Post-2015 Goals Research Articles

PISA for Development: how the OECD and World Bank shaped education governance post-2015

ABSTRACTThe year 2015 was significant for the arena of international development, as UNESCO’s Education for All agenda was replaced by Education 2030, which would identify minimum standards of education quality. The OECD had been working on extending its existing PISA assessment into low- and middle-income countries through PISA for Development (PISA-D) and positioned the new assessment as a means of tracking progress on the post-2015 goals. The organisation maintains that PISA-D was introduced primarily in response to the demands of the international community, especially low- and middle-income countries, and that the assessment was developed in partnership with them. This paper investigates those claims through an analysis of the arrival of PISA-D in Cambodia, situating the analysis within UNESCO’s shifting agenda and the strategic visions of the OECD and World Bank that first emerged in the 1990s. The result is a very different picture to the portrayals of local agency, demand, consensus and partnership that adorn the official websites and pamphlets of global agencies and much academic research, raising serious doubts about education governance post-2015.

Neonatal mortality in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals and new post-2015 goals.

Neonatal mortality in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals and new post-2015 goals.

Küresel Kapitalizmin Sosyalleştirilen Yüzü: Birleşmiş Milletler 2015 Sonrası Kalkınma Gündemi Örneği

The report of UN published in 2013 “A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development” reveals the new post-2015 goals. The report sets forth a universal agenda to fulfil the promises of eradicating extreme poverty and sustainable development. In this study, it is argued that the Post-Washington consensus which aims to provide sustainability of the capitalist system by decreasing the appearance of social destructions stemming from the nature of the global capitalism forms the basis of the goals of UN and these goals target a sustainable capitalist system under the name of sustainable development. In the context of the aim for giving a social face to global capitalism, through these goals the appearance of social problems especially poverty is tried to be decreased however the fundamental reasons inherent to the system are not underlined.

Traditional healers and the “Fast-Track” HIV response: is success possible without them?

The rapid scale-up of effective HIV prevention strategies is a central theme of the post-2015 health and development agenda. All major global HIV and AIDS funders have aligned their policies and plans to achieve sharp reductions in new HIV infections and reach epidemic control by 2030. In these “fast-track” plans, increased antiretroviral treatment coverage and the attainment of viral suppression are pivotal, and there is firm recognition of the need for countries to mobilise more domestic resources and build stronger community clinic systems. There is little in these bold plans, however, to suggest that the now 30-year-old call by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other organisations to establish systematic collaborations with the traditional health sector will finally be heeded. In the context of sub-Saharan Africa’s HIV epidemic, a significant body of literature demonstrates the critical role that traditional healers can play in improving the success of health programmes, including those for HIV prevention. This paper provides a brief history of collaboration with traditional healers for HIV followed by a description of several successful collaborations and discussion of key elements for success. We argue that the traditional health sector is a major resource that has yet to be sufficiently mobilised against HIV. As we shift from a short-term HIV response to a longer-term and more sustainable response, there is an urgent need to accelerate efforts to leverage and partner with the hundreds of thousands of traditional health practitioners who are already providing health services in communities. Failure to better attune our work to the medical pluralism of communities affected by HIV will continue to hinder HIV programming success and help assure that ambitious post-2015 HIV prevention and control goals are not realised.

Discourse, ideas and power in global health policy networks: political attention for maternal and child health in the millennium development goal era.

