Human Rights Watch - World Report 2018

                    This post is a summary of the book published with the title above in December 2017 at   https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/201801world_report_web.pdf

                     World Report 2018 is a Human Rights Watch`s 28th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It summarizes key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events from late 2016 through November 2017. In his keynote essay, "The Pushback Against the Populist Challenge,"  Human Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth says that the surge of authoritarian populists appears less inevitable than it did a year ago. Then, there seemed no stopping a series of politicians around the globe who claimed to speak for "the people" but built followings by attacking human rights principles, and fueling distrust of democratic institutions. Today, a popular reaction in a broad range of countries, bolstered by some political leaders with the courage to stand up for human rights, has left the fate of many of these populists agendas more uncertain. Preoccupied with the internal domestic struggle over the populist agenda, many of the world`s democracies, including the U.S.A. and U.K., have been less willing than before to promote human rights abroad. China and Russia have sought to fill that leadership void by advancing an anti-rights agenda. But several medium-sized governments, often backed by galvanized publics, have also stepped into the breach. They include France, the Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, and Ireland. They have succeeded in building coalitions that exert serious pressure on the anti-rights agenda and in trumpeting the advantages of governments that are accountable to their people rather than to their officials` empowerment and enrichment. However, where other priorities stand in the way of a strong defense of human rights, the populists and autocrats have flourished. Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Burma are example of countries where a lack of international pressure has enabled governments to crush dissent and, at times, to commit large-scale atrocities. "A fair assessment of global prospects for human rights," Roth concludes, "should induce concern rather than surrender, a call to action rather than a cry of despair." The book reflects extensive investigative work that HRW staff undertook in 2017, usually in close partnership with human rights activists and groups in the country in question. The factors we considered in determining the focus of our work in 2017 include the number of people affected and the severity of abuse, the susceptibility of abusive forces to influence, and of reinforcing the work of local rights organizations. Widespread violence, often perpetrated by criminal gangs, plagues many Brazilian cities. In 2016, 437 police officers were killed in Brazil, the vast majority of them while off-duty. Police officers, including off-duty, killed 4,224 people in 2016, about 26% more than in 2015. While some police killings result from legitimate use of force, others do not. HRW has documented scores of cases in the past decade where there was credible evidence of an execution or a cover-up that were not properly investigated or prosecuted. In Para, police killed 10 farmers in May. Officers said they were responding to an attack, but witnesses and forensic data provide credible evidence that they executed the victims. Violence against rural activists and indigenous leaders involved in conflicts over land continued to climb. In 2016, 61 people involved in land conflict died violently, the highest number since 2003, and from January to October 2017, 64 were killed, according to the Pastoral Land Commission of the Catholic Church. Among those were nine rural workers killed in April in the state of Mato Grosso. Prosecutors assert a logger ordered the crimes to expel them from the land. A federal law approved in July would grant titles to people occupying land illegally in the Amazon forest. Environmental and landless peasant organizations opposed it, arguing it would benefit