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.

Learning to Realize Education's Promise

             This post is a summary of the book published with the title above in 2018 at   https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/.../9781464810961.pdf

                Education and learning raise aspirations, set values, and ultimately enrich lives. South Korea is a good example of how education can play these important roles. After the Korean War, the population was largely illiterate and deeply impoverished. Korea understood that education was the best way to pull itself out of economic misery, so it focused on overhauling schools and committed itself to educating every child and educating them well. Today, not only has Korea achieved universal literacy, but its students also perform at the highest levels in international learning assessments. It's a high-income country  and a model of success development. Korea is a striking example, but we can see the salutary effects of education in many countries. Delivered well, education and the human capital it creates has many benefits for economies, and for societies as a whole. But providing education is not enough. What is important, and what generates a real return on investment, is learning and acquiring skills. This is what truly builds human capital. As this year's World Development Report documents, in many countries learning is not happening. Schooling without learning is a terrible waste of precious resources and of human potential. Worse, it is an injustice. This year's report provides a path to address this failure. The detailed analysis in this Report shows that these problems are driven not only by service delivery failings but also by deeper systemic problems. The human capital lost because of these shortcomings threatens development and jeopardizes the future of people and their societies. At the same time, rapid technological change raises the stakes: to compete in the economy of the future, workers need strong basic skills. Schooling is not the same as learning. In Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, when grade 3, students were asked to read a simple sentence, three-quarters did not understand what it said. In rural India, just under three-quarter of students in grade 3 could not solve a subtraction such as 46-17. Although the skills of Brazilians 15-year-olds have improved, at their current rate of improvement they won't reach the rich-country average score in math for 75 years. These countries are not unique in the challenges they face. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of children reach young adulthood without even the most basic life skills. This learning crisis is a moral crisis. When delivered well, education cures a host of societal ills. For individuals, it promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. For societies, it spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion.. The learning crisis amplifies inequality: it severely hobbles the disadvantaged youth who most need the boost that a good education can offer. Because of this slow progress, more than 60% of primary school children in developing countries still fail to achieve minimu proficiency in learning, according to one benchmark. The ultimate barrier to learning is no schooling at all, yet hundreds of millions of youth remain out of school. Almost all developing countries still have pockets of children from excluded social groups who do not attend school. Tackling the learning crisis and skills gaps requires dagnosing their causes, both their immediate causes at the school level and their deeper systematic drives. Given all the investment countries have made in education, shortfalls in learning are discouraging. But one reason for them is that learning has not always received the attention it should have. Acting effectively requires first understanding how schools are failing learners and how systems are failing schools. Successful educational systems combine both alignment and coherence. Alignment means that learning goal of the various components of the system. Coherence means that the components reinforce each other in achieving whatever goals the system has set for them. When systems achieve both, they are much more likely to promote student learning. Too much misalignment or incoherence leads to failure to achieve learning. Learning outcomes won't change unless education systems take learning seriously and use learning as a guide and metric. This idea can be summarized as "all for learning." As this section explains, a commitment to all for learning, and thus to learning for all implies three complementary strategies: 1) Assess learning - to make it a serious goal. Measure and track learning better; use the results to guide action.  2) Act on evidence - to make schools work for all learners. use evidence to guide innovation and practice.  3) Align actors - to make the whole system work for learning. Tackle the technical and political barriers to learning at scale. Research has expanded our understanding of how the brain works, and therefore how people learn. The brain is malleable throughout life, even if most brain development is completed by early adulthood. The fastest synaptic growth (thus malleability) occurs between until age 3, with growth then gradually slowing. A range of enriching experiences leads to more complex synapses, but cumulative exposure to risk factors (such as neglect or violence) either eliminates synapses associated with healthy brain development, or it consolidates those associated with unhealthy development. experiences affect the architecture of the brain in part because of the hormonal response they trigger. Hormones such as dopamine stimulate information absorption, whereas hormones such as cortisol can shut off learning. Illiteracy at the end of grade two has long-term consequences for two reasons. First, learning is cumulative. Education systems around the world expect students to acquire foundational skills such as reading by grades 1 or 2. Children who can not read by grade 3 fall behind and struggle to catch up. Teachers are the most important determinant of student learning. But high-quality teachers are in short supply. In Latin America, there is evidence that candidates entering the teaching profession are academically weaker than the pool of higher education students. 15 year-olds who identified themselves as interested in a teaching career had much lower PISA  scores than students interested in engineering in every country in the region. Many developingcountries suffer significant losses of instructional time. In Latin America, about 20% of potential instructional time is lost. there are many reasons for this loss of time, including poor training and other demands on teachers, and some teachers may perceive it as justified. This problem is concerning because the bulk of national education budgets goes to teacher salaries. Staff compensation accounts for 80% of public spending in some countries. If one in five school teachers is absent from school, developing countries are wasting considerable resources. The learning crisis is real, but too often education systems operate as if it is not. Many policy makers do not realize how low learning levels are. Others do not acknowledge them or simply equate low learning with low resources. Still, there are reasons for optimism. First, learning is increasingly in the spotlight. Second, learning metrics are generating irrefutable evidence of the learning crisis, thereby creating pressure for action. Third, promising new insights on how to tackle the crisis are becoming available. 