BackgroundMaternal and child health issues have gained global political attention and resources in the past 10 years, due in part to their prominence on the Millennium Development Goal agenda and the use of evidence-based advocacy by policy networks. This paper identifies key factors for this achievement, and raises questions about prospective challenges for sustaining attention in the transition to the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, far broader in scope than the Millennium Development Goals.MethodsThis paper relies on participant observation methods and document analysis to develop a case study of the behaviours of global maternal and child health advocacy networks during 2005–2015.ResultsThe development of coordinated networks of heterogeneous actors facilitated the rise in attention to maternal and child health during the past 10 years. The strategic use of epidemiological and economic evidence by these networks enabled policy attention and promoted network cohesion. The time-bound opportunity of reaching the 2015 Millennium Development Goals created a window of opportunity for joint action. As the new post-2015 goals emerge, networks seek to sustain attention by repositioning their framing of issues, network structures, and external alliances, including with networks that lay both inside and outside of the health domain.ConclusionsIssues rise on global policy agendas because of how ideas are constructed, portrayed and positioned by actors within given contexts. Policy networks play a critical role by uniting stakeholders to promote persuasive ideas about policy problems and solutions. The behaviours of networks in issue-framing, member-alignment, and strategic outreach can force open windows of opportunity for political attention -- or prevent them from closing.

Reckoning Level Differentials in the Measurement of Progress: An Application in the Context of Deliveries Attended by Skilled Health Personnel Across Least Developed Countries (LDCs)

The paper highlights that performance assessments should account for non-linear dynamics of progress whereby an improvement at a higher level represents greater achievement than an equal improvement at lower level. With this rationale, desirable properties of progress assessment indicators are reviewed, and an alternative level-sensitive indicator is discussed. Further, an application in the context of proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel is presented to draw attention towards the dismal performance of developing regions, particularly least developed countries from Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In concluding, we argue that post-2015 goals setting should resolve the definitional and operational inconsistencies associated with existing developmental targets and indicators. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Disposing of children’s diapers with solid waste: a global concern?

Use of a disposable diaper for children’s faeces, a common practice in many developed countries, is likely to become more common in developing countries as well, due to economic growth. According to current standards for safe disposal of children’s faeces, use of disposable diapers is categorized as open defecation in developing countries. With the renewed focus on children’s sanitation in the Post-2015 goals, whether the use of diapers or nappies should be considered unhygienic in all contexts has been questioned. We performed a critical review of the literature with the objectives of determining: 1) what, if any, policies or practices govern disposal of children’s diapers with solid waste; 2) whether disposal of diapers in solid waste was a common practice in developing countries; and 3) whether disposal of diapers with solid waste is a public health concern. We found very little information on policies regarding diaper disposal or how diapers are actually disposed, but did identify several articles that include diapers in studies of the composition and pathogenicity of municipal solid waste. We conclude that despite the potentially important public health consequences of disposal of diapers in the solid waste stream, policies are lacking. There is a paucity of research to inform development of guidelines that reflect the reality of the situation while still safeguarding public health.

Tentative Analysis of the Relationship between the Implementation of the Coming Post-2015 SDGs and the Principle of CBDR

This paper focuses on the relationship between the principle of "Common but Differentiated Responsibilities" (CBDR) and the implementation of post-2015 agenda. Based on analysis of the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's report "The Road to Dignity by 2030" and the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the studies of the evolution of the principle of "CBDR" and its impact on the implementation of the coming SDGs, the paper sums up that following the principle of "CBDR" will lead developed and developing countries, i.e. North and South, to more successfully implementing post-2015 sustainable goals and targets, both at home and in international development cooperation in the future.

Improving the world's health through the post-2015 development agenda: perspectives from Rwanda.

The world has made a great deal of progress through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to improve the health and well-being of people around the globe, but there remains a long way to go. Here we provide reflections on Rwanda's experience in working to meet the health-related targets of the MDGs. This experience has informed our proposal of five guiding principles that may be useful for countries to consider as the world sets and moves forward with the post-2015 development agenda. These include: 1) advancing concrete and meaningful equity agendas that drive the post-2015 goals; 2) ensuring that goals to meet Universal Health Coverage (UHC) incorporate real efforts to focus on improving quality and not only quantity of care; 3) bolstering education and the internal research capacity within countries so that they can improve local evidence-based policy-making; 4) promoting intersectoral collaboration to achieve goals, and 5) improving collaborations between multilateral agencies - that are helping to monitor and evaluate progress towards the goals that are set - and the countries that are working to achieve improvements in health within their nation and across the world.

