International Development Issues Research Articles

Imagining with imaginable: A Holistic Approach to Futures Thinking

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought attention to how interconnected and dependent the globe is, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive and team effort to address local, regional, and international sustainable development issues. The ability to receive and understand data from the outside world, our inner world of emotions, and our memories is known as imagination. It serves as a display for rational evaluation, introspection, and imaginative creation of our instincts, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and conceptions. The capacity for creative imagination is the capacity to combine sensations and notions to create original ideas that are not always logical or true. We need to be conscious of the three filters that imagination uses to analyze information: the emotional, the intellectual, and the creative. We may create a more comprehensive and integrated approach to problem-solving and decision-making by comprehending these filters and how they interact. The "Theory of Imagination and Imaginables" and the "Model of Imaginables" are presented in this work using an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach. We may design sustainable, just, and compassionate futures by practicing creativity and using a multidisciplinary approach to problem-solving. In addition to contributing to the emerging field of future studies, this study offers a valuable framework for people and organizations trying to understand the intricacies of our linked world.

THE HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDONESIA AS SEEN THROUGH VARIOUS ASPECTS OF LEGAL AND CUSTOM LIFE

The purpose of this research is to analyze Human Rights in Indonesia from a Legal Perspective and a Customary Life Perspective. Based on Indonesian law and the way of life in each region, regional regulations are established to protect inhabitants' human rights. This research was carried out using normative methods with research through a literature study. As a guarantee of the notion of equality among all humans, HAM, or human rights, is a fundamental value that must be safeguarded and maintained. It is not just in Indonesia but anywhere else in the world. Right now, there is an imbalance between the respect for human rights and how those rights are put into practice. In spite of these circumstances, Indonesian conversation and debate are nonetheless highly fascinating. With regard to human rights, in particular. In order to examine human rights in relation to various legal and customary aspects of life in Indonesia, this research was conducted utilizing the literature review technique. The findings of this research describe the state of human rights in light of Indonesia's legislative and cultural traditions. The issue of indigenous peoples has indeed become one of the strongest issues in international development. Indigenous peoples are a community group that must receive attention in mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Unethical Issues in Twenty-First Century International Development and Global Health Policy

Abstract Billions in development aid is provided annually by international donors in the Majority World, much of which funds health equity. Yet, common neocolonial practices persist in development that compromise what is done in the name of well-intentioned policymaking and programming. Based on a qualitative analysis of fifteen case studies presented at a 2022 conference, this research examines trends involving unethical partnerships, policies, and practices in contemporary global health. The analysis identifies major modern-day issues of harmful policy and programming in international aid. Core issues include inequitable partnerships between and representation of international stakeholders and national actors, abuse of staff and unequal treatment, and new forms of microaggressive practices by Minority World entities on low-/middle-income nations (LMICs), made vulnerable by severe poverty and instability. When present, these issues often exacerbate institutionalized discrimination, hostile work environments, ethnocentrism, and poor sustainability in development. These unbalanced systems perpetuate a negative development culture and can place those willing to speak out at risk. At a time when the world faces increased threats including global warming and new health crises, development and global health policy and practice must evolve through inclusive dialogue and collaborative effort.

Missing Basic Issues on Credit Money: On the Role of Money in Removing World-wide Growth Barriers (The M. L. Qureshi Memorial Lecture)

Kalecki identifies demand restraint in industrialised and capital restraint in developing countries as the decisive barriers of world-wide growth. Thus, beyond others, it is a matter of financing to foster employment in both types of countries: a rational use of credit money on the international scale could finance additional imports of capital goods by developing countries, whereas industrialised countries could increase their output by trade balance surpluses. This question has been largely debated under various aspects, from the Stamp plan (1958) to the programme of the Commission on International Development Issues (1980). Even if this debate has been superseded by questions of the process and the institutions by which capital is allocated, of the appropriate business management and screening and monitoring, declining growth rates in the last twenty years show that the basic issue of production and distribution of additional real capital remains at stake. Besides institutional obstacles, capital restraint still remains the main bottleneck for development. Basic questions as how to create and use world-wide credit money has to be reconsidered instead of taking backfiring actions to manage actual financial crises. Additional international money supply by planned trade balance deficits of developing countries contributes to world-wide growth, whereas trade balance deficits of the United States are likely to prepare the next financial crises by an excessively increasing dollar supply. A revival of the debate of how to link SDR’s and development financing surely requires to tackle a great number of additional questions, such as how to allocate trade balance deficits and surpluses and how to ensure the acceptance of this world credit money. All in all, it would be a serious attempt to break the money away from the handing down tradition and to transform it into a rationale by abstract reasons and well-founded instrument for economic development.

