Global Humanitarian Assistance Blog [access]- Commentary on funding for humanitarian assistance.PRRN: The Blog of the Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet [access]- Forum for personal observations on the Palestinian refugee issue from members of the PRRN.Seeking Refuge [access]- Provides a forum for asylum seekers in Hong Kong to tell their stories and share their experiences.UNHCR Central Europe Blog [access]- Stories and anecdotes from refugees in Central European countries.Tagged Web...
A
In
Climate Justice,
Ethiopia,
Climate Change,
Global Warming,
Samoa,
India,
Maldives,
United Nations,
Norway,
South Africa,
Mexico,
Brazil,
climate policy,
Climate Challenge,
Costa Rica,
UNFCCC,
carbon trading,
cdm,
g-77,
Reforestation,
BASIC,
carbon neutral,
Cartagena Dialogue,
COP 16,
Marshall Islands,
MRV,
China
(New York) - Eyewitness accounts confirm that Chinese security forces used disproportionate force and acted with deliberate brutality during and after unprecedented Tibetan protests beginning on March 10, 2008, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
read...
Ce rapport présente des informations sur les contraintes de crédit auxquelles les ménages ruraux pauvres doivent faire face. Les données sont issues d’enquêtes détaillées, menées par l’IFPRI et ses collaborateurs dans neuf pays d’Asie et d’Afrique (Bangladesh, Cameroun, Chine, Egypte, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Népal et Pakistan). Ces informations sont utilisées pour proposer des interventions
publiques appropriées permettant de renforcer les marchés financiers ruraux ; les secteurs où les ressources publiques peuvent être utilisées au mieux sont identifiés.
PDF file:
fpr25fr.pdf(428.6KB)...
In
Bangladesh,
Pakistan,
Nepal,
Egypt,
Rural Development,
ghana,
Malawi,
Madagascar,
Cameroon,
IFPRI-1,
Agriculture & Rural Development,
Food Policy Reports,
Français,
Agricultural credit -- Developing countries.,
Informal sector (Economics) -- Developing countries.,
Poverty alleviation -- Developing countries,
Rural credit -- Government policy -- Developing countri,
Rural development -- Developing countries -- Finance.,
China
As China's economy boomed it soon thereafter moved from being an aid recipient to an aid donor. The rich nations have stopped giving aid to China in recent years, but now view China's aid to poor nations with suspicion. From the Inter Press Service, writer Mitch Moxley has this analysis of China's move up the development ladder. Following the lead of other Western nations, Britain’s Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said in June that the 40 million pounds (60.6 million U.S. dollars) that his government sends annually in China – home to the world’s fastest growing, and soon to be second largest, economy – would be better spent elsewhere."UK money should be spent helping the poorest people in the poorest countries, with every penny making a real difference by giving families the...
China has long been in the throes of demographic, economic and social change, with massive rural-to-urban migration, a growing middle class, and an emerging culture of entrepreneurship. In China’s rural communities, it is increasingly common to find lavish spending on weddings, festivals and gifts. A new IFPRI discussion paper documents this recent spike in conspicuous consumption and examines the implications for Chinese society.
Type of Post:
News...
By Todd Moss - The blogosphere is abuzz following the June 13 New York Times report by James Risen that Afghanistan is a potential El Dorado of minerals:
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan...
Focusing on a remote area in rural China, we use a panel census of households in 26 villages to show that socially observable spending has risen sharply in recent years. We demonstrate that such spending by households is highly sensitive to social spending by other villagers. This suggests that social spending is either positional in nature (that is, motivated by status concerns) or subject to herding behavior. We also document systematic relations between social spending and changes in higher order terms of the income distribution.
PDF file:
ifpridp00983.pdf(581.4KB)...
In
Poverty,
English,
Development Strategy and Governance,
IFPRI Discussion Paper,
DSGD,
Rural-Urban Linkages,
GRP-36,
Positional spending,
status,
East Asia,
IFPRI-1,
Asia,
China
(New York) – The Chinese government should immediately release two Tibetan environmentalists held on trumped up charges for running an environmental group in their village, and should drop charges made against their brother, Karma Samdrup, after he tried to protest their detention, Human Rights Watch said today.
read...
Soaring property prices have effectively priced the average Chinese citizen out of the housing market. Last year, a government official conceded that he could not afford an apartment on his humble salary. Fortunately for him, most government officials are provided with comfortable public housing—he need not worry. The emerging middle class does not have it so easy: for instance, statistics show that it is not at all unusual for an ordinary resident of Beijing to spend 80 percent of his income on monthly mortgage payments. This leaves little room for discretionary spending, thereby crippling the middle class’ purchasing power and standard of living while contributing to a widening wealth gap.
Housing prices have increased dramatically in big urban regions, particularly China’s first...
