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Social Development

Women Should Not Be Free from Violence? Think Again!

Alys Willman's picture

Women: Just when you thought it was safe to leave the kitchen, drive, vote, or wear pants, think again. Try Googling “Women should not,” and watch what the autocomplete function brings up. Top responses include “be allowed to vote,” “be in combat,” and “be in church.” This glimpse of the deep and pervasive sexism in our collective conscious inspired a UN ad campaign featuring women’s faces with their mouths covered in these slurs.

© Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai/UN Women

These disturbing messages did not emerge out of nowhere. They reflect social norms, and their rigid persistence reminds us that norms change slowly, when they change at all. According to the World Health Organization, at least 35% of the world’s women have been assaulted at some point, and many men and boys have also been victimized, particularly when their behavior goes against dominant norms.

Road Safety: How Youth Can Help Create Awareness

Maria Cristina Gallegos's picture

YouThink! Road Safety

Sheila Atieno, from Kenya, always tells her students to look both ways before crossing the street.

She understands the importance of carefully navigating roads. When she was 11, she lost a close friend.  He was on his way to school when his life was taken by a speeding truck.  So Atieno, now 26, decided that it was time to take action. She became  a Coordinator of the African Region for YOURS, a global youth-led organization dedicated to road safety issues. She is also a leader of a group in Kenya called YOURS-K. Its mission is to “use all means possible to ensure that all road users arrive safely to their destinations.”

Road incidents are the number one cause of death for youth worldwide according to the UN Campaign for Global Road Safety. The economic cost of road accidents in developing countries is estimated to be at least $100 billion a year.

How does migration shape economic and social development?

Elina Scheja's picture

Migration has a profound impact on the lives of the migrant households, but also their societies are shaped by the cumulative effects of labor mobility and consequently remittances. Literature provides interesting insights into the true development impact of migration. Dilip was asked to provide a background document assessing the state of the current knowledge for a roundtable discussion at the Civil Society Days of the Global Forum of Migration and Development 2010 held in November in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. This resulting paper (co-authored with me and Sanket) has since then been revised and recently published as a World Bank working paper.

In the paper we have reviewed a variety of studies representing different aspects of migration in order to distill key messages and new insights. Main observations arising from the survey are:

For a sending country, migration and the resulting remittances lead to increased incomes and poverty reduction, improve health and educational outcomes, and promote productivity and access to finance. Although individual variation exists, the economic impact is primarily and substantially positive. Yet, these gains come at a substantial social cost to the migrants and their families as migration may lead to eroded family structures, children losing parental care, and weaker safety nets.