scholarly journals Content analysis of reported activities of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration Members during the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020

BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. e042409
Author(s):  
Sean Alan Flannigan ◽  
Meleckidzedeck Khayesi
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Road Safety ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
To Come

ObjectiveSeveral activities were planned for the Decade of Action (DOA) for Road Safety 2011–2020, covering key policies and interventions on road safety. Knowledge of the activities implemented by key actors is currently lacking in the literature. This study answers the question: what activities were implemented during the DOA by the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration (UNRSC) members?DesignThe study used content analysis techniques to extract and analyse information from five United Nations Secretary General’s reports, which summarise the activities reported by UNRSC members.SettingThe primary setting for this study are 116 countries in which activities supporting the DOA were conducted.Outcome measuresFrequency of themes and subthemes that emerged from reported activities are identified and cross-tabulated by year of report, country level of income, geographical region and organisation type.ResultsOver the entire DOA, establishment of institutions and lead agencies as well as the development of national strategies featured prominently under the theme of management. This theme was steadily reported across regions, country income level and organisation type. Workshops, training and major events regarding road safety increased in frequency of reporting throughout the decade as did developing and promoting the basic road and vehicle systems supportive of road safety. It is further noted that other key activities like infrastructure and behaviour change that are required for a balanced approach to road safety policy were also attended to by various organisations. Activities related to road safety enforcement and post-crash response as well as activities in low-income countries appeared to be less reported.ConclusionThe wide range of activities reported by UNRSC members over the entire DOA need to be sustained and evaluated in years to come if they are to have a significant impact on reducing road traffic deaths and injuries at national and international levels.

The Developing Relationship between Superior and Subordinate Political Bodies at the International Level: A Note on the Experience of the United Nations and the Organization of American States

1964 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 21-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.St.J. MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
American States ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
United Nations General Assembly ◽  
Local Solutions ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
To Come ◽  
Regional Problems

Speaking in the general debate at the Eighteenth Session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 19, 1963, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson made the following observation: The United Nations will inevitably remain the central world forum for international discussion and recommendation on a wide range of subjects. We already have on the other hand, regional groupings of states — in Europe, Africa and Latin America. Other groupings conceivably may be formed. The time may have to come to correlate the activities of these regional groupings more closely with those of the United Nations. It is possible to envisage a stage in the evolution of the UN when regional assemblies may be used with regional problems in search of local solutions or in the preparation for broader treatment at the United Nations. The Charter acknowledges the part to be played by regional arrangements or agencies in the conduct of international relations. In the economic and social field there is a growing tendency to delegate responsibility and authority to the UN Regional Commissions. Why not adopt a similar approach to some, though obviously not all, of the political questions which may face us in the United Nations?

scholarly journals Looking back on 10 years of global road safety

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 327-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret M Peden ◽  
Prasanthi Puvanachandra
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Road Safety ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Sustainable Transportation ◽  
World Health ◽  
Road Traffic Crashes ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
On The Road

Abstract Every year more than 1.35 million people lose their lives on the road and tens of millions more are injured, some permanently. Since the early 2000s there has been renewed focus on the issue, with the United Nations, World Health Organization and the World Bank placing the issue higher on their agendas. Guided by the United Nations General Assembly, World Health Assembly resolutions and ministerial-level conferences on the global road safety crisis, multisectoral partnerships have synthesised the evidence, advocated for action (there are two Sustainable Development Goal targets with an ambitious goal of reducing deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes by 50%), raised public awareness, generated funding, piloted interventions and monitored progress. And yet the total number of deaths has plateaued despite some sporadic country-level successes. More needs to be done—more people need to be trained in countries to deliver, monitor and evaluate a systems approach to road safety, more solid evidence of what works in low-resource settings is needed (including sustainable transportation options) and there needs to be a greater focus on optimising care and support for those injured in crashes—if we are to begin to see numbers come down in the next decade.

