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KEY PUBLICATIONS AND ONLINE
RESOURCES
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
This page was updated
on: 01/12/10
COMMON GROUND: WOMEN'S ACCESS TO
NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE UNITED NATIONS MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
(WEDO, December 2003) Produced
by the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), this
booklet demonstrates how linking the Millennium Development Goals, in
particular those that focus on poverty eradication, gender equality and
environmental sustainability (MDGs 1, 3, and 7), can increase women's
access to natural resources. It gives an overview of women's
relationship to natural resources, recommends strategies and actions for
making gender equality central to MDGs, and offers links to further
information on these issues. The booklet is
downloadable at:
http://www.wedo.org/sus_dev/common1.htm
THE STATE OF THE WORLD'S
CHILDREN 2004
(UNICEF, December
2003) Highlighting the Millennium Development Goal of eliminating gender
disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005, UNICEF's State of
the World's Children 2004 underscores how educating girls is critical to
achieving international development goals. Officially launched at the
recent World Summit on Information Society in Geneva, the report shows
that enabling girls to receive a good quality basic education improves
other indicators of human well-being, and that girls denied an education
are more vulnerable to poverty, hunger, violence, abuse, exploitation,
trafficking and diseases, and more likely to die in childbirth. It also
shows the positive impact of educating girls, and details how breaking
barriers that keep girls out of schools render going to school more
welcoming for both boys and girls. The report makes a case that education
must be approached as a human right rather than a privilege or an expected
outcome of economic progress, in order to ensure that governments mobilize
the necessary resources to allow children to complete a quality education.
The report further calls for a change in how development is approached,
including: regarding education as an essential component in development
plans, eliminating school fees, integrating education into national
poverty reduction plans and increasing international funding for
education. The report is available at:
http://www.unicef.org/sowc04/index.html
WORLD
POPULATION IN 2300
(DESA,
December 2003) The world's population is projected to be about nine
billion in 2300, according to a report circulated by the Population
Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs at an Expert
Meeting on World Population held on 9 December in New York. This figure is
based on the assumption that mortality will steadily decline after 2050,
which results in increase in life expectancy. The report has prepared for
the first time a set of population projections to the year 2300 for each
country of the world. The report outlines findings of different scenarios
and highlights in its medium scenario, how Africa's portion of the global
population will increase from 13 to 24 percent from 2000-2300, while
Asia's will decrease from 61 to 55 percent and Europe's from 21 to 7
percent. The report also finds that the world's median age will rise from
26 years today to almost 50 years by 2300, due to the trend of
continuously increasing longevity. The report is available at:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/Long_range_report.pdf
STATE OF THE WORLD POPULATION 2003 -
MAKING 1 BILLION COUNT: INVESTING IN ADOLESCENTS' HEALTH AND RIGHTS
(UNFPA, October 2003) This year's State of
the World Population report focuses on the challenges of and need to
safeguard health and human rights for adolescents. Noting that almost half
of the world's people are under the age of 25 and that 20 percent are
adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19, with 87 percent of these
adolescents living in developing countries, the report highlights how the
educational and health status of adolescents, their readiness to take on
adult roles and responsibilities, and the support they receive from their
families, communities and governments will have significant consequences
for the future. The report stresses that investment in adolescent
reproductive health is critical for combating poverty and HIV/AIDS, and
states that education, and access to information and services are
essential to protecting and empowering young people, especially girls and
young women. The report is available at:
http://www.unfpa.org/swp/swpmain.htm
GLOBAL REPORT ON HUMAN SETTLEMENTS: THE SLUM CHALLENGE
(UN-HABITAT, October 2003) This year's UN-HABITAT global report on human
settlements focuses on slums, reviewing the reasons behind their growth
and evaluating policy responses in recent decades. Using a new operational
definition of slums that takes into account, inter alia, percentage
of poor households having access to permanent housing compliance with
local laws and access to water, sanitation and electricity, the report
estimates that almost 1 billion people around the world dwell in slums.
The report further projects that in the absence of policy action this
figure could increase to 2 billion by 2030. Recommendations for the way
forward emphasize increased
political will, investment in infrastructure, pro-active urban planning
and empowerment of the urban poor.