large landowners and illegal loggers. The Federal Prosecutor's Office concurred, warning that the law could also increase the numbers of killings as a result of land conflicts, and petitioned the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional. The perpetrators of human rights abuses during military rule from 1964 to 1985 continue to be shielded from justice by a 1979 amnesty law that the Supreme Court upheld in 2010, a decision that the Inter-American Court of human Rights quickly ruled violated Brazil's obligations under international law. Since 2012, federal prosecutors have charged more than 40 former military officers and other agents of the dictatorship with killings, kidnappings and other serious human rights abuses. In August, Brazil and the other founding members of the South America trading bloc Mercosur suspended Venezuela from the group for "breaking democratic order." In May, Brazil approved a new migration law that grants non-citizens immigrants equal access to public services, including education and health, and the right to join unions. A humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has launched thousands of people across the border to Bazil. Brazil approved a resolution allowing Venezuelans to apply for a two-year residency permit.               The broad offensive on human rights that started after President Xi Jinping took power five years ago showed no sign of abating in 2017. Foreign governments did little to push back against China's worsening rights record at home and abroad. The Chinese government, which already oversees one of the strictest online censorship in the world, limited the provision of circumvention tools and strengthened ideological control over education and mass media in 2017. Authorities subjected more human rights defenders, including foreigners, to trials in 2017, airing excerpted forced confessions and court trials on state TV and social media. In Xinjiang, a nominally autonomous region, authorities stepped up mass surveillance and the security presence despite the lack of an organized threat. Hong Kong's human rights record took a dark turn. Hong Kong courts disqualified four pro-democracy lawmakers and jailed three prominent pro-democracy student leaders. In 2017, authorities continued prosecutions of human rights activists and lawyers who were rounded up in a crackdown that began in July 2015.                  The strong civil society and democratic institutions of the U.S. were tested in the first year of the administration of Donald Trump. He has targeted refugees and immigrants and has also expressed disdain for independent media and for federal courts that have blocked some of his actions. He also coddled autocratic leaders and showed little interest in pressing for the respect of human rights abroad. Poor defendants throughout the U.S. are locked up in pretrial detention because they can not afford to post bail. A 2017 HRW report demonstrated that pretrial detention, often resulting from failure to pay bail, coerces people, some innocent, into pleading guilty just to get out of jail. A movement to reduce the use of money bail is growing, with several states implementing reform. Many states fund their court systems, including judges, prosecutors, and public defenders, partly or entirely via fees and fines imposed on criminal and traffic defendants. The privatization of misdemeanor probation services by several states has led to abuses, including fees by private probation companies to penalize poor offenders. President Trump repeatedly criticized journalists and posted comments during the year, prompting concerns over the chilling of freedom of speech. Two U.N. experts expressed alarm about state legislative proposals seeking to "criminalize peaceful protests." The Trump administration was considering withdrawing from the UNHRC, primarily because of concerns about body's memberships and its dedicated agenda on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Although the Council's membership includes some serial rights violators, this has not prevented it from successfully addressing a wide range of human rights issues.