GENDER-SENSITIVE PUBLIC POLICY INITIATIVES: AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF THE PUNJAB WOMEN EMPOWERMENT PACKAGE (PWEP) 2012–2016

One of the several contradictions that rule women’s lives in Pakistan since its inception in 1947 is endorsing of their empowerment and the restoration of their misappropriated rights by successive governments, political parties and non-government organisations. The sad state of women’s lives in present times, however, indicates a consistent lack of effort and willpower in taking effective measures in this direction. One of the recent steps in this direction is the Punjab Women Empowerment Package launched by the province’s government in 2012, 2014 and 2016 to safeguard women’s rights and economic empowerment. This paper aims at exploring the gender sensitivity of the public policy towards women with a special focus on the PWEP by following the analytical framework used by the Centre for International Development Issues, University of Nijmegen (CIDIN). The parameters of the approach cover the structural and action-oriented aspects based on three dimensions: (i) access to resources, information, power and networks; (ii) rights, rules and responsibilities; and (iii) identity, culture and sense of belonging. The outcomes of this study will help foresee the effects of these packages in the long run for the women of Punjab.

The Synthetic Role of Dialectics from Hegelianism and Taoism in Philosophical Investigation into the Complex Inter-civilisational and Human Development Issues

Both School of Hegalianism from the Western philosophy and School of Taoism from the ancient Chinese intellectual schools of thoughts can be unquestionably epitomised as two quintessential, enigmatic schools of dialectics, which to a large degree facilitate the intellectual researchers and scholars within the field of philosophy, humanities, social sciences and so forth to theoretically deconstruct and extrapolate the complex, authentic, objective world system and global human civilisations in a dialectical and synthetic fashion instead of the metaphysical and intuitive perspectives alone. In that regard, the hypothetical questions of 1) whether both Hegalianism and Taoism share certain implicit reciprocal conceptual components that may outweigh their explicitly diametrical diversity owning to the explicit heterogeneity in historical background, social development trajectory, and socioeconomic and politico-economic development pattern between the Agrarian Civilisation and the Oceanic Civilisation in history, and of 2) whether their intellectual thoughts and legacies of dialectics can accurately monitor and predict the infinite occurrence of inter-civilisational, international development issues and human development affairs may at least help to construct a thought-provoking theoretical guideline and framework, which are unquestionably worthy of profound theoretic investigation and empirical analysis. The ultimate purpose of this academic manuscript attempts to dialectically identify and deconstruct certain vital dissimilarities and complementarities between Hegelianism and Taoism and philosophically build a theoretical bridge that interconnects them for the sake of follow-up empirical analysis of their differentiated methodologies. Moreover, this paper seeks to in a dialectical fashion evaluate the availability, applicability and functionality of these two intellectual schools in a context of inter-civilisational and international development, especially pertaining to the underlying themes of global economic crisis and macroeconomic recovery, the unprecedented global climate crisis, and global COVID-19 pandemic with much insufficiency of global sanitation partnership reform and imbalanced means of production. This academic manuscript seeks to itemise and quantify the diverse conceptual components between Hegelianism and Taoism as well as qualitative comments on their potential areas that they might share and develop. Additionally, this paper attempts to undertake hermeneutic retrospectives of their legacies of dialectics and case studies of international, inter-civilisational development issues and human development issues. In a nutshell, on a basis of existential research findings so far, this paper draws preliminary conclusions that the reflexivity of dialectics from Hegelianism and Taoism helps to classify and clarify the implicit dogmatic principles that drive the advancement of global human development, and inter-civilisational development on the grounds of dialectical antithesis as the theoretical guidelines. On the other hand, neither of them can mostly accurately function as a guarantee for maximum prediction and monitoring of world affairs, which necessitates updated data elaboration, comprehensive out-of-box thinking mode, maximum interdisciplinary theoretical breakthroughs and discovery from a maximum dialectical, inter-civilisational perspectives. That can prevent the readers, scholars and researchers from falling into the idealistic solipsism.