Mandate or Donors? Explaining the UNHCR’s Country-Level Expenditures from 1967 to 2016

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172097433
Author(s):  
Svanhildur Thorvaldsdottir ◽  
Ronny Patz ◽  
Klaus H Goetz
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Voluntary Contributions ◽  
United Nations High Commissioner ◽  
Country Level ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Donor Influence ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Major Donors ◽  
Expenditure Allocation

In recent decades, many international organizations have become almost entirely funded by voluntary contributions. Much existing literature suggests that major donors use their funding to refocus international organizations’ attention away from their core mandate and toward serving donors’ geostrategic interests. We investigate this claim in the context of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), examining whether donor influence negatively impacts mandate delivery and leads the organization to direct expenditures more toward recipient countries that are politically, economically, or geographically salient to major donors. Analyzing a new dataset of UNHCR finances (1967–2016), we find that UNHCR served its global mandate with considerable consistency. Applying flexible measures of collective donor influence, so-called “influence-weighted interest scores,” our findings suggest that donor influence matters for the expenditure allocation of the agency, but that mandate-undermining effects of such influence are limited and most pronounced during salient refugee situations within Europe.

scholarly journals Immigration and economic mobility

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria F. Hoen ◽  
Simen Markussen ◽  
Knut Røed
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Labor Market Outcomes ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Class Background ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Relative Prime

AbstractWe examine how immigration affects natives’ relative prime-age labor market outcomes by economic class background, with class background established on the basis of parents’ earnings rank. Exploiting alternative sources of variation in immigration patterns across time and space, we find that immigration from low-income countries reduces intergenerational mobility and thus steepens the social gradient in natives’ labor market outcomes, whereas immigration from high-income countries levels it. These findings are robust with respect to a wide range of identifying assumptions. The analysis is based on high-quality population-wide administrative data from Norway, which is one of the rich-world countries with the most rapid rise in the immigrant population share over the past two decades. Our findings suggest that immigration can explain a considerable part of the observed relative decline in economic performance among natives with a lower-class background.

The Politics of Proximity: The Italian Response to the Albanian Crisis

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Perlmutter
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Popular Opinion ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Humanitarian Mission ◽  
Neighboring Country ◽  
The Future ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
To Come ◽  
First Time

This article focuses on the apparent disjunction between the Italian reluctance to allow Albanians to come as refugees and Italy's enthusiastic leadership of the United Nations military-humanitarian mission. It explains the Italian response both in terms of Italian popular opinion regarding Albanians and Italy's concern for the impression on Europe that its politics would make. Italy's leadership of the mission represents the first time a medium-sized power has assisted a neighboring country with whom it has had deep historical connections. The conclusion argues that such proximate interventions are likely to increase in the future, and spells out the implications of the Italian case.

Quantitative Content Analysis of the United Nations Seabed Debate: Methodology and a Continental Shelf Case Study

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. L. Friedheim ◽  
J. B. Kadane
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Continental Shelf ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
Outer Edge ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The United Nations

International arrangements for the uses of the ocean have been the subject of long debate within the United Nations since a speech made by Ambassador Arvid Pardo of Malta before the General Assembly in 1967. Issues in question include the method of delimiting the outer edge of the legal continental shelf; the spectrum of ocean arms control possibilities; proposals to create a declaration of principles governing the exploration for, and the exploitation of, seabed mineral resources with the promise that exploitation take place only if it “benefits mankind as a whole,” especially the developing states; and consideration of schemes to create international machinery to regulate, license, or own the resources of the seabed and subsoil. The discussions and debates began in the First (Political and Security) Committee of the 22nd General Assembly and proceeded through an ad hoc committee to the 23rd and 24th assembly plenary sessions. The creation of a permanent committee on the seabed as a part of the General Assembly's machinery attests to the importance members of the United Nations attribute to ocean problems. Having established the committee, they will be faced soon with the necessity of reaching decisions. The 24th General Assembly, for example, passed a resolution requesting the Secretary-General to ascertain members' attitudes on the convening of a new international conference to deal with a wide range of law of the sea problems.

scholarly journals What drives political commitment for nutrition? A review and framework synthesis to inform the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. e000485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Baker ◽  
Corinna Hawkes ◽  
Kate Wingrove ◽  
Alessandro Rhyl Demaio ◽  
Justin Parkhurst ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Synthesis Method ◽  
Income Country ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Strategic Commitment ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Actor Networks