Strengthening Governance Globally: Forecasting the Next 50 Years

              This post is a summary of the book with the title above published in 2014 at   http://pardee.du.edu/sites/default/files/PPHP5ExecutiveSummary_0.pdf

             The book explores the future around the world of domestic governance, conceptualized as a two-way interaction between governments and society. It identifies three dimensions of governance - the provision of security (includingthe reduction of violent conflict), the building of capacity (including the control of corruption) and the broadening and deepening of inclusion - as fundamental to the moden state, and it examines how countries have made, are in the process of making, or have yet to undertake these transitions. We begin this summary with several key messages about longer-term governance futures: the important roles good governance can play in establishing an environment conducive to development and the implications of alternative governance scenarios for human development more broadly. The world has seen sustained movement toward improved governance globally, especially since the end of cold war in 1989. However, today's transitions are different than the broad historical patterns. Whereas contemporary high-income countries progressed sequentially through three historical governance transitions (first improved security, then greater capacity, and finally wider inclusion), today's developing countries are dealing with all three simultaneously. Improved governance facilitates delivery of essential services and improvements in the lives of citizens and enhances the stability and resilience of societies. Globally, there is great positive momentum in both human development and governance improvement. Today's positive trends in education, health, income, and governance help drive virtuous feedback loops that our Base Case scenario suggest are likely to function in coming decades. Good governance can facilitate human development by providing reliable market regulation, infrastructure, education, healthcare, and an institutional means of resolving conflict. Poor governance, on the other hand, can prove a barrier to development through insecurity, ineffectiveness, corruption, and exclusionary practices. The global evolution of governance over the last few hundred years has generally been toward greater sovereignty and domestic jurisdictional security; toward leaders paying closer attention to needs of their populaces and toward greater effectiveness in meeting those needs; and toward competitive, democratic elections and growing inclusion. In strengthening governance globally, we focus on these three transitions involving greater security, stronger capacity, and broader and deeper inclusion because they are fundamental to the development of the modern state. For capable governance, effective use of revenues by governments and a rule of law are also necessary. Over time, developing coutries as a whole have lagged behind high-income countries in terms of corruption reduction, but, high-income countries also still have room for improvement. The transition toward broader inclusion has historically come later than the transition to greater security and enhanced capacity. As states become more secure and effective, failure to also allow greater inclusion can undermine that earlier progress. Sociopolitical supports for inclusion include the free-flow of information, freedom of association, extensive participation in politics, and a cooperative culture of political behavior, each of which can feed into a movement toward democracy. Our forecast of governance is quite positive, with virtuous feedback loops dominating global development patterns over the next 50 years. Much of this positive outlook is due to the progress in key dimensions of human development, in particular, education and health. Rising enrollment in education, improving health and lengthening life-spans, climbing income levels, and falling fertility rates, along with other ongoing socioeconomic changes, all favor stronger governance and further development. Government effectiveness (the ability to use revenue well) is another important aspect of the capacity dimension of governance. The measures government effectiveness is primarily in terms of the level of corruption. The forecast shows most countries progressing toward less corruption as a result of increases in education and income that tend to lead to demands for accountability. The greatest reductions in corruption are likely to be seen in the developing countries of East and Central Asia, Latin America and Europe. The forecast of governance provide us with a reasonable window into the coevolution of advance in human development and governance. However, it is only one window among many possible ones. The Global Challenges scenario is built around a number of storm clouds that are appearing on the forecasting horizon. These storm clouds include: aging populations and the fiscal pressures associated with them; the peaking of oil and gas production and the need to develop alternative, sustainable energy; the rise to global leadership of emerging countries with less democratic histories than those of the countries now in leadership; growing pressure on fresh water supplies; and climate change. We find that the Global Challenges sceanrio does not stop global progress in human development, but it does slow it. Under Global Challenges, the world as a whole could lose more than 40% of the forecasted gains in HDI seen in our forecast. Most striking in our forecasts may be the narrowing on the security dimension, on which we forecast that upper-middle-income countries will converge with high-income countries and that other country categories will make much progress. Our forecasts also antecipate very substantial progress for upper-middle-income countries on the capacity dimension, even as high-income countries advance and raise the bar for all regions of the world. To analyze the four sub-Saharan African countries with the largest population (D.R.Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa). In 2010, these countries lagged far behind the BRIC countries in terms of capacity and especially security. By 2060, we anticipate considerable progress on the continent; with the exception of D.R.Congo, security for Africa's largest countries could be above the level of Brazil today. By 2060, using our Base Case forecast values of the index, no developing region other than Latin America is likely to have reached the average level of governance experienced by high-income countries in 2010.