Women’s Empowerment in Household Decision-making among the Poor and Non-poor in Nepal

Women empowerment is taken as one of the major agenda for the twenty-first century in national and international development issues. The primary objective of this study is to examine the factors associated with women empowerment in household decision-making among poor and non-poor women in Nepal. This study uses data from the 2016 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey. The analytic sample size of this study is 9575 currently married women aged 15-49. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression was used to examine the effect of demographic and socio-economic variables on women empowerment in household decision-making. The analysis of the result showed there is a significantly high variation between empowerment status and demographic and socio-economic background among the poor and non-poor. Women who have more children, older age, working women, and residing in urban areas were significant association and more likely to empower in household decision-making than having no children, young age and not working women among both poor and non-poor household wealth. However, women have significantly more decision-making power among non-educated women to compare with educated among poor; it is a quite inverse result among non-poor. Thus, this study suggests that it needs to identify and explore the pertinent issues with genuine reasons of the gap to be empowered in a variety of groups of population in Nepal.

Wicksell, Myrdal and Swedish Intellectual Thought on Inequality

The ‘Swedish Model’ of the welfare state was born from a confluence of geographic, cultural, political, and economic factors in the immediate post-war period. Its intellectual history, however, lay in a much longer tradition that originated with the economist Knut Wicksell (1851 – 1926). A radical and progressive thinker on issues of inequality, social justice and the role of the state, Wicksell had a profound influence on Swedish economic thought. His concerns carried over to the next generation of Swedish economists, including Gunnar Myrdal (1898 – 1987) – Nobel Prize winning economist, public intellectual, architect of the Swedish welfare state, and technocrat of postwar international economic order. This paper takes Wicksell as its starting point, considering the intellectual history of Myrdal’s views on inequality and the welfare state as a ‘middle way’, a ‘system of social morals.’ Like Wicksell, Myrdal initially conceived of inequality as a national problem. However, Myrdal’s Beyond the Welfare State (1960) extended Swedish intellectual thought on domestic inequality to issues of international economic development. Myrdal argued that contemporary welfare programs were too narrow and irrationally nationalistic, concluding that what was needed was a welfare world, not a welfare state.

Diplomasi Digital Sebagai Dampak Pandemi Global Covid-19: Studi Kasus Diplomasi Indonesia Di Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa (Pbb)

The background of this article is the existence of a global pandemic COVID-19 which has an impact in various fields. This article seeks to explore the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on information and communications technology (ICT) in the form of digital diplomacy. Exploration is carried out by investigating the case of Indonesian diplomacy at the United Nations (UN) in March, April, and May 2020. The main concept in this article is digital diplomacy. This concept illustrates the use of ICT as a means of diplomacy for state actors and changes at the policy and institutional levels. This article found various digital diplomacy activities from the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Indonesia to the United Nations in New York, United States during the global pandemic COVID-19. These activities include: 1) coordination with Indonesia's Embassy and Consulate General in the United States to protect Indonesian citizens; 2) participation in UN Security Council virtual meeting to discuss international peace and security issues; and 3) participation in other UN bodies virtual meetings to discuss international development issues. This article argues that the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic in the field of ICT is reflected in Indonesia's digital diplomacy at the United Nations. The global pandemic COVID-19 changed the means and tools used by Indonesian diplomats to gather information, negotiations, and responses on international issues. Even so, Indonesian diplomacy at the UN continues to run optimally.

“One more time”: why replicating some syntheses of evidence relevant to COVID-19 makes sense

• Given the urgent need for credible answers to high-priority questions about the health and social impacts of COVID-19, many systematic reviewers seek to contribute their skills and expertise. • Rather than embarking on unnecessary, duplicate reviews, we encourage the evidence synthesis community to prioritise purposeful replication of systematic reviews of evidence relevant to COVID-19. • We explain why replication of systematic reviews is important, how to carry out a replication, and when to consider replication of reviews.

A14D

In the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution is Artificial intelligence, better known as “AI.” As a frontier technology, AI is implementing deep and far-reaching changes into the way we work, play and live. These tools present numerous opportunities in solving issues of international development. Yet in spite of its infallible potential, the negative repercussions of AI driven change have become abundantly clear. These consequences will only be exacerbated in the Global South where there is a greater tendency for weak institutional capacity and governance. AI has the potential to threaten employment, human rights, democratic process and worsen economic dependency. The very nature of these tools--the ability to codify and reproduce patterns--must be met with responsible, ethical actors who ensure developmental goals will be met. Is AI4D the answer? This paper will illustrate the opportunities and risks of AI-driven development. I argue that technology can no longer be considered an inherent equalizer, and that the responsibility for fairness in the digital world must be championed by the international community. Finally, I will present possible steps policymakers can take to ensure true development in our data-driven future.

