Part 1. Global -- 1. International Boundaries, Biological Borders, and the Public Governance of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Are we Entering a Whole New Era? (Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly) -- 2. Pandemic Geopolitics in the Anthropocene (Simon Dalby) -- 3. COVID-19 and the Science of where (Michael F. Goodchild) -- 4. Coronavirus and Conservation: Environmental Repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic (Helen D. Hazen) -- 5. Pandemic Geopolitics and the Bordering of COVID-19: Academic and Lay Geographies of the Pandemic and Policies to Contain and Mitigate the Novel Coronavirus (Virginie Mamadouh) -- 6. Rethinking Distance and Presence Conceptions in Times of COVID-19 and post-COVID-19: The Search for a New Educational Literacy (Paulo Quadros) -- Part 2. States, Cities and COVID-19 -- 7. The Swedish COVID-19 Enigma/Exception (Sebastian Abrahamsson and Richard Ek) -- 8. Insularity in a Connected World? The COVID-19 Pandemic in Iceland (Karl Benediktsson, Benjamin D. Hennig, Anne-Cécile Mermet, and Sigríður Haraldsdóttir) -- 9. Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on a Small Island: The Isle of Man Case Study (Sharon C. Cobb) -- 10. Medical Philately and the World of COVID-19 Postage Stamps: Issues of Truth, Health and Wealth (Stanley D. Brunn) -- 11. The COVID-19 Pandemic in Ukraine: A Mosaic of Regional Patterns and Voices of Social Disparity (Eugenia Maruniak and Olena Dronova) -- 12. COVID-19 Policy in Uzbekistan: Slipping Back Toward Authoritarianism? (Reuel Hanks and Dilshod Achilov) -- 13. The Pandemic in Belarus in 2020-21: COVID-19 in the Shadow of Politics (Ales Kirkevich and Alena Makouskaya) -- 14. COVID-19, the Stay-Home Discourse and a 'New' Geographic Haven (Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou) -- 15. COVID-19 Geopolitics in Southeast Asia: Regional and National Health (in)Securities in Times of Pandemic (Carl Grundy-Warr) -- 16. Three Challenges Facing Guatemala's COVID-19 Crisis: Mobility, Violence and Governance (Trudy Mercadal) -- 17. COVID-19 Waves and Politics in Costa Rica (Ivan Molina) -- 18. Societal Perceptions of the Saudi Government's Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic (Mark C. Thompson) -- 19. Tackling Challenges of COVID-19: An Assessment of the Convergence-Divergence Debates from the Global South-India (M. Satish Kumar and Aditya Singh) -- 20. Health Geography of COVID-19: An Exploratory Analysis of the Pandemic During its First Phase in the Compact Cities of Barcelona and Madrid, Spain (Montserrat Pallares-Barbera, Simón Sánchez-Moral, Rafael Vicente-Salar, and Alfonso Arellano) -- 21. Three impacts of COVID-19 in Pakistan society: Home Confinement, Social Survey Data and Maps Showing Diffusion (Tahir Awan, Tehreem Raza Ch, and Mavia Mumtaz) -- Part 3. Political impacts: Laws, Borders, Diplomacy, Elections, Peacekeeping -- 22. Peacekeeping Operations: Challenges and Opportunities in the Midst of Health Crises (Jessica Di Salvatore) -- 23. Travel Restrictions and Border Security Measures on the Canada–U.S. Border During the COVID-19 Pandemic—Does Law Matter in a Crisis? (Roger S. Fisher) -- 24. Forgotten Ones: Rhetoric of Migration and Tourism Governance in South Africa in the Sedentary Epoch of COVID-19 (Samuel Umoh Uwem and Oyewo Adetola Elizabeth) -- 25. From European Union Student Mobility to Lockdown: "Virtual Study Mobility" in the COVID-19 Era and a Case Study of Transnational Law in an International Classroom Delivered Online (Cherry James, John Koo, and Emmanouela Mylonaki) -- 26. Vaccination Nation: Vaccine Diplomacy and the U.S. Vaccine Rollout (Shaun J. Johnson) -- 27. Changing COVID-19 Border Restrictions and Borderland Resilience: The Finnish-Swedish Border Case (Eeva-Kaisa Prokkola and Juha Ridanpää) -- 28. Free Movement of Persons and Goods in the European Union During COVID-19 (Lehte Roots) -- 29. Intertwined Geographies of the Pandemic and the U.S. Presidential Election of 2020: COVID-19 Prevalence and Donald Trump (Ryan Weichelt, J. Clark Archer, Robert Shepard, Robert Watrel, and Jill Archer) -- Part 4. Communication, Branding and the Media -- 30. Affective Immediately: Reading the Semiotic Landscape of COVID-19 in Lincoln, Nebraska (James E. Baker) -- 31. Local Newspaper Coverage of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Two Major Texas Cities: A Visual Comparison of Houston and El Paso (Sarah A. Blue and Mary Stycos) -- 32. COVID-19 as the Great (un)equalizer: The Framing of Women in Media Coverage in China, the Middle East, and the U.S. (Mari A. DeWees and Amy C. Miller) -- 33. Place-Branding for Immigrant and Refugee Integration and Receptivity Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Responses of U.S. Cities in the "Welcoming America" Network (Paul N. McDaniel, Rajit H. Das, and Darlene Xiomara Rodriguez) -- 34. Lost in Translation: Reporting About COVID-19 Pandemic by Community Vernacular Radio Stations in Rural Kenya (Lilliane Atieno Oloo and Daniel Ochieng' Orwenjo) -- 35. Examining Effective Communication during COVID-19 Through Prime Minister's Speeches: The Case of Malaysia (Teresa Wai See Ong) -- 36. Trump and the Coronavirus: The Triumph of Incompetence (Barney Warf) -- Part 5. Communications: Websites, Social Media -- 37. Presenting, Representing, and Misrepresenting COVID-19 in the five Central Asian States: The Political Underpinnings of Official State Coronavirus Websites in Authoritarian Regimes (Ryan P. Cabana) -- 38. The Role of User-Generated Content Data for Collaborative Learning: Identifying Tourism Hot Topics During the Pandemic (Nuria Recuero Virto) -- 39. The Impact of COVID-19 and use of Geo-Tagged User Data in Territories without Planning: The Case of São Tomé and Príncipe (Nagayamma Aragão and Carlos Smaniotto Costa) -- 40. Social Distancing and Politeness: Hungarian Emailing Practices During the Coronavirus Epidemic (Ágnes Domonkosi and Zsófia Ludányi) -- 41. Application of GIS in Vaccine Distribution During COVID-19 (Jing Wu) -- Part 6. Cartoons and Cartooning -- 42. More than a Message: Public Health Advocacy, Political Cartooning and COVID-19 Challenges in Pakistan (Ayesha Ashfaq and Joseph Russomanno) -- 43. What's so Funny about COVID-19? How some Comic Strip Artists have Approached or Avoided a Sensitive Subject (Thomas L. Bell) -- 44. Visualizing the Unspeakable in Thought: A Multi-Model Discourse Analysis of Cartoons as a Device for Communicating (Maxwell Mpotsiah) -- Part 7. Maps and Mapping -- 45. One Year of COVID-19: Mapping the Spread of a Global Pandemic (Benjamin D. Hennig) -- 46. Mapping Silenced Spaces During Increased Overdose and COVID-19: Opportunities for Danger and Harm Reduction in Southern Appalachia (Lesly-Marie Buer, Bayla Ostrach, Sam Armbruster, and Erin Major) -- 47. COVID-19 in Tunisia: Mapping and Documenting the Impacts on those on the Margins (Betty Rouland and Marouen Taleb) -- 48. Mapping the COVID-19 Spatial Behaviors and Narratives of Women in an Architecture School in the Midwest USA" (Mania T. Taher) -- 49. Increased use of Maps During the COVID-19 pandemic: An example from Morocco (Abdallah Zouhauri) -- Part 7. Cultures: Diffusion and Social Well-Being) -- 50. The Way from the Leading Position to the Last: Geodemographic Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Czechia (Dagmar Dzúrová, Klára Hulíková Tesárková, Pavlína Netrdová, and Lukáš Brůha) -- 51. COVID-19 Deaths in México: A Spatiotemporal Analysis (Oscar Gerardo Hernández-Lara, José R. Díaz-Garayúa, and Kevin A. Butler) -- 52. Impacts of COVID-19 on Nigerian Culture (Ibrahim Badamasi Lambu) -- 53. Research Frontiers on COVID-19 Issues in Brazilian Context (Paulo Quadros) -- 54. Geography, Factors and Consequences of COVID-19 Diffusion in Russia (Stepan Zemtsov and Vyacheslav Baburin) -- Part 9. Mobility and Immobility -- 55. Effects of COVID-19 on Urban Mobility and Public Space use in Kumasi, Ghana (Clifford Amoako, Kwasi Kwafo Adarkwa, and Michael Poku-Boansi) -- 56. Impact of COVID-19 on Nepal's Labour Migration (Sadikshya Bhattarai and Jeevan Baniya) -- 57. Voting with their Feet: Coronavirus Pandemic Refugees and the Future of American Cities (James H. Johnson, Jr.) -- 58. Exploring Human Mobilities in the COVID-19 Era in Urban and Rural Canada (K. Bruce Newbold, Curtis Towle, and Kaylah Vrabic) -- 59. Rearranging Mobilities and Immobilities and Placeremaking During COVID-19: Governing the Pandemic Situation through (im)mobilities in South Korea (HaeRan Shin) -- Part 10. Inequalities and Divides) -- 60. Pandemic and Education: Persistent Deepening of Educational Inequalities in Argentina as a Consequence of COVID-19 (Gustavo Javier Annessi and Paola Demirta) -- 61. COVID-19 and the Comorbidities of Spatial Inequality and Colonial Legacy: Two Caribbean Cases – Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago (April K. Baptiste and Hubert Devonish) -- 62. Digital Inequalities in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Israel and Germany (Elisabeth Sommerlad and Yossi David) -- Part 11. Marginalized Groups: Refugees, Silences, Gender, Racism, Survival -- 63. Beyond the Ecumene: Roma Genesis, Community and Survival in the COVID-19 World (Krasimir Asenov) -- 64. Ethnic Minorities in Poland in the Face of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Threats, Stigma and Forms of (in)visibility (Bartłomiej Chromik, Joanna Maryniak, and Justyna Olko) -- 65. Everyday Morbid Geography: Street life and COVID-19 State Regulation in Manila and Hanoi (José Edgardo A. Gomez, Jr., Redento B. Recio, Ha Minh Hai Thai, and Phuong Thu Nguyen) -- 66. Undocumented Migrants and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Similar and Dissimilar COVID-19 Stories Comparing Finland and Iran (Jussi S. Jauhiainen and Davood Eyvazlu) -- 67. 'If I don't Sell Food, How Would I eat?' Negotiating Street Vendor Livelihoods in the Context of COVID-19 Lockdowns in Urban Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos (Jennifer C. Langill, Binh N. Nguyen, and Sarah Turner) -- 68. Impact of COVID-19 on Local Planning Practices: Focusing on Tactical Urbanism, Slow Streets and low-Income Communities in Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francis.
