Browse by: "2011"

Trade promotes economic growth, alleviates poverty and helps countries reach their development goals. However, developing countries – in particular the least developed – face difficulties in making trade happen and turning trade into economic growth. The Aid for Trade Initiative – launched at the 2005 World Trade Organisation conference in Hong Kong – aims at helping these countries to take advantage of trade opportunities and to reap the benefits of their integration into the world economy. The Initiative has been a success: it has not only raised awareness among both donors and developing countries about the role of trade in development, but also helped secure increased resources.

Trade for Growth and Poverty Reduction: How Aid for Trade Can Help explains how Aid for Trade can foster economic growth and reduce poverty, and why it is an important instrument for a development strategy that actively supports poverty alleviation. Unlocking this potential requires carefully designed and sequenced trade reforms. While developing countries have many trade-related needs, but financial resources and political capital for reforms are limited, it is an important priority to tackle the most binding constraints to trade expansion. This report describes the diagnostic tools available, evaluates their strengths and weaknesses, and suggests a dynamic framework to guide the sequencing of reform and donor support.

Space applications have become an important part of everyday life. Weather forecasting, air traffic control, global communications and broadcasting, disaster management -- these and many other key activities would be almost unthinkable today without satellite technology. The space industry itself is relatively small compared to other manufacturing sectors, but its technological dynamism and strategic significance mean that it plays an ever more critical role in modern society. 

This book assembles information on the space economy from a wide range of official and non-official sources. Together these paint a richly detailed picture of the space industry, its downstream services activities, and its wider economic and social impacts. Who are the main space-faring nations? How large are revenues and how much employment is there in the sector? How much R&D goes on, and where? What is the value of spin-offs from space spending? Answers to these and other questions are provided in this second OECD statistical overview of the emerging space economy.

A dynamic link (StatLink) is provided for graphs, which directs the user to a web page where the corresponding data are available in Excel® format.

This book contributes to the current debate on migration policy, focusing on three main elements in the standard migration policy dialogue: the regulation of flows, the integration of immigrants and the impact of labour mobility on development.
In particular it argues that the current governance of international migration is both insufficient and inefficient. Restrictive and non-cooperative migration policies not only affect development in sending countries but also have counterproductive effects in the countries that implement them. Likewise, the lack of integration policies generates costs for society. In this respect, the book focuses on South-South migration and highlights the specific risks of neglecting integration in developing countries. It also analyses the effects of emigration on origin-country labour markets and underlines the externalities of immigration policies in migrant-sending countries.

The book explores the feasibility of implementing a coherent governance framework centred on three complementary objectives: i) a more flexible regulation of international migration flows; ii) a better integration of immigrants in developing countries; and iii) a higher impact of labour mobility on development.

Functioning states are essential for reducing poverty, sustaining peace and achieving agreed development goals. Despite receiving growing international attention in recent years, fragile states are falling behind other low-income countries in human development. Fragility – and its negative consequences – can destabilise entire regions and have global repercussions. Tackling the challenges associated with fragility requires a concerted international effort to support sustainable statebuilding processes, based on robust state-society relations.

Supporting Statebuilding in Situations of Conflict and Fragility: Policy Guidance presents new thinking on statebuilding and clear recommendations for better practice. It provides an internationally accepted conceptual framework for statebuilding, informed by today’s realities of conflict-affected and fragile situations. Building on good practices already being successfully applied on the ground, this guidance lays out how developing and developed countries can better facilitate positive statebuilding processes and strengthen the foundations upon which capable and legitimate states are built. The recommendations in this guidance address critical areas for better international engagement from strategy development and programme design and delivery to day-to-day operations in the field and at headquarters.

“Shifting wealth” – a process that started in the 1990s and took off in the 2000s – has led to a completely new geography of growth driven by the economic rise of large developing countries, in particular China and India. The resulting re-configuration of the global economy will shape the political, economic and social agendas of international development as those of the converging and poor countries for the years to come.

This report analyses the impact of “Shifting wealth” on social cohesion, largely focusing on high-growth converging countries. A “cohesive” society works towards the well-being of all its members, creates a sense of belonging and fights against the marginalization within and between different groups of societies. The question this report asks is how does the structural transformation in converging economies affect their “social fabric”, their sense of belonging or put generally their ability to peacefully manage collective action problems.

Recent events in well performing countries in the Arab world but also beyond such as in Thailand, China and India seem to suggest that economic growth, rising fiscal resources and improvements in education are not sufficient  to create cohesion; governments need to address social deficits and actively promote social cohesion if long-term development is to be sustainable.   