Learning to Realize Education`s Promise - Part III

                      There is a world consensus that the governments, politicians, education systems` employees, parents and students must make an effort to upgrade the quality of education. The fourth industrial revolution is about to begin and we all should be prepared for the technological challenge. The law for the implementation of high school reform in Brazil last year was a good step toward the right direction. Now depend on education system of every state for its effective implementation. We all know that integral high school is difficult to implement in the short-term, because most of high school buildings have classes of middle school in the afternoon, but at least the flexibilization of subjects and the sixth class are perfectly possible to implement next year in all schools in every state. So, in October there will be elections, we must not forget to demand the correct  implementation of the high school reform from our candidates for governors` office. We should not wait more, we are wasting precious time. The third and final part of the book with the title above, published in 2018 at   http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018

                    The nature of work is changing. Within countries, jobs have been shifting across sectors, sometimes on a massive scale. Some shifts have been out of agriculture. In the South Korea, for example, the share of workers farm jobs fell from 80% in 1950 to less than 7% in 2009. Technology is central to these changes. 85% of the population worldwide now has access to electricity. Digital tech penetrates most corners of the world, with one mobile phone per person globally, with 4 in 10 persons connected to the internet. With rising computing power, combined with the connectivity and informational internet, digital tech are taking on more tasks. This is particularly true for routine tasks that are easy to automate. But other jobs, such as teachers, are not easy. The impact of tech on jobs varies dramatically across countries. In the short run, tech will change the demand for skills much more in countries that have the infrastructure to support automation. Individuals who enter the workforce with better tech skills see benefits. Around the world, the rise of ICT (information and communication technology) is increasing the demand for high-skilled graduates who can use that tech effectively. That rising demand translates into higher wages. Because this dynamic can widen inequality, ensuring that much of the population has access to these skills is essential. It is not enough to train learners to use computers: to navigate a rapidly changing world, they have to interact effectively with others, think creatively, and solve problems. All of those skills that help individuals succeed in a changing economies are built on the same foundations of literacy and numeracy. It may be tempting to divert resources from foundational skills into tech skills, which seems more exciting. but these are complements, not substitutes from them. Workers can search effectively for digital information or create digital content only if they have strong literacy skills. Higher-order cognitive skills involve consuming information using literacy and numeracy skills and combining it in new ways. Innovations in developing 21st-century skills are much needed, but these skills work best in conjunction with strong foundational abilities. Regional learning assessment show how inconsistent the association between spending and learning can be. These findings indicate that educational systems, and even schools within the same system, vary in their ability to translate increased spending into better learning outcomes. The gap is even wider at the tertiary level, where 86% of all public spending is captured by the richest households. Spending more can be an important first step to spending better, but again, increasing spending alone is not sufficient to improving learning. A 2006 education finance law in Argentina aimed at reversing declines in quality led to a near-doubling of education spending as a share of GDP between 2005 and 2013. The new resources were used to increase teacher hiring, raise teacher pay, and improve school infrastructure. Yet despite these, learning outcomes have improved only marginally and are still below 2003 levels. These experiences highlight the need to strengthen the links in the spending learning chain, if more spending is to lead to better learning outcomes. Reforms that improve learning rely on good strategies, both political and technical. This chapter draws lessons from various experiences to identify how opportunities for reform emerge and how politicians, parents, and students can seize them. It focuses on three entry points for addressing systemic political and technical challenges: 1) Improving information, 2) building coalitions and strengthening incentives, 3) Encouraging innovation and agility.    Information on school performance can make local education systems work better. In many countries, parents have limited information on the quality of their local schools. Political and technical complexities make it challenging to design and implement policies to improve learning. Some parts of the solution to low learning are straightforward. But improving what happens in the classroom is much harder. It involves changing student and teacher behavior, as well as supporting teachers in efforts to tailor their teaching to the needs of their students. Learning reforms need a more agile approach, with room for adaptation. To innovate effectively, education systems need strong competent leadership. Research highlights three attributes of effective leaders. First, they can clearly articulate problems and present clear visions for how to tackle them. Second, they mobilize human and financial resources around agreed-on goals and build coalitions to advocate for change and support implementation. And finally, effective leaders focus on identifying solutions that fit the institutional context. There is nothing inevitable about poor learning outcomes, whatever a country`s level of development. some countries have used well-documented reforms to escape low-learning traps, successfully reorienting their systems toward learning. Others have achieved learning outcomes that far exceed what their development level would predict, indicating that they escaped the trap in the past. Though there is no single recipe for achieving broad-based learning, these cases identify three entry points for getting under way. 1) Deploy information and metrics to shine a light on the hidden exclusion of low learning. 2) Build coalition that can better align incentives toward learning, especially the learning of the most disadvantaged. 3) Commit to innovation and agility, using feedback loops for continuous improvement.        None of this is easy, but history shows that achieving education`s promises will depend on taking up the challenge.

Learning to Realize Education's Promise - Part II

                 This summary is the second part of the same book from last week. The book was published at file:///D:/9781464810961.pdf