The Benefits of Online Activism

                   This post is a summary of two articles. The first was published with the title above at  https://storify.com/Amberlin23/the-benefits-of-online-activism. The second article was published in January of 2017 at  http://www.unpan.org/Regions/AsiaPacific/PublicAdministrationNews/tabid/115/mctl/ArticleView/ModuleId/1467/articleId/53060

           In the past decade, the merits and faults of online activism have been debated among digital media scholars. Some of these scholars believe that net-activism is making it easier than ever to make your voice heard, and therefore increases democracy. Others claim that the internet decreases what they consider to be real-world activism. Essentially, some people believe that online activism will lead to a more active and complete democracy.  This essay will focus on the progressive activist site MoveOn.org to argue that the internet provides an opportunity for increased participation in the democratic process and complements rather than replaces traditional means of political activism.In his article "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not Be Tweeted," Malcolm Gladwell claims that, as a society, we have forgotten what it means to be an activist. Gladwell does not appear to buy the assertion that online activists are activists. Gladwell seems to think that social media activism rarely leads to high-risk activism and that only high-risk activism can lead to meaningful change. There are two powerful critiques of Gladwell's argument. Depending on the situation, internet activists can be high-risk activists. For example, in an authoritarian state, an internet activist can be involved in high-risk activism. Even in the U.S. internet activists can be considered high-risk activists. Take the case of Aaron Swartz, at just 26 years old Aaron was being made an example of by federal prosecutors after his conviction that information should be free led him to release scholarly articles from JSTOR's database. Facing up to 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines, Aaron hanged himself in his apartment in Brooklyn. Certainly online activism can be considered high-risk activism. The second critique to Gladwell's article is the fact that low-risk activism can in fact lead to meaningful change. In his argument, Gladwell calims that the members of the Facebook page for the Save Darfur Coalition have donated, on average, nine cents each. However with over a million members, they have raised over $115,000 which should be considered meaningful. Furthermore, after Aaron Swartz's death, people were empathetic to the cause of free information and online activists redoubled their efforts. Many people express high hope for future of online activism, but people are deeply divided about whether the online activism will bring about positive change. Most everyone can agree that online activism have effect on political future but disagree about what that change will entail. Palfrey and Gassey are clearly optimistic in their article "Activists." They believe that online activism can lead to a better represented citizenry, at least in the media. Despite some concerns, most scholars have settled on the theory that online activism will enhance democracy. Furthermore, the internet has mobilized average citizens into action. Even with people like Siegel expressing the dangers of increased online participation, hopes are running high about the democratizing of online activism. One common assumption, made by those both for and against online activism, is that the internet is a motivation machine, taking previously disengaged people and turning them into political activists. However, a study conducted by Jennifer Orser, Marc Hooghe, and Sophie Marien found that those people who were active online were likely to be active offline as well. For instance, someone who floods your Facebook wall with political comments and reminders to vote correctly is likely to volunteer, contribute to a campaign, or otherwise participate in the political process outside of the internet. Orser, Hooghe and Marien, in their published report of the study, conclude that the internet works more as a reinforcement tool than a mobilization technique. MoveOn.org recognized early that online activity comes along with offline activity and now this webpage works by harnessing the power of over 8 million progressives activits from across the country. Besides providing an opportunity for individuals to be more active in their government, the internet has also helped to level the playing field between activist groups and well-funded organizations. In the article "Activism, information subsidies, and the internet," author Erich Sommerfeldt claims that the internet have helped activist groups gain professionalism and garner more attention with needing the resources they needed in the past. Palfrey and Gasser's article "Activists" expresses a belief that the internet has given activist groups power enough to compete with resource-rich organizations. They even take it a step further, claiming that because of new highly interactive, easy-to-use applications, professional journalists are not the only people who can determine what the nation talks about. Rather, they say, our social agenda is increasingly determined by our own "observations, experiences and concerns." The fact that social policy can be changed by one person starting a petition is demonstrative of Palfrey and Gasser's claims. I think this essay has demonstrated that despite the naysayers, internet activism goes hand-in-hand with traditional activism, increases participatory democracy, and create real social and political change. Though there were always be those who will doubt and those who will pin their hopes too high, activists will continue on, using all the tools at our disposal in order to make changes in the world we live in.