This publication presents the Development Assistance Committee peer review of the aid programmes and policies of Germany for 2010. The policies and programmes of each DAC member are critically examined approximately once every four or five years. Five members are examined annually. The OECD’s Development Co-operation Directorate provides analytical support and is responsible for developing and maintaining the conceptual framework within which the Peer Reviews are undertaken.  The Peer Review is prepared by a team, consisting of representatives of the Secretariat working with officials from two DAC members who are designated as “examiners”. The country under review provides a memorandum setting out the main developments in its policies and programmes. Then the Secretariat and the examiners visit the capital to interview officials, parliamentarians, as well as civil society and NGO representatives of the donor country to obtain a first-hand insight into current issues surrounding the development co-operation efforts of the member concerned. Field visits assess how members are implementing the major DAC policies, principles and concerns, and review operations in recipient countries, particularly with regard to poverty reduction, sustainability, gender equality and other aspects of participatory development, and local aid co-ordination.

The Secretariat then prepares a draft report on the member’s development co-operation which is the basis for the DAC review meeting at the OECD. At this meeting senior officials from the member under review respond to questions formulated by the Secretariat in association with the examiners. This review contains the Main Findings and Recommendations of the Development Assistance Committee and the report of the Secretariat.

This publication presents the Development Assistance Committee peer review of the aid programmes and policies of Belgium for 2010. The policies and programmes of each DAC member are critically examined approximately once every four or five years. Five members are examined annually. The OECD’s Development Co-operation Directorate provides analytical support and is responsible for developing and maintaining the conceptual framework within which the Peer Reviews are undertaken.  The Peer Review is prepared by a team, consisting of representatives of the Secretariat working with officials from two DAC members who are designated as “examiners”. The country under review provides a memorandum setting out the main developments in its policies and programmes. Then the Secretariat and the examiners visit the capital to interview officials, parliamentarians, as well as civil society and NGO representatives of the donor country to obtain a first-hand insight into current issues surrounding the development co-operation efforts of the member concerned. Field visits assess how members are implementing the major DAC policies, principles and concerns, and review operations in recipient countries, particularly with regard to poverty reduction, sustainability, gender equality and other aspects of participatory development, and local aid co-ordination.

The Secretariat then prepares a draft report on the member’s development co-operation which is the basis for the DAC review meeting at the OECD. At this meeting senior officials from the member under review respond to questions formulated by the Secretariat in association with the examiners. This review contains the Main Findings and Recommendations of the Development Assistance Committee and the report of the Secretariat.

More than 200 multilateral donors receive or serve as a channel for 40% of all aid. To help meet the challenge of ensuring effective and co-ordinated multilateral aid efforts, Multilateral Aid 2010 covers trends in and total use (core and non-core) of the multilateral system, with a special focus on trust funds from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Bank. It explores development perspectives of the climate change funding architecture and provides an overview of the response of multilaterals to the financial and economic crisis.

While the OECD’s annual Development Co-operation Report serves as a key reference for statistics and analysis on the latest trends in international aid, the Multilateral Aid report – as the name implies – takes a specific look at trends in multilateral aid only.

To help experts and practitioners working to tackle the problem of armed violence, three Programming Notes build on the 2009 publication entitled Armed Violence Reduction: Enabling Development. These three notes cover:

• Armed violence in urban areas
• Youth and armed violence
• The linkages between Armed Violence Reduction and Security System Reform

Conservative estimates indicate that at least 740 000 men, women, youth and children die each year as a result of armed violence, most of them in low- and medium-income settings. The majority of these deaths occur in situations other than war, though armed conflicts continue to generate a high incidence of casualties.   Approaches to preventing and reducing these deaths and related suffering are becoming increasingly important on the international agenda. In spite of the global preoccupation with the costs and consequences of armed violence, comparatively little evidence exists about how to stem its risks and effects. Virtually no information is available on Armed Violence Reduction and Prevention interventions, much less their effectiveness.

This publication aims to fill this gap. It seeks to generate more understanding of what works and what does not, to stimulate further evaluation and to contribute to more effective and efficient policies and programmes.

A large-scale mapping of Armed Violence Reduction and Prevention activities around the world form the basis of analysis, focusing primarily on programming trends in six countries – Brazil, Burundi, Colombia, Liberia, South Africa and Timor-Leste. These countries represent the very different programming contexts – from high rates of urban criminal violence to protracted post-conflict insecurity – in which development practitioners are currently engaged.

While offering new data and analysis, this assessment builds directly on the 2009 publication Armed Violence Reduction: Enabling Development.