Richard Jolly

Global Development Goals: the United Nations experience

This paper reviews experience since governments first began, through the United Nations, setting time-bound quantitative goals to serve as guidelines and benchmarks for national and international action and development assistance. It argues that, contrary to much opinion, many of these goals have had a major influence on subsequent action and many have been largely or considerably achieved. It discusses approaches to implementation adopted in the United Nations Development Decades as well as by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Bretton Woods’ structural adjustment programmes. It underlines the need for a more nuanced and critical approach to what is meant by goal achievement, drawing on the experience of the Water Decade and the child survival revolution. It examines the ways in which global goals were costed, and draws lessons for the pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals. Appendix 1 summarizes the wide range of goals, targets and results adopted and the results achieved.

Employment, Basic Needs and Human Development: Elements for a New International Paradigm in Response to Crisis

Abstract This article reviews various strands of development policies such as employment and basic needs policies, structural adjustment policies, human rights and human development policies, as well as policies emanating from the so‐called Washington Consensus leading to current globalization practices. It argues that the present global crisis presents an important opportunity for making major changes in the objectives, directions and operations of the international system. Major efforts of financial and economic stimulus without such changes are short‐sighted and dangerous. A new approach, a shift of paradigm or framework, is needed that is more flexible, less dogmatic, and is multi‐disciplinary and clearly directed to long‐term international goals: sustainability, stability, equity and human rights. There is also a need for more coherence in objectives and strategies across the system of international organizations. The human development paradigm, now marking its 20th anniversary, has many of the qualities required to be the basis for such an international framework, adapted to the specifics of each country. Some moves toward this should be considered.

The Brain Drain and the Development Process

In spite of the publication of many factual and analytical studies of the brain drain in recent years, very little systematic attention has been paid to its links with the process of development, or perhaps rather with distortions in the process of development. In the past decade there have been two conspicuous distortions in many poor countries. One has been the growth of unemployment; the other, the persistence of (or even increase in) the concentration of income. These are linked with each other in mutual causation. They are also each aspects of growing imbalances in the world economy.

Statisticians of the World Unite: The Human Development Challenge Awaits

At critical stages in the past, statisticians have been the social pioneers in leading the way to measure wealth and poverty, in providing the tools for social policy, and in using their professional skills to provide a focus for social action. Fifty years ago, Richard Stone played such a pioneering role, working within the framework of the United Nations to lay the foundations of the Standard System of National Accounts (SNA) — which produced the guiding principles for the statistical efforts of most countries and independent nations in the post-war world. As the new millennium opens, four priorities call for pioneering efforts on a similar scale of inx8fuence: human rights, human development, poverty reduction, and human perspectives on the process of globalization. All need to be tackled within the frame of a globalizing world, making use of the new technologies available and responding to the challenge of human rights for all people in all countries. The role of statisticians is more inx8fuential in the modern world than many people realize, including those members of the general public who x8end numbers and statistics somewhat confusing. Dudley Seers put the issue very well:

Western Pessimism, Asian Optimism: Three Perspectives on Global Governance

As of 2007 the world economy has been caught in the worst crisis since the 1930s. Yet after two years of only partly successful efforts to mobilize and coordinate global action of financial control and stimulus, ending with the G-20 meeting of March 2009, responsibility for corrective economic initiatives has essentially been left to individual countries, supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU). Moreover, such support has been usually conditional on countries following financial policies of tough austerity. The United States took some actions to stimulate its economy, but by many accounts these were insufficient. Most of Europe has not even attempted stimulus measures and has been in a period of economic stagnation, with falling real incomes among the poorest parts of the population. Although some signs of “recovery” have been heralded in 2013 and 2014, growth has mostly been measured from a lower base. There is little evidence of broad-based economic recovery, let alone improvements in the situation of the poor or even of the middle-income groups.