Latest Resources
Middle East and North Africa Report
Arab States, Conflict, Electoral Systems, Human Rights, Justice, Report, Academic/Think TankThe Syrian regime is losing ground to armed rebels, while the exiled opposition is in chaos Information coming from Syria points to the accelerating erosion of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. While the possible repercussions of the massacre perpetrated in Houla on May 25th remain unclear, the regime hasmore and more reason to be nervous. The “poison operation” conducted against top security figures on...
Indonesia Country Assessment: The Asia-Pacific Rights and Justice Initiative
Asia and the Pacific, GAP, Human Rights, Justice, Report, UNDP ProducedAuthors/Editors: Ana Patricia Graça and Andrea Davis This report presents the assessment findings of the DGTTFsupported Indonesia project Strengthening Access to Justice and the Rule of Law (A2J Assessment Project). The country study is an assessment and not a project evaluation. It provides an overall analytic review of results, rather than an evaluation of progress. It aims mostly to...
Citizenship law in Africa: a comparative study
Africa, Human Rights, Justice, Report, Civil SocietyLaws and practices governing citizenship in too many African countries effectively leave hundreds of thousands of people without a nationality. These stateless Africans are among the continent’s most vulnerable populations: they can neither vote nor stand for office; they cannot enrol their children in school, travel freely, or own property; they cannot work for the...
Regional organizations and incentives to improve governance: The APRM experience, with particular reference to Ghana
Africa, Human Rights, Justice, Public Administration, Report, Civil SocietyThis report reviews the APRM-process in Ghana, which is one of the first three countries to complete the process. It finds that though the guidelines are basic and the continental institutions for overseeing the APRM process are relatively weak, the clearly African-driven nature of these regional bodies gives them potential tofoster incentives for leaders to improve governance....
Strengthening African Governance: index of African governance result and rankings
Africa, Corruption, Global Index, Human Rights, Justice, Local Governance and Decentralization, Academic/Think Tank, Civil SocietyThe 2009 Index of African Governance seeks to measure the degree to which five categories of political goods - Safety and Security; Rule of Law, Transparency, and Corruption; Participation and Human Rights; Sustainable Economic Opportunity; and Human Development - are provided within Africa’s 53 countries. The Index offers a report card on the accomplishments of each government for...
Foreign Direct Investment and Civil Rights: Testing Decreasing Returns to Civil Rights
Article / Working Paper, Democracy, Europe and CIS, Human Rights, Justice, Latin America and the Carribean, Academic/Think TankIn this paper, the effectiveness of improvements in political and civil rights for attracting foreign direct investment flows (FDI) into democracies is examined. The author contends that advances in the quality of democracy – specifically those concerning civil rights – present positive but decreasing marginal returns in attracting FDI inflows. This is empirically proven by using...
State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and CIS, Human Rights, Justice, Land Governance, Latin America and the Carribean, Report, Other UN AgencyFirst UN publication on the state of the world’s indigenous peoples reveals alarming statistics on poverty, health, education, employment, human rights, the environment and more. In the United States, a Native American is 600 times more likely to contract tuberculosis and 62 per cent more likely to commit suicide than the general population. In Australia, an indigenous...
Response to ‘What do the Worldwide Governance Indicators Measure?
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Human Rights, Justice, Public Administration, Academic/Think TankThis article, published in the European Journal for Development Research is a response to the article “What do the Worldwide Governance Indicators Measure?” by M. Thomas (2009) where he dismisses the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) as an ‘elaborate and unsupported hypothesis’ because of the failure to demonstrate the ‘construct validity’...
What Do the Worldwide Governance Indicators Measure?
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Human Rights, Justice, Academic/Think TankThis journal article from the European Journal of Development Research discusses the ‘construct validity’ of qualitative measurement techniques that policymakers and researchers use, as they focus more on the question of the impact of governance in economic development. A number of measures of the quality of governance have been created. Among these are the...
The State of the World's Human Rights
Africa, Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and CIS, Human Rights, Justice, Latin America and the Carribean, Report, Civil SocietyAmnesty International's 2010 report documents abuses in 159 countries and shows how powerful governments are blocking advances in international justice by standing above the law on human rights, shielding allies from criticism and acting only when politically convenient. Between January and May 2009, some 300,000 Sri Lankans were trapped on a narrow strip of land between the retreating...