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This report describes the SLE study concerning quality infrastructure in three value chains and its potential to contributing to economic growth in southern Kyrgyzstan. In the context of GIZ's Sustainable Economic Development Programme in Kyrgyzstan, the German development agency tasked SLE to perform the study out its Jalal-Abad office, with the following subtasks: - Studied three value chains (apple, tomato and plum) partly; - Has interviewed companies producing and processing those commodities and - Has analyzed the national quality infrastructure (NQI) serving the three. Following a similar task in Ghana, SLE developed a qualitative research methodology with a five week stay in Kyrgyzstan. Through 60 interviews mainly with food processors, but also including farmers, quality infrastructure (QI) service providers and GIZ partners, the three staff SLE team prepared recommendations after verifying them in workshops. Three recommendation groups were developed: 1. Strengthen utilization of formal market demands as driver for improved Food Safety and QI 2. Widen scope of Kyrgyz QI services and increase clients' satisfaction in order to boost QI utilization 3. Flank intervention in quality management through facilitating investment climate Background and Task This summary condensates the SLE study on how quality infrastructure in three value chains can contribute to economic growth in southern Kyrgyzstan. In the context of GIZ's Sustainable Economic Development Programme in Kyrgyzstan, the German development agency operates an office in the rural South Fergana Valley. Based out of that office in Jalal-Abad, this research consultancy has: • Studied three value chains (apple, tomato and plum) partly; • Has interviewed companies producing and processing those commodities and • Has analyzed the national quality infrastructure (NQI) serving the three. These steps were taken in order to come up with recommendations how to support economic growth in rural Kyrgyzstan through specific interventions. The Kyrgyz national economy is still much depending on Russia, 27 years after Soviet Union's breakup. Yet, many young Kyrgyz people migrate to Russia instead of farming on their families' properties with the consequence of them not being available in the Kyrgyz national labor market. Stemming from Soviet's era, the Quality Infrastructure (QI) subsector serves companies and their customers alike through Metrology, Standardization, Testing, Certification and Accreditation. The -mostly governmental- NQI operates on the policy level out of the capital, the regional hubs such as Osh being relevant to Jalal Abad and on the county level (oblast). Besides supplying national Kyrgyz markets, exports play a particular role as they are relevant to apple and plum products. Since the accession of Kyrgyzstan to the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) with Russia, Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan, export regulations are expected for summer 2017. In light of this the client defined the main research questions as to how to improve food safety and how quality infrastructure services can contribute to creating job opportunities, especially for youth. Methodology Having completed a study of Ghana's national quality infrastructure in 2015, the Seminar Ländliche Entwicklung (SLE) has been commissioned by GIZ to perform this task, replicating partially the methods and partly in personal union. Given the explorative character of the Kyrgyzstan study, and in coordination with the client during the inception phase, a qualitative approach was adopted. Given the results of the research in Ghana showing the best chances of QI utilization on the medium size company level, the Kyrgyzstan study focused on food processors. The three expatriate SLE consultants designed a five week field phase, flanked by two national Kyrgyz experts. Supported by GIZ's logistics, the SLE team spent a week in each value chain. The interviews covered 20 food processing companies; three farmers and one retailer were interviewed. 18 interviews were conducted with service providers in the quality infrastructure sector. The total of sixty interviews included also six with development agencies, partly in GIZ partnership. During the final stages, recommendation workshops were hold in Jalal Abad and Bishkek with the purpose of verifying the results and recommendations. Findings and Observations Some out of many observations shall be reflected here: The interviews with producers revealed that EAEU markets, especially Russia are highly relevant to them and will become even more once compliance with customs regulations become obligatory, foreseen in 2017. Looking at the type of producer and processor, the research found a "dual-economy" existing with informal markets for fresh products and formal markets requiring certifiable quality management. Given the formal markets concluding contracts between producers, processors and their clients also concerning quality characteristics, it results in a higher chance of quality management and QI services playing a role. Pondering obligatory and voluntary use of QI, this research applied the assumption that formal markets impose quality regimes sparing the authorities from obligating farmers, processors and exporters as well as policing compliance. On paper, Kyrgyz NQI should function, but in reality this is barely in position to check compliance of products being exported to EAEU countries. While the EAEU is supposed to equip Kyrgyz QI providers even in regions, much is left to be done. Since soviet past, the line ministries for agriculture and health shared the task of maintaining QI services. However, given the nowadays' involvement of the state inspectorate, exporters have to check compliance for each authority the same characteristics. This duplication withholds willing QI customers and frustrates them, instead of facilitating their work. With 28'000 out of the total 150'000 tones annual apple production, apple products are subject to export regulations. In so far, EAEU's customs union is very relevant, which can even become restrictive, like it was observable with potatoes evading quality infrastructure. Apple juice, which is examined by health authorities additionally for sanitary reasons, requires quality infrastructure services, but does lack inspection. Given this situation, Kyrgyz apples or products more generally do not reach lucrative markets. Like apple, the pomicultures plum is growing in orchards typically planted back in Soviet times. The up to 20'000 tons of Plums produced annually, are dried in order to conserve them with the few micro-drying facilities. However, even more is sold to intermediaries who partly export them to more lucrative markets, through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Hardly any QI service utilization was observed. Tomatoes are produced on some 10'000 ha of fields in Southern Kyrgyzstan. 60% of these tomatoes are processed to juices and paste, where hygiene and quality regimes apply. On the fields, fertilizer is applied leading to a necessity to analyze Nitrate concentrations, yet hardly any QI utilization has been observed. In all three value chains, it would be required using Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) because it is the most effective and economic way to combat food safety problems. Nevertheless, HACCP is not mandatory in the EAEU quality management and training has been too theoretical. While organic products do not play any role on Kyrgyz national markets, there is an opportunity for European markets. Already now, Kyrgyz Walnuts, plums and other are exported to Turkey, and partly re-dispatched onwards to the EU. A few European processors even invest directly, such as in Kyrgyz nuts. However, in order to do so, they utilize their own company based quality management. Nevertheless, given the growing EU organic market, an opportunity arises for Kyrgyz plums, dried apples, herbal spices and more. This is even more relevant, given the national quality infrastructure contributing. Looking at job opportunities, income generation and youth's migration, the youth's multitude of motives for leaving the country presented itself. Youth also leaves rural South in order to be in reach of urban opportunities from mobile phone access to training opportunities. The research concludes that in order to influence migration, the necessary condition is an integrated program offering job opportunities Results and recommendations Summarizing all three value chains, quality infrastructure is utilized rarely by farmers and micro-scale processors, also because National QI is concentrated in Bishkek. In order to solve this, QI services need to be offered on the producer level in relevant villages. Extending services on village level also involves consultancy as to how translating the QI results in a proper HACCP management. Already now, Quality infrastructure is not utilized sufficiently to access profitable markets. The reason is partly the high cost, the unawareness by producers and partly the poor presence in relevant fields and area. Given the poor scope of tests and compliance checks, farmers and processors risk having to check twice quality properties. Consequently, and in order to comply with EAEU regulations already during 2017, the rejection risk of Kyrgyz products grows. In light of this, it is recommended to stimulate QI utilization, widen the scope of QI services and facilitate general economic conditions as follows: 1. In order to use formal market demand as driver for improved Food Safety and QI – service utilization in selected value chains (VC) it is necessary to: a. improve the linkage of local VC actors with formal markets b. facilitate compliance of local VC actors with market requirements 2. QI utilization should grow through fulfillment of two recommendations. a. In order to increase QI service utilization, the necessary condition is to increase its scope. b. The sufficient condition is customers satisfied with easy access, speed and precision of service. 3. Besides these two main recommendations, general conditions should augment room for change.
We present a data set on authoritarian regimes' claims to legitimacy that is based on leading experts' assessments of 98 states for the period 1991–2010. The experts assessed these regimes on the basis of six conceptually distinguishable but interlinked claims to legitimacy – namely (1) foundational myth, (2) ideology, (3) personalism, (4) international engagement, (5) procedural mechanisms and (6) performance. For the survey, we contacted approximately 800 renowned international and local experts. They were selected on the basis of their publication records, their local expertise and their work for high-quality country-based indices, research institutes, and/or high-profile think tanks. 273 online questionnaires were completed. We collected expert assessments for the most recent non-democratic regime (as of 2013, the year of assessment). The survey comprised questions covering the strength of a regime's six legitimation strategies, based on a six-point scale ranging from 0-5. In addition, the dataset includes information regarding the number of experts per country and the experts' average confidence in answering the questions on the respective country.
AMÉRICA LATINAOperación Camaleón: se rescataron cuatro rehenes de las FARC.Los cuatro liberados se encontraban en cautiverio por más de 12 años. Esta operación fortalece al candidato presidencial oficialista Juan Manuel Santos, quien, como ministro de Defensa propició duros golpes contra esa guerrilla.Para más información:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-colombia-rescue-20100614,0,2040937.storyhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/world/americas/15briefs-Colombia.html?ref=worldhttp://diario.elmercurio.com/2010/06/15/internacional/_portada/noticias/771D43D3-3B58-4485-87B9-6E2F078A83EC.htm?id={771D43D3-3B58-4485-87B9-6E2F078A83EC}http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/29/1655235/colombia-candidates-ones-cheeky.htmlhttp://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Rescatados/jefes/policiales/secuestrados/FARC/hace/anos/elpepuint/20100613elpepuint_9/Teshttp://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/25/1648168/youngest-voters-may-sway-election.html Presidente de Globovisión anuncia que no se entregará a la justicia venezolana.El directivo del canal opositor al gobierno chavista acusó al mandatario de ordenar su arresto para intentar silenciar a su emisora. "Hemos sido nuevamente atacados vilmente por el gobierno, con el único fin de tratar de callar nuestra pantalla", comentó el presidente de la cadena televisiva.Para más información:http://diario.elmercurio.com/2010/06/15/internacional/_portada/noticias/A44ED0A4-D89C-46F4-A5D8-9F5B65F988BF.htm?id={A44ED0A4-D89C-46F4-A5D8-9F5B65F988BF}http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1275142La violencia reina en México.Otra escalada de violencia se vive en este país producto de diversos enfrentamientos entre las fuerzas gubernamentales y el narcotráfico.Para más información:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/latin_america/10314218.stmhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/world/americas/15mexico.html?ref=worldhttp://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/latinoamerica/cien-carceles-de-mexico-estan-bajo-el-control-de-los-delincuentes_7758063-1http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/06/15/mexico.taxco.killings/index.htmlhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37718870/ns/world_news-americas/Indígenas bolivianos se oponen a investigaciones por linchamientos.Para más información:http://diario.elmercurio.com/2010/06/15/internacional/internacional/noticias/153C7C13-FCBD-43EC-8DD5-7619D2EAEBE1.htm?id={153C7C13-FCBD-43EC-8DD5-7619D2EAEBE1}La guerra sucia del gobierno argentino contra el grupo Clarín.Marcela y Felipe Noble son hijos adoptivos de Ernestina Herrera de Noble, dueña del conglomerado de medios Clarín (claro opositor del gobierno de los Kirchner). La policía allanó su casa para obtener muestras de ADN. La comparación de las muestras de los hermanos con las del banco nacional de datos genéticos busca revelar las sospechas relacionadas a la vinculación genética de los mismos con disidentes políticos que fueron asesinados después de haber dado a luz en cautiverio durante la dictadura argentina.Para más información:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-argentina-heirs-20100609,0,2101883.storyMiami Herald analiza la situación política de Trinidad. Para más información:http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/16/1632952/trinidads-ruling-party-faces-tough.html ESTADOS UNIDOS / CANADÁDerrame de petróleo en el Golfo de México se trasforma en un desastre ambiental.Según Obama "De la misma forma que el 11 de septiembre [de 2001] modificó profundamente nuestra visión de nuestras vulnerabilidades y nuestra política exterior, creo que este desastre va a modificar por muchos años nuestra visión sobre el ambiente y la energía".Para más información:http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1275093http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/science/earth/15cleanup.html?hphttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10313921.stmhttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-obama-20100615,0,7816116.storyhttp://diario.elmercurio.com/2010/06/15/internacional/_portada/noticias/752191C8-6B41-423D-997B-0DD2DA37E312.htm?id={752191C8-6B41-423D-997B-0DD2DA37E312}http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/686359.htmlIndividuo que hirió a Bin Laden se encuentra en Pakistán.Para más información:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/10317158.stmEstados Unidos y las sanciones contra Pyongyang.El presidente Barack Obama ha prorrogado una serie de sanciones económicas contra Corea del Norte frente al inminente desarrollo nuclear de este país.Para más información:http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2010/06/16/barack-obama-prolonge-d-un-an-les-sanctions-americaines-contre-pyongyang_1373910_3222.htmlEUROPACrisis en la Eurozona.Merkel y Sarkozy se unen contra la crisis europea y coinciden en que la Unión Europea necesita un gobierno económico para los 27 Estados. Asimismo concuerdan en la necesidad del apoyo de los mercados financieros del bloque para dar una respuesta eficiente a la crisis de la Eurozona. Mientras tanto diversos gobiernos europeos ejecutan recortes en sus presupuestos.Para más información:http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1275255http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10314743.stmhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2010-06/08/content_9950037.htmhttp://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1274830El centro derecha obtiene la victoria en Eslovaquia.Los conservadores, liberales, democristianos y húngaros moderados han ganado las elecciones parlamentarias del pasado sábado en Eslovaquia. Ahora intentan formar una coalición de Gobierno en sustitución de la encabezada por la socialdemocracia.Para más información:http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/centro-derecha/gana/Eslovaquia/elpepuint/20100614elpepiint_3/TesSe presenta ante el Parlamento británico la investigación referente al Domingo Sangriento.La pesquisa clarifica los trágicos sucesos ocurridos en enero de 1972 en los que murieron 13 personas.Para más información:http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1275257http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/10310598.stmBarcelona prohibió el uso velos islámicos en espacios públicos.Para más información:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/10316696.stmhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/world/europe/15briefs-veils.html?ref=world Emergencia en Francia por inundaciones.Las lluvias torrenciales dejan 19 muertos y 12 desaparecidos. Hay unos 200.000 hogares sin suministro eléctrico. Las lluvias en la región del Var convirtieron las calles en ríos que arrastraron árboles, autos y otros objetos.Para más información:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37726749/ns/world_news-europe/http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/688066.htmlhttp://www.eltiempo.com/multimedia/galerias/multimedia.php?id_recurso=7758014 ASIA- PACÍFICO/ MEDIO ORIENTETensión en la península coreana.Tras el naufragio de una corbeta surcoreana, Corea del Sur ha anunciado represalias por la presunta responsabilidad de su vecino del Norte. Asimismo Corea del Norte tomaría acciones militares en caso de una eventual condena de la ONU. Toda la región ingresó en un estado de alerta y tensión frente al conflicto. La situación es considerablemente precaria y está constituyendo uno de los momentos de mayor tensión entre las Coreas desde 1953. Para más información:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_pacific/10315219.stmhttp://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Maxima/alerta/peninsula/coreana/elpepuint/20100524elpepuint_5/Teshttp://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/06/15/un.north.korea/index.htmlhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37710977/ns/world_news-asiapacific/http://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/otrasregiones/corea-del-norte-reaccionaria-militarmente-ante-condena-de-la-onu_7756511-1A pesar de las sanciones internacionales Irán está construyendo un nuevo reactor nuclear.Para más información:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-ed-sanctions-20100610,0,5349934.storyhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2010-06/11/content_9963124.htmhttp://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2010/06/16/teheran-va-se-doter-d-un-nouveau-reacteur-de-recherche-nucleaire_1373567_3216.htmlAtaque suicida en Afganistán deja a más de 40 muertos.El ataque tuvo lugar durante una ceremonia de una boda en la provincia de Kandahar.Para más información:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-wedding-20100610,0,5701726.storyhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2010-06/10/content_9961237.htmhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/world/asia/16kyrgyz.html?hpIrak con nuevo parlamento.Para más información:http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/02/1658963/iraqi-court-order-seals-alliances.htmlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/10311096.stmPolicía israelí es asesinado en las cercanías de Hebrón.Para más información:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/10308466.stmhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/world/middleeast/15mideast.html?ref=worldAludes de barro en Bangladesh dejan 47 muertos Para más información:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/10315737.stmhttp://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/687833.html Crisis en KirguistánEnfrentamientos étnicos y conflictos políticos se sitúan en el centro de la violencia que se vive en la pequeña república ex-soviética de Kirguistán. Los incidentes ya han sido clasificados como los peores disturbios étnicos en el país en los últimos 20 años. Tanto el carácter interétnico como el número de muertos, que ya supera los 117, y desplazados, que podrían sobrepasar los 80.000, que huyen en muchos casos a la vecina Uzbekistán le dan magnitud al conflicto.Para más información:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-kyrgyzstan-riots-20100614,0,7705850.storyhttp://diario.elmercurio.com/2010/06/15/internacional/internacional/noticias/0FB7A81A-A121-4E86-9EDE-2821FA062A83.htm?id={0FB7A81A-A121-4E86-9EDE-2821FA062A83}http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/06/16/kyrgyz.violence/index.htm http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/internacional/2010/06/100614_que_pasa_kirguistan_pl.shtmlhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37726749/ns/world_news-europe/http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/688074.htmlhttp://www.lemonde.fr/international/infographie/2010/06/15/le-kirghizistan-fiche-d-identite_1373429_3210.