Three lessons for educational quality in post-2015 goals and targets: Clarity, measurability and equity

Amongst those engaged in devising post-2015 education targets, there is general agreement on the centrality of quality. However, there is greater debate on whether the quality of education can and should be measured by learning outcomes. Even if learning outcomes are viewed as an appropriate measure, what type of outcomes should be measured? Offering lessons from the goals that were set in 2000, this article highlights the importance of making sure goals and targets are clear and measurable, and put equity at their heart. From a rights-based perspective, the paper proposes tracking progress towards a universal target that, at a minimum, ensures that all children, regardless of circumstance, complete primary school and achieve the basics in reading and mathematics. The paper illustrates the importance of adopting a ‘stepping-stones’ approach to ensure that no one is left behind by 2030, with interim targets that assess progress for the most disadvantaged.

Does global progress on sanitation really lag behind water? An analysis of global progress on community- and household-level access to safe water and sanitation.

Safe drinking water and sanitation are important determinants of human health and wellbeing and have recently been declared human rights by the international community. Increased access to both were included in the Millennium Development Goals under a single dedicated target for 2015. This target was reached in 2010 for water but sanitation will fall short; however, there is an important difference in the benchmarks used for assessing global access. For drinking water the benchmark is community-level access whilst for sanitation it is household-level access, so a pit latrine shared between households does not count toward the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target. We estimated global progress for water and sanitation under two scenarios: with equivalent household- and community-level benchmarks. Our results demonstrate that the “sanitation deficit” is apparent only when household-level sanitation access is contrasted with community-level water access. When equivalent benchmarks are used for water and sanitation, the global deficit is as great for water as it is for sanitation, and sanitation progress in the MDG-period (1990–2015) outstrips that in water. As both drinking water and sanitation access yield greater benefits at the household-level than at the community-level, we conclude that any post–2015 goals should consider a household-level benchmark for both.

Learning and competences for the 21st century

This special issue of Prospects, titled ‘‘Learning and Competences for the 21 Century’’, could hardly be more timely. Rapid advances in communications and information technology, growing urbanisation, concerns for environmental sustainability, shifts in geopolitics, demographic patterns and labour markets, increasing unemployment, especially of young people, and the growing divide between rich and poor (UNESCO 2014) place unprecedented pressure on education systems to change rapidly and profoundly. This is also a key moment for the international community, which must now place education at the heart of a broad post-2015 global development agenda. The United Nations (2013) called for a universal framework with one set of goals relevant to all nations and a core focus on sustainable development and eradicating poverty. But that effort will only succeed if it rests on coherent and achievable goals and strategies for education post-2015. High-quality education and learning, as well as life skills and vocational education and training, will be crucial to achieving the post-2015 goals, based on the three dimensions of sustainable development: providing economic transformation and opportunity to lift people out of poverty; advancing social justice; and protecting the environment (UNESCO 2013). Education systems are expected to convey values that will help develop more just and inclusive societies; they must also provide a variety of learning experiences to train a competent and active citizenship, and ensure quality and equity in learning outcomes. In addition, students need new and complex competences, not only to lead economically productive lives but also to live together in a rapidly changing world and to transform themselves into ‘‘self-directed learners who can address their own wants and concerns and can advocate for their goals and aspirations’’ (UNESCO and UNICEF 2013, p. 24). There is an urgent need to return to fundamental questions about the goals and purposes of education and to a more holistic, integrated and humanistic vision of learning. Thus,

Annual rates of decline in child, maternal, HIV, and tuberculosis mortality across 109 countries of low and middle income from 1990 to 2013: an assessment of the feasibility of post-2015 goals.

