Human Development and Capability Association

2013 HDCA Annual International Conference - "Human Development: Vulnerability, Inclusion and Wellbeing
9-12 September 2013, Managua Nicaragua
More information about the conference can be found at www.hdca2013.org
Conference registration now open click here to register

Conference Papers

The following is a list of conference papers from HDCA conferences
To submit a paper for the upcoming conference, please click the Submit Document button.


Capability, Functioning and Reproductive Choice: an analysis of Reproductive Freedom in Jordan [Members Only]
Majumder, Amlan Dinhata College West Bengal IN		The objective of the paper is to present an analysis on fertility preferences from the perspective of reproductive freedom within the framework of Capability Approach. We have recognised the changes in the world-view on reproductive life recognising freedom of choice in matters of reproduction and contrasted capabilities of a mother on her perception on ideal number of children with those of functioning achievements or actual reproductive performance to define reproductