Suchergebnisse

Commodity associations are organizations that bring together a wide spectrum of interest groups related to a particular commodity or sector in a particular country, whether for export, for the domestic market, or for both. Such associations can have, as members, individual farmers or their associations, crop buyers, processors, distributors, and exporters, as well as suppliers of support services and, sometimes, government representatives. Drawing on a literature review and case studies of relevant associations in Ghana, Mali, Nepal, the Philippines, South Africa, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe and covering the meat, poultry, horticulture, coconut, and rice sectors, this paper explores the role of such associations in improving supply chain performance. Particular attention is paid to interprofessional associations, a concept first developed in France, which draw their membership from associations representing each activity or "profession" of the chain. Associations can play a particularly important role as a focal point for policy dialogue with government, but they also have many other functions. These include regulation, setting or advising on grades and standards and their implementation, promotion of trademarks or quality signs within the industry, support for research, export and domestic market promotion, provision of information and statistics, education and training, and support to government in trade negotiation. Representing all sectors of an industry, such associations also have a potential dispute-resolution role. In many countries, policy formulation is inadequate because there are no clear channels through which governments can approach the private sector. Inefficiencies also exist within commodity sectors because of the lack of communication between chain actors. The paper concludes that the need to address such weaknesses, combined with the positive role played by many existing associations, argues for further development of the concept in developing countries. However, developmental efforts must consider the need to promote sustainable organizations.

Efforts to tackle discrimination in access to basic services have shown mixed results in different country settings. This study examines the positive and negative outcomes attributed to anti-discrimination measures adopted in different country contexts and analyses the factors contributing to these outcomes, with a specific focus on anti-discrimination measures in education. An analysis of trends in inequalities in human development is used to identify three countries that have seen positive change in reducing inequalities and three countries that have seen negative change. This is followed by a literature review exploring the factors that have contributed to the changes observed in these six cases. We find that reductions in inequalities have been achieved in those countries where targeted measures have gone alongside universal measures, where the constitution is used to generate an equity-focused political discourse, and where evidence on exclusion from education has been taken up politically.

The Chronic Poverty Report on Growth aims to put in front of economic policymakers in developing countries and international agencies evidence about the type of growth and the policies and interventions that will best allow the poor to escape poverty and stay out of it through growth. Growth does usually reduce poverty, certainly, but with much variation - from substantial impacts, through attenuated impacts - and there are also episodes where it does not, or where growth may be immiserising. The "big idea" embedded in this report is that most governments promote "growth from above", involving large, formal investments, while most people escape poverty through "growth from below", involving small, usually informal, investments by individuals and households, enabled or disadvantaged by their working environments. "Growth from below" is critical for most poor and vulnerable people but remains unrecorded and much harder to promote. Evidence from a growing database of country studies of poverty dynamics shows that most people sustaining their escapes from poverty do so through growth from below, even in countries where growth from above is generating jobs. This report analyses policies and programmatic approaches that directly help people out of poverty through the informal economy, women's economic empowerment and the inclusion of most marginalised groups, agriculture, the rural non-farm economy and migration.