Subverting the Idea(l) of Equal Opportunity in Global Trade: The Paradoxes of Differentiation for Peripheral States

The existing multilateral trade regime is often beleaguered for unfairly privileging its Western guarantors. Since not all countries command the same opportunity sets to compete in global markets, world trade rules sanction über-rich markets to extend autonomous trade concessions to capital-poor countries without demanding any reciprocal treatment. Given the entanglements of trade in the thorny issues of international development and distributive justice, this paper joins a crowded trade as/and fairness debate by judging how the present global economic order (dis)favors developing and least developed countries on the basis of equal opportunity. In a Roemerian-Rawlsian reading of economic fairness, I start by elevating the demands of diffuse reciprocity over the misguided minimalism of mutual reciprocity in a twin attempt to morally defend asymmetric exchanges between asymmetric trading partners and to redress background inequalities in access to the merits of commerce. While the notion and praxis of altruism in international trade generally allude to northern democracies in modern political thought, this article also unmasks parallel models of special and differential treatment projects lorded over by two seemingly unusual suspects: the Eurasian Economic Union and the People’s Republic of China. In juxtaposing weak and strong conceptions of equal opportunity vis-à-vis leading compensatory measures presently open to needy nations, I articulate how the strong standard of equal opportunity is partially cantilevered by existing level-playing-field structures and yet brutally bulldozed at once by the politics of donor discretion. Finally, although a diluted form of diffuse reciprocity grows more fashionable among affluent and emerging economies, unlocking the strong standard of equal opportunity still insists on a solidaristic system of preferences to diffuse both opportunities and obligations arising from a less tilted trading order as widely and deeply as possible.

International economic development: Principal Internet resources

From attempts to uplift millions of peoples from the throes of abject poverty and starvation to global assistance programs to benefit developing countries’ transition into viable civil societies, international economic development issues dominate the international agenda.

Taiwan's Foreign Aid in Transition: From ODA to Civil Society Approaches

AbstractSince the 1950s, Taiwan and China have utilized foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy. After Taiwan's forced withdrawal from the United Nations in 1971, diplomatic and aid-giving competition with China became more intense. As a result, Taiwan's and China's struggles to gain supporters have been reflected in foreign aid strategies. Taiwan's bid for the UN and the WHO, and the issue of diplomatic recognition empirically demonstrate the utilization of aid to obtain diplomatic support from recipient countries, and, frequently, any decisions are heavily influenced by the competition it experiences with China. Theoretically, this highlights an importantrelationalframework for analyzing foreign aid decisions – particularly the management of foreign relations of small states or middle powers simultaneously influenced by greater powers and aid recipient states.Using data from ICDF and related reports, we observe geographically concentrated patterns in the distribution of Taiwan's aid recipients from 1988 to 1997 – mostly in Latin America and Southeast Asia. In contrast to China's foreign aid which emphasizes infrastructural development, the spirit of Taiwan's economic development aid programs often took the form of technical cooperation. However, a high percentage of aid went to countries with diplomatic ties to Taiwan. With civil society development and increased international activities of Taiwanese NGOs in humanitarian relief and development projects after 2000, we find a new emerging set of geographical aid distribution patterns that expand beyond countries that recognize Taiwan. In addition, while the process of incorporating civil society into foreign aid work was initiated by the ICDF the following decade, Taiwanese NGOs have increasingly demonstrated autonomous international agendas, funding, and direction, as well as the formation of civil society alliances that work on common international development issues.

Strategic philanthropy and its challenges in India: A multiple case study of grantmaking organizations

Grantmaking organizations in the United States play an increasingly important role in philanthropic giving toward international development issues. Champions of strategic philanthropy have encouraged grantmakers to set clear goals, use evidence‐based strategies, and monitor programs. This exploratory study delves into grantmaking in one of the largest emerging economies; India. Although India is a major recipient of private philanthropy, it continues to perform below average on various socio‐economic indicators. The impact of grantmaking has been unclear. We conducted in‐depth interviews with managers and leaders (n = 9) engaged in decision‐making within U.S. based grantmaking organizations, including nonprofit intermediaries and philanthropic foundations. We examine how the concept of strategic philanthropy is operationalized by participant organizations. Although the participants acknowledge the importance of starting out with a well‐defined strategy, they also face several challenges. We identify some of these challenges, outline how they are being addressed, and discuss implications.