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/world/asia/16kyrgyz.html?ref=worldhttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-kyrgyzstan-riots-20100615,0,7771387.storyhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_pacific/10315347.stmÁFRICASudan entre un nuevo gabinete y la violencia.El presidente sudanés anuncia un nuevo gobierno con 35 ministros mientras que la violencia en la región de Darfur no cesa dejando como resultado 20 muertos.Para más información:http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2010/06/15/des-affrontements-tribaux-font-20-morts-au-soudan_1373480_3212.htmlhttp://espanol.news.yahoo.com/s/14062010/54/n-world-presidente-sudanes-anuncia-nuevo-gobierno.htmlCopa Mundial de Fútbol.Se presentan diversos portales que disponen información relacionada a este suceso mundial.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/10314858.stmhttp://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/12/1676411/world-cup-starts-with-an-array.htmlhttp://www.futbolred.com/mundial-sudafrica-2010 Bombardeo en Kenya recuerda la violencia electoral del 2008.Al menos cinco personas murieron y 112 resultaron heridas en la capital de Kenia. El pasado domingo dos explosiones sacudieron un acto de campaña organizado por líderes religiosos opositores a una nueva constitución.Para más información:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/world/africa/15kenya.html?ref=worldhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2010-06/14/content_9977146.htmDos personas muertas por ver el Mundial.Militantes islamistas somalíes asesinan a dos personas y arrestan a docenas por violar la prohibición de ver partidos del mundial por televisión.Para más información:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37713976/ns/world_news-africa/ OTRAS NOTICIASIrán, Brasil y Turquía: ¿un nuevo eje?Para más información:http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1275253http://www.economist.com/node/16167540?story_id=16167540http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-fg-iran-sanctions-20100609,0,4910721.storyThe Economist presenta su informe semanal:Business this Week.Para más información:http://www.economist.com/node/16335781?story_id=16335781Greenpeace plantea crear 115 mil empleos limpios.Para más información:http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/688069.htmlEl Universal dispone de un portal con valiosa información relativa al cambio climático.Para más información:http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/coberturas/esp284.htmlThe Economist en un excelente intento de repensar la realidad analiza los cambios vertiginosos que están sucediendo en el tercer mundo y sus consecuencias.Para más información: http://www.economist.com/node/16329442?story_id=16329442
Según una leyenda eslava del siglo XIV, al principio de los tiempos había tres hermanos que se fueron separando para tomar posesión de tres países. Czech fue al sur; Rous al este y Lech se quedó en las fértiles tierras polacas.En realidad, la expansión del pueblo eslavo por toda Europa hacia el oeste, hasta los límites del Imperio Carolingio (771-814) en la región de Moravia y el río Elba, data de finales del siglo V y principios del VI de nuestra era. Los eslavos inician su peregrinación hacia esos territorios prácticamente despoblados, a partir de la zona del río Dnieper, cerca de Kiev, empujados por la llegada desde el este de los hunos. Ocupan prácticamente la mitad de Europa hacia el siglo X, limitando con el imperio Bizantino en la actual zona de Yugoslavia, al sur; con el mar Báltico en la desembocadura del Oder, al norte; con el mar Negro al suroeste, y con el río Volga y la zona báltica al noroeste.El legado de la HistoriaNo puede entenderse la política exterior rusa, de hoy y de siempre, sin este formidable legado histórico y geográfico eslavo. Consciente de su papel central en la historia de Occidente, Rusia ha obrado, al menos desde el siglo XVII, de forma de garantizarse un lugar de privilegio en el concierto de las grandes potencias; obsesionada, desde siempre, con garantizar su salida al mar Báltico y al mar Negro.Desde Pedro el Grande –que lega a la Historia rusa la salida al Báltico -, hasta Putin, pasando por Catalina II, la amiga de los filósofos franceses de la Ilustración, que asegura la salida al mar Negro; Alejandro III – que teje las alianzas claves con Francia e Inglaterra a finales del siglo XIX –; o el mismísimo Stalin, que conduce la Segunda Guerra Mundial desde la referencia del orgullo ruso y marcha con convicción hacia el centro de Europa, la política exterior de Moscú ha respondido a ejes estratégicos que van de la mano del convencimiento de cierta grandeza de su civilización. Primer potencia mundial en superficie, la Federación Rusa de más de 17 millones de km es la frontera entre Europa y Asia, e integra con igual espíritu estratégico los dos continentes. Fue actor político fundamental del siglo XX (tal como lo adelantara Alexis de Tocqueville en sus análisis sobre Estados Unidos en la primer mitad del siglo XIX). Contribuyó, más que cualquier otra potencia, a ganar la Segunda Guerra Mundial, que le costó la pavorosa pérdida humana de 20 millones de rusos (algo no siempre señalado por estas latitudes tan proclives a la influencia, por décadas, de la propaganda antisoviética estadounidense de la Guerra Fría). Y vivió en los años 1990 un derrumbe económico sin parangón, del que todavía está saliendo con dificultades. La salida del socialismoSi calculamos el PNB por habitante en paridad de poder adquisitivo sobre una base 100 en 1990, Rusia se hunde y llega a la trágica cifra de 60 en 1995. Moscú aceptó en los años Yeltsin una privatización salvaje, en particular en el área estratégica de la energía, que colaboró en la formación de una clase "oligarca" poderosa en dinero, corrupta, y vinculada a intereses corporativos extranjeros que saquearon al país. Llegó a la quiebra financiera del Estado en 1998. Se benefició a partir de 2004 por la suba del precio del petróleo, y recién en 2005, el PNB ruso por habitante alcanzó el entorno de 90 puntos en la escala antes referida. Todas cifras que dan cuenta de una catástrofe nacional, en medio del crecimiento sostenido de todas las potencias occidentales y asiáticas, y que demuestran la enorme dificultad de la transición económica rusa hacia un sistema capitalista abierto y competitivo luego de décadas de socialismo ineficiente y corrompido. Pero la Federación Rusa también procesó cambios geopolíticos fundamentales en esos años noventa.Moscú terminó con el régimen totalitario más perfeccionado en la historia de la humanidad evitando una guerra civil. Aceptó que sus países satélites de Europa del Este, de la zona del Báltico, del Cáucaso y de Asia Central se independizaran en relativa paz, y permitió que Bielorrusia tuviese un gobierno propio.Enfrentó, además, el activismo desembozado de la CIA en el Cáucaso. Estados Unidos fijó bases militares en Uzbekistán y Kirguizistán; instaló consejos militares en Georgia y avanzó hasta las puertas mismas de la federación con acuerdos con países que se integraron (o pretenden hacerlo) a la OTAN. Por su parte, la Unión Europea pasó en estos primeros años del siglo a tener fronteras directas con su tan importante socio comercial ruso, lo que también significó un cambio fundamental en los parámetros de seguridad regional.Finalmente, la Federación Rusa, de unos 142 millones de habitantes (7 millones menos que en 1993), viene enfrentando desde hace décadas problemas demográficos preocupantes a mediano plazo, de los que se ocupara el artículo de Pablo Brum (cf. Letras Internacionales nº 70, "Una verdad incómoda") y que, de mantenerse, implican el continuo decrecimiento absoluto de su población en los próximos años. El centro estatal de estadísticas (Rosstat) calcula que Rusia perderá 11 millones de habitantes en el horizonte 2025.Sin embargo, las minorías rusas están muy presentes en las ex- repúblicas soviéticas. Representan por ejemplo, el 17% de la población de Ucrania, el 11% de Bielorrusia, el 40% de Estonia y Letonia, el 26% de Kazakstán y el 58% de la estratégica Crimea. Son más de 17 millones los rusos desperdigados por los países del área cercana a la Federación, que aseguran un enorme potencial de influencia de largo plazo, cultural y económico, y que vienen a ilustrar la complejidad del entramado geográfico y político de la región.¿Una potencia estabilizadora?Intérprete de cierto legado de la Historia y consciente de la evolución reciente de la escena internacional, la Federación Rusa de Putin y Medvedev ha establecido criterios claros y estrategias consistentes en materia internacional. En primer lugar, resguardar la frontera próxima, el área de influencia en donde, naturalmente según Moscú, debe primar el criterio del gran vecino ruso y la soberanía de los Estados habrá de ser, por definición, limitada. Siempre quiso Rusia que así fuera y, en su lógica, así ha de mantenerse en el futuro. Desde esa perspectiva debe entenderse la invasión y ocupación militar de parte del territorio de Georgia, o la negativa a aceptar el escudo antimisil estadounidense en Europa del Este que vendría a desestabilizar dramáticamente la ecuación militar en la región. Los rusos, claro, desconfían con razón de la prédica anti- iraní estadounidense que justificaría semejante revolución en la seguridad de su (natural) zona de influencia. Desde esa visión también, las relaciones con Venezuela o Cuba se explican como una reacción espejo, en la óptica de Moscú, al indebido, prolongado, y desestabilizador involucramiento estadounidense en el Cáucaso y en Europa del Este.En segundo lugar, Rusia se plantea avanzar en su reconocimiento como gran actor internacional, lugar que ocupó al menos desde el siglo XVIII. Ni Putin como presidente, ni Putin como primer ministro de Medvedev, está dispuesto a dejar que se relegue a la gran Rusia a un segundo plano de la conformación y definición del nuevo orden internacional de principios del siglo XXI. Y es que la Federación Rusa es un gran actor internacional, sin duda, en materia militar y energética. Desde esa perspectiva debe entenderse el aumento del gasto militar que representó en 2007 el 3,7% de su PIB, comparable en proporción al 4% del PIB que Estados Unidos destina a gastos militares (si bien en términos absolutos el gasto norteamericano es muy superior). En el mismo sentido, Moscú utiliza sus recursos energéticos para sus negociaciones con China por la venta de petróleo por ejemplo – en su papel de potencia asiática -, o para afianzar su realpolitik europea en torno a la provisión de gas a Ucrania, e indirectamente, como proveedor de toda la Unión Europea y en particular de su pulmón industrial alemán. Pero también quiere reconocerse como actor primordial en el cuidado de los grandes equilibrios políticos mundiales. Rusia tiene un papel preponderante para jugar en la situación iraní, en Afganistán y en Corea del Norte, y en junio pasado mostró tener una posición constructiva con Estados Unidos sobre el desarme nuclear. Frente a la hiperpotencia estadounidense de los tiempos de Bush, que no generó estabilidad ni construcción colectiva de un nuevo orden internacional previsible, Rusia buscó aliarse con Europa en temas claves – el acuerdo Paris- Berlín- Moscú en 2003 sobre Irak lo ilustra – a la vez que profundizó su secular lógica imperialista regional. La Federación Rusa no jugará, por tanto, un papel democratizador en su región. No es una democracia plena, ni mucho menos (nunca lo fue, por cierto). Sus dirigentes actúan como integrantes de una especie de directorio de una "corporación rusa" económica, militar y estratégica que defiende cierta visión de lo que quieren ser intereses nacionales heredados de los más profundo de la Historia, y que no evita graves episodios de corrupción. En este sentido, su opaco manejo del poder es fiel a cierta tradición autócrata que descree del discurso democrático. Un discurso que es visto desde Moscú como un producto del sofisticado "soft power" occidental, y como un caballo de Troya que procura debilitar las bases del poder ruso en la escena internacional.Sin embargo, al decir del historiador francés Emmanuel Todd, asesor del ex presidente Chirac, Rusia tiene un "temperamento universalista". La igualdad está inscrita en el corazón de su estructura familiar por una regla de herencia absolutamente simétrica que, desde los tiempos de Pedro el Grande, rechazó la lógica del primogénito que favorecía al hijo mayor en detrimento de los otros. Según Todd, Rusia es "fiable porque, liberal o no, es de temperamento universalista, capaz de percibir de forma igualitaria, justa, las relaciones internacionales. Sumado a su debilidad, que le impide sueños de dominación, el universalismo ruso no puede más que contribuir positivamente al equilibrio del mundo ". Podrá compartirse la apreciación de Todd, o creer que peca de ingenuidad frente a los recurrentes episodios internacionales que ilustran la agresividad del "oso ruso". Pero sin duda, la gran Rusia, la del legado cultural universal de su literatura, la de los Gogol, Tolstoï, Dostoïevski y Tchekhov, es más compleja y rica que la representación en blanco y negro que lamentablemente ha primado históricamente en estas latitudes y que es heredera de la maniquea Guerra Fría. Sin duda, sus vecinos sufren su lógica imperial – los polacos, desde hace varios siglos, ¡vaya si la han sufrido! -. Sin duda también, si no cae en la tentación histórica de la anarquía o del salvaje autoritarismo, la Federación Rusa puede transformarse en un fundamental factor de equilibrio internacional. En todos los escenarios, la gran Rusia es y será un actor ineludible y de primer orden del tablero mundial. Entender mejor su complejidad es también contribuir a un mejor análisis de las relaciones internacionales.Emmanuel Todd. Après l´empire. Essai sur la décomposition du système américain. Folio, Gallimard, 2004, p. 218. *Profesor de Sistema Internacional ContemporáneoDepto de Estudios InternacionalesFACS- ORT Uruguay
Bei den Daten handelt es sich um Indikatoren aus den World Values Surveys (Wellen 1-6), die auf Länderebene aggregiert wurden.
Themen: Index Emanzipatorischer Werte (Emancipative Values Index, EVI); Index Emanzipatorischer Werte Kurzversion basierend auf den Komponenten reproductive choice (Reproduktionsentscheidungen) und gender equality (Gleichberechtigung); Komponente reproductive choice (Akzeptanz von Homosexualität, Scheidung und Abtreibung); Komponente Sprache (Priorität auf Redefreiheit und die Stimme der Menschen in nationalen und lokalen Angelegenheiten); Komponente gender equality (Unterstützung für die Gleichberechtigung von Frauen in den Bereichen Beruf, Bildung und Politik); Autonomiekomponente (Unabhängigkeit, Phantasie statt Gehorsam als geschätzte Eigenschaft von Kindern); Index säkularer Werte (Secular Values Index; SVI); Index säkularer Werte Kurzversion basierend auf den Komponenten disbelief (Ungläubigkeit, Zweifel) und defiance (Trotzhaltung, Renitenz); Komponente Ungläubigkeit (schwacher Glaube an Religiosität und wenig religiöse Praxis); Komponente Renitenz (geringer Nationalstolz, geringer Respekt vor Autoritäten und geringe Konformität mit elterlichen Erwartungen); Komponente Skepsis (geringes Vertrauen in die Polizei, Behörden und Gerichte); Komponente Relativismus (nur leichte Ablehnung von Bestechung, Steuerhinterziehung und Gebührenbetrug); Social movement activities (Beteiligung an Petitionen, Boykotten und Demonstrationen); Verknüpfung mit Informationsquellen (Nutzung von Internet, E-Mail und PC); wahrgenommene Stimulation: durchschnittliche Wahrnehmung der täglichen Aufgaben als kreativ, kognitiv und autonom; kognitive Mobilisierung; individuelle Befähigung (individual empowerment); Index zur Temperatur und Wasserversorgung (Cool Water Index); liberales Demokratieverständnis: freie Wahlen, Bürgerrechte und Gleichberechtigung; illiberales Demokratieverständnis: militärische Intervention; religiöse Autorität, Arbeitslosengeld; aufgeklärtes Demokratieverständnis; wahrgenommener Grad der Demokratisierung im eigenen Land; demokratisches Bestreben: Wunsch, in einem demokratisch regierten Land zu leben; Mobilisierungspotential für Demokratie; wahrgenommene Fairness anderer Menschen; Vertrauen: allgemeines Vertrauen; Vertrauen in Familie, Bekannte und Nachbarn; Vertrauen in Unbekannte und Menschen mit anderer Nationalität und Religion; unspezifisches und generalisiertes Vertrauen; Aktivitäten in zivilen Organisationen (z.B. Freizeit, Kirche, Parteien, etc.); Zufriedenheit mit der finanziellen Situation des Haushalts; Selbsteinschätzung des Gesundheitszustands; Fähigkeit zur Gestaltung des eigenen Lebens; Glück; Lebenszufriedenheit; Kampfbereitschaft für das eigene Land im Falle eines Krieges.