A dynamic computable general equilibrium model is developed to assess the impact of the recent global recession and the Chinese government’s stimulus package on China’s economic growth. The model is first used to capture the actual sector-level economic growth in 2008 and the possible economic performance in 2009 without the intervention of the Chinese government through its stimulus package.
PDF file:
ifpridp00979.pdf(968.5KB)...
In
Country Development Strategy,
GRP-32,
Development strategies,
global financial crisis,
China stimulus package,
general equilibrium modeling,
English,
Development Strategy and Governance,
IFPRI Discussion Paper,
DSGD,
East Asia,
IFPRI-1,
Asia,
China
In her book The Dragon' Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, author Deborah Bräutigam paints an alternative picture of China's involvement in Africa's development that stands in sharp contrast to the commonly-held Western belief that such investment primarily stems from China's short-term commercial and strategic interests in the region.
Type of Post:
News...
A
In
Americas,
usa,
Renewable Energy,
campus,
350,
350.org,
clean energy race,
350 ppm,
Asia,
Global Warming,
India,
China
In the past several years, labor shortages in China have become an issue. However, there is heated debate as to whether China has passed the Lewis turning point and moved from a period of unlimited supply to a new era of labor shortage. Most empirical studies on this topic focus on estimation of total labor supply and demand. Yet the poor quality of China’s labor statistics leaves the debate open. In this paper, China’s position along the Lewis continuum is examined though primary surveys of wage rates, which offer a more reliable statistic than employment data.
PDF file:
ifpridp00977.pdf(618.8KB)...
In
dual economy,
employment data,
Labor market,
Lewis model,
Supply and demand,
surplus labor,
wage rates,
Country Development Strategy,
GRP-32,
English,
Development Strategy and Governance,
IFPRI Discussion Paper,
DSGD,
East Asia,
IFPRI-1,
Asia,
China
Voting power in the World Bank has changed to reflect the GDP of individual countries. The World Bank says that emerging nations now have more voting power and influence in Bank decisions. This is great for countries like China, India and Brazil, but Sub-Saharan Africa has lost some of it's voting power.From the IPS, writer Hilaire Avril has this summary of the changes. Eighteen sub-Saharan countries have thus lost a measure of their already modest influence in the institution’s decision-making process. Nigeria and South Africa are hardest hit, their voting powers having been decreased by about 10 percent.Only oil-rich Sudan - whose president has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on suspicion of war crimes - has seen its share of votes increase.The World Bank,...
Time:
12:15pm - 1:45pm (light lunch served at 11:45am)
Free video streaming by Ustream
Presenter(s):
Deborah Bräutigam, American University; Xiaobo Zhang, IFPRI; Shenggen Fan, IFPRI (Chair)
Contact/RSVP:
Kindly RSVP to Simone Hill-Lee (Tel: 202.862.8107; s.hill-lee@cgiar.org).
Location:
International Food Policy Research Institute
2033 K Street, NW, Washington, DC
Fourth Floor Conference Facility
Is China a rogue donor? Media reports about huge aid...
Nokia is bringing Ovi Life Tools, a set of informational services for rural areas in developing countries, to China, the company said on Friday.The SMS-based service will be in simplified Chinese, the written form of the language used in mainland China. The services are split into four categories: healthcare, agriculture, education and entertainment.More:Ovi Life Tools lands in ChinaRural Calling: Can Nokia Sustain Its First-mover Advantage?...
Water resources continue to be a major constraint for China’s Yellow River Basin, a region enjoying rapid economic growth. Researchers have documented a link between access to water for irrigation and economic well-being: non-irrigated villages have poverty rates twice as high as irrigated villages. A number of problems, including pollution and competing water demand for industrial and urban use, have greatly reduced the total amount of water available for agricultural production in the area and thus threaten to increase poverty for the basin’s rural population.
Type of Post:
News...
Contact/RSVP:
Kevin Chen - k.chen@cgiar.org
Location:
Beijing, China
Organized by Agricultural Information Institute of CAAS, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and UK Department for International Development (DFID)
For three days in June, high level Chinese policymakers and international researchers will gather in Beijing to discuss and share lessons on ensuring food security in the face of economic and weather-related risks......
The New York Times highlights a changing decades-old tradition in China for the government not to disclose information on its spending habits. The original story on Asia Times Online talks about a small town in the Sichuan province, where public officials decided to disclose its budget. The findings are quite interesting – 65% of government funds were spent on entertainment and accommodations…of local public officials. But, as the story notes, the public is not outraged about the spending – most of the people seem to be happy with the fact that the government is actually releasing the numbers.
(Part of Publicized Baimiao Village Government Spending in January. Source: http://www.chinahush.com)
This translation of a Chinese commentary notes that in just 3 days the...
