Human Development In An Unequal World

Human Development in an Unequal World deals with the twenty-first-century challenges of unstable economic growth and sustainability and the re-emergence of deprivations and inequalities in multiple realms. It argues that the broader perspective of human development is most suited in reorienting development towards a more equitable, sustainable, and empowering world. The authors discuss the concept and philosophy of the capabilities and human development approach, its measurement, the links between economic growth and human development, and the role of social sector policy, gender equality, and securing sustainability. In doing so, they analyse frameworks, processes, institutions, and actors, and weave together concepts, methods, and evidence from numerous developing countries. The chapters offer an integrated understanding of the importance of capabilities, freedoms, and human flourishing in the process of development. This volume calls for an approach that focuses on the humanness of development and brings people back to the centre stage—a phenomenon that has receded to the background in the neoliberal era.

Environmental activists and academics alike are realizing that a sustainable society must be a just one. Environmental degradation is almost always linked to questions of human equality and quality of life. Throughout the world, those segments of the population that have the least political power and are the most marginalized are selectively victimized by environmental crises. This book argues that social and environmental justice within and between nations should be an integral part of the policies and agreements that promote sustainable development. The book addresses the links between environmental quality and human equality and between sustainability and environmental justice.

“No one has written with more penetrating skepticism about the history of human rights.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “Moyn breaks new ground in examining the relationship between human rights and economic fairness.” —George Soros The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. While state violations of political rights have garnered unprecedented attention in recent decades, a commitment to material equality has quietly disappeared. In its place, economic liberalization has emerged as the dominant force. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn considers how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of broader social and economic justice. Moyn places the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift and explores why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside exploding inequality. “Moyn asks whether human-rights theorists and advocates, in the quest to make the world better for all, have actually helped to make things worse... Sure to provoke a wider discussion.” —Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal “A sharpening interrogation of the liberal order and the institutions of global governance created by, and arguably for, Pax Americana... Consistently bracing.” —Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books “Moyn suggests that our current vocabularies of global justice—above all our belief in the emancipatory potential of human rights—need to be discarded if we are work to make our vastly unequal world more equal... [A] tour de force.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

This volume offers an introductory and accessible overview of key issues, debates, and perspectives in human development and human rights worldwide. The book explores topics such as human development, sustainability, justice, women's rights, international inequality patterns, aid, education, and ideas about change. Written and designed for use in a variety of educational contexts, 80:20: Development in an Unequal World makes extensive use of descriptive analyses, facts and figures, case studies, graphics, cartoons, photos, and onward referencing. The accompanying DVD provides extensive additional materials and information, including over 100 activities for use in classroom, community, and youth work settings. It also includes a range of video and stimulus materials with suggestions on their use, practical ideas for debating the issues, and an annotated guide to sources of additional information.

'Punchily written ... He leaves the reader with a sense of the gross injustice of a world where health outcomes are so unevenly distributed' Times Literary Supplement 'Splendid and necessary' Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm, New Statesman There are dramatic differences in health between countries and within countries. But this is not a simple matter of rich and poor. A poor man in Glasgow is rich compared to the average Indian, but the Glaswegian's life expectancy is 8 years shorter. The Indian is dying of infectious disease linked to his poverty; the Glaswegian of violent death, suicide, heart disease linked to a rich country's version of disadvantage. In all countries, people at relative social disadvantage suffer health disadvantage, dramatically so. Within countries, the higher the social status of individuals the better is their health. These health inequalities defy usual explanations. Conventional approaches to improving health have emphasised access to technical solutions – improved medical care, sanitation, and control of disease vectors; or behaviours – smoking, drinking – obesity, linked to diabetes, heart disease and cancer. These approaches only go so far. Creating the conditions for people to lead flourishing lives, and thus empowering individuals and communities, is key to reduction of health inequalities. In addition to the scale of material success, your position in the social hierarchy also directly affects your health, the higher you are on the social scale, the longer you will live and the better your health will be. As people change rank, so their health risk changes. What makes these health inequalities unjust is that evidence from round the world shows we know what to do to make them smaller. This new evidence is compelling. It has the potential to change radically the way we think about health, and indeed society.

A development education resource designed and written by an international group of authors and educationalists. It explores inequalities and injustices in an accessible and understandable fashion, with infographics, figures, graphs, photographs and cartoons. Now in its seventh edition, it is extensively used in universities, schools, adult and youth groups and NGOs. Tony Daly is co-ordinator of Irish development education and human rights organisation 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World and project manager for an NGO consortium website www.developmenteducation.ie. Previously, he led a pilot project advancing a human rights approach to community development with the British Institute for Human Rights, London and has been directly engaged in human rights education, development education, curriculum reform and research projects in Ireland, Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and Australia for over 15 years. He holds degrees from University College Dublin and University College London. Ciara Regan is education consultant to 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World. Since 2010 she has worked directly on the developmenteducation.ie website and has researched and published in the area of women and development in the context of HIV and AIDS in Zambia. She has worked on community art projects in Lusaka, Zambia and across Dublin on a wide range of issues such as public accountability, women’s rights, diversity and interculturalism. She holds degrees from NUI Galway and Birkbeck, University of London. Colm Regan initiated and, for many years edited 80:20 Development in an Unequal World – the reader is now widely used internationally, particularly in Africa. He is former co-ordinator of 80:20 in Ireland and has been professionally active for over 40 years in education for human rights, justice and human development – subjects he has written extensively on. In this context, he has worked in development education in Ireland, the UK, Australia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Brazil and Zambia. He holds post graduate degrees from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver and McGill University, Montreal and now lives, writes and teaches in Gozo, Malta.

This publication presents the abstracts that were accepted for presentation at the Unequal World Conference on September 28-29, 2020. The conference was organized by the Unequal World Research Center, IPSEC, and UN Liaison Office for IRLA and SDA.

Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.

This report revisits the theoretical concepts of inequalities including their measurements, analyzes their global trends, presents the policy makers' perception of inequalities in 15 countries and identifies various policy options in combating this major development challenge of our time. The report makes the basic point that in spite of the impressive progress humanity has made on many fronts over the decades, it still remains deeply divided. In that context, it is intended to help development actors, citizens, and policy makers contribute to global dialogues and initiate conversations in their own countries about the drivers and extent of inequalities, their impact, and the ways in which they can be curbed.

Why the rich are getting smarter while the poor are being left behind What explains the growing class divide between the well educated and everybody else? Noted author Brink Lindsey, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, argues that it's because economic expansion is creating an increasingly complex world in which only a minority with the right knowledge and skills—the right "human capital"—reap the majority of the economic rewards. The complexity of today's economy is not only making these lucky elites richer—it is also making them smarter. As the economy makes ever-greater demands on their minds, the successful are making ever-greater investments in education and other ways of increasing their human capital, expanding their cognitive skills and leading them to still higher levels of success. But unfortunately, even as the rich are securely riding this virtuous cycle, the poor are trapped in a vicious one, as a lack of human capital leads to family breakdown, unemployment, dysfunction, and further erosion of knowledge and skills. In this brief, clear, and forthright eBook original, Lindsey shows how economic growth is creating unprecedented levels of human capital—and suggests how the huge benefits of this development can be spread beyond those who are already enjoying its rewards.