Zusätzlich verkodet wurde: für alle Länder: Nummer; Jahr, Name; Erhebungsjahr; Erhebungswelle; Kulturzone; Filterdummy für die letzte Welle je Land; numerischer Ländercode; 3-Buchstaben-Ländercode; Ländercode Weltbank; Index demokratische Rechte 1996 bis 2006; Index Bürgerrechte 1995 bis 2005; Index ehrliche Regierung 1996 bis 2006; Index wirksame Demokratie 1996 bis 2006; Index ehrliche Demokratie; Index Loyalitäts-Normen: Vertrauen in den öffentlichen Dienst, Polizei und Armee; Index Protest-Normen: Beteiligung an Demonstrationen, Boykotten, Petitionen.
The GSRE 1.0 dataset is based on recently released historical documents from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and improves the coverage and accuracy of state budget data for most authoritarian regimes and some democracies since the end of World War II. The GSRE dataset includes 39 unique indicators covering major aspects of state finance for 161 countries between 1946 and 2006.
Please consult the GSRE website at https://sites.google.com/a/thomaserichter.de/gsre/ for further changes and updates.
In this dissertation, we are mainly interested in the interactions between poverty and one of its greatest dimensions1, namely health. More specifically, we will focus on their inequalities: does poverty inequality have more effect on poverty than health level? Does health inequality matter to poverty? Poverty and health are two related concepts that both express human deprivation. Health is said to be one of the most important dimensions of poverty and vice-versa. That is, poverty implies poor health because of a low investment in health, a bad environment and sanitation and other living conditions due to poverty, a poor nutrition (thus a greater risk of illness), a limited access to, and use of, health care, a lower health education and investment in health, etc2. Conversely, poor health leads inevitably to poverty due to high opportunity costs occasioned by ill-health such as unemployment or limited employability (thus a loss of income and revenues), a lower productivity (due to loss of strength, skills and ability), a loss of motivation and energy (which lengthen the duration of job search), high health care expenditures (or catastrophic expenditures), etc3. But what are the degree of correlation and the direction of the causality between these two phenomena? Which causes which? This is a classic problem of simultaneity that has become a great challenge for economists. Worst, each of these phenomena (health and poverty) has many dimensions4. How to reconcile two multidimensional and simultaneous events? 1 Aside the income-related material deprivation. 2 Tenants of the ?Absolute Income? hypothesis for instance show that absolute income level of individual has positive impact on their health status (Preston, 1975; Deaton, 2003). Conversely, lack of income (and the poverty state it implies) leads unambiguously to poor health. For other authors, it is not the absolute level per se, but the relative level (i.e. comparably to others in the society) that impacts most health outcomes. This is the ?Relative Income? hypothesis (see van Doorslaer and Wagstaff, 2000, for a summary). 3 See Sen (1999) and more recently Marmot (2001) for more information. 4 Poverty could be seen as monetary poverty, human poverty, social poverty, etc. Identically, one talks of mental health, physical health, ?positive? and ?negative? health, etc. So a one-on-one causality could not possibly exits between the two, or will be hard to establish. We?ve chosen the first way of causality: that is, poverty (and inequality) causes poor health. As justification, we consider a life-cycle theory approach (Becker, 1962). An individual is born with a given stock of health. This stock is supposed to be adequate enough. During his life, this stock is submitted to depreciation due to health shocks and aging (Becker?s theory, 1962). We could think that the poorer you are, the more difficult is your capacity to invest in your health5. Empirically, many surveys (too numerous to be enumerated here) show that poor people6 do have worse health status (that is, high mortality and morbidity rates, poor access to health services, etc.). It has been established that poor children are less healthy worldwide, independently of the region or country considered. It is generally agreed that the best way to improve the health of the poor is through pro-poor growth policies and redistribution. Empirically, one of the major achievements of these last two decades in developing countries is the improvement in health status of populations (notably the drop in mortality rates and higher life expectations) following periods of (sustained) economic growth. However, is this relation always true? In some countries as we will see later in this thesis, while observing an improvement in the population?s welfare, the converse is observed in its health status, or vice versa. If health and poverty are so closely related, they should theoretically move in the same direction. But the fact that in some countries we observe opposite trends suggests that some dimensions of health and poverty are not or may not be indeed so closely related, as postulated, and that they may depend of other factors. 1. The Purpose of the Study. 5 Another justification is that many authors have studied the problem the other way. Schultz and Tansel (1992, 1997) for instance showed that ill-health causes a loss of revenues in rural Cote d?Ivoire. Audibert, Mathonnat et al. (2003) also showed that malaria caused a loss of earnings of rural cotton producers in Cote d?Ivoire. 6 Usually defined from some income or expenditure-related metric or some assets-based metric. The ultimate goal of our dissertation in its essence is to measure inequality in health7 in developing countries using mainly Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS, henceforth)8. It deals with interactions between poverty and one of its greatest dimensions, putting aside the income-related material deprivation, namely health. It therefore measures inequality in health status and access to health and discusses which policies should be implemented to correct these inequalities. That is, it aims to see how much rich people are better off and benefit from health interventions, as compared to the poor, and how to reduce such an inequality. The present dissertation contains four papers that are related to these questions. Our main hypothesis (that will be tested) is that poverty impacts health through inequality effects9. Graphically, we can lay these simple relationships as: The dashed line in the figure above suggests that income inequality could impact health directly. But we consider that this direct effect is rather small or negligible, as compared to the indirect effect through inequality in health. Therefore, inequality in health is central to our discussion. To measure inequalities in health, we face three challenges: 7 And corollary health sanitation (access to safe water, toilet and electricity). Though electricity is more a measure of economic development that health measure per se, we add it here as a control for sanitation and nutrition: for example women could read more carefully the drugs? notices, or warm more quickly foods; more generally, electricity often improves the mental and material wellbeing of households. It also conditions health facility?s performance. 8 And potentially other surveys. In this case, we mention explicitly the survey(s). 9 The other important factor that could impact health is the performance of the health system. This is discussed in the Chapter 3. Health Assets Inequality Health Inequality Poverty (Assets Index) - measuring welfare (income metric) and subsequently inequality in welfare, - measuring health, - and measuring inequality in health. The measurements can be conducted using two approaches (Sahn, 2003): - Directly by ranking the households or individuals vis-à-vis their performance in the health indicator; we thus have a direct measure of inequality in health. This is suitable when the health indicator is continuous (such as weight, height or body mass index). According to Prof. David E. Sahn, that approach ?which has been referred to as the univariate approach to measuring pure health inequality, involves making comparisons of cardinal or scalar indicators of health inequality and distributions of health, regardless of whether health is correlated with welfare measured along other dimensions?. - Indirectly by finding a scaling measure such as consumption or income or another indicator (assets index for instance)10 that would help ranking the households or individuals (from the poorest to the richest), and see what are their performance in the health variable of interest. We are therefore measuring an indirect health inequality. The indirect method is mostly suitable when the health indicator is dichotomous (for example whether the individual has got diarrhoea last 2 weeks, or ?have the child been vaccinated?, or ?place of delivery?) or is a rate (such as child mortality). Again, quoting Prof. Sahn, ?making comparisons of health across populations with different social and economic characteristics is often referred to in the literature as following the so-called `gradient? or `socioeconomic? approach to health inequality. Much of the motivation for this work on the gradient approach to health inequality arises out of fundamental concerns over social and economic justice. The roots of the gradient will often arise from various types of discrimination, prejudice, and other legal, social, and economic norms that may contribute to stratification and fragmentation, and subsequently inequality in access to material resources and various correlated welfare outcomes?. While the first method would appear quickly limited for dummy or limited categorical health variables because of the small variability in the population, the second approach could also be 10 Or more generally any other socioeconomic gradient such as education, gender or location. impossible when no information is available to scale the units of observation in terms of welfare. We?ll be mostly focusing on the second approach, as did many health economists, and also due to the nature of the DHS datasets in hand and the indicators that we are investigating. 2. Strategy, Methods and Structure. Measuring wealth-related inequality in health implies in the first stage defining and characterizing the poor. Who are indeed the poor? Traditionally, monetary measures (income or consumption) have been used to distinguish households or people into ?rich? and ?poor? classes. Indeed, it is agreed that the ?incomemetric? approach is one of the best ways to measure welfare11. However, it sometimes, if not often, happens that we lack this essential information in household survey datasets. Especially in our case, the DHS datasets do not have income nor consumption information. Then, how to characterize the poor in this situation? For a long time, economists have eluded the question. But soon, it became evident that an alternative measure is needed to strengthen the ?poverty debate?. In the first part of our dissertation, we start by providing a theoretical framework to find a proxy for wellbeing, in the case where consumption or income-related data are missing, namely by discussing the use of assets as such a proxy. The first part of this thesis is relatively long, as compared to the second. However, this is justified, due to its purpose. The goal of the first part of the dissertation is to participate to the research agenda on poverty. It attempts to measure it in a ?non traditional?12 way. 11 There is a consensus in the economic literature that income is more suitable to measure wealth or welfare in developed countries while consumption is more adequate for developing ones due to various reasons such as irregularity of incomes for informal sector, seasonality, prices, recall periods, trustworthy, etc. (see Deaton 1998 for detail). 12 i.e. a non monetary way. The main rationale for this first part therefore is thus to find a new, non monetary measure to characterize in best, life conditions, welfare and then the poor. This measure is referred to as the ?assets index?. Indeed, as the majority of developing countries are engaged more and more in fighting poverty, inequality and deprivation, more and more information on the state of poverty13 is needed. If in almost all these countries, many household surveys have been implemented to collect information on socioeconomic indicators, the major indicator that is needed to analyze poverty (namely income or consumption data) is unfortunately not often collected due to various reasons (time, cost, periodicity, etc.). Even, if they were collected, the quality of the data is often poor. Therefore, economists tend to rely more on other indicators to compensate for the absence of monetary measures. One of the indicators often used are the assets owned by households. The question arose then how to use these assets to characterize the poor in this context? How to weight each of them? In a first attempt, many economists built a simple linear index by assigning arbitrary weights to the assets14. In a seminal paper, Filmer and Pritchett (2001) propose to construct the so-called ?assets index? which could be used as a proxy for consumption or income. It is commonly agreed that their methodology follows a ?scientific? approach, thus is more credible. In their case, they use a Principal Component Analysis (PCA, henceforth) to build their assets index. Since, many other economists have followed in their footsteps which we label in our dissertation, the ?material? poverty approach (as opposed to the monetary one) since it is based on materials (goods and assets) owned by the households or individuals. Because of the importance of the subject (poverty) and because the method is pretty new and original, this first part of our thesis is as said quite long as compared to the second one and has two papers which focus mainly on poverty and inequality issues and their connections with economic growth. In this part, we start by presenting a methodology of measuring non monetary (material) poverty, when a consumption or income data is not available. We show how one can obtain robust results using assets or wealth variables. Once the method is clearly 13 And more generally welfare. 14 For example a television is given a weight of 100, a radio 50, and so on. But this is clearly not a `scientific? way to proceed, as there is no rational ground in giving such weights. tested and validated, it is then confronted to real data. We show that the index shares basically the same properties with monetary metrics and roughly scales households in the same way as does the consumption or income variables. We discuss the advantages and also the limitations of using the assets index. The important thing to bear in mind is that, once it is obtained, it could be used to rank the observational units by wealth or welfare level. - The first chapter defines in a first section poverty and how it is usually measured (by the income metric approach). We discuss the limitations of the use of income/expenditure and what could be alternative measures. We then propose in section 2 the assets metric as a proxy for poverty measurement and test the material poverty approach on international datasets collected by the DHS program. We explore the material poverty and inequality nexus in the world and how Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)15 compares with other regions. We show, using that index and DHS data, that poverty, at least from an assets point of view, was also decreasing in SSA as well as in other regions of the world. This result contrasts with other findings such as Ravallion and Chen (2001) or Sala-i-Martin (2002) that show that, while other regions of the world are experiencing a decline in their (monetary) poverty rates, SSA is lagging behind, with rates starting to rise over the last decade. Therefore, two different measures of welfare could yield opposite results and messages in terms of policies to implement to combat poverty. Moreover, the method we use not only allows observing changes over time for each country, but also provides a natural ranking among countries (from the poorest to the richest). In this chapter, aside the measure of welfare and poverty, we also discuss in a final section the impact of demographic transition on economic growth and therefore on poverty. Indeed, demographic transition is a new phenomenon that is occurring in developing countries, especially African ones. Its negligence could lead to underestimating poverty measures (both material and monetary) by underestimating real economic growth rates. We show that changes in the composition and the size of households put an extra-pressure on the development process. While traditional authors have not considered the impact of these 15 SSA countries are Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Côte d?Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The ?rest of the world? is represented by Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Yemen. changes, we show that taking this into account implies higher economic growth rates than those actually observed or forecasted. - Once the assets index approach is established and tested on international data, the question arose how it performs as compared to the monetary metric. Indeed, if monetary measures remain the reference, then our assets index should share some common properties with them. The second chapter assesses the trends in material poverty in Ghana from the assets perspective using the Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaires Surveys (CWIQ). It then compared these trends with the monetary poverty over roughly the same period. We show that the assets index could be used and yields the same consistent results as using other welfare variable (such as income, consumption or expenditure). Therefore, using two consecutive CWIQ surveys, we find that material poverty in Ghana has decreased roughly by the same magnitude as monetary one, as found in other studies by other authors such as Coulombe and McKay (2007) using Ghanaian GLSS16 consumption data. Thus, this chapter could thus be viewed as providing the proof that the material and the monetary approaches could be equivalent. The second part of our dissertation seeks how to define and measure health and inequality in health. While the definition of health is not obvious, we propose to measure it with child mortality rates. Our main rationale in doing so is that low child mortality generates, ceteris paribus, higher life expectancy17, thus is an adequate measure of a population?s health. This may not be true in areas devastated by wars, famines, and HIV and other pandemics where child mortality could be high (in this case, the best measure should be life expectancy by age groups). Also, the reader should bear in mind that in fact, child mortality could be itself is a good indicator for measuring the (success of the) economic development level of a society as a whole (Sen, 1995), mainly because in developing countries, child mortality is highly correlated to factors linked to the level of development such as access to safe water, sanitation, vaccination coverage, access to health care, etc. - In the third chapter, we focus on measuring overall population?s health. For this, we estimate child mortality in SSA and compare it to the rest of the world. We explore the 16 Ghana Living Standard Surveys. 