Related Content

Mali’s multi-layered conflicts cannot be understood from a single analytical perspective, it is not one conflict - but a dynamic system of conflicts.

How will the EU develop its role as an actor in an increasingly multipolar world? Next June we will know, when the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini presents her new global strategy for the European Union External Action Service.

Today’s Europe seems barely equipped to tackle the challenges of the twenty-first century. It is time to lay a new political, economic and financial foundation for the European project.

In the online consultation on inclusive development launched by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, roughly three different perspectives are expressed on how social protection contributes to inclusive development. It is seen either as a me...

Robots have long been part of the world around us, but soon there really will be no avoiding them – when they no longer only work for us, but also with us. How are we going to do that together?  

You can read it in the newspapers every day: national economies are not creating enough jobs and fewer quality jobs in the productive sectors. Globalization, automation and financialization of the economy have been identified as the drivers of cur...

List of sources for conflict and context analysis frameworks, outlining organisations with their corresponding analytical frameworks

The review of 88 frameworks for doing context analysis, originating from a broad range of sectors including development, military, research, policy and economics, shows that there are four aspects of analytical models that cover the breadth and de...

In the complex contexts of fragile or conflict-affected states, where international interventions can easily influence power relations, good context analysis is crucial. Systematically mapping these contexts allows international actors to work eff...

International trade can contribute to the creation of more and better jobs but not always, not for everyone, and not everywhere. Thirty years after the beginning of a global push for liberalization we are finally starting to understand the real co...

Specific policy is needed to respond to the loss of social control over employment.

In an increasingly globalized world which places downward pressure on nominal wages, monetary policy should permit the rewards of productivity growth to be passed on to workers in the form of falling prices. Targeting nominal income growth to equa...

Inequality and declining job quality have been driven mainly by government policies, so reforming policy is now needed.

With a demographic shift ahead, Europe has to increase productivity and employment rates and structurally reform the labour market.

The central theme of The Broker Day 2014 on 14 April was employment and inequality, and the structural macroeconomic problems underlying them. The main speaker was Minister of Social Affairs and Employment and deputy prime minister Lodewijk Assche...

The key to avoiding the risk of a jobless recovery in Southern Europe lies in the combination of wage flexibility and human capital accumulation.

Recognizing employment as a fundamental human right is the most important policy to promote full employment.

It is time for development economists to look beyond the stylized facts to the dire realities of Africa’s frustrated youth and burgeoning informal economies.

Employment is a critical path to women’s economic empowerment, but it is by no means a simple relationship.

Policies to promote social entrepreneurship cannot cover up cuts in public expenditure. It should promote equality, greater civic participation in the economy, and the small and medium sized productive sectors. This means an incentive package incl...

Over 200 million people worldwide are officially unemployed and looking for work. A much larger number of people, however, has a job, but one that is uncertain, unstable and precarious and does not help them out of poverty. Rising economic growth...

To solve the structural problems related to unemployment, a radical policy shift is needed. Innovation policies must focus on job-intensive sectors. Governments must curb free capital flows with more regulation and stimulate financial institutions...

The creation of more decent jobs should be central to economic policies. The prevailing assumption that GDP growth alone will generate more decent work is not valid. And it obstructs the creation of a society in which labour serves and dignifies b...

A growing number of people in the industrialized world work under insecure employment conditions. This is due to increasing labour market flexibility, which has influenced the nature of employment and the related power relations. This fundamental...

Welcome to The Broker’s dossier on employment. Global employment trends can be confusing. For example, they show an increase in the numbers of unemployed people while at the same time an increase in the amount of jobs. Population growth alone cann...

The international discussion on the changing nature of jobs and employment is taking place on many levels. The table here contains a number of institutional reports, research papers and other sources that The Broker’s editors have found useful in...

The belief that economic growth– together with low inflation rates, technological innovations and good education–is enough to create all the jobs a country needs, is in decline. The reality now is that technology is improving so fast that better e...

In many countries the share of labour in national income has declined over the last three decades. As a result, the low and middle-income groups of people who depend the most on wages for their income are crumbling. Meanwhile, the rich elites who...

Geopolitical action is required to cope with the enormous resource challenges that lie ahead.

Conference report of The 24th Regular Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Geneva, Switzerland.

Despite the aspirations, the development of a set of Sustainable Development Goals remains a challenging trial.

The new policy framework should acknowledge that challenges for global sustainable development and the environment are interlinked.

African governments must implement a series of policies to make sure that natural resource wealth brings more inclusive and equitable growth.

Social protection schemes look very different across the world. They traditionally protect people from income fall after shocks. But some programmes have higher aims: increasing the economic opportunities and promoting the potential of those who a...

How effective are China’s and India’s social policies in making growth more inclusive?

This is the first blog post in a series from the OECD conference Economics for a Better World. Happiness versus wellbeing, are we talking about the same thing?

Pro-poor strategies that are inclusive should be funded primarily by domestic sources, because foreign savings and investment tend to be volatile and difficult to target. However, this can be a problem for the very poor countries.

The international post-2015 development agenda is in need of a comprehensive water development framework based on widely shared ethical principles.

The EU’s renewable energy policy, that brace food-based biofuels, is at the expense of food security, poverty eradication and the climate.

More guidelines on food security include the Right to Food. At the same time donors and governments heavily support private sector development to increase agricultural investment and growth. The focus should be kept on smallholder farmers. 

Land grab is rarely challenged through a food security and food sovereignty perspective in research and policy elaboration, in spite of its multifarious impact on both of such key dimensions of human livelihood. 

The gap in policy processes towards better food security and nutrition interventions is not related to a lack of knowledge, it is politics. Research institutions need to be more aware of empowering beneficiaries.

It is crucial to be aware of deeply-rooted gender structures and to create gender-equity in land tenure, in order to guarentee both water and food security.

The MDGs, by emphasizing targets at a global level, have ignored the inequalities that average figures conceal (van der Hoeven, 2010, Vandemoortele, 2011, Melaned, 2012). Attention to inequality should be a basic element of any post-2015 agenda an...

How are inequality and conflict connected? This question has occupied the minds of thinkers and practitioners for many years. The common-sense argument sounds convincing: where there are large inequalities between rich and poor, the latter become...

Aid effectiveness has come to be seen as an empty concept without national ownership being placed at its heart.  Yet, in too many aspects of the development field, the notion of national ownership runs up against notions of a set of "int...

Read the Draft Busan Outcome Document and related comments

How have the principles of aid effectiveness been put into practice?

Nancy Peluso’s exciting and much discussed keynote speech drew on the metaphor of the 'Beauty and the Beast'. Using the humorous but thought-provoking imagery of the story, Peluso highlighted the variety of ways in which the relationship between n...

Had we not had such chock-a-block days preparing the launch of our new website, I would have loved to have attended the conference on the micro-analysis of violent conflict hosted by IDS yesterday and today.MICROCON, an EC supported research conso...

The concept of sustainable development has been rearing its head in international, national and local policy debates for almost 25 years. And yet the precise meaning of the concept is still elusive. It is vague and difficult to actually put into p...

The two articles in this special report explore the shift that is needed from the national to the global, not just in outlook but especially in policy agendas, institutional set-up, cooperation between sector ministries, governance and funding. Ho...

Contemporary conflicts are very different from the conflicts of the twentieth century like the two world wars and the Cold War. Yet it has taken a long time for policy makers to realize that these ‘new wars’ require a different policy approach. Ev...

International affairs can be examined at many levels, including transnational networks, relations between states, regional dynamics, foreign policy and the many links between local events in different countries. But there is a difference between a...

The idea of a European Development Report (ERD) is interesting for two reasons. First is that it contributes to making a European language on development a reality (i.e. to facilitate a common language on such issues, which is necessary due to the...

The broker asked Stephan Klasen to reflect on the following three questions concerning Europe's role in international development.

‘Global’ and ‘globalization’ carry many meanings. Politicians are increasingly using the terms in public discourse, but often in the neoliberal sense. Understanding how ‘global’ and ‘globalization’ are used helps reveal possibilities for new natio...