IntroductionGenerating country-level political commitment will be critical to driving forward action throughout the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016–2025). In this review of the empirical nutrition policy literature, we ask: what factors generate, sustain and constrain political commitment for nutrition, how and under what circumstances? Our aim is to inform strategic ‘commitment-building’ actions.MethodWe adopted a framework synthesis method and realist review protocol. An initial framework was derived from relevant theory and then populated with empirical evidence to test and modify it. Five steps were undertaken: initial theoretical framework development; search for relevant empirical literature; study selection and quality appraisal; data extraction, analysis and synthesis and framework modification.Results75 studies were included. We identified 18 factors that drive commitment, organised into five categories: actors; institutions; political and societal contexts; knowledge, evidence and framing; and, capacities and resources. Irrespective of country-context, effective nutrition actor networks, strong leadership, civil society mobilisation, supportive political administrations, societal change and focusing events, cohesive and resonant framing, and robust data systems and available evidence were commitment drivers. Low-income and middle-income country studies also frequently reported international actors, empowered institutions, vertical coordination and capacities and resources. In upper-middle-income and high-income country studies, private sector interference frequently undermined commitment.ConclusionPolitical commitment is not something that simply exists or emerges accidentally; it can be created and strengthened over time through strategic action. Successfully generating commitment will likely require a core set of actions with some context-dependent adaptations. Ultimately, it will necessitate strategic actions by cohesive, resourced and strongly led nutrition actor networks that are responsive to the multifactorial, multilevel and dynamic political systems in which they operate and attempt to influence. Accelerating the formation and effectiveness of such networks over the Nutrition Decade should be a core task for all actors involved.

scholarly journals Using Facebook Ad Data to Track the Global Digital Gender Gap

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masoomali Fatehkia ◽  
Ridhi Kashyap ◽  
Ingmar Weber
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Gender Gaps ◽  
Mobile Access ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Official Data

Gender equality in access to the internet and mobile phones has become increasingly recognised as a development goal. Monitoring progress towards this goal however is challenging due to the limited availability of gender-disaggregated data, particularly in low-income countries. In this data sparse context, we examine the potential of a source of digital trace `big data' -- Facebook's advertisement audience estimates -- that provides aggregate data on Facebook users by demographic characteristics covering the platform's over 2 billion users to measure and `nowcast' digital gender gaps. We generate a unique country-level dataset combining `online' indicators of Facebook users by gender, age and device type, `offline' indicators related to a country's overall development and gender gaps, and official data on gender gaps in internet and mobile access where available. Using this dataset, we predict internet and mobile phone gender gaps from official data using online indicators, as well as online and offline indicators. We find that the online Facebook gender gap indicators are highly correlated with official statistics on internet and mobile phone gender gaps. For internet gender gaps, models using Facebook data do better than those using offline indicators alone. Models combining online and offline variables however have the highest predictive power. Our approach demonstrates the feasibility of using Facebook data for real-time tracking of digital gender gaps. It enables us to improve geographical coverage for an important development indicator, with the biggest gains made for low-income countries for which existing data are most limited.

scholarly journals Administration of Micro-credit by National Bank

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-24
Author(s):  
K. Prabakkar Rajkumar
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Basic Aspect ◽  
The Core ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Self Worth ◽  
National Bank ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Micro Credit

The United Nations has designated the year 2005 as the "International year of Micro-Credit". The Micro Finance (MF) initiatives of NABARD have evolved as a sustainable social movement over a decade by now. The design and content of these innovations have remained dynamic in tandem with the changing needs of the micro finance sector in the Country. These initiatives have attracted the attention of a wide range of stakeholders. Large number of formal and informal agencies has joined the NABARD in this unique process of soda-economic engineering. The relevance of the micro finance programme was greatly enhanced the interest of all participants through the core strategies of SHG — bank linkage, which was built around a simple but basic aspect of human nature — the feeling of self-worth.

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