Measuring a country's health performance has focused mostly on estimating levels of mortality. An alternative is to measure rates of decline in mortality, which are more sensitive to changes in health policy than are mortality levels. Historical rates of decline in mortality can also help test the feasibility of future health goals (eg, post-2015). We aimed to assess the annual rates of decline in under-5, maternal, tuberculosis, and HIV mortality over the past two decades for 109 low-income and middle-income countries. For the period 1990-2013, we estimated annual rates of decline in under-5 mortality (deaths per 1000 livebirths), the maternal mortality ratio (deaths per 100 000 livebirths), and tuberculosis and HIV mortality (deaths per 100 000 population per year) using published data from UNICEF and WHO. For every 5-year interval (eg, 1990-95), we defined performance as the size of the annual rate of decline for every mortality indicator. Subsequently, we tested the feasibility of post-2015 goals by estimating the year by which countries would achieve 2030 targets proposed by The Lancet's Commission on Investing in Health (ie, 20 deaths per 1000 for under-5 mortality, 94 deaths per 100 000 for maternal mortality, four deaths per 100 000 for tuberculosis mortality, and eight deaths per 100 000 for HIV mortality) at observed country and aspirational best-performer (90th percentile) rates. From 2005 to 2013, the mean annual rate of decline in under-5 mortality was 4·3% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 3·9-4·6), for maternal mortality it was 3·3% (2·5-4·1), for tuberculosis mortality 4·1% (2·8-5·4), and for HIV mortality 2·2% (0·1-4·3); aspirational best-performer rates per year were 7·1% (6·8-7·5), 6·3% (5·5-7·1), 12·8% (11·5-14·1), and 15·3% (13·2-17·4), respectively. The top two country performers were Macedonia and South Africa for under-5 mortality, Belarus and Bulgaria for maternal mortality, Uzbekistan and Macedonia for tuberculosis mortality, and Namibia and Rwanda for HIV mortality. At aspirational rates of decline, The Lancet's Commission on Investing in Health target for under-5 mortality would be achieved by 50-64% of countries, 35-41% of countries would achieve the 2030 target for maternal mortality, 74-90% of countries would meet the goal for tuberculosis mortality, and 66-82% of countries would achieve the target for HIV mortality.

Community participation in formulating the post-2015 health and development goal agenda: reflections of a multi-country research collaboration.

Global discussion on the post-2015 development goals, to replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire on 31 December 2015, is well underway. While the Millennium Development Goals focused on redressing extreme poverty and its antecedents for people living in developing countries, the post-2015 agenda seeks to redress inequity worldwide, regardless of a country’s development status. Furthermore, to rectify the UN’s top-down approach toward the Millennium Development Goals’ formulation, widespread negotiations are underway that seek to include the voices of people and communities from around the globe to ground each post-2015 development goal. This reflexive commentary, therefore, reports on the early methodological challenges the Go4Health research project experienced in its engagement with communities in nine countries in 2013. Led by four research hubs in Uganda, Bangladesh, Australia and Guatemala, the purpose of this engagement has been to ascertain a ‘snapshot’ of the health needs and priorities of socially excluded populations particularly from the Global South. This is to inform Go4Health’s advice to the European Commission on the post-2015 global goals for health and new governance frameworks. Five methodological challenges were subsequently identified from reflecting on the multidisciplinary, multiregional team’s research practices so far: meanings and parameters around qualitative participatory research; representation of marginalization; generalizability of research findings; ethical research in project time frames; and issues related to informed consent. Strategies to overcome these methodological hurdles are also examined. The findings from the consultations represent the extraordinary diversity of marginal human experience requiring contextual analysis for universal framing of the post-2015 agenda. Unsurprisingly, methodological challenges will, and did, arise. We conclude by advocating for a discourse to emerge not only critically examining how and whose voices are being obtained at the community-level to inform the post-2015 health and development goal agenda, but also how these voices are being translated and integrated into post-2015 decision-making at national and global levels.