"Africa's displaced people: out of the shadows - African Union convention breaks new ground, but challenges await," Africa Renewal (April 2010) [text]The African Union, the United Nations and civilian protection challenges in Darfur, Working Paper, no. 63 (RSC, May 2010) [text]Humanitarian Coordination in the Asia-Pacific Region: Study in support of the 2010 OCHA Donor Support Group field mission (Humanitarian Outcomes, Feb. 2010) [text via ReliefWeb]Livelihoods under protracted conflict: A case study of Sri Lanka, Working Paper, no. 62 (RSC, May 2010) [text]Making States, Displacing Peoples: A Comparative Perspective of Xinjiang and Tibet in the People’s Republic of China, Working Paper, no. 61 (RSC, May 2010) [text]Refugee advocacy and the biopolitics of asylum in Britain: The...
In
Sri Lanka,
Publications,
Sudan,
development,
united kingdom,
Advocacy,
children,
internally displaced persons,
detention,
unaccompanied minors,
African Union,
Asia,
China,
humanitarian assistance
Keynote address, China-DAC Study Group on Agriculture, Food Security and Rural Development, meeting in Bamako, April 27–28, 2010
PDF file:
chinaafricadac.pdf(474.6KB)...
Japan is finally admitting that it has a relative poverty problem. After keeping poverty measurements secret for years, the government released it's data in 2007 to a huge uproar. The reason for this secrecy is mostly due to the stigmatization that the poor people face. 80 percent of those who are below the poverty line are the working poor. These people may have enough to eat but may lack in health insurance or some luxuries. In trying to compete with the many low wage jobs in China, Japan created it's own low wage workforce. Now the nation is trying to come to terms with the income inequality it created. From the New York Times, writer Martin Fackler gives us some background on Japan's economy. After years of economic stagnation and widening income disparities, this once proudly...
A new study shows an encouraging drop in maternal deaths due to childbirth. The study published in the journal The Lancet, says that women who died due to childbirth dropped from 526,300 in 1980 to 342,900 in 2008. This is welcome news because the general perception has been that there has been no improvement in this area. The big surge in the improvement came from, where else, but China and India. From the New York Times, writer Demise Grady tells us more about the study. “The overall message, for the first time in a generation, is one of persistent and welcome progress,” the journal’s editor, Dr. Richard Horton, wrote in a comment accompanying the article, published online on Monday.The study cited a number of reasons for the improvement: lower pregnancy rates in some countries;...
Suspects stand trial at the No. 1 Intermediate People's Court in Chongqing, China. (Photo: CNS/Newscom)
For a country of 1.3 billion, 30 million seems only marginal, yet with over 30 million inhabitants, the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing has a population greater than most developed countries, including the Netherlands, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, and the Czech Republic—and that’s just legal residents. The recent city-wide crackdown on corruption and racketeering is therefore noteworthy.
More than 3,300 have been arrested as part of a campaign led by the crusading local Communist Party boss Bo Xilai to root out corruption in the city. This comes as all police officials were asked to re-apply for their jobs less than a month after their chief was jailed following a mafia...
(New York) - The Beijing municipal government's plan to relocate up to one million migrant workers from the city's central Chaoyang district by the end of 2010 puts those migrants at high risk of forced evictions and demolitions, Human Rights Watch said today.
read...
This article also appeared in the Business Standard.
Back in 1971, the then US Treasury Secretary, John Connolly, told his European counterparts that the dollar was “our currency, but your problem”. Today, it seems that China has returned that favour. Its currency has become a problem for the US. Not just the politics but the intellectual...
(New York) - Google's decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine is a strong step in favor of freedom of expression and information, and an indictment of the Chinese government's insistence on censorship of the internet, Human Rights Watch said today. Google announced today that it would not censor searches and instead redirect searches to its uncensored Hong Kong-based site that would
read...
Annual Report on Human Rights 2009 (UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 2010) [text via Human Security Gateway]"Assessing Asylum Claims from Children Born in Violation of China’s One-Child Policy: What the United States Can Learn from Australia," Wisconsin International Law Journal, vol. 27, no. 1 (2009) [text]Iraq: Humanitarian Needs Persist (Refugees International, March 2010) [text]Safer Homes, Stronger Communities: A Handbook for Reconstructing after Natural Disasters (World Bank, March 2010) [text via ReliefWeb]Technical, Vocational, and Entrepreneurial Capacities in Southern Sudan: Assessment and Opportunities (Centre for Refugee Studies & Plan International, 2010) [text]Third party intervention by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, under Article 36,...
In
United States,
Housing,
Iraq,
Human Rights,
Australia,
Annual Reports,
asylum,
Greece,
reconstruction,
law of asylum,
vocational training,
Publications,
China,
humanitarian assistance,
Palestinians