Over 150 countries maintain mandatory civil registration systems. The number and variety of registration and identification systems has increased with the rise of the Internet (World Bank 2015).
... See More + The functionality of these systems has also expanded over this time period, with delivery mechanisms for services and benefits increasingly tied to registration. Attracted by the promise of new technology, countries and development partners alike have invested heavily in identification systems, in terms of both development dollars and strategy. Regarding strategy, identification systems have found their way onto no less preeminent a platform than the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, which include the proposed target, by 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration, under the broader goal of peaceful and inclusive societies. This article will explore the prospects, challenges and risks of pinning inclusive development outcomes on identification systems. Much of the current discourse on identification- and registry- related issues3 is framed from a state-centered perspective; that is, improving the functioning of government agencies and enhancing the collection of data for planning and policy. The authors suggest complementing this with a stronger focus on the impacts of identification systems on the poorest and most marginalized. In many circumstances, identification systems risk not serving the development needs of such people. In developing global and country-specific identification strategies, there is a need to more clearly and critically articulate the implied benefits, costs and risks of alternative approaches.
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This policy note summarizes key lessons and conclusions from the World Bank's engagement in Solomon Islands under the justice for the poor program, which has been active in that country since 2009.
... See More + It interprets what has been learned in connection with a question posed at the start of this program: what can be done to support more effective and legitimate institutions to handle problems of justice in Solomon Islands?. To answer this question, the note is organized around a set of three questions. First, what are Solomon Islanders' main justice concerns? Second, how are these concerns being handled today, to what extent are people satisfied, and why? Third, what can Solomon Islanders and their development partners do to improve justice outcomes? This note is an effort to shift the standard discourse on building justice institutions to a problem driven approach that seeks to grapple with the contextual peculiarities of Solomon Islands. The approach, which this note aims to illustrate, begins with an assessment of how problems are experienced by citizens and then examines how these issues are being handled by public authorities, whether secular, religious, chiefly, or kastom in nature. It then considers the conditions under which these authorities may work differently and also the likelihood that powerful players and citizens will invest in the forms of institutions needed to incrementally, but appreciably, deliver better results.
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The objective of the Third Regional Development Project for Georgia is to improve infrastructure services and institutional capacity to support the development of a tourism-based economy of the Samtskhe - Javakheti and Mtskheta - Mtianeti regions.
... See More + Negative impacts include: (1) loss of agricultural land; (2) loss of residential and non-residential buildings; (3) loss of common property resources; (4) loss of income and livelihood. Mitigation measures include: adequate compensation for loss, self-relocation allowances, reconstruction of the lost common property structures in consultation with community and restoration of their functions.
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Previous research on sex-selective abortions has ignored the interactions between fertility, birth spacing, and sex selection, despite both fertility and birth spacing being important considerations for parents when deciding on the use of sex selection.
... See More + This paper presents a novel approach that jointly estimates the determinants of sex-selective abortions, fertility, and birth spacing, using data on Hindu women from India's National Family and Health Surveys. Women with eight or more years of education in urban and rural areas are the main users of sex-selective abortions and they also have the lowest fertility. Predicted lifetime fertility for these women declined 11 percent between the 1985-1994 and 1995-2006 periods, which correspond to the periods of time before and after sex selection became illegal. Fertility is now around replacement level. This decrease in fertility has been accompanied by a 6 percent increase in the predicted number of abortions during the childbearing years between the two periods, and sex selection is increasingly used for earlier parities. Hence, the legal steps taken to combat sex selection have been unable to reverse its use. Women with fewer than eight years of education have substantially higher fertility and do not appear to use sex selection.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7189 FEB 01, 2015
The objective of the Second Tamil Nadu Road Sector Project for India is to assist the Highways Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu, in improving the road services over its core road network (CRN) in terms of capacity enhancement, better maintenance and lower accident fatalities.
... See More + Some of the negative impacts and mitigation measures include: (i) resettlement should be avoided where feasible, or minimized, exploring all viable alternative project designs; (ii) where it is not feasible to avoid resettlement, resettlement activities should be conceived and executed as sustainable development programs, providing sufficient investment resources to enable the persons displaced by the project to share in project benefits and displaced persons should be meaningfully consulted and should have opportunities to participate in planning and implementing resettlement programs; and (iii) displaced persons should be assisted in their efforts to improve their livelihoods and standards of living or at least to restore them, in real terms, to pre-displacement levels or to levels prevailing prior to the beginning of project implementation, whichever is higher.
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Justice interventions in Solomon Islands over the last decade have focused largely on assisting Honiarabased state institutions in the form of a variety of capacity-building programs.