Approaches are also identified for achieving Target 11 of Millennium
Development Goal 7 to significantly improve the lives of 100 million slum
dwellers by 2020. More information is available at:
http://www.unhabitat.org/global_report.asp
REPORT ON THE WORLD SOCIAL SITUATION
2003 – SOCIAL VULNERABILITY
(UNDESA, October 2003) Prepared
by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Division for Social
Policy and Development, this report is the 16th in a series of reports
that provide a background for discussion and policy analysis of
socio-economic matters at the intergovernmental level by contributing to
the identification of emerging social trends of international concern and
the analysis of relationships among major development issues. With the
theme of "Social Vulnerability," this year's report aims to develop a
frame of reference for identifying the source of social vulnerability, as
well as discuss strategies for reducing vulnerabilities of selected social
groups. More information is available at:
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/rwss/rwss2003.htm
MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS: NATIONAL
REPORTS, A LOOK THROUGH A GENDER LENS
(UNDP, 2003) This UNDP
publication, which was released in May 2003, is now available online. The
report reviews a selection of published MDG reports and assesses the
extent to which gender concerns and perspectives have been mainstreamed
into discussions of various MDGs in 13 countries around the world. The
results of the assessment include consideration of gender as a
cross-cutting issue, and how gender perspectives have been mainstreamed
into discussions on poverty, education, infant mortality, maternal
mortality/reproductive health, health and the third MDG goal concerning
the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women. The report is
available at:
http://www.undp.org/gender/docs/mdgs-genderlens.pdf
SOCIAL PANORAMA OF LATIN AMERICA
2002-2003, 11TH EDITION
(ECLAC, August 2003) This
annual publication analyzes social trends within the Latin American and
Caribbean region. This year's edition focuses on hunger and examines the
progress of the region's countries towards meeting the UN Millennium
Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015.
The study finds that over 40 percent of the
region's population were living in poverty by the end of 2002, and that
11 percent were undernourished and
about 55 million people of the region suffered from some degree of
malnutrition toward the end of the past decade. The report also considers:
new benchmarks for poverty and
income distribution; poverty analysis from a gender perspective; trends in
social spending after the 1998 recession and changes in private
expenditure on health care and education; and labor policies applied in
Latin American countries. The report is available at:
http://www.eclac.cl/cgi-bin/getProd.asp?xml=/publicaciones/xml/
0/12980/P12980.xml&xsl=/dds/tpl/p9f.xsl
WORLD MIGRATION REPORT 2003
(International Organization for
Migration, June 2003) Produced by IOM's Migration Policy and Research
Programme, this report presents the latest trends in international
migration and provides insight into "the complex dynamic of a growing
socio-economic, cultural and political phenomenon." The report notes the
role of globalization, trade liberalization and economic integration in
encouraging labor mobility, and estimates the 2.9% of the world population
are migrants, motivated mainly by economic opportunities. The report
considers, inter alia: the root causes of migration; relations with
migrant diasporas; integration of migrants in host societies; sustainable
integration for returning migrants; migrants' rights; and linkages between
migration and development and trade. The report further highlights
effective migrant management policies, and states that effective and human
migration management policies benefiting migrants and society depend on
broad international cooperation. More information is available online at:
http://www.un.org/Pubs/whatsnew/e03174.htm
E-FLASH PROVIDES UPDATES ON PREPARATIONS
FOR THE WSIS
Published regularly by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS),
E-Flash updates readers on preparations underway for the WSIS. The Summit,
which is to be held in two parts, the first in Geneva in December 2003 and
the second in Tunisia in November 2005, aims to develop a better
understanding of the information and communication technologies (ICT)
revolution and its impact on the international community. The July issue
of E-Flash contains articles on: preparations for the upcoming
intersessional meeting in Paris, engaging the business community, and the
Pan-Arab WSIS regional conference. The issue also highlights relevant
upcoming events and WSIS initiatives, including the launching of the
Francophonie WSIS website. Read or subscribe to E-Flash at:
http://www.itu.int/wsis/newsroom/eflash/latest.html
TIME FOR EQUALITY AT WORK
(ILO, May 2003) ILO has launched
its first global report on discrimination at work. The report, entitled
"Time for Equality at Work," states that workplace discrimination remains
a persistent global problem, with new and more subtle forms of
discrimination emerging. It finds that women are by far the largest
discriminated group, noting the significant gap in income between the
sexes in most countries, and further highlights new and emerging forms of
discrimination based on disability, HIV/AIDS, age and sexual orientation.
The report states that people who suffer from discrimination experience a
persistent "equality gap," and warns that failure to address these
socio-economic inequalities not only points to a waste of human talent and
resources, but could also have potentially "disastrous effects on national
social cohesion, political stability, and hence growth. The report
is available online at:
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/decl/publ/reports/report4.htm
UN DEMOGRAPHIC YEARBOOK 2000
The United Nations has recently
launched its Demographic Yearbook, a source of national population and
vital statistics for over 233 countries or areas in the world. The book
provides statistics on population size and composition, fertility,
mortality, infant and fetal mortality, marriages and divorces. More
information is available at:
http://www.unis.unvienna.org/unis/pressrels/2003/dev2412.html
If you
would like to submit details of
recently published documents and online resources,
send a message to
Diego Noguera, IISD
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