scholarly journals Economic Sanctions and Academia: Overlooked Impact and Long-Term Consequences

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Bezuidenhout ◽  
Ola Zeinalabdin Abdelrahim Karrar ◽  
Javier Lezaun ◽  
Andy Nobes

There is an often-overlooked nexus between economic sanctions, academia, and sustainable development. The paper unpacks the implication of economic sanctions for the maintenance of robust academic systems capable of addressing national development goals. We show how sanctions place “invisible barriers” limiting access to necessary resources and curtailing their effective use. Furthermore, the impact of sanctions persists long after they are formally lifted. To develop our argument, we draw on a national survey of Sudanese academics focused on the impact of 20 years of economic sanctions on their work. It identifies key areas of academic research and education that have been impacted by international sanctions. It also discusses how the 2017 lifting of these sanctions is unlikely to overcome the long-term implications of the sanctions on academia. The paper concludes by problematising the current interpretation of jus post bellum, or moral behaviour after conflict. It suggests that the responsibility to make reparations in the form of support for academic systems applies to countries who impose economic sanctions.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Wazir ◽  
Yilma Melkamu Alazar ◽  
Bakhtior Kadirov

Investing in voluntary family planning services andcommodities is a cost-effective intervention for socioeconomicdevelopment. Every dollar spent on familyplanning results in reductions in child and maternaldeaths, returns in savings in other development areas, andenvironmental benefits. Investments in family planningyield demonstrated social and economic returns in allsectors - food, water, health, and economic development.Our analysis suggests that achieving universal access tocontraception could contribute in the long term toachieving some of the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs). We applied the Family Planning-SustainableDevelopment Goals (FP-SDGs) Model that quantifies thebenefits voluntary contraceptive use offers for realizing 13of the SDG indicators which are related to 7 out of the 17SDGs Goals. The model unravelling the multi-sectoralbenefits of contraceptive use and shows that familyplanning can accelerate progress across the 7 SDG.Further, it shows that family planning does not onlyempower women to choose the number, timing, andspacing of their pregnancies but also touches on manymultisectoral determinants vital to sustainabledevelopment. We show that in the case of Pakistan,without universal access to family planning andreproductive health, the impact and effectiveness of otherinterventions will be less, will cost more, and will takelonger to achieve. In the end, we put some keyrecommendations to prioritize family planning as one ofthe strategic national development investments.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danial Esmaeili Aliabadi ◽  
Katrina Chan

Abstract BackgroundAccording to sustainable development goals (SDGs), societies should have access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy. Deregulated electricity markets have been established to provide affordable electricity for end-users through advertising competition. Although these liberalized markets are expected to serve this purpose, they are far from perfect and are prone to threats, such as collusion. Tacit collusion is a condition, in which power generating companies (GenCos) disrupt the competition by exploiting their market power. MethodsIn this manuscript, a novel deep Q-network (DQN) model is developed, which GenCos can use to determine the bidding strategies to maximize average long-term payoffs using available information. In the presence of collusive equilibria, the results are compared with a conventional Q-learning model that solely relies on past outcomes. With that, this manuscript aims to investigate the impact of emerging DQN models on the establishment of collusive equilibrium in markets with repetitive interactions among players. Results and ConclusionsThe outcomes show that GenCos may be able to collude unintentionally while trying to ameliorate long-term profits. Collusive strategies can lead to exorbitant electric bills for end-users, which is one of the influential factors in energy poverty. Thus, policymakers and market designers should be vigilant regarding the combined effect of information disclosure and autonomous pricing, as new models exploit information more effectively.


1982 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 757-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nader Fergany

Labor migration among Arab countries is the most important phenomenon in the political economy of that region at present and will remain so for some time. The focus of this article is the impact of emigration on national development in labor sending countries experiencing wide-scale emigration, the main contention being that, due to the characteristics of contemporary labor movements among Arab countries, there obtains a contradiction between short term benefits and long term adverse effects. The article briefly defines development, then presents empirical evidence from the Yemen Arab Republic of the negative impact of labor emigration.