... See More + This has included a heavy reliance on expatriate expertise positioned in central justice agencies. The National Judiciary has benefited significantly from this support, although to date the direct effects of increased assistance have not been felt in most parts of the country. In part this has been because of a heavy focus on processing the vast amount of criminal cases emanating from the 1998-2003 period of civil conflict, locally referred to as the tension. Matters related to the tension have occupied the time and resources of Honiara-based justice institutions, particularly the courts. As tension investigations and trials have subsided there has been a growing recognition of the limits of the capacity-building approaches adopted to date (see Cox, Duituturaga and Scheye 2012). Government, together with donor partners, has been grappling with future spaces and modalities of support. Since 2010, the World Bank Justice for the Poor (J4P) program has supported the Justice Delivered Locally (JDL) initiative of the Solomon Islands Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs. The JDL initiative is aimed at reinvigorating local-level justice services to meet the demands of the 80 percent of the population living outside the capital, Honiara.
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The development objectives of the Odra-Vistula Flood Management Project for Poland are to increase access to flood protection for people living in the selected areas of the Odra and the upper Vistula river basins; and to strengthen the institutional capacity of the government to mitigate summer, winter, and flash-floods more effectively.
... See More + The key likely temporary or permanent impacts of project-related land take include: (1) loss of land (agricultural, non-agricultural, rural); (2) loss of assets (buildings, irrigation channels, fences, crops, trees, etc); (3) physical displacement of people, (4) loss of community infrastructure or common property resources. The negative effects of permanent acquisition or restricted conditions to the use of land are to be counteracted by suitable and adequate compensations.
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Most of the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa live in rural areas where agriculture is the main income source. This agriculture is characterized by low performance and its productivity growth has been identified as a key driver of poverty reduction.
... See More + In Niger, as in many other African countries, productivity is even lower among female peasants. To build policy interventions to improve agricultural productivity among women, it is important to measure the potential gap between men and women and understand the determinants that explain the gap. This paper uses the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methodology at the aggregate and detailed levels to identify the factors that explain the productivity gap. The analysis finds that in Niger on average plots managed by women produce 19 percent less per hectare than plots managed by men. It also finds that the gender gap tends to be widest among Niger's most productive farmers. The primary factors that contribute to the gender productivity gap in Niger are: (i) farm labor, with women facing significant challenges in accessing, using, and supervising male farm labor; (ii) the quantity and quality of fertilizer use, with men using more inorganic fertilizer per hectare than women; and (iii) land ownership and characteristics, with men owning more land and enjoying higher returns to ownership than women.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7199 FEB 01, 2015
Parental involvement in matchmaking may distort the choice of spouse because parents are willing to substitute love for market and household production, which are more sharable between parents and their children.
... See More + This paper finds supportive evidence in a survey of Chinese couples. In both rural and urban areas, parent matchmaking is associated with less marital harmony between the couple, more submissive wives, and a stronger belief in old age support for the son. In contrast, its association with couple income differs by rural and urban regions, perhaps because of differences in earning opportunities and in the enforcement of the one-child policy. Moreover, parent matchmaking is associated with more children for the couple and lower schooling for wives only in rural areas. Thus, in places with a stronger need for old age support, parents tend to be involved in matchmaking and use it to select submissive daughters-in-law to ensure old age support. The results render support to Becker, Murphy and Spenckuch (2015), who imply that parents would meddle with children;s preferences to ensure their commitment to providing old age support.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7188 FEB 01, 2015
This report, Europe and Central Asia - Missing Women in the South Caucasus : Local perceptions and proposed solutions, discusses research conducted on skewed sex ratios in the South Caucasus.
... See More + It discusses (i) the factors that encourage sex selection in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, (ii) whether and how these might be changing; (iii) public awareness of and attitudes regarding skewed sex rations; and to propose potential policy responses. The report examines the following: factors contributing to smaller families and unbalanced sex rations in the South Caucasus, the reasons for underlying son preference, attitudes toward daughters, factors that make women vulnerable to pressures to produce sons. It also describes how intergenerational and gender relationships are starting to change and proposes some recommendations for addressing the factors that underlie unbalanced sex rations.
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This report, Europe and Central Asia - Missing Women in the South Caucasus : Local perceptions and proposed solutions, discusses research conducted on skewed sex ratios in the South Caucasus.
... See More + It discusses (i) the factors that encourage sex selection in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, (ii) whether and how these might be changing; (iii) public awareness of and attitudes regarding skewed sex rations; and to propose potential policy responses. The report examines the following: factors contributing to smaller families and unbalanced sex rations in the South Caucasus, the reasons for underlying son preference, attitudes toward daughters, factors that make women vulnerable to pressures to produce sons. It also describes how intergenerational and gender relationships are starting to change and proposes some recommendations for addressing the factors that underlie unbalanced sex rations.
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Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASRH) is one of five areas of focus of the World Banks Reproductive Health Action Plan 2010-2015 (RHAP), which recognizes the importance of addressing ASRH as a development issue with important implications for poverty reduction.