17 By construction, life expectancy at birth is highly correlated and sensitive to child mortality (it is based on child mortality rates for various cohorts). Lower child mortality rates lead to higher life expectancy and vice versa. determinants of child mortality using mainly a Weibull model and DHS data with socioeconomic variables18 as one of our major covariates. The use of the assets index information is to see how these quintiles behave in a multivariate regression framework of child mortality (i.e. how they affect child mortality). We find, among others, that mother?s education and access to health care and sanitation are one of the strongest predictors for child survival. Controlling for education and other factors, family?s wealth and the area of residency do not really matter for child survival in SSA, contrasting with results found elsewhere. - The fourth and last chapter answers the ultimate goal of this dissertation, that is, the scope of health inequalities in the developing world, particularly in SSA. It uses the factor analysis (FA) method of Chapter 1 to rank household according to their economic gradient status19 and then studies inequalities in various health indicators in relation with these groups. The intention is to analyze inequality rates between rich and poor for various health variables. In this chapter, we concentrate solely on inequality issues in health and health-related infrastructures and services. Mainly, we analyze inequality in access to sanitation infrastructures (water and electricity20) and various health status and access to health indicators (such as child death, child anthropometry, medically assisted delivery and vaccination coverage) using a Gini and Marginal Gini Income Elasticity approach (GIE and MGIE, henceforth) on one hand, and the Concentration Index (CI) approach on the other. Results show that, while almost all countries have made great efforts in improving coverage in, and access to, these indicators, almost all the gains have been captured by the better-offs of the society, especially in SSA. We extend the analysis to compare GIE estimates to those of CI and find consistent results yielding quite similar messages. 18 Quintiles groups derived from an assets index. 19 By grouping usually households in 5 quintiles from poorer to richer ones. 20 On the rationale of using electricity, see footnote 7 above. 3. Results and Policy Implications. As said above, the major goal in conducting this thesis research is to analyze inequality in health status, health care and health-related services using DHS data. To reach our objective, we follow two intermediate steps: - For assets poverty, results show that assets poverty and inequality are decreasing in every region of the world, including Sub-Saharan Africa. This tends to support our hypothesis that, contrary to common beliefs, African households use assets and building ownerships as saving tools and buffer to economic shocks. The first paper also shows however that the demographic transition actually occurring in developing countries could impede on economic growth and trigger a bullet on policies aiming at combating poverty. - Our third paper shows that child mortality is decreasing in all parts the world. However, the 1990s and early 2000s have been a lost decade for the African continent where many countries have witnessed an increase in rates that is mostly attributable among other factors to the economic and financial turmoils of the 1990s and early 2000s and the HIV epidemic. Our hypothesis is that these phenomena have destabilized the organization of the health care system, cut its funding and hampered its performance. High levels of health inequality can also be part of the puzzle. Coming back to the particular case of HIV/AIDS, the reader should observe that it affects more and more the less poor so that it can also lead to a decline in assets inequality (richer people are dying) along with an increase in child mortality and thus explain in great part our paradox. This setback (the rise in mortality over recent periods despite poverty reduction) will make impossible for these countries to reach the millennium development goals, at least for child mortality. The conclusion to this is that African population?s health has been stagnant over the period 1990-2005. Regression analysis reveals no strong correlation between our measure of welfare (assets index) and child mortality. More important are mothers? education and access to health care and sanitation services. - Finally, our inequality estimates show that they are quite high for all indicators considered. For ill-health indicators (child malnutrition and death), rates are excessively concentrated in poor and rural groups. Concerning access to health care services, rich and urban groups tend to be more favoured than poor and urban ones. But the high level of inequality tends to be reducing at the margin over time, as the poor have increasing access. Finally for access to sanitation services, results show that while the majority of countries have made substantial efforts to increase coverage on the first two periods, the rich and urban classes have benefited more and inequality (which is at high levels) tends to rise at the margin over time, especially for the poor. More preoccupying is the fact that rates are falling between 1995-2000 and 2000-2005, probably because of the privatization of these services and the new costs they impose on households. Overall, inequality in all variables considered is more pronounced in SSA than the rest of the world (expect for death and malnutrition). The sub-continent is still disadvantaged in terms of access to services or ill-health. Where to go from here? In the African sub-continent, we have the following picture: a decreasing (material) poverty and inequality but coupled with a stagnant child mortality situation, a stagnant or increasing malnutrition. This is mostly due to high levels of, and an increasing inequality at the margin in access to sanitation and electricity services coupled with a decreasing access to these services. Thus, despite the fact that we observe a decreasing inequality at the margin in access to health care (even though the average level of inequality is still high) the missing link in health-related services coupled with an overall high inequality in these two types of services hugely impact child health and survival. Therefore, as access to health care services and health-related sanitation services is essential to child survival, our findings call for vigorous policies to promote access of the poor groups and rural areas to these services. African Governments should continue to favour access of the poor to health care and reverse the inequality trends in access to water, sanitation and electricity. This is vital for the health of the population and for the development of Africa. Funding can come from various sources: the Government Budget, International Assistance but also from households themselves (since the first part of our thesis has demonstrated that they are getting richer (and various surveys show that they are willing to pay for quality health care), an adequate fees policy could benefit to the health care system). Measures should be put in place to strengthen the performance of the health system and to mitigate the negative effects of macroeconomic imbalances, economic crises and HIV/AIDS. Only on these conditions the Sub-Continent could hope to eradicate poverty and promote health for all. 4. Contribution of this Thesis. This thesis seeks to analyze empirically the inequality in health and access to health in SSA and how this region compared to the rest of the world. To do so, it develops a new method to characterize poor households and to analyze assets-based poverty, when the monetary measure is unavailable. Such a method is indeed necessary as almost all developing countries have collected many surveys that lack the consumption or income information. Once a poverty measure and a correct measure of health have been found, and their core determinants clearly established, we then proceed to the health inequality analysis, along with its determinants, using two methodologies: the traditional CI and the more recent GIE approaches. These approaches have been the mostly used to explore the inequality in health and access to health these last years. Though already studied in the literature, and sometimes applied on DHS or some groups of DHS datasets, our dissertation differs in its purpose and scope and its large scale. No paper to our knowledge used the totally to-date freely available DHS datasets to study poverty and inequality topics and provide basic statistics. Our main contribution is to shed a new light on the welfare-inequality-health nexus in Africa, how it evolves over time and how it compares to other regions around the world, using all available information. It also put numbers on various important socioeconomic indicators such as poverty, inequality, child health and mortality, access to health-related infrastructures, etc., for developing countries, especially African ones. As we sometimes lack these important information, this thesis proves finally to be a very useful exercise. ; Cette thèse part d'un postulat simple : « l'amélioration du niveau de vie s'accompagne de l'amélioration de l'état de santé générale d'une population » et teste sa validité dans le contexte de l'Afrique au Sud du Sahara (ASS). Si cette hypothèse se vérifie en général dans le contexte de l'ASS en ce qui concerne le niveau (plus le pays est riche, plus sa population est en bonne santé), il l'est moins en ce qui concerne les dynamiques, du moins à court et moyen terme. Notamment, les pays qui connaissent une amélioration tendancielle de bien-être matériel ne connaissent pas forcément une amélioration de la santé de leurs populations. Ceci constitue un paradoxe qui viendrait invalider notre postulat. En écartant tout effet de retard ou de rattrapage qui pourrait l'expliquer car nous travaillons sur une période de 15 ans réparties en 3 sous-périodes (1990-1995, 1995-2000 et 2000-2005), nous expliquons ce paradoxe, toutes choses égales par ailleurs, par deux canaux principaux qui peuvent interagir : - la performance du système de santé et - l'inégalité en santé. Si le premier est plus évident mais aussi plus difficile à prouver empiriquement du fait du manque de données sur des séries longues, ou du fait que ces données sont trop agrégées et éparses, le second canal est testable avec des bases de données adéquates qui, elles, sont disponibles au niveau microéconomique (ménages). Les bases de données que nous avons privilégiées sont les Enquêtes Démographiques et de Santé (EDS) du fait de leur comparabilité dans l'espace et le temps (mêmes noms de variables standardisées, même méthodologie d'enquête, mêmes modules, etc.). Ces atouts sont d'autant plus importants que les comparaisons de pauvreté et de bien-être basées sur les enquêtes de revenus ou de consommation butent sur de sérieux problèmes à savoir la comparabilité de ces enquêtes (méthodologies différentes, périodes de rappel différents, prix souvent non collectés de la même manière, etc.). Pour montrer ces effets de l'inégalité de santé sur les niveaux et les tendances de la santé des populations et la pauvreté et le bien-être, nous avons axé notre recherche autour de 3 axes principaux : 1- Comment mesurer le niveau de richesse et donc le bien-être des ménages en l'absence d'information sur la consommation et le revenu ? Les chapitres 1 et 2 de notre thèse se penchent sur cette question. Nous avons privilégié, à l'instar de plus en plus d'économistes, l'utilisation des biens des ménages et les méthodes de l'analyse factorielle et d'analyse en composantes principales pour construire un indice de richesse. Cet indice de richesse est pris comme un substitut du revenu ou de la consommation et sert donc de proxy pour la mesure du bien-être. Bien qu'il comporte quelques lacunes (notamment le fait qu'il ne concerne que les biens matériels et durables du ménage alors que la consommation ou le revenu sont des concepts plus globaux de bien-être, il ne prend pas en compte les préférences des ménages, il ne comporte aucune notion de valeur car le prix n'est pas pris en compte, de telle façon qu'une petite télévision en noir blanc vieille de vingt ans est mise au même niveau qu'un grand écran plasma flambant neuf, etc.), il n'en demeure pas moins que d'un côté, avec les EDS, il n'y a pas moyen de faire autrement en l'état actuel des choses, mais aussi et surtout parce que ces données permettent d'éviter les problèmes évoqués plus haut, notamment celui de la comparabilité des données pour faire de la comparaison spatiale et inter-temporelle des données en matière de pauvreté. Dans le premier chapitre, en nous basant sur cet indice et une ligne de pauvreté définie a priori à 60% pour la première observation dans notre échantillon (Benin, 1996), et en utilisant les données EDS et une analyse en composantes principales (ACP), nous avons pu mesurer la tendance de la pauvreté dite « matérielle » (en opposition à la pauvreté monétaire, basée sur la métrique monétaire). Cette méthode qui est privilégiée par des auteurs comme Sahn et Stifel est d'autant plus intéressante qu'elle donne non seulement les tendances de la pauvreté dans chaque pays, mais elle permet aussi une classification naturelle de ces pays par ordre de grandeur de pauvreté. Cependant, dans la mesure où les biens des ménages et la dépenses de consommation sont disponibles, l'analyste devrait estimer les deux types de pauvreté (matérielle via l'indice de richesse et monétaire via le revenu ou la consommation) car les études montrent souvent que les biens matériels et la consommation ou le revenu ne sont pas très bien corrélés, et donc le choix de l'indicateur de bien-être est crucial en termes de politiques économique et de santé. En effet, si l'indicateur sous-estime le vrai niveau de pauvreté ou d'inégalité (ou les surestime), les dépenses publiques qui en résultent peuvent être plus ou moins surévaluées, de même que les réponses apportées se révéler inadéquates. Donc dans la mesure du possible, il conviendrait de se pencher sur la question du choix de l'indicateur. Les résultats de notre méthodologie montrent que l'ASS reste la région la plus pauvre du monde en termes de possession d'actifs. La région orientale de l'ASS est la plus pauvre au monde (75%) suivie de l'Asie du Sud (64%), le Sud de l'ASS (61%), l'Afrique Centrale (57%), l'Afrique de l'Ouest (55%), l'Asie de l'Ouest (40%), l'Asie du Sud-Est (19%), l'Amérique Latine (18%), les Caraïbes (17%), l'Afrique du Nord (6%), l'Asie Centrale (2%) et l'Europe de l'Est (1%). Notre analyse nous montre que la pauvreté baisse dans l'ensemble des pays Africains au Sud du Sahara (sauf la Zambie), à l'instar des autres pays du monde dans l'échantillon. En effet, en considérant les trends, nous voyons que la moyenne de l'ASS passe de 63% de pauvreté matérielle entre 1990-1995 à 62% en 1995-2000 et 58% entre 2000 et 2005. La baisse est modeste et lente mais non négligeable et surtout, elle est en accélération sur les 2 dernières périodes. Mais elle demeure toutefois beaucoup plus marquée dans le reste du monde. Concomitamment à la baisse de la pauvreté, nous observons aussi une baisse de l'inégalité. Nous terminons ce chapitre par une réflexion sur l'effet de la transition démographique sur la croissance économique et la pauvreté en ASS et dans les autres pays en développement. En effet, la chute de la fertilité et de la mortalité couplées à un exode rural font que le nombre de famille se démultiplie du fait de la transition vers des tailles plus réduites. Ceci impose plus de contraintes (et donc peut avoir un impact négatif) sur la croissance économique et risque de sous-estimer le niveau réel de pauvreté. Il convient, une fois que la pauvreté matérielle et ses tendances ont été bien calculées avec les biens durables (et la transition économique prise si possible en compte), de tester la validité de cette méthode en la confrontant avec les résultats issus de l'analyse monétaire de la pauvreté. Les EDS ne comportant pas données d'information sur la consommation, nous nous sommes tournés vers une autre source de données. Dans le chapitre 2, nous avons testé la robustesse de notre méthode dans le cas particulier du Ghana, en utilisant les enquêtes du Questionnaire Unifié sur les Indicateurs de Base de Bienêtre (QUIBB), et en confrontant les résultats issus de la méthode ACP avec ceux issus de la méthode traditionnelle monétaire et trouvons grosso modo les mêmes résultats (10% de baisse avec la méthode monétaire traditionnelle et 7% avec notre méthode sur la période 1997- 2003). Ceci valide donc le fait que la méthode que nous proposons (à savoir, mesurer le bienêtre et la pauvreté par les biens durables des ménages) est tout aussi valide que la méthode plus traditionnelle utilisant des métriques monétaires. Une analyse fine dans le cas du Ghana montre que la baisse de la pauvreté est due à une croissance économique particulièrement pro-pauvre mais aussi à des dynamiques intra et intersectorielles (réallocation des gens des secteurs moins productifs vers ceux plus productifs) et aussi une forte migration des campagnes vers les villes. Nos simulations montrent que les migrants ruraux ont aussi bénéficié de cette croissance dans les villes où ils trouvent plus d'opportunités. 