Can Dreams Come True? Eliminating Extreme Poverty in Africa by 2030

With the year 2015 – the MDG finishing line – approaching, post-2015 goals as they impact Africa need to be firmed. The goal of ending extreme poverty remains paramount. Globally, the World Bank set goals to end extreme poverty by 2030 and to promote shared prosperity in every society. We examine feasibility of these objectives for Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest but rapidly rising region. We find that under plausible assumptions on consumption growth and redistribution, eliminating poverty by 2030 is out of the region’s reach. Even under our ‘best case’ scenario of accelerated growth and redistribution from the richest 10 percent to the poorest 40 percent of the population, the poverty rate would still be around 10 percent in 2030. A more realistic goal for the region would be reducing poverty by a range from half to two thirds. At this rate, especially if in part achieved by lowering inequality, the Africa region would meaningfully contribute to the global agenda. Policies need to focus on mutually reinforcing objectives of making growth stronger, resilient to shocks, and inclusive.

On Rights-Based Partnerships to Measure Progress in Water and Sanitation

The right to water and sanitation has emerged from the penumbra of associated rights in the past few decades and now plays an important role in international debates. This right has emerged "from below", through the efforts of social movements seeking transformation in the lives of the world's poor, and it has been recognized "from above", with major international actors such as the United Nations, international financial institutions, and even large corporate actors affirming its existence. As the obligations and entitlements inherent in this right are increasingly clarified, the role of interdisciplinary collaboration has never been more important. This short Commentary examines one such collaborative effort, led by the United Nations Joint Monitoring Programme, to devise post-2015 goals, targets, and indicators for water, sanitation, and hygiene. The Commentary calls for renewed partnerships to advance human rights-based policy among advocates, development practitioners, and water and sanitation experts from diverse scientific fields.

Can Dreams Come True? Eliminating Extreme Poverty in Africa by 2030

The year 2015 is the “finish line” for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). What should the post-2015 goals look like for Africa? The goal of ending extreme poverty remains paramount. Globally, the World Bank has set goals to end extreme poverty by 2030 and to promote shared prosperity in every society. We examine feasibility of these objectives for Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest but rapidly rising region. We find that under plausible assumptions on consumption growth and redistribution, eliminating poverty by 2030 is out of the region’s reach. Even under our ‘best case’ scenario of accelerated growth and redistribution from the richest 10 percent to the poorest 40 percent of the population, the poverty rate would still remain around 10 percent in 2030. A more realistic goal for the region would be reducing poverty by two thirds of current poverty levels. At this rate, especially if in part achieved by lowering inequality, the Africa region would meaningfully contribute to the global agenda. Policies need to focus on mutually reinforcing objectives of making growth stronger, resilient to shocks, and inclusive.