Subject The Mexican government's advances towards greater gender equality. Significance President Enrique Pena Nieto has been active in promoting gender equality at home and abroad, and his government has repeatedly voiced its commitment to the UN's Millennium Development Goals, particularly regarding female empowerment. The Pena Nieto administration included a gender dimension in its National Development Plan for the first time, and has allocated significant resources to supporting women. Efforts have focused not only on the federal level, but also at state level, as illustrated by the signing of a collaboration agreement in December 2015 between the government and the National Conference of Governors. Impacts Bridging the gender gap across all government levels will be an expensive and difficult task, with uneven success across the country. Any reductions in domestic violence rates will require long-term efforts to change attitudes from the bottom up. Quotas that encourage the employment of women, regardless of merit, may perpetuate politics' reputation for being corrupt and nepotistic.


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 612-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amiya Kumar Bagchi

The need for a new economy is great and the obstacles are many: growing inequalities within and between nations and regions, new complicity between corporations and non-democratic political regimes and failure of workers worldwide to make common cause. There are alternative models, indicating that a more egalitarian approach does not necessarily reduce living standards. Environmental degradation cannot be addressed by a technological fix: the threat to our long-term survival is pre-figured in the impact of climate change and corporate rapacity on the land and sea resources of the indigenous minorities who live as humanity has lived for most of its existence. A 10-point plan for a follow-up to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals is suggested, but it will work only if solidarity networks can be built across divides of ascribed race, religion and nominal income levels, to express the will of the people in place of the government representatives who are prepared to gamble the future of humanity for corporate profit and power.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Shackell ◽  
David M. Keith ◽  
Heike K. Lotze

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity was established in 1993. Canada is a signatory nation that has adopted, and exceeded, the UN Aichi biodiversity target to protect 10% of coastal and marine areas through marine protected areas or “other effective area-based conservation measures” (OECMs) by 2020. However, the science of OECMs as contributors to biodiversity conservation is relatively young and their definition and efficacy testing continue to evolve. Here, we examine whether areas closed to fishing on the Scotian Shelf in Atlantic Canada, where the groundfish community had collapsed in the early 1990s, have the potential to serve as OECMs for groundfish recovery. Using long-term research survey data, we show that three long-term area-based fishing fleet closures did not enhance per capita population growth rates of the majority of 24 common groundfish species. At a regional scale, 10 out of 24 species are currently at less than 50% of their pre-collapse (1979–1992) biomass, reflecting a sustained diminished productivity, even though fishing mortality has been drastically reduced through a moratorium in 1993. Additional measures are needed to protect severely depleted groundfish, especially when the causes of continued diminished productivity are still largely unresolved. The importance of OECMs as a risk-averse approach toward sustainability is globally accepted and they can be considered a tool toward the overarching UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-14). Our study provides further impetus toward articulating the criteria of OECMs and improving their design, monitoring, and testing, while placing OECMs within the broader context of sustainable ecosystem-based management.


2021 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 01028
Author(s):  
Irina Kirishchieva ◽  
Mikhail Skorev ◽  
Oksana Mishchenko ◽  
Tatiana Grafova

The economic security of the company is the state of protection of the vital interests of the enterprise from the impact of internal and external destabilizing factors and threats, the emerging management and collective enterprise through the effective use of its resources, as well as the implementation of measures of economic, legal, organizational, technical, technological and social nature. -psychic directed and stable functioning of the enterprise both in the current and in the long term. Digitalization is bringing changes to the country’s economy. The volume of services, the use of labor, investment in physical and human capital, technologies and their diffusion, the use of trade services, including financial, legal, managerial, informational and consulting, and is reflected in production efficiency, labor productivity and competitiveness, culture, lifestyle and system of values. The presented risks and threats to the security of an enterprise in a digital economy emphasize the need to improve the electronic security system. At the same time, the features of the process of ensuring electronic safety in the context of digital development lie in the development and use of tools for identifying and assessing risks, indicators and indicators of the level of economic security, providing subsystems, including information, technological, personnel, investment, regulatory and legal components.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-32
Author(s):  
Svetlana Drobyazko ◽  
Yurii Malakhovskyi ◽  
Ruslana Zhovnovach ◽  
Mohamed Mohamed