... See More + Delaying childbearing and preventing unintended pregnancies during adolescence has been shown to schooling, future employment, and earnings (Greene Merrick, 2005). Early marriage often marks the beginning of exposure to the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Research has shown that adolescent marriage is associated with unplanned pregnancy, rapid repeat childbirth, inadequate use of maternal health services, and poor birth outcomes, among other negative maternal and child health outcomes (Godha, Hotchkiss, and Gage, 2013; Raj Boehmer, 2013; Santhya, 2011). Furthermore, research in Ethiopia has found that adolescent females who marry before the age of 15 are at higher risk of intimate partner violence and coercive sex than those who marry between ages 15-18 (Erulkar, 2013). At the 65th World Health Assembly, representatives agreed that early marriage is a violation of the rights of children and adolescents. Early marriage is illegal in most of the places where it occurs. It limits young girls autonomy, knowledge, resources, and decision-making power (World Bank, 2014). Adolescent marriage is also much more likely to affect females than males: in the developing world, 16 percent of females are married in comparison to 3 percent of males (UNFPA, 2013).
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Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASRH) is one of five areas of focus of the World Banks Reproductive Health Action Plan 2010 - 2015 (RHAP), which recognizes the importance of addressing ASRH as a development issue with important implications for poverty reduction.
... See More + Delaying childbearing and preventing unintended pregnancies during adolescence has been shown to improve health outcomes and increase opportunities for schooling, future employment, and earnings (Greene Merrick, 2005). The key messages relayed in this brief are as follows: Early age at sexual debut puts young people - particularly females - at an increased risk for unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, maternal mortality and morbidity; An analysis of data from six countries showed that adolescent sexual activity is closely tied to marital status. In all six countries studied, nearly all ever-married adolescent women have had sexual intercourse, but almost all those never-married have abstained, except in Burkina Faso and Nigeria where less than one quarter of never-married women have had sexual intercourse; The age at sexual debut is also closely linked to age at marriage. Over one third of ever-married women had sexual intercourse before age 15 in Nigeria (38 percent), Bangladesh (37 percent), and Niger (37 percent); In Burkina Faso and Nigeria, sexual activity is lowest among never-married adolescent women with no education (15 percent and 7 percent, respectively).
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The Government of Maldives (GoM) received support from the World Bank-managed Climate Change Trust Fund (CCTF) to deal with adaptation and mitigation of climate change.
... See More + A multi-donor Maldives CCTF was established in December 2009 with the aim to build a climate resilient economy and society in Maldives through adaptation to climate change as well as mitigation for a low carbon development path. The total resources pledged by the European Union and the Government of Australia were US$10.3 million. Three projects that have been implemented under the CCTF so far include: (i) Wetlands Conservation and Coral Reef Monitoring for Adaptation to Climate Change project (WCCM) (P128278); (ii) Clean Energy for Climate Mitigation project (CECM) (P128268); and (iii) AASWM pilot project (P130163). All the three projects are planned to end on November 30, 2014. The EU expressed its intention to support the second phase with a supplemental contribution of EUR 3.85 million. With support from CCTF second phase (CCTF- II), GoM proposes a project named Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) Project in the southernmost atolls (Addu/Seenu and Gnaiviyani) to undertake an integrate approach to respond to climate risks while ensuring environmental sustainability in a select geographical area. It is envisaged that this comprehensive approach of combining natural resources management and SWM may create synergy and establish a self-sustained system. The CCA Project supports initiatives to strengthen knowledge and leadership in the government, build adaptive capacity through pilot programmes, develop low-carbon options and improve policy and institutional capacities in both public and private sectors related to climate change adaptation and mitigation with a focus on flood management, wetland management, biodiversity conservation and integrated solid waste management.
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The extractive industries sector has been vital to the local economy of Papua New Guinea for over 20 years. Extractives have contributed substantially to government revenues but also face challenging social issues and significant environmental impacts in many areas.
... See More + A persistent challenge has been ensuring that extractives benefits reach local communities, including women and children. Research shows that benefits tend to be captured by men, while the impacts of social disruption and environmental harm fall most heavily on women and children.
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This paper uses cross-section data for 107 countries to explore the relationship between gender inequality and economic growth. The paper departs from the literature by using a broad measure of gender inequality that goes well beyond gender inequality in education, which has been the focus of most studies.
... See More + Another novelty of the paper lies in exploring heterogeneity in the growth-gender inequality relationship. The results confirm that greater gender inequality is strongly associated with lower economic growth. However, this negative relationship between gender inequality and growth is entirely due to the relatively poor countries, with the relatively rich countries showing no such relationship. The findings have important implications for the design and targeting of gender-specific policies.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7172 JAN 01, 2015
Amin, Mohammad; Kuntchev, Veselin; Schmidt, Martin