2- Une fois établie que la pauvreté est en recul en ASS, nous avons voulu mesurer la tendance de la santé de sa population (approximée par les taux de mortalité infantile et infanto-juvénile). Nous discutons dans le chapitre 3 de trois méthodes pour estimer et comparer les taux de mortalité des enfants : - la méthode des cohortes fictives (sur laquelle l'équipe de l'EDS se base pour estimer les taux « officiels » de mortalité), - la méthode non paramétrique (Kaplan et Meier) que privilégient un certain nombre d'économistes et - la méthode paramétrique (Weibull) de plus en plus utilisée pour sa souplesse et sa robustesse. Les deux premières méthodes ont tendance à sous-estimer le vrai niveau de mortalité et de ce fait nous avons privilégié le Weibull. De plus, avec cette dernière, nous pouvons évaluer l'effet de chaque variable spécifique (comme l'éducation ou l'accès à l'eau) sur le niveau de mortalité. Une étude des déterminants de cette mortalité montre qu'outre l'effet attendu de l'éducation des mères, l'accès aux infrastructures de santé (soins médicaux et surtout prénataux durant et lors de l'accouchement) et sanitaires (accès aux toilettes et dans une moindre mesure à l'eau potable) en sont les principaux facteurs. L'effet de richesse joue peu en ASS (mais pas dans le reste du monde), une fois que nous contrôlons pour le lieu de résidence (urbain) et le niveau d'éducation. Ce résultat nous surprend quelque peu, même s'il a été trouvé dans d'autres études. Ensuite, nous avons calculé la mortalité prédite des enfants. De toutes les régions du monde, l'ASS a le niveau de mortalité le plus élevé (par exemple en moyenne 107 décès pour la mortalité infantile contre 51 pour le reste du monde, soit plus du double). Ce résultat était toutefois attendu. Par contre nous avons été quelque peu surpris en ce qui concerne les tendances. Le constat est que sur les 15 ans, la mortalité des enfants a très peu ou pas du tout baissé dans le sous-continent africain (et est même en augmentation dans certains pays, alors qu'ils enregistrent une baisse de la pauvreté matérielle sur la même période). En moyenne, considérant les enfants de moins d'un an, les taux sont passés de 95%o à 89.5%o pour remonter à 91.5%o pour les 3 périodes 1990-1195, 1995-2000 et 2000-2005. Ainsi sur 15 ans, la mortalité infantile n'a baissé que de 3 points et demie en moyenne et surtout, elle remonte sur la période 1995-2005. Un examen des taux de malnutrition des enfants confirme ces tendances. On pourrait dire que ces résultats sont plutôt encourageants et normaux si on fait une analyse d'ensemble du sous-continent. En effet pour l'ensemble de l'ASS, cette légère baisse semble en conformité avec la baisse de 5 points des taux de pauvreté matérielle (63% en 1990-1995 à 58% en 2000-2005). Mais l'ordre de grandeur est faible en termes de magnitude, et surtout si compare au reste du monde où on observe une baisse de la mortalité beaucoup plus conséquente. Mais c'est l'arbre qui cache la forêt. Une analyse plus fine par pays montre en effet une situation plus contrastée. Notre postulat de départ nous dit que sur une période suffisamment longue, une amélioration de bien-être s'accompagne d'une amélioration de la santé. Or on constate que certains pays qui connaissent une baisse de la pauvreté matérielle connaissent également une recrudescence de la mortalité des enfants. Pour une même année, ce résultat peut être normal, traduisant un simple décalage pour que l'amélioration de bien-être se traduise par un meilleur état de santé de la population. Mais à moyen terme (période de 5 ans), nous observons la même absence d'effet. Nous sommes donc face à un paradoxe qu'il nous faut comprendre et tenter d'expliquer. Une des pistes pour comprendre ces résultats est d'analyser la performance des systèmes de santé en Afrique. Les facteurs qui expliquent notamment cette performance sont : des facteurs « classiques » comme la performance économique des périodes passées, les montants et l'allocation des dépenses de santé, l'organisation des systèmes de santé, la baisse de la fourniture de services de soins de santé (vaccination, assistance à la naissance, soins prénataux, soins curatifs, .), la malnutrition, le SIDA, les guerres, la fuite des cerveaux notamment du personnel médical, etc., à côté de facteurs plus « subtils » ou ténus car moins saisissables comme les crises financières des années 1990s qui ont plombé certaines des économies de la sous-région, la qualité des soins, la corruption et les dessous-de-table, l'instabilité de la croissance économique (même si elle est positive), etc. La seconde voie que nous examinons pour expliquer le manque de résultat en santé dans certains pays concerne l'inégalité en santé et ceci fait l'objet de notre dernier chapitre. 3- Expliquer l'absence de lien entre santé et pauvreté dans certains pays de l'ASS : l'effet de l'inégalité en santé. Dans le chapitre 4, nous émettons l'hypothèse que le fort niveau d'inégalité dans l'accès aux services de santé et d'assainissement couplé à la faible performance du système de santé (avec en toile de fond l'impact du Sida) peuvent servir à expliquer en partie notre paradoxe. Nous considérons deux types de services : - soins de santé (vaccination, assistance médicale à la naissance et traitement médical de la diarrhée) et - hygiène et assainissement (accès à l'eau potable et à l'électricité, accès aux toilettes propres). Le choix de ces services est motivé par le fait que le modèle Weibull dans le chapitre 3 nous montre que toutes choses égales par ailleurs, ils sont cruciaux pour la survie des enfants, en particulier en Afrique. Les niveaux d'accès montrent une baisse tendancielle des taux pour les services de santé (surtout pour la vaccination) et une légère augmentation de l'accès à l'électricité et dans une moindre mesure à l'eau potable. L'accès aux toilettes propres demeure un luxe réservé à une petite fraction de la population. Pour les calculs d'inégalité, nous considérons deux indicateurs: - l'indice de concentration (pour mesurer le niveau moyen d'inégalité) - et l'élasticité-revenu du Gini (inégalité « à la marge » quand le revenu d'un individu ou d'un groupe augmente d'un point de pourcentage). Globalement, les pays d'ASS ont un niveau d'inégalité beaucoup plus élevé comme on s'y attendait par rapport au reste du monde. Pour les tendances, nous remarquons que l'inégalité marginale s'accroît pour les services d'assainissement (eau, toilette et électricité), mais qu'elle diminue pour les soins de santé. En ce qui concerne l'inégalité moyenne, elle indique une disproportion dans l'accès des classes riches par rapport à celles pauvres. Même si les groupes pauvres « rattrapent » ceux riches dans la provision de certains services, cela se fait de façon trop lente. De fait, le haut niveau d'inégalité couplé à une recrudescence de cette inégalité à la marge pour certains services tendent à annihiler les effets positifs de la croissance économique et de la réduction de la pauvreté et maintiendraient la mortalité, la malnutrition et la morbidité des enfants en Afrique à des niveaux relativement élevés et plus particulièrement concentrées dans les groupes les plus pauvres. Tout ceci appelle à des politiques économiques, sociales et sanitaires pour renverser fortement les tendances de la mortalité des enfants. En particulier, nos résultats suggèrent qu'il faudrait que les pays Africains puissent entre autres : - accroître les services de soins de santé, notamment les soins préventifs comme les services essentiels à la santé de l'enfant dès sa naissance (vaccination, services prénataux et assistance à la naissance), les soins curatifs et les campagnes de sensibilisation. - renverser la tendance baissière dans la provision des services sanitaires (eau, électricité, environnement et assainissement, prise en charge des déchets, etc.). - améliorer la nutrition et l'environnement immédiat de ces enfants et les comportements des ménages (espacement des naissances, éducation des mères en matière de santé, etc.). - plus généralement comme le montrent d'autres études, il faudrait aussi améliorer la performance globale de leur système de santé en empêchant la fuite des cerveaux, en allouant un budget suffisant à la santé, en organisant mieux les différents organes, de même que les ciblages des politiques de santé, en empêchant la corruption, en améliorant la qualité (accueil, propreté des centres de soins, etc.), en équipant les centres en médicaments, vaccins, moyens de transport et de communication, etc. Intégrer si possible les systèmes plus traditionnels de soins (comme les matrones et les guérisseurs) et le secteur privé, de même qu'une meilleure organisation du système pharmaceutique. Ces politiques constituent un tout et doivent être mise en oeuvre rapidement, ou renforcées le cas échéant. A cette seule condition les pays Africains pourraient espérer rattraper leur retard dans les Objectifs du Millénaire.
On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of similar to 1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg(2) at a luminosity distance of 40(-8)(+8) Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 M-circle dot. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at similar to 40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One-Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over similar to 10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient's position similar to 9 and similar to 16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta. ; Kavli Foundation; Danish National Research Foundation; Niels Bohr International Academy; DARK Cosmology Centre; NSF [AST-1518052, AST-141242, AST-1411763, AST-1714498, AST-1517649, PHY-1607291, AST-1412421, AST-1313484]; Gordon AMP; Betty Moore Foundation; Heising-Simons Foundation; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; David and Lucile Packard Foundation; DNRF; UCMEXUS-CONACYT; NASA - Space Telescope Science Institute [HST-HF-51348.001, HST-HF-51373.001]; NASA [NAS5-26555, NNX15AE50G, NNX16AC22G, NAS5-00136, NNX08AR22G, NNX12AR65G, NNX14AM74G, NNX12AR55G, NNM13AA43C, NNM11AA01A, NNX15AE60G, PF6-170148, PF7-180162]; INAF; INFN; ASI [I/028/12/2]; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France; Commissariat a l'energie atomique et aux energies alternatives (CEA), France; Commission Europeenne (FEDER), France; Commission Europeenne, France; Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), France; IdEx, France; Sorbonne Paris Cite, France [ANR-10-LABX-0023, ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02]; Labex OCEVU, France [ANR-11-LABX-0060]; A*MIDEX, France [ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02]; Region Ile-de-France (DIM-ACAV), France; Region Alsace (CPER), France; Region Provence-Alpes-Cite d'Azur, France; Departement du Var and Ville de La Seyne-sur-Mer, France; Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Germany; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy; Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands; Council of the President of the Russian Federation, Russia; National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS), Romania; Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO): Plan Estatal de Investigacion (MINECO/FEDER), Spain [FPA2015-65150-C3-1-P, FPA2015-65150-C3-2-P, FPA2015-65150-C3-3-P]; Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence and MultiDark Consolider (MINECO), Spain; Prometeo program (Generalitat Valenciana), Spain; Grisolia program (Generalitat Valenciana), Spain; Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Professional Training, Morocco; National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China [2013CB834901, 2013CB834900, 2013CB834903]; Chinese Polar Environment Comprehensive Investigation AMP; Assessment Program [CHINARE2016-02-03-05]; Tsinghua University; Nanjing University; Beijing Normal University; University of New South Wales; Texas AM University; Australian Antarctic Division; National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) of Australia; Chinese Academy of Sciences through Center for Astronomical Mega-Science; National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC); Argentina-Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica; Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica (ANPCyT); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET); Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza; Municipalidad de Malargue; NDM Holdings and Valle Las Lenas; Australia-the Australian Research Council; Brazil-Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq); Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP); Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ); Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) [2010/07359-6, 1999/05404-3]; Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia, Inovacoes e Comunicacoes (MCTIC); Czech Republic [MSMT CR LG15014, LO1305, LM2015038, CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001402]; France-Centre de Calcul IN2P3/CNRS; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Conseil Regional Ile-de-France; Departement Physique Nucleaire et Corpusculaire (PNC-IN2P3/CNRS); Departement Sciences de l'Univers (SDU-INSU/CNRS); Institut Lagrange de Paris (ILP) within Investissements d'Avenir Programme [LABEX ANR-10-LABX-63, ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02]; Germany-Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); Finanzministerium Baden-Wurttemberg; Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP); Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (HGF); Ministerium fur Innovation, Wissenschaft und Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen; Ministerium fur Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Wurttemberg; Italy-Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN); Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF); Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca (MIUR); CETEMPS Center of Excellence; Ministero degli Affari Esteri (MAE); Mexico-Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT) [167733]; Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM); PAPIIT DGAPA-UNAM; Netherlands - Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap; Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO); Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM); Poland-National Centre for Research and Development [ERA-NET-ASPERA/01/11, ERA-NET-ASPERA/02/11]; National Science Centre [2013/08/M/ST9/00322, 2013/08/M/ST9/00728, HARMONIA 5-2013/10/M/ST9/00062, UMO-2016/22/M/ST9/00198]; Portugal-Portuguese national funds; FEDER within Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade through Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (COMPETE); Romania-Romanian Authority for Scientific Research ANCS; CNDI-UEFISCDI [20/2012, 194/2012, PN 16 42 01 02]; Slovenia-Slovenian Research Agency; Spain-Comunidad de Madrid; Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER); Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad; Xunta de Galicia; European Community 7th Framework Program [FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF-328826]; USA-Department of Energy [DE-AC02-07CH11359, DE-FR02-04ER41300, DE-FG02-99ER41107, DE-SC0011689]; National Science Foundation [0450696]; Grainger Foundation; Marie Curie-IRSES/EPLANET; European Particle Physics Latin American Network; European Union 7th Framework Program [PIRSES-2009-GA-246806]; European Union's Horizon research and innovation programme [646623]; UNESCO; Australian Research Council [FT150100099, FL15010014]; Australian Research Council; Australian Government; Australian Government (NCRIS); Western Australian and Australian Governments; National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics in 3D (ASTRO 3D) [CE170100013]; Spanish Ministry [AYA 2015-71718-R]; Junta de Andalucia Proyecto de Excelencia [TIC-2839]; National Research Foundation [NRF-2015R1A2A1A01006870, DGE-1144469]; Korea Basic Science Research Program [NRF2014R1A6A3A03057484, NRF-2015R1D1A4A01020961]; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (Mexico) through Laboratorios Nacionales Program (Mexico); Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA-CSIC, Spain); 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Wallenberg Foundation; Swedish Research Council; National Space Board (Sweden); INAF (Italy); CNES (France); DOE [DE-AC02-76SF00515]; Office of Naval Research [N00014-07-C0147]; National Science Foundation under University Radio Observatory [AST-1139963, AST-1139974]; ESO Telescopes at the Paranal Observatory [099.D-0382, 099.D-0622, 099.D-0191, 099.D-0116]; REM telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory [35020]; Department of University and Research (MIUR); Italian Space Agency (ASI); Autonomous Region of Sardinia (RAS); National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF); BIC [114332KYSB20160007]; Hundred Talent Program; Chinese Academy of Sciences [KJZD-EW-M06]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [11673062]; Oversea Talent Program of Yunnan Province; STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council); Slovenian Research Agency [P1-0188]; Sorbonne Paris Cite [ANR-10-LABX-0023, ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02]; JSPS [15H05437]; JST Consortia; GROWTH (Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen) - National Science Foundation under PIRE [1545949]; California Institute of Technology (USA); University of Maryland College Park (USA); University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA); Texas Tech University (USA); San Diego State University (USA); Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA); Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan); National Central University (Taiwan); Indian Institute of Astrophysics (India); Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (India); Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel); Oskar Klein Centre at Stockholm University (Sweden); Humboldt University (Germany); Liverpool John Moores University (UK); Planning and Budgeting Committee; Israel Science Foundation; Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Corporation; National Science Foundation CAREER [1455090]; ERC grant TReX; Naval Research Laboratory (NRL); NRL; Oxford Centre for Astrophysical Surveys; Hintze Family Charitable Foundation; Swedish Research Council (V.R.); Israel Science Foundation, Minerva, Israeli ministry of Science; US-Israel Binational Science Foundation; I-CORE of the Planning and Budgeting Committee; Swedish Research Council (VR) [2016 03657 3]; Swedish National Space Board [Dnr. 107/16]; Gravitational Radiation and Electromagnetic Astrophysical Transients (GREAT) - Swedish Research council (V.R.) [Dnr. 2016-06012]; Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, India; Indo-US Science and Technology Foundation; US National Science Foundation (NSF); US Department of Energy Office of High-Energy Physics; Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACyT), Mexico [271051, 232656, 167281, 260378, 179588, 239762, 254964, 271737, 258865, 243290]; Red HAWC, Mexico; DGAPA-UNAM [RG100414, IN111315, IN111716-3, IA102715, 109916]; VIEP-BUAP; University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation; Institute of Geophysics, Planetary Physics, and Signatures at Los Alamos National Laboratory; Polish Science Centre [DEC-2014/13/B/ST9/945]; German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF); Max Planck Society; German Research Foundation (DFG); Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; French Ministry for Research; CNRS-IN2P3; Astroparticle Interdisciplinary Programme of the CNRS; U.K. Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC); IPNP of the Charles University; Czech Science Foundation; Polish National Science Centre; South African Department of Science and Technology; National Research Foundation; University of Namibia; National Commission on Research, Science and Technology of Namibia (NCRST); Innsbruck University; Austrian Science Fund (FWF); Austrian Federal Ministry for Science, Research and Economy; University of Adelaide; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; University of Amsterdam; EGI Federation; China National Space Administration (CNSA); Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) [XDB23040400]; Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST) [2016YFA0400800]; U.S. National Science Foundation-Office of Polar Programs; U.S. National Science Foundation-Physics Division; Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW) grid infrastructure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Open Science Grid (OSG) grid infrastructure; U.S. Department of Energy; National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center; Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) grid computing resources; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; WestGrid and Compute/Calcul Canada; Swedish Research Council, Sweden; Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Sweden; Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC), Sweden; Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Germany; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany; Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP), Germany; Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, Germany; Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS-FWO); FWO Odysseus programme; Flanders Institute; Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo); Marsden Fund, New Zealand; Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS); Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Switzerland; National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); Villum Fonden, Denmark; Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF), Denmark; Russian Science Foundation [15-1230015, 14-22-00271]; Science and Education Ministry of Kazakhstan [0075/GF4]; RUSTAVELI [FR/379/6-300/14]; ESA Denmark; ESA France; ESA Germany; ESA Italy; ESA Switzerland; ESA Spain; ESA Russia; ESA USA; CEA; CNES; DLR; ESA; INTA; OSTC; ASI/INAF [2013-025-R.1]; German INTEGRAL through DLR [50 OG 1101]; Spanish MINECO/FEDER [ESP2015-65712-C5-1-R]; RFBR [16-29-13009-ofi-m]; JSPS KAKENHI [JP16H02183, JP15H02075, JP15H02069, JP26800103, JP25800103]; Inter-University Cooperation Program of the MEXT; NINS program; Toyota Foundation [D11-R-0830]; Mitsubishi Foundation; Yamada Science Foundation; Inoue Foundation for Science; National Research Foundation of South Africa; NRF [2017R1A3A3001362]; KASI [2017-1-830-03]; Israel Science Foundation [541/17]; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India; Department of Science and Technology, India; Science AMP; Engineering Research Board (SERB), India; Ministry of Human Resource Development, India; Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigacion; Vicepresidencia i Conselleria d'Innovacio Recerca i Turisme; Conselleria d'Educacio i Universitat del Govern de les Illes Balears; Conselleria d'Educacio Investigacio Cultura i Esport de la Generalitat Valenciana; National Science Centre of Poland; Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); Russian Foundation for Basic Research; Russian Science Foundation; European Commission; European Regional Development Funds (ERDF); Royal Society; Scottish Funding Council; Scottish Universities Physics Alliance; Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA); Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO); National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (NKFI); National Research Foundation of Korea; Industry Canada and Province of Ontario through Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation; Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations, and Communications; International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR); Council of Hong Kong; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST); Leverhulme Trust; Research Corporation; Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan; RIKEN; MEXT; KAKENHI [JP 17H06362]; EVN [RP029]; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [653477]; ERC [647208]; Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research through NWO VIDI [639.042.612-Nissanke]; NWO TOP [62002444-Nissanke]; VISIR [60.A-9392]; [MOST104-2923-M-008-004-MY5]; [MOST106-2112-M-008-007] ; (1M2H) We thank J. McIver for alerting us to the LVC circular. We thank J. Mulchaey (Carnegie Observatories director), L. Infante (Las Campanas Observatory director), and the entire Las Campanas staff for their extreme dedication, professionalism, and excitement, all of which were critical in the discovery of the first gravitational-wave optical counterpart and its host galaxy as well as the observations used in this study. We thank I. Thompson and the Carnegie Observatory Time Allocation Committee for approving the Swope Supernova Survey and scheduling our program. We thank the University of Copenhagen, DARK Cosmology Centre, and the Niels Bohr International Academy for hosting D.A.C., R.J.F., A.M.B., E.R., and M.R.S. during the discovery of GW170817/SSS17a. R.J.F., A.M.B., and E.R. were participating in the Kavli Summer Program in Astrophysics, "Astrophysics with gravitational wave detections." This program was supported by the the Kavli Foundation, Danish National Research Foundation, the Niels Bohr International Academy, and the DARK Cosmology Centre. The UCSC group is supported in part by NSF grant AST-1518052, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, generous donations from many individuals through a UCSC Giving Day grant, and from fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (R.J.F.), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (R.J.F. and E.R.) and the Niels Bohr Professorship from the DNRF (E.R.). AMB acknowledges support from a UCMEXUS-CONACYT Doctoral Fellowship. Support for this work was provided by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grants HST-HF-51348.001 (B.J.S.) and HST-HF-51373.001 (M.R.D.) awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. This paper includes data gathered with the 1 meter Swope and 6.5 meter Magellan Telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile.r (AGILE) The AGILE Team thanks the ASI management, the technical staff at the ASI Malindi ground station, the technical support team at the ASI Space Science Data Center, and the Fucino AGILE Mission Operation Center. AGILE is an ASI space mission developed with programmatic support by INAF and INFN. We acknowledge partial support through the ASI grant No. I/028/12/2. We also thank INAF, Italian Institute of Astrophysics, and ASI, Italian Space Agency.r (ANTARES) The ANTARES Collaboration acknowledges the financial support of: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Commissariat a l'energie atomique et aux energies alternatives (CEA), Commission Europeenne (FEDER fund and Marie Curie Program), Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), IdEx program and UnivEarthS Labex program at Sorbonne Paris Cite (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02), Labex OCEVU (ANR-11-LABX-0060) and the A*MIDEX project (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02), Region Ile-de-France (DIM-ACAV), Region Alsace (contrat CPER), Region Provence-Alpes-Cite d'Azur, Departement du Var and Ville de La Seyne-sur-Mer, France; Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Germany; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy; Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), the Netherlands; Council of the President of the Russian Federation for young scientists and leading scientific schools supporting grants, Russia; National Authority for Scientific Research (ANCS), Romania; Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO): Plan Estatal de Investigacion (refs.; r r FPA2015-65150-C3-1-P, -2-P and -3-P; MINECO/FEDER), Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence and MultiDark Consolider (MINECO), and Prometeo and Grisolia programs (Generalitat Valenciana), Spain; Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Professional Training, Morocco. We also acknowledge the technical support of Ifremer, AIM and Foselev Marine for the sea operation and the CC-IN2P3 for the computing facilities.r (AST3) The AST3 project is supported by the National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China (Grant Nos. 2013CB834901, 2013CB834900, 2013CB834903), and the Chinese Polar Environment Comprehensive Investigation & Assessment Program (grant No. CHINARE2016-02-03-05). The construction of the AST3 telescopes has received fundings from Tsinghua University, Nanjing University, Beijing Normal University, University of New South Wales, and Texas A&M University, the Australian Antarctic Division, and the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) of Australia. It has also received funding from Chinese Academy of Sciences through the Center for Astronomical Mega-Science and National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC).r (Auger) The successful installation, commissioning, and operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory would not have been possible without the strong commitment and effort from the technical and administrative staff in Malargue. We are very grateful to the following agencies and organizations for financial support: Argentina-Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica; Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica (ANPCyT); Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET); Gobierno de la Provincia de Mendoza; Municipalidad de Malargue; NDM Holdings and Valle Las Lenas; in gratitude for their continuing cooperation over land access; Australia-the Australian Research Council; Brazil-Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq); Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP); Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ); Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grant Nos. 2010/07359-6 and 1999/05404-3; Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia, Inovacoes e Comunicacoes (MCTIC); Czech Republic-grant Nos. MSMT CR LG15014, LO1305, LM2015038 and CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001402; France-Centre de Calcul IN2P3/CNRS; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Conseil Regional Ile-de-France; Departement Physique Nucleaire et Corpusculaire (PNC-IN2P3/CNRS); Departement Sciences de l'Univers (SDU-INSU/CNRS); Institut Lagrange de Paris (ILP) grant No. LABEX ANR-10-LABX-63 within the Investissements d'Avenir Programme Grant No. ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02; Germany-Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG); Finanzministerium Baden-Wurttemberg; Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP); Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (HGF); Ministerium fur Innovation, Wissenschaft und Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen; Ministerium fur Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Wurttemberg; Italy-Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN); Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF); Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca (MIUR); CETEMPS Center of Excellence; Ministero degli Affari Esteri (MAE); Mexico-Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT) No.; r r 167733; Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM); PAPIIT DGAPA-UNAM; The Netherlands - Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap; Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO); Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM); Poland-National Centre for Research and Development, grant Nos. ERA-NET-ASPERA/01/11 and ERA-NET-ASPERA/02/11; National Science Centre, grant Nos. 2013/08/M/ST9/00322, 2013/08/M/ST9/00728, and HARMONIA 5-2013/10/M/ST9/00062, UMO-2016/22/M/ST9/00198; Portugal-Portuguese national funds and FEDER funds within Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade through Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (COMPETE); Romania-Romanian Authority for Scientific Research ANCS; CNDI-UEFISCDI partnership projects grant Nos. 20/2012 and 194/2012 and PN 16 42 01 02; Slovenia-Slovenian Research Agency; Spain-Comunidad de Madrid; Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) funds; Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad; Xunta de Galicia; European Community 7th Framework Program grant No. FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF-328826; USA-Department of Energy, Contract Nos. DE-AC02-07CH11359, DE-FR02-04ER41300, DE-FG02-99ER41107, and DE-SC0011689; National Science Foundation, grant No.r 0450696; The Grainger Foundation; Marie Curie-IRSES/EPLANET; European Particle Physics Latin American Network; European Union 7th Framework Program, grant No. PIRSES-2009-GA-246806; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant No. 646623); and UNESCO.r (Australian Radio) T.M. acknowledges the support of the Australian Research Council through grant FT150100099. S.O. acknowledges the Australian Research Council grant Laureate Fellowship FL15010014. D.L.K. and I.S.B. are additionally supported by NSF grant AST-141242. P.A.B. and the DFN team acknowledge the Australian Research Council for support under their Australian Laureate Fellowship scheme. The Australia Telescope Compact Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, which is funded by the Australian Government for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. This scientific work makes use of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, operated by CSIRO. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. Support for the operation of the MWA is provided by the Australian Government (NCRIS), under a contract to Curtin University administered by Astronomy Australia Limited. We acknowledge the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, which is supported by the Western Australian and Australian Governments. The Australian SKA Pathfinder is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, which is managed by CSIRO. Operation of ASKAP is funded by the Australian Government with support from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. ASKAP uses the resources of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. Establishment of ASKAP, the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre are initiatives of the Australian Government, with support from the Government of Western Australia and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics in 3D (ASTRO 3D) through project number CE170100013.r (Berger Time-Domain Group) The Berger Time-Domain Group at Harvard is supported in part by the NSF through grants AST-1411763 and AST-1714498, and by NASA through grants NNX15AE50G and NNX16AC22G.r (Bootes) A.J.C.T.; r r acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry Project AYA 2015-71718-R (including FEDER funds) and Junta de Andalucia Proyecto de Excelencia TIC-2839. I.H.P. acknowledges the support of the National Research Foundation (NRF-2015R1A2A1A01006870). S.J. acknowledges the support of Korea Basic Science Research Program (NRF2014R1A6A3A03057484 and NRF-2015R1D1A4A01020961). The BOOTES-5/JGT observations were carried out at Observatorio Astronomico Nacional in San Pedro Martir (OAN-SPM, Mexico), operated by Instituto de Astronomia, UNAM and with support from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (Mexico) through the Laboratorios Nacionales Program (Mexico), Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA-CSIC, Spain) and Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU, South Korea). We also thank the staff of OAN-SPM for their support in carrying out the observations.r (CAASTRO) Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020. The national facility capability for SkyMapper has been funded through ARC LIEF grant LE130100104 from the Australian Research Council, awarded to the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Queensland, the University of Western Australia, the University of Melbourne, Curtin University of Technology, Monash University, and the Australian Astronomical Observatory. SkyMapper is owned and operated by The Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.r (CALET) The CALET team gratefully acknowledges support from NASA, ASI, JAXA, and MEXT KAKENHI grant numbers JP 17H06362, JP26220708, and JP17H02901.r (Chandra/McGill) This work was supported in part by Chandra Award Number GO7-18033X, issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) under contract NAS8-03060. D.H., M.N., and J.J.R. acknowledge support from a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant and a Fonds de recherche du Quebec-Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) Nouveaux Chercheurs Grant. P.A.E. acknowledges UKSA support. J.A.K. acknowledges the support of NASA grant NAS5-00136. D.H. also acknowledges support from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).r (CZTI/AstroSat) CZTI is built by a TIFR-led consortium of institutes across India, including VSSC, ISAC, IUCAA, SAC, and PRL. The Indian Space Research Organisation funded, managed, and facilitated the project.r (DLT40) D.J.S. acknowledges support for the DLT40 program from NSF grant AST-1517649.r (EuroVLBI) The European VLBI Network is a joint facility of independent European, African, Asian, and North American radio astronomy institutes. Scientific results from data presented in this publication are derived from the following EVN project code: RP029. e-MERLIN is a National Facility operated by the University of Manchester at Jodrell Bank Observatory on behalf of STFC. The collaboration between LIGO/Virgo and EVN/e-MERLIN is part of a project that has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 653477.r (ePESSTO) We acknowledge ESO programs 199.D-0143 and 099.D-0376. PS1 and ATLAS are supported by NASA grants NNX08AR22G, NNX12AR65G, NNX14AM74G, and NNX12AR55G. We acknowledge the Leibniz-Prize to Prof. G.; r r Hasinger (DFG grant HA 1850/28-1), EU/FP7-ERC grants 291222, 615929, 647208, 725161, STFC grants ST/P000312/1 and ERF ST/M005348/1, ST/P000495/1. Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant No 702538. Polish NCN grant OPUS 2015/17/B/ST9/03167, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. PRIN-INAF 2014. David and Ellen Lee Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. Alexander von Humboldt Sofja Kovalevskaja Award. Royal Society-Science Foundation Ireland Vilho, Yrjo and Kalle Vaisala Foundation. FONDECYT grant number 3160504. US NSF grant AST-1311862. Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Space Board. The Quantum Universe I-Core program, the ISF, BSF, and Kimmel award. IRC grant GOIPG/2017/1525. Australian Research Council CAASTRO CE110001020 and grant FT160100028. We acknowledge Millennium Science Initiative grant IC120009.r (Fermi-GBM) B.C., V.C., A.G., and W.S.P. gratefully acknowledge NASA funding through contract NNM13AA43C. M.S.B., R.H., P.J., C.A.M., S.P., R.D.P., M.S., and P.V. gratefully acknowledge NASA funding from cooperative agreement NNM11AA01A. E.B. is supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Goddard Space Flight Center, administered by Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA. D.K., C.A.W.H., C.M.H., and J.R. gratefully acknowledge NASA funding through the Fermi-GBM project. Support for the German contribution to GBM was provided by the Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) via the Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt (DLR) under contract number 50 QV 0301. A.v.K. was supported by the Bundesministeriums fur Wirtschaft und Technologie (BMWi) through DLR grant 50 OG 1101. S.M.B. acknowledges support from Science Foundation Ireland under grant 12/IP/1288.r (Fermi-LAT) The Fermi-LAT Collaboration acknowledges support for LAT development, operation, and data analysis from NASA and DOE (United States), CEA/Irfu and IN2P3/CNRS (France), ASI and INFN (Italy), MEXT, KEK, and JAXA (Japan), and the K. A. Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the National Space Board (Sweden). Science analysis support in the operations phase from INAF (Italy) and CNES (France) is also gratefully acknowledged. This work performed in part under DOE Contract DE-AC02-76SF00515.r (FRBSG) S.L.L. is supported by NSF grant PHY-1607291 (LIU). Construction of the LWA has been supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-07-C0147. Support for operations and continuing development of the LWA1 is provided by the National Science Foundation under grants AST-1139963 and AST-1139974 of the University Radio Observatory program.r (GRAWITA) We acknowledge INAF for supporting the project "Gravitational Wave Astronomy with the first detections of adLIGO and adVIRGO experiments-GRAWITA" PI: E. Brocato. Observations are made with ESO Telescopes at the Paranal Observatory under programmes ID 099.D-0382 (PI: E. Pian), 099.D-0622 (PI: P. D'Avanzo), 099.D-0191 (PI: A. Grado), 099.D-0116 (PI: S. Covino) and with the REM telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory under program ID 35020 (PI: S. Campana). We thank the ESO operation staff for excellent support of this program. The Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT) is funded by the Department of University and Research (MIUR), the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and the Autonomous Region of Sardinia (RAS) and is operated as National Facility by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). Z.J. is supported by the External Cooperation Program of BIC (number 114332KYSB20160007). J.M.; r r is supported by the Hundred Talent Program, the Major Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KJZD-EW-M06), the National Natural Science Foundation of China 11673062, and the Oversea Talent Program of Yunnan Province. R.L.C. Starling, K.W., A.B.H., N.R.T., and C.G.M. are supported by the STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council). D.K., acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (P1-0188). S.K. and A.N.G. acknowledge support by grant DFG Kl 766/16-3. D.G. acknowledges the financial support of the UnivEarthS Labex program at Sorbonne Paris Cite (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02). K.T. was supported by JSPS grant 15H05437 and by a JST Consortia grant.r (GROND) Part of the funding for GROND was generously granted from the Leibniz-Prize to Prof. G. Hasinger (DFG grant HA 1850/28-1). "We acknowledge the excellent help in obtaining GROND data from Angela Hempel, Markus Rabus and Regis Lachaume on La Silla."r (GROWTH, JAGWAR, Caltech-NRAO, TTU-NRAO, and NuSTAR) This work was supported by the GROWTH (Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen) project funded by the National Science Foundation under PIRE grant No. 1545949. GROWTH is a collaborative project among California Institute of Technology (USA), University of Maryland College Park (USA), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA), Texas Tech University (USA), San Diego State University (USA), Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA), Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan), National Central University (Taiwan), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (India), Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (India), Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), The Oskar Klein Centre at Stockholm University (Sweden), Humboldt University (Germany), Liverpool John Moores University (UK). A.H. acknowledges support by the I-Core Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the Israel Science Foundation. T.M. acknowledges the support of the Australian Research Council through grant FT150100099. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020. The Australia Telescope Compact Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility which is funded by the Australian Government for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. D.L.K. is additionally supported by NSF grant AST-1412421. A.A.M. is funded by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Corporation in support of the Data Science Fellowship Program. P.C.Y., C.C.N., and W.H.I. thank the support from grants MOST104-2923-M-008-004-MY5 and MOST106-2112-M-008-007. A.C. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation CAREER award 1455090, "CAREER: Radio and gravitational-wave emission from the largest explosions since the Big Bang." T.P. acknowledges the support of Advanced ERC grant TReX. B.E.C. thanks SMARTS 1.3 m Queue Manager Bryndis Cruz for prompt scheduling of the SMARTS observations. Basic research in radio astronomy at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is funded by 6.1 Base funding. Construction and installation of VLITE was supported by NRL Sustainment Restoration and Maintenance funding. K.P.M.'s research is supported by the Oxford Centre for Astrophysical Surveys, which is funded through the Hintze Family Charitable Foundation. J.S. and A.G. are grateful for support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. GREAT is funded by the Swedish Research Council (V.R.). E.O.O.; r r is grateful for the support by grants from the Israel Science Foundation, Minerva, Israeli ministry of Science, the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, and the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and The Israel Science Foundation. We thank the staff of the GMRT that made these observations possible. The GMRT is run by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. AYQH was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant No. DGE-1144469. S.R. has been supported by the Swedish Research Council (VR) under grant number 2016 03657 3, by the Swedish National Space Board under grant number Dnr. 107/16 and by the research environment grant "Gravitational Radiation and Electromagnetic Astrophysical Transients (GREAT)" funded by the Swedish Research council (V.R.) under Dnr. 2016-06012.r We acknowledge the support of the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, India and the Indo-US Science and Technology Foundation for the GROWTH-India project.r (HAWC) We acknowledge the support from: the US National Science Foundation (NSF); the US Department of Energy Office of High-Energy Physics; the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACyT), Mexico (grants 271051, 232656, 167281, 260378, 179588, 239762, 254964, 271737, 258865, 243290); Red HAWC, Mexico; DGAPA-UNAM (grants RG100414, IN111315, IN111716-3, IA102715, 109916); VIEP-BUAP; the University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation; the Institute of Geophysics, Planetary Physics, and Signatures at Los Alamos National Laboratory; Polish Science Centre grant DEC-2014/13/B/ST9/945. We acknowledge the support of the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, India and the Indo-US Science and Technology Foundation for the GROWTH-India project.r (H.E.S.S.) The support of the Namibian authorities and of the University of Namibia in facilitating the construction and operation of H.E.S.S. is gratefully acknowledged, as is the support by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), the Max Planck Society, the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the French Ministry for Research, the CNRS-IN2P3 and the Astroparticle Interdisciplinary Programme of the CNRS, the U.K. Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the IPNP of the Charles University, the Czech Science Foundation, the Polish National Science Centre, the South African Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation, the University of Namibia, the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology of Namibia (NCRST), the Innsbruck University, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science, Research and Economy, the University of Adelaide and the Australian Research Council, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and by the University of Amsterdam. We appreciate the excellent work of the technical support staff in Berlin, Durham, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Palaiseau, Paris, Saclay, and in Namibia in the construction and operation of the equipment. This work benefited from services provided by the H.E.S.S. Virtual Organisation, supported by the national resource providers of the EGI Federation.; r r r (Insight-HXMT) The Insight-HXMT team acknowledges the support from the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; grant No. XDB23040400), and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST; grant No. 2016YFA0400800).r (IceCube) We acknowledge the support from the following agencies: U.S. National Science Foundation-Office of Polar Programs, U.S. National Science Foundation-Physics Division, University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW) grid infrastructure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Open Science Grid (OSG) grid infrastructure; U.S. Department of Energy, and National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) grid computing resources; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, WestGrid and Compute/Calcul Canada; Swedish Research Council, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC), and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP), Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, Germany; Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS-FWO), FWO Odysseus programme, Flanders Institute to encourage scientific and technological research in industry (IWT), Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo); Marsden Fund, New Zealand; Australian Research Council; Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS); the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Switzerland; National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); Villum Fonden, Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF), Denmark.r (IKI-GW) A.S.P., A.A.V., E.D.M., and P.Y.u.M. acknowledge the support from the Russian Science Foundation (grant 15-1230015). V.A.K., A.V.K., and I.V.R. acknowledge the Science and Education Ministry of Kazakhstan (grant No. 0075/GF4). R.I. is grateful to the grant RUSTAVELI FR/379/6-300/14 for partial support. We acknowledge the excellent help in obtaining Chilescope data from Sergei Pogrebsskiy and Ivan Rubzov.r (INTEGRAL) This work is based on observations with INTEGRAL, an ESA project with instruments and science data center funded by ESA member states (especially the PI countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain), and with the participation of Russia and the USA. The INTEGRAL SPI project has been completed under the responsibility and leadership of CNES. The SPI-ACS detector system has been provided by MPE Garching/Germany. The SPI team is grateful to ASI, CEA, CNES, DLR, ESA, INTA, NASA, and OSTC for their support. The Italian INTEGRAL team acknowledges the support of ASI/INAF agreement No. 2013-025-R.1. R.D. and A.v.K. acknowledge the German INTEGRAL support through DLR grant 50 OG 1101. A.L. and R.S. acknowledge the support from the Russian Science Foundation (grant 14-22-00271). A.D. is funded by Spanish MINECO/FEDER grant ESP2015-65712-C5-1-R.r (IPN) K.H. is grateful for support under NASA grant NNX15AE60G. R.L.A. and D.D.F. are grateful for support under RFBR grant 16-29-13009-ofi-m.; r r r (J-GEM) MEXT KAKENHI (JP17H06363, JP15H00788, JP24103003, JP10147214, JP10147207), JSPS KAKENHI (JP16H02183, JP15H02075, JP15H02069, JP26800103, JP25800103), Inter-University Cooperation Program of the MEXT, the NINS program for cross-disciplinary science study, the Toyota Foundation (D11-R-0830), the Mitsubishi Foundation, the Yamada Science Foundation, Inoue Foundation for Science, the National Research Foundation of South Africa.r (KU) The Korea-Uzbekistan Consortium team acknowledges the support from the NRF grant No. 2017R1A3A3001362, and the KASI grant 2017-1-830-03. This research has made use of the KMTNet system operated by KASI.r (Las Cumbres) Support for I. A. and J.B. was provided by NASA through the Einstein Fellowship Program, grants PF6-170148 and PF7-180162, respectively. D.A.H., C.M., and G.H. are supported by NSF grant AST-1313484. D.P. and D.M acknowledge support by Israel Science Foundation grant 541/17. This work makes use of observations from the LCO network.r (LIGO and Virgo) The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck- Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium.; r r The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology, India, the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India, the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, the Vicepresidencia i Conselleria d'Innovacio Recerca i Turisme and the Conselleria d'Educacio i Universitat del Govern de les Illes Balears, the Conselleria d'Educacio Investigacio Cultura i Esport de la Generalitat Valenciana, the National Science Centre of Poland, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the Russian Science Foundation, the European Commission, the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), the Royal Society, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), the Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO), the National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (NKFI), the National Research Foundation of Korea, Industry Canada and the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations, and Communications, the International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR), the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST), the Leverhulme Trust, the Research Corporation, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan and the Kavli Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, STFC, MPS, INFN, CNRS, and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for provision of computational resources. The MAXI team acknowledges the support by JAXA, RIKEN, and MEXT KAKENHI grant number JP 17H06362. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The European VLBI Network is a joint facility of independent European, African, Asian, and North American radio astronomy institutes. Scientific results from data presented in this publication are derived from the following EVN project code: RP029.r e-MERLIN is a National Facility operated by the University of Manchester at Jodrell Bank Observatory on behalf of STFC. The collaboration between LIGO/Virgo and EVN/eMERLIN is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 653477. We thank Britt Griswold (NASA/GSFC) for graphic arts. P.G.J. acknowledges ERC-Consolidator grant No. 647208. We thank the GMRT staff for prompt scheduling of these observations. The GMRT is run by the National Center for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. INAF, Italian Institute of Astrophysics ASI, Italian Space Agency. This work is part of the research program Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (Vernieuwingsimpuls), which is financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research through the NWO VIDI grant No. 639.042.612-Nissanke and NWO TOP grant No. 62002444-Nissanke.; r r We thank ESO for granting full access to all the LVC MoU partners of the observations of GW170817 obtained with NACO and VISIR under the Observatory program 60.A-9392.