             Online activism emerged in the early 1990s in the USA and later spread very quickly to all countries. It initially consisted of mass email and E-bulletin board campaigns. Later, organizations such as Avaaz, Change.org, MoveOn.org and other brought civic engagement to a new level and put online activism at the center of political and business decisions. Online activism via petitions and campaigns has become an effective way to raise awareness about important political, economic, cultural and social problems and challenges society is facing. Some governments and parliaments are also creating online petition sites. Thanks to them, citizens have a more direct way to influence policy-making. Wikileaks and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists can be considered different examples of online activism. By revealing thousands of classified documents, these sites are contributing to transparency. Moreover, online political activism is helping to tip the balance in contested electoral campaigns. While online activism is growing in popularity, the rejection this type of activism generates among people also increases. Those people think that online activism is simply encouraging people to passively click in support of a cause rather than take concrete action, which may have a greater impact in bringing about change. We have summarized some of the main advantages and limitations of internet activism. Pros of online activism : 1) Online activism is cost efficient. It requires low effort from the organizers and supporters of a cause. 2) Digital activism is democratizing activism. 3) Online activism is demonstrating the transformational impact of internet on society. There are many examples of online petitions that have worked. 4) As many viral campaigns can attest to, it is an extremely effective means to raise funds if social media campaigns become viral. 5) It generates significant debate and awareness amongst people. "clicktivists" who are simply sharing a link or a post or clicking to endorse a petition, often learn about problems through this process. Some of them will later on find out more about that issue or cause and may end up becoming "fully-fledged activists." The limitations of online activism are: 1) Clicktivists are usually passive activists, they usually get involved because of the hype on social media. 2) Online activism can become hypocritical way of getting peace of mind when we know that we are not doing anything substantial to solve the problems. 3) Although the potential to transform society is real, sometimes the impact of online activism is negative for society. For instance, terrorist groups and xenophobic parties are also using online activism to achieve their goals. 

