efforts Survey to assess how national-level policymakers perceive the MDGs in light of their domestic reform priorities, and what this may mean for the SDGs.
more
World Drug Report 2017
-5-
Accessed: 14.03.2019
To enhance health co-benefits across urban policies which tackle air pollution and climate change, WHO, in cooperation with various international, national, and local partners, implemented the Urban Health Initiative (UHI) pilot
...
project in Accra, Ghana. The Initiative prompted the health sector to use its influential position to demonstrate to decision-makers and the public the full range of health, environmental and economic benefits that can be achieved from implementing local emission reduction and energy access policies and strategies. Policy tracking, although not always considered, is a fundamental component of this procedure. It assesses the planning, implementation and progress of a policy to refine or adjust policies with the final objective of increasing the likelihood of the policy being successful. This report is an outcome of the last component of the UHI model process, Policy tracking and monitoring outcomes. The report proposes a framework for tracking urban health policies, with a special focus on the impacts of air quality and energy access on human health and well-being in African countries, giving some examples from the pilot project in Accra. The report also provides resources to survey air quality in cities and other tools to assess public health and the environmental impacts of urban policies and monitor or track their effects.
more
Progress towards targets of the Global action plan on dementia
The Global status report on violence prevention 2014, which reflects data from 133 countries, is the first report of its kind to assess national ef
...
forts to address interpersonal violence, namely child maltreatment, youth violence, intimate partner and sexual violence, and elder abuse. Jointly published by WHO, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the report reviews the current status of violence prevention efforts in countries, and calls for a scaling up of violence prevention programmes; stronger legislation and enforcement of laws relevant for violence prevention; and enhanced services for victims of violence.
You can download summaries in different languages, single chapters and graphics
more
In its report from 2014, the Working Group outlines the various factors influencing vaccine acceptance or refusal, and what can be done to create social norms around vaccine acceptance and to encour
...
age the general public regarding the necessity of vaccination.
more
Access to safe blood and blood products is recognized as one of the key requirements for delivery of modern health care in the journey towards health for all.
...
The foundation of safe and sustainable blood supplies depends on the collection of blood from voluntary non-remunerated and low-risk donors. Data from the WHO Global Database for Blood Safety (GDBS) brings out several inadequacies related to the supply and safety of blood and blood products. These inadequacies include a number of variations in safe blood practices across the world, including the quantity of blood donated (voluntary and replacement types), quality and adequate testing of the donated blood (immunohaematology [IH] and transfusion-transmitted infections [TTIs]), rational use of blood and blood components such as appropriate patient blood management protocols. These variations are very high in countries of the South-East Asian Region and most of them are either low- or middle-income countries (LMICs).
more
There is growing understanding and high-level endorsement of the importance of strong collaborative multisectoral approaches to address a broad range of social, economic and governance issues for the
...
prevention and control of noncommunicable disease (NCDs) and mental health conditions. In 2019, World Health Organization (WHO) Member States requested the WHO Director-General to provide an analysis across countries of successful approaches for the prevention and control of NCDs that used multisectoral action.This report describes the experiences of different countries, areas and territories in implementing multisectoral actions to tackle NCDs and is the first step to address their request for an analysis of such efforts
more
This paper introduces a new dataset of official financing—including foreign aid and other forms of concessional and non-concessional state financing—from China to 138 countries between 2000 and 2014. We use these data to investigate whether and to what extent Chinese aid affects economic growth
...
in recipient countries. To account for the endogeneity of aid, we employ an instrumental-variables strategy that relies on exogenous variation in the supply of Chinese aid over time resulting from changes in Chinese steel production. Variation across recipient countries results from a country’s probability of receiving aid. Controlling for year- and recipient-fixed effects that capture the levels of these variables, their interaction provides a powerful and excludable instrument. Our results show that Chinese official development assistance (ODA) boosts economic growth in recipient countries. For the average recipient country, we estimate that one additional Chinese ODA project produces a 0.7 percentage point increase in economic growth two years after the project is committed. We also benchmark the effectiveness of Chinese aid vis-á-vis the World Bank, the United States, and all members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
more
Putting Asia’s HIV response back on track
Robust clinical research capacity in low- and middle-income countries is key to stemming the spread of epidemics, according to a new report from the
...
International Vaccines Task Force (IVTF). The report lays out how to develop the political support, financing and coordination required to build this capacity as a crucial component of global epidemic preparedness. The IVTF was convened by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in October 2017.
more
The Lancet Volume 397, ISSUE 10269, P129-170, January 09, 2021