One in four adults will experience mental health difficulties, yet prejudice and discrimination are significant barriers that deprive people of their dignity. To make dignity in mental health a reality requires every member of society to work together. It requires action in the community and, importantly, in the workplace....

Ce premier rapport 2016 sur la situation des droits économiques, sociaux et culturels de 42 pays est une initiative de L’Observatoire international sur les droits économiques, sociaux et culturels (ObIDESC). Créé par le Collège Universitaire Henry Dunant, en collaboration avec l’OIDEL et la chaire UNESCO de l’Université de La...

This database shows bilateral social security agreements per country. Link to...

In recent years, the International Monetary Fund has become a global leader in highlighting the inequality crisis; consistently identifying it as a major threat to human progress and prosperity. This is a significant shift from its previously held position that rising inequality was a necessary trade-off for achieving greater...

To increase accountability for failures to fulfill economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights), it is necessary to uncover the shortcomings in a state’s social and economic policies that lead to large scale deprivations. This serves to expose as a preventable injustice what may otherwise be seen as an...

This article presents an econometric estimation of the determinants of the wage share, using sectoral data for 14 OECD countries for the period 1970- 2014. We present estimations for the wage share of high- and low-skilled workers and within manufacturing and service industries. We augment sectoral data with input-output...

In 2009 the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) and the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales (ICEFI) produced a report titled Rights or Privileges? Fiscal commitment to the rights to health, education and food in Guatemala. A collaboration between an international human rights organization and a Central American...

This briefing paper provides a brief assessment of the changing role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF or the Fund) with regards to one key fiscal consolidation measure: contractions in public expenditure. The briefing explores the Fund’s positive and negative influence over public expenditure decisions, and further explains how...

The website makes the first comprehensive and transparent database of IMF-mandated policy reforms  freely available to interested researchers and civil society organizations. The database systematizes the 58,406 conditions applicable to IMF programmes over the 1980-2014 period. The data was extracted from countries’ loan agreements with the IMF. This resource enables...

The Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality marks an unprecedented advance in the care agenda in terms of the visibility of care as a central dimension of sustainable development. The new international commitment for recognizing, redistributing and reducing unpaid care and domestic work through care policies needs to...

It is the right time to channel more public investment for comprehensive support of children’s and adolescents’ mental health and well-being. Target 3.4 under Goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Agenda explicitly aims to ‘promote mental health and well-being’, while the WHO Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan for 2013-2020...

We present a systematic collection and assessment of impact evaluations of active labour market programmes (ALMP) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The paper delineates the strategy to compile a novel meta database and provides a narrative review of 51 studies. Based on these studies, the quantitative analysis...

The efficiency of institutional food procurement programmes (IFPPs) depends on a series of interconnected conditions to reach their stated goal of linking smallholders with institutional markets and demand (e.g. school meals). These programmes rely on governmental will and the availability of public demand. Furthermore, they require institutional changes and...

The development and implementation of an efficient institutional food procurement programme (IFPP —which aims to link smallholder producers to institutional markets and promote development of food supply systems—is not a simple or straightforward task. It requires a series of conditions that must be coordinated and matched together. These conditions...

This One Pager explains that to address internal development issues in Saudi Arabia such as poverty, vulnerability and inequality, the Vision 2030 plan and its programmes have, inter alia, pointed to a number of specific goals, targets and policy measures to reduce social vulnerability, address labour market issues for women and promote...

Brazil, in the period after the great financial crisis of 2007–2008, presents a compelling case study of the interactions between fiscal policy and business cycles. The country is noteworthy not only for being one of the very few that dealt relatively well with the most acute stage of the...

This paper analyses the changes in orientation and composition of Brazilian fiscal policy, focusing on three recent periods and seeking to explore their relationship with economic performance. The first period (2005–2010) was characterised by fiscal expansion, with public investment and redistributive transfers as its main drivers. Economic performance was...

This Policy Research Brief presents some elements that should be carefully considered in the design of policies and programmes to overcome poverty, based on evidence from the field of behavioural economics. A growing number of international experiences point to the fact that, in many situations, government policies and programmes...

This report presents an analysis of progress and disparities among children in South Africa. Data show significant progress during the past two decades in areas such as child poverty, child survival, mother to-child transmission of HIV and primary school attendance, among others. These are impressive achievements, but they are...

The 2008 financial crisis triggered the worst global recession since the Great Depression. Many OECD countries responded to the crisis by reducing social spending. Through 11 diverse country case studies (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States), this volume describes the...

Social return on investment (SROI) is a concept to account for social value when evaluating investments. It goes beyond traditional economic evaluation tools, by considering value produced for multiple stakeholders in all three dimensions of development: economic, social and environmental. This discussion paper reviews the main features of SROI...

From the early 1990s many emerging and developing economies (EDEs) liberalized their capital accounts, allowing greater freedom for international lenders and investors to enter their markets, as well as for their residents to operate in international financial markets. Despite recurrent crises, liberalization has accelerated in the new millennium. Global...

Economic growth in Asia-Pacific economies, although steady, is modest compared with its recent historical trend amid prolonged weak external demand and its ramifications, such as subdued investment and rising trade protectionism. While robust economic growth is not a sufficient condition for achieving broader development goals, the lack of it...

The Sustainable Development Goals have set ambitious targets that apply to rich countries as well as poor. The most telling sign of a nation’s progress towards meeting those goals will be how well it meets the needs of its children. This Report Card offers an assessment of child well-being...

In 2015, the leaders of 193 governments promised to reduce inequality as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Without reducing inequality, meeting the SDG to eliminate poverty will be impossible. Now Development Finance International and Oxfam have produced the first index to measure the commitment of governments to...