United Nations Development Programme

Purpose -Gender empowerment measure (GEM) is an assessment about inequalities between men's and women's opportunities in a country. The concept of empowerment can be explored through three interrelated dimensions: agency, resources and achievements. Agency refers to processes by which choices and abilities are made, resources are the medium through which agency is exercised and achievements are the outcomes of agency. Specifically, this paper seeks to examine an indicator of GEM specifically in the achievements in politics based on data from selected developed and developing countries. Design/methodology/approach -A GEM indicator based on percentage of female parliamentarian taken from secondary sources such as United Nations Development Programme was used in the analysis of empowerment. The developed countries were represented by Norway, Australia and Japan; while the developing countries are Malaysia, the Philippines and China. Findings -There are variations in the achievement indicator in terms of percentage of female parliamentarians in the two groups of countries. Reasons for variations are explained. Research limitations/implications -Although the analysis was limited to the secondary data of the selected countries only, the results may have valuable implications to women's studies and human resource development practitioners particularly at institutional and policy-making levels of the respective countries. Originality/value -GEM is a concept which is lacking in terms of definition. Thus, the study could contribute to a fuller understanding of one of the GEM indicators, inevitably towards constructive solutions to improve the participation of women in public function.

Abstract
Postwar Canadian approaches to Asia were often in the non-governmental realm, drawing on the country’s missionary heritage. While diplomats in Ottawa worked for pro-Western states in the political realm, Canadian policies on economic development also aimed at building new states in the Canadian image. Canadians in government, transnational and non-governmental positions offered their own country as a model.
The international experts called together by the UN Technical Assistance Administration were central to Canadian postwar hopes and aspirations. The Administration, headed by Canadian civil servant Hugh Keenleyside, also included staff member George Cadbury, previously director of the Saskatchewan CCF government’s Economic Planning Board. It was individual Canadian technical advisers like these who offered the hands-on advice and played the crucial role in shaping policy taken by Southeast Asian states. These “modern missionaries” imagined themselves as part of a transnational community, one in which  Canada could play a leadership role by being an active member of multilateral organizations.
This paper examines the experience and role of postwar Canadian technical advisers in Southeast Asia, drawing on selected cases from the 1950s and 1960s. After considering the influence of the Canadian Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) on the idea of planning, it looks at F.R. Scott, the Montreal law professor and poet who served as the first UN Technical Assistance Resident Representative in Burma; Benjamin Higgins, the McGill
economist who served as first financial advisor for the Indonesian National Planning Bureau; and J.T. Cawley, the Saskatchewan deputy minister of natural resources who was chief petroleum advisor to the Indonesian government.

Résumé
L’action canadienne d’après-guerre en Asie s’est souvent déroulée en marge des interventions gouvernementales, faisant appel à la charité missionnaire. Sur le plan politique, Ottawa favorisait l’ouverture des États sur l’Occident, tandis que sur le plan économique, ses politiques visaient à encourager l’avènement de nouveaux États à l’image du Canada. Les Canadiens œuvrant dans les secteurs gouvernemental, transnational et non gouvernemental offraient alors leur propre pays en exemple.
Par leur travail, les conseillers techniques canadiens ont joué un rôle déterminant et apporté les conseils pratiques nécessaires pour orienter la destinée des États du sud-est asiatique. Ces « missionnaires modernes » se voyaient membres d’une collectivité transnationale au sein de laquelle le Canada pouvait occuper une place prééminente en s’engageant activement dans plusieurs organisations multilatérales. Aux côtés de l’ONU, le Canada  ettait ses espoirs d’après-guerre dans les experts internationaux réunis par l’Administration de l’assistance technique des Nations unies, sous la houlette du fonctionnaire canadien Hugh Keenleyside et d’une équipe dont était membre George Cadbury, ancien dirigeant du Conseil de planification économique du gouvernement CCF de la Saskatchewan.
Cet article examine l’expérience et le rôle des conseillers techniques canadiens d’après-guerre en Asie du sud-est en s’appuyant sur quelques dossiers des années 1950 et 1960. Envisageant d’abord l’influence de la Fédé ration du commonwealth coopératif (CCF) sur l’idée de planification, l’étude s’arrête ensuite sur F.R. Scott, professeur de droit et poète montréalais qui a été le premier représentant résident de l’assistance technique des Nations unies en Birmanie, sur Benjamin Higgins, économiste de McGill qui a été le premier
conseiller financier du Bureau national de planification de l’Indonésie, et sur J.T. Cawley, sous-ministre des ressources naturelles de la Saskatchewan, qui a été conseiller en chef des affaires pétrolières auprès du gouvernement indonésien.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS FRAMEWORK DOCUMENT

This is a Framework Document on evidence-based reintegration programme design, prepared by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) for the Inter-agency Working Group(IAWG) on Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR). The purpose of this Framework Document is to develop and introduce a Conceptual Framework for working with evidence in the design of reintegration programmes to support efforts towards greater local impact at the field level. This is critical to achieving strategic goals at both the national and the international levels.

