Should governance have a place?
Today marks the conclusion of the final meeting of the Global Thematic Consultation on Governance and the Post-2015 Development Framework, held in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Millenium Development Goals
Fifty Million Twelve-Year-Old Solutions
“We have a situation on our hands and the clock is ticking. We have fifty million twelve-year-old girls in poverty,” the opening video proclaimed. The solution is simple and profound, the Girl Effect, “an effect that starts with a 12-year-old girl and impacts the world.” Despite the catchy rhyme, I was skeptical. Can you blame me? It seems that we women have been getting the shaft since that damn snake in Eden.
The list of superwomen who addressed the over capacity crowd at the “Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI): An Alliance for Economic Empowerment” event on October 6th read like the World Bank, White House, Hollywood, Philanthropy, Business and the Catwalk list of Who’s Who. The crowd craned their necks from the hallway to catch a glimpse of World Bank Managing Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and World Bank Director of Gender and Development Mayra Buvinic; White House Senior Advisor, Valerie Jarrett; Actor, Anne Hathaway; President of the Nike Foundation, Maria Eitel, and Supermodel Christy Turlington.
- Tags:
- Liberia
- Brazil
- The World Region
- South Asia
- Middle East and North Africa
- Latin America & Caribbean
- Europe and Central Asia
- East Asia and Pacific
- Africa
- Trade
- Governance
- Gender
- Education
- Youth for Good Governance
- Youth Adult Participation Project
- young women
- YAPP
- world bank
- White House
- Valerie Jarrett
- The Girl Effect
- Ready to work
- Philanthropy
- Nike Foundation
- Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
- New Lessons: The Power of Educating Adolescent Girls
- Millenium Development Goals
- Mayra Buvinic
- Maria Eitel
- IDA 16 special themes
- Hollywood
- HIV/AIDS
- Girls Count
- Gender Gap
- Gender Equality is smart economics
- Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
- Eden
- economic returns
- discrimination
- Dilma Rousseff
- Christy Turlington
- Catwalk
- business
- Anne Hathaway
- AGI
- Adolescent Girls Initiative
Transport and maternal health: President Zoellick agrees with me!
With only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, one particular topic in transport that I believe should gather more collaboration and contributions from both the health and the transport sectors is the unfinished agenda of maternal and child health. The completion date of the MDGs is fast approaching but the discussions and research surrounding specific MDGs have been uneven.
- Tags:
- South Asia
- Middle East and North Africa
- Latin America & Caribbean
- Europe and Central Asia
- East Asia and Pacific
- Africa
- Transport
- women
- under-five mortality
- roads
- pregnant
- Poverty
- patient
- newborn
- Millenium Development Goals
- MDGs
- MDG5
- MDG4
- maternal mortality
- Maternal health
- intensive care
- infants
- hospital
- healthcare
- health facility
- emergency
- birth
- ambulance
- ACCESS
Ushering in New Era of Openness and Transparency
The doors to the largest depository of development data in the world were just thrown open. Starting today, all our statistics are available online free of charge for all. The Open Data Access builds on the success of Data.Gov adopted by the US and UK and lets the global community create new applications and solutions to help poor people in the developing world.
Data, until now available through subscriptions only, is now accessible at data.worldbank.org. This is an important milestone for the World Bank, which complements the Access to Information reform. For many data is power. It is more than just numbers as it creates the space for dialogue based on facts and helps to foster new ideas.
Watch how the world has changed through animated bubbles
I was never too great with numbers or math. I guess you could call me a visual learner. Which is why I was intrigued after exploring Gapminder.org. The non-profit organization behind the website says it's dedicated to "unveiling the beauty of statistics." They attempt to do this with impressively interactive and animated graphs.
Leaving an imprint: Rebuilding the shrimp sector in Aceh, Indonesia
Aceh is an autonomous province on the northern tip of Sumatra, in Indonesia, with a population of 4.2 million. It has a colorful history of resistance: they gave the Dutch colonists major headaches, and fought against the Indonesian government for three decades. In December 2004 the Tsunami struck, leaving 165,000 people dead or missing in the space of 30 minutes. This led to the biggest reconstruction effort in history, including IFC's work to build up the private sector, funded by AusAID (pdf) through its Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Reconstruction and Development (AIPRD).
Shrimp is a key sector in Aceh, a livelihood for 100,000 people. In the 1990s, Aceh's shrimp sector was slammed by white spot disease, which devastated shrimp harvests.{C}
Most countries likely to fall short of achieving the 2015 Millenium Development Goals
The new Global Monitoring Report 2008 is warning that most countries are likely to fall short on the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which have a due date of 2015. World Bank president Bob Zoellick stresses that