Editors’ Note

Editors’ Note Christine Croft, Editor-in-Chief, Diane French, Senior Editor, Bartholomew Thanhauser, Managing Editor, and Sandra Zuniga Guzman, Web Editor In 2000, all 193 member states of the United Nations established an ambitious global agenda that ranged from halving extreme poverty to providing universal primary education. In eight target areas, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) summarized the global development framework, which went on to guide national political, social, and economic priorities for the next decade and a half. Now, with planning for the post-2015 agenda well underway, the international community is in the midst of negotiating the framework that will define the next fifteen years. This issue of the SAIS Review of International Affairs, “Sustaining the Millennium: Global Development from the MDGs to Post-2015,” seeks to capture the policy discussion surrounding the creation of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Featuring authors from six continents, the issue leverages a diversity of voices across a variety of backgrounds in policy and academia. In doing so, the SAIS Review seeks to further our insights into the promises and pitfalls of global development efforts. John W. McArthur sets the stage by debunking seven myths of the MDGs, offering a thorough explanation of the Goals’ true origins. His insider’s perspective on the creation of the MDGs deepens our understanding of the debate currently taking place to determine the course for the post-2015 agenda. With misperceptions cleared, Homi Kharas and Christine Zhang contrast the MDG creation process with the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) and the goal-setting process that is underway. Praising the MDGs for their ability to unite and rally a diverse set of actors, they also highlight key shortcomings, and outline shifts necessary for a successful post-2015 framework. Nina Weitz, Måns Nilsson, and Marion Davis articulate one potential shift for the post-2015 goals, describing what they term a “nexus approach,” whereby targets from interacting sectors are united to craft goals. In doing so, they reimagine the goal-setting process, offering practical ideas with great potential. Another series of authors marshal their expertise to evaluate how the past and present development agenda has fared in aiding the world’s most vulnerable populations. Pointing to the importance of institutional structures and civil society, David Satterthwaite examines urban-rural divides, and argues that limited attention to local government and civil society has contributed to a failure to adequately aid disenfranchised and underprivileged populations. Providing a counterweight, Susan Myers describes the success of the United Nations’ Every Woman Every Child campaign in improving infant and maternal health through a multi-stakeholder partnership at the local and national level. Myers’ efforts showcase not only a victory within the MDGs, but also offer a potential model for the implementation of other health programs in the post-2015 development agenda. [End Page 1] Supporting the vision for goals that “leave no one behind,” Tanvi Nagpal and Mark Radin offer a history of global water and sanitation programs over the past few decades. In doing so, they balance hope with concern in a world where adequate sanitation still reaches only 60 percent of people. For Darío Hidalgo change is also critical, as he demands a different scope for SDG targets through the creation of a goal committed to reducing the adverse human, environmental, and economic impacts of urbanization on dignity and progress. The authors’ focus on inclusivity is a hallmark of the underlying values behind post-2015 consultations. The Rio+20 outcome document pledged to generate an intergovernmental process open to all stakeholders in the spirit of transparency and inclusivity. With open working groups, online surveys, focused campaigns, and 169 targets, the much-anticipated Zero Draft has served as a forum to conceptualize the next slate of development goals. Andrea Ordóñez presents a stark contrast between the MDGs’ negotiations and the new role of southern voices in the SDGs. It is against this backdrop of new perspectives and leadership that Rachel Quint identifies important outcomes from Africa’s regional consultative meeting in 2013. Her commentary spotlights a continent preparing to speak with a strong, unified voice to rally support for goals that are finally aligned with...

Measuring disparities in sanitation access: does the measure matter?

Initiatives to monitor progress in health interventions like sanitation are increasingly focused on disparities in access. We explored three methodological challenges to monitoring changes in sanitation coverage across socio-economic and demographic determinants: (i) confounding by wealth indices including water and sanitation assets, (ii) use of individual urban and rural settings versus national wealth indices and (iii) child-level versus household-level analyses. Sanitation coverage by wealth for children and households across settings was estimated from recent Demographic and Health Surveys in six low-income countries. Household assignment to wealth quintiles was based on principal components analyses of assets. Concordance in household quintile assignment and estimated distribution of improved sanitation was assessed using two wealth indices differing by inclusion or exclusion of water and sanitation assets and independently derived for each setting. Improved sanitation was estimated using under five children and households. Wealth indices estimated with water, and sanitation assets are highly correlated with indices excluding them but can overstate disparities in sanitation access. Independently, derived setting wealth indices highly correlate with setting estimates of coverage using a single national index. Sanitation coverage and quintile disparities were consistently lower in household-level estimates. Standard asset indices provide a reasonably robust measure of disparities in improved sanitation, although overestimation is possible. Separate setting wealth quintiles reveal important disparities in urban areas, but analysis of setting quintiles using a national index is sufficient. Estimates and disparities in household-level coverage of improved sanitation can underestimate coverage for children under five.

Post-2015 agendas: Northern tsunami, southern ripple? The case of education and skills

This paper examines the architecture of post-2015, paying particular attention to the role of the South and the place of education and skills development in this. A battery of different levels of meetings and consultations has sought to influence the outcome. So another dimension analyses the route map itself, and explores the process whereby any post-2015 goals or targets might be established, and what are the milestones on the journey. A particular education challenge in this safari is that there are three processes for proposing an education dimension of post-2015 frameworks: a post-MDG one, a post-EFA, and a SDG process.