The general task of a Conceptual Framework is to lay out the central concern to be addressed, provide a way of thinking about that concern (in the sense of a theoretical orientation), and identify ways of treating, engaging or addressing that concern (in the sense of both practical and methodological requirements). A Conceptual Framework sets up the foundations for a shared vocabulary and orientation to complex phenomena and provides direction and focus to practices developed in response.

Taking direction from both the Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards (IDDRS) and the IAWG’s strategic priority areas as established for 2012–2014,1 this framework is designed to support locally effective implementation of existing (and developing) policy on reintegration programming by directing attention to the operational needs of reintegration practitioners involved with programme design and strategic planning. As such, it is a highly pragmatic endeavour to advance the means by which policy is implemented.

Because these tasks inherently involve negotiating the complex space between local realities on the one hand, and the strategic objectives set out by high-level political actors on the other (such as national governments, existing peace treaties, United Nations Security Council resolutions, United Nations Development Assistance Frameworks, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers etc.) the framework developed here treats evidence-based programme design as both a diagnostic and a design process.

It is a diagnostic process in that it is used for identifying and learning about local reintegration contexts, and that learning can directly contribute to crafting locally effective programming activities that serve strategic goals, but which are not always known a priori or are identified by predetermined assessments. It is a design process in that it facilitates both adaptation and innovation in programming through the use of evidence as a way of addressing problem-solving tasks.

The primary audience for this document is practitioners of the IAWG’s member organizations. This is a diverse group of organizations and professionals. Therefore, the framework developed here is intended to provide broadly applicable and practical assistance relevant to tasks and requirements involved in programme design at various levels and junctures.
A secondary audience is the wider community of peace, security and development professionals concerned with how to better move knowledge to action in order to achieve greater success in their efforts.
A key objective in this Framework Document is to create an approach to evidence-based programme design that is responsive to the central challenge of negotiating field-level realities with strategic objectives (in the form of policies etc.) in a manner that is pragmatic, practical and productive.

In addressing this goal, the Framework Document focuses on two procedural steps central to evidence-based programme design, namely the identification of evidence, and the application of evidence to the design of activities that serve strategic goals in a local context.

The Philippine Commission on Women furthered campaign in promoting gender equality in the Philippines which has been a socio-cultural issue over the past years. The strict implementation of the law may have caused Filipino women to speak up and report abuses against them. The study determined the model for the trends, a sample forecast for the next 10 years, and relatedness of the reported crime of violence against women and the Gender Gap Index (GGI) in the Philippines. It retrieved data from the reports of the Philippines Statistics Authority and of the World Economic Forum from 2006 to 2017 through data mining. This
study employed descriptive methods via time trend analyses using Minitab R and Symbolic Regression using Eureqa Pro. Using time trend analysis, the reported cases of violence against women fits the Quadratic Trend Model (MAD=1968) while the quality of gender
equality in the Philippines fits the Linear Trend Model (MAD=0.00306). Both reports are forecasted to be increasing for the next 10 years. The symbolic regression analysis provided a forecasted relatedness of the reported cases of violence against women (R=0.9958, R2=0.9911, MAE=0.00067) to GGI. The reported cases of violence against women have a 73% positive association of increasing GGI. Such disclosure supports the necessity of pragmatically real social action from governmental and non-governmental organizations which prevent the occurrence of the crime of violence against women in the future and increase gender equality to promote social welfare as part of the sustainable development goals.

Published in TRANSFORMATION - PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL, Issue 92, 2017: Global policy changes make 2015 a potential turning point for how Southern Africa is shaped by political and economic ambitions embedded in the global development project. For a start, 2015 heralded the manufacture of a new global good with the Sustainable Development Goals supplanting the Millennium Development Goals as the global standard for development and aid. At the same time, the European Union has started consultations on a ‘post-Cotonou’ agreement: the Cotonou agreement is the primary legal and policy basis for EU aid in Southern Africa and will be renegotiated in 2015. Among Southern African countries, South Africa is both a donor and recipient of aid. In 2013, South Africa received R18 billion in aid, the second highest amount recorded in a decade, almost half of it from the EU (OECD 2013) . To muddy the space further, in 2015 South Africa committed to establishing the South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA) and capitalising the BRICS Bank (the New Bank for International Development), both of which are tantalising to South Africa’s foreign policy wonks searching for levers to shift developmental debates in Africa (Maasdorp 2015).

This paper will show how these combined factors create a playing field ripe for South African engagement in Southern Africa’s aid playing field but concludes that South Africa is ill positioned to take advantage due to a poor understanding of how global aid machinery works. The paper first examines shifts in global thinking on donors maintain and expand influence, focusing on what emerging aid themes and priorities could mean for how the global development project expands its reach in Southern Africa. Next, the paper turns to an analysis of South Africa’s approach and capacity as a donor, and its participation in and influence on the developmental debate in Southern Africa. The paper finds that donors are driven largely by self-interest in shaping aid interventions and that they employ strategic language and tactics when planning for and evaluating development programmes in order to achieve self-interested outcomes, and that South Africa’s forays into aid are not well-matched to its interests.