               Life outcomes are influenced by a child's development during the early years. Between the time of gestation and a child's sixth birthday, the brain matures faster than any other time of life. The environment children grow up in is a key determinant of their developmental trajectories toward outcomes later in life. Severe deprivation, along with stress, can impair healthy brain development (both structural and functional).  Why does the learning crisis persist? One big reason is that, for many, the learning crisis is invisible. To tackle the crisis, it is necessary, though not enough, to measure learning. This is evident in how politicians often talk about education only in terms of inputs, numbers of schools, numbers of teachers, teachers salaries, schools grants, but rarely in terms of actual learning. Lack of data on learning means that governments can ignore or obscure the poor quality of education, especially for disadvantaged groups. Identifying learning gaps in the classroom is the first step toward resolving them. In environments of low learning, there is often a gap between the level of students and the level at which classes are being taught. Learning metrics help highlight where support is most needed. For learning metrics to guide action effectively, they need to be used as a range of tools to serve different needs, from classroom practice to system management. The learning crisis will be truly salient politically only when vulnerable populations, who likely to suffer from learning gaps, are adequately covered by national assessment systems. Schools can not produce learning without prepared, present, motivated learners. Around the world. many children receive too little investment in nutrition and stimulation during their early years, and many lack access to early learning opportunities that can prepare them for first grade. Many young people leave formal education with weak skills, and thus they are unprepared for further education and training. This problem is especially pronounced in several developing countries. Improving skills early can alter workers' labor market trajectories. remedial education interventions can work, if they reach the right people using the right approach. Effective remedial interventions  meet people where they are, helping them transition into careers. Second-chance programs give youth who have dropped out of school a path to reengage in nontraditional learning environments, obtain secondary education and enter job training. In Australia and the U.S. early schools leavers are encouraged to enroll in programs that provide an equivalent to an upper secondary diploma. Across secondary-chance interventions, socioemotional skills play an important role in student success, with skills such as the ability to work toward long-term goals. The demand for second-chance programs is high and the evidence is promising, but keeping youth engaged in further education and training requires an integrated policy approach. After prepared and motivated learners, equipped and motivated teachers are the most fundamental ingredient of learning. Teachers are also the largest budget item, with their salaries accounting for over three-quarters of the education budget at the primary level in low- and middle-income countries. Yet many education systems put in classroom teachers who have little mastery of the subjects they are to teach. Meanwhile, education systems often lack effective mechanisms to mentor and motivate teachers. A key principle in leaving no learner behind is to help teachers teach to the level of their students. This technique has been successful in different formats across a range of scenarios, whether by using community teachers to provide remedial lessons or reorganizing classes by ability. Over time, education systems perform best when their teachers are respected, prepared, selected based on merit, and supported in their work. Countries should work toward these objectives. But in the short run, countries can take actions to strengthen the performance of teachers. They can provide a professional structure so that teachers feel motivated to apply what they know. Teachers are key to education. Making them more effective is an excellent investment. Learners and teachers have a more productive learning relationship when supported by learning materials and other inputs. Young people around the world face challenges in their transition from school to work. Many of them, especially youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, leave formal education prematurely, lacking the foundational skills needed to succeed on the job. As a result, many become unemployed or stuck in low-wage, unstable, informal sector jobs that offer them few opportunities to strengthen their skills. But the same can happen to secondary schools graduates, if they can not fulfill labor market needs. Workplace training deepens workers' skills and raises firms' productivity. Despite its potential benefits, young workers rarely receive workplace training. Successful short-term job training programs offer more than skills training. Programs that focus on developing multiple skills and that complement training with wraparound services such as career guidance, mentoring, and job search assistance have better odds of success. For example, comprehensive training schemes that emphasize technical skills, life skills, and interniships show positive effects in Kenya, Brazil, and Nepal. Career information is an important part of training programs, helping students identify opportunities, stay on course, and transition into a career. Career information interventions are usually grouped into career education program, which might include providing direction on coursework selection, and which is usually provided on an individual basis. Successful job training programs are typically based on strong ties with employers, with curriculums taught by teachers who have both industry experience and up-to-date pedagogical expertise. These programs also tend to reinforce skills, integrate calssroom instruction with workplace learning, and offer certifications that can be further built on. These features keep career paths open for graduates. though job training programs can yield positive outcomes, a key lessons is that trainees still need strong skills, cognitive and socioemotional, before moving into specialized streams. From 2000 to 2012, Brazil's learning outcomes on the PISA showed steady improvement, with gains in some subjects concentrated among poorer-performing students. Underlying this progress were reforms strengthened accountability for system performance, reduced funding inequalities across Brazil's diverse regions, and provided cash tranfers to the neediest families. Better information made it much easier to hold education agencies accountable for learning. The central government combined assessment results with student promotion rates to create an index of basic education quality IDEB for every school. Target based on this index are used by system administrators at every level, as well as parents, to hold schools and local administrators accountable for learning. Better information also raised incentives for politicians to improve performance. Public awareness of the index is high, with the biannual release of IDEB scores generating extensive media coverage and debate. This not only places education quality high on the political agenda, but also makes it an important factor when citizens choose their local representatives.