Digital Games, African Development, and Gender Equality: a Comparative Analysis of Family Values and Moraba

Digital Development Games (DDGs) have been designed to tackle a variety of international development issues, including gender inequality. This study uses critical textual analysis and a political economic approach to highlight how the development goals embedded in two games, Family Values and Moraba, both aimed at gender equality in Africa, were shaped by the large donor organizations that funded them. Understanding the relationship between game developers and funders is necessary in order to understand how and why DDGs work to reinforce established, and often problematic, development narratives. As smaller nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and independent game developers look to large development institutions to support the production of DDGs, research on the ways in which the ideologies of funding organizations get mapped onto games becomes increasingly important. Further, the findings of this study provide a contemporary example of the ways in which development networks are able to incorporate new technologies and discourses into their work without fundamentally changing their worldviews or their approach to creating change.

What is Global Development?

Global development is a term that is increasingly referred to, yet is often conflated with international development and is used with different implicit meanings. This paper outlines reasons for moving beyond international development, before distinguishing between global development as ‘vertical’ scale and as ‘horizontal’ scope. As a strand of development focusing on common issues, the former co-exists in parallel with sovereign (national development) and foreign (international development) issues. The latter involves an overarching paradigm, taking in interconnected as well as shared issues anywhere. It is a successor to international development and goes beyond a focus only on the Global South to encompass development issues anywhere. Global development as scope thus explicitly goes beyond the North-South binary and is argued to represent a greater fit with contemporary development opportunities and challenges.

Power, Ideology and Global Development: On the Origins, Evolution and Achievements of UNCTAD

ABSTRACTUNCTAD was created in 1964 as a forum for strategic thinking about international trade and development issues and for identifying mutually beneficial opportunities for policy coordination and international cooperation with the participation of both developing and industrialized countries. The history of UNCTAD, with its successes and failures, therefore, is closely intertwined with the history of ideas on trade and development and the interplay of political power and ideological manipulation in international trade and development policy making. This article focuses on the intellectual traditions in economics which underpinned the formation of UNCTAD and examines the way in which such intellectual traditions have informed — both in method and substance — the subsequent thinking and research output by the institution and helped define its objectives. It compares UNCTAD's methods and research output on a number of international development issues with the positions taken by other international institutions. These findings are used to reflect on the ideological element in development economics thinking.

Governance in sport-for-development: Problems and possibilities of (not) learning from international development

The lack of attention towards issues of governance in both global sport-for-development (SfD) policy and academic literature is placed in stark relief when compared to the significance accorded to such issues in international development. This article addresses this lacuna in sport-for-development by drawing on international development literature as well as interview data from representatives of international agencies, domestic governments and in-country non-governmental organisations involved with sport-for-development in Ghana and Tanzania. As previously recognised in other development sectors, the commonality of narrow, project-based approaches in sport-for-development contributes to excessive donor influence, fragmentation, competition and limits both impact and sustainability. It was in response to similar problems that, from the mid-1990s, Sector-Wide Approaches were instigated within specific sectors in particular countries as a more systematic model of development governance based on leadership by the domestic government and co-ordination among donors and other stakeholders. Although interviewees’ perspectives and some exemplar sport-for-development initiatives aligned with key features of Sector-Wide Approaches, significant challenges to their effective instigation in sport-for-development can be identified. Nevertheless, examining the applicability of Sector-Wide Approaches to sport-for-development raises important issues that require further consideration and demonstrates the necessity that sport-for-development, more generally, learns from the longer-established field of international development.

Study of US/EU National Innovation Policies Based on Nanotechnology Development, and Implications for Korea

ABSTRACT Recently US/EU governments are utilizing nanotechnology as a key catalyst to support national innovation poli-cies with economic recovery goals. US/EU nano policies have been serving as a global model to various countries, including Korea. So the authors initially seek to understand US/EU national innovation policy interconnections, and then find the role of nanotechnology development within. To strengthen national policy coherence, nano-technology development strategies are under evolution as an innovation catalyst for promoting commercializa-tion. To strategically support nano commercialization, EHS (Environmental, Health, Safety) and informatics are invested as priority fields to strengthen social acceptance and sustainability of nano enabled products. The current study explores US/EU national innovation policies including nano commercialization, EHS, and Informatics. Then obtained results are utilized to analyze weaknesses of Korean innovation systems of connecting creative economy and nanotechnology development policies. Then ongoing improvements are summarized focusing on EHS and informatics, which are currently prominent issues in international nanotechnology development.