Human Rights Day 2017

                        Two weeks ago, precisely on Sunday 10th of December all the world celebrated the day of human rights. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published with the title above at http://www.unesco.org/new/human-rights-day. The second was published at  https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/human-rights-day/. The third was published at  http://www.un.org/en/events/humanrightsday/sgmessage.shtml. The fourth was published at              https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/what-are-human-rights-

                In the wake of the Second World War, humanity, together, resolved to uphold human dignity everywhere and always. In this spirit, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations. The Universal Declaration embodies common human aspirations, rooted in different cultures, put clearly in its first words: "the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." Today, the Universal Declaration emters its 70th year of existence at a time of rising challenge. Hundreds of millions of women and men are destitute, deprived of basic livehoods and opportunities. Human rights must be the bedrock for all progress moving forward. This must start as early as possible, on the benches of schools. UNESCO is leading human rights education today and is launching its Global Education Monitoring Report on Youth and a campaign encouraging youth to hold governments accountable for ensuring everyone's right to education.

               Every often a thing comes to pass that is of such astounding importance that we must stand up and recognize it. We must place this thing on the pedestal it deserves, and ensure that policies put in place by it are adhered to, appreciated, and spread as far as the human voice will carry. Such is the sort of message sent by Human Rights Day. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was a shout across the world, stating loud and clear that no matter where we live, what we believe, or how we love, we are each individually deserving of the basic fundamentals of human needs. Every year Human Rights Day marks conferences around the world dedicated to ensuring that these ideals are pursued. The first and foremost way to celebrate Human Rights Day is to take some time to appreciate the effect that this resolution has had on your life. The next step is to get out and make a difference, whether it is simply making a donation or you own help those organizations or people fighting the good fight.

               This year's commemoration of Human Rights Day marks the beginning of a year-long celebration of seven decades since the adoption of one of the world's most far-reaching international agreements. The UDHR establishes the dignity of every human being and stipulates that every government has a core duty to enable all people to enjoy all their inalienable rights and freedoms. We all have a right to live free from all forms of discrimination. We have a right to education, health care, and economic opportunities. We have rights to privacy and justice. These rights are relevant to all of us, every day. Since the proclamation of the UDHR in 1948, human rights have been one of the three pillars of the UN, along with peace and development. While human rights abuses did not end when the UDHR was adopted, the UDHR has helped countless people to gain greater freedom and security. Despite these advances, the UDHR is being tested in all regions. We see rising hostility towards human rights and those who defend them by people who want to profit from exploitation and division. On this Human Rights Day, I, the UN Secretary-General want to acknowledge the brave human rights defenders, who work every day, sometimes in grave peril, to uphold human rights around the world. I urge people and leaders everywhere to stand up for all human rights, civil, political,  and social rights and for the values that underpin our hopes for a fairer, safer and better world for all.

               Human rights are like armour: they protect you; they are like rules, because they tell you how you can behave; and they are like judges, because you can appeal to them. They belong to everyone and they exist no matter what happens. They are like nature because they can be violated; and like the spirit because they can not be destroyed. They offer us respect, and they charge us to treat others with respect. Like goodness, truth and justice, we may sometimes disagree about their definition, but we recognise them when we see them. An acceptance of human rights means accepting that everyone is entitled to make certain claims: I have these rights, no matter what you say or do, because I am a human being, just like you.Human rights are inherent to all human beings as a birthright. Two of the key values that lie at the core of the idea of human rights are human dignity and equality. Human rights can be understood as defining those basic standards which are necessary for a life of dignity. Human rights receive support from every culture in the world, every civilised government and every major religion. It is recognised almost universally that state power can not be unlimited or arbitrary. We shall look at the legal mechanisms that exist for protecting the different areas of people's interests. In Europe, but also and the Americas, there is a court to deal with complaints about violations. One important role in exerting pressure on states is played by associations, NGOs, and other civic initiative groups. Realising rights means facing a range of obstacles. Firstly, some governments, political parties or candidates, social and economic players use the language of human rights without a commitment to human rights objectives. Secondly, governments, political parties or candidates may criticise human rights violations by others but fail to uphold human rights standards themselves. Thirdly, there are cases when human rights are restricted in the name of protecting the rights of others. Exerting your rights should not impinge on other's enjoyment of their rights. An active civil society and an independent judiciary is important in monitoring such cases.