Introduction. Management of competencies of innovative workers in specific conditions of functioning of innovatively active enterprises as producing ecosystems is considered as the dominant direction of managing the process of production of new knowledge, localized within a specific organization, which can increase the consumer value of final consumption goods/services in the process of global value chains’ formation. Aim and tasks. The purpose of the publication is to summarize United Kingdom practices in the management of intellectual resources of innovatively active enterprises. Results. The purpose of the United Kingdom science and innovation policy is to develop the professional skills of the population, to organize world-class research and education, to apply knowledge and skills to develop a competitive economy. The established network of science and innovative policy management entities is in line with the open innovation demand model, which implies the establishment of effective cooperation between universities, business organizations, suppliers, consumers. The generalized model of organizational and economic mechanism of regulation of intellectual resources of innovatively active enterprises personnel as knowledge-intensive sociocentric networks is presented in the form of a structured system focused on the behavioral aspects of the activity of subjects of production of new knowledge of means of regulatory and indicative influence on the configuration of regulatory objects that are subordinated to the sub-system in the conditions of global competition. Conclusions. To fully meet the requirements of innovating the organizational and economic mechanism regulation of intellectual capital’ innovatively active enterprises corresponds to the incorporation into the toolkit of realization of the purpose and tasks of development of the means of forecasting the future state, structure, prospects of increasing the value of its elements. This trend of modernization provides an opportunity to increase intellectual capital through the introduction of Foresight procedures for analysing the impact on it of scientific and technological innovations, formulating and modernizing the mission of forecasting inclusive social capital, comprehensive specification of the regulatory sector, taking into account economic macro and mesoscenarios. At the same time, the proposed means increase the degree of scientific substantiation of the processes of regulation of enterprise development by implementing the analysis of alternative scenarios of intellectual capital growth of innovatively active ecosystems of microeconomic level, open the possibility of developing technological roadmaps for the implementation of targeted programs for long-term research, long-term research development of themes and programs for the implementation of applied social technologies at the request of stakeholders.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
TARIQULLAH KHAN ◽  
FATOU BADJIE

In this research, we present a framework for blended Islamic finance for impactful small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). The blend results from discussing the pertinent perspectives that underlie the motives philanthropy, private sector activities and public sector facilitation. The consensus of these three stakeholders on the impact criteria is an essential precondition for the blend to happen. Therefore, we first developed the consensus-based impact criteria for SMEs, namely, 4Zeros & SS (zero-waste, zero-emissions, zero-interest, zero-foreclosures and service to society). After that, we adopted a financial engineering approach to design products by blending the three motives. Financial contracts could be incentive compatible and effective if these three motivations are recognized and brought together. The purpose of our research is to offer such incentive-compatible structures that can mobilize funding for impactful SMEs, save cost as well as generate revenue for self-sustainability. In the contract design, the private sector provides finance, the philanthropist pays the costs of funds, the public sector facilitates, and the impactful SME gets subsidized financing. Since the blended nature of the contract provides a social subsidy to fund the cost element of the financing, the proposed structure creates a win–win result for the blending parties. While financial institutions expand into the SMEs sector for profitability, blended Islamic finance will attract additional resources towards enhancing development impact. Through the philanthropic component, SMEs, on the other hand, will access the source of social subsidy that will relieve the burden of the exorbitant commercial rates. The funding structure will reduce risk perception and spur growth. Consequently, this collaborative and innovative contract design will contribute to achieving multidimensional human development, as enshrined in the Maqasid al-Shariah, and the SDGs. Impactful businesses must integrate environmental, social and governance best practices as well as national development goals. Hence, the proposal offers several benefits and prospects of extended use for other consensus-based purposes such as low-cost housing, solar panelling, health, education, etc.


Author(s):  
Najat Maalla M’jid

Abstract More than 1 billion children are exposed to violence every year. The devastating immediate and long-term impact of violence on the mental health of children is well established. Despite commitments made by the international community to end violence against children and support their mental health, there has been a serious lack of investment and capacity to provide quality, rights-based, culturally appropriate mental health care globally. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified these challenges. This article outlines how the risk of children experiencing violence has increased and how the pandemic has weakened the capacity of child protection and mental health services to respond. The article argues for child protection, mental health and other core services to be prioritized during and after the pandemic. A failure to do so will undermine the international community’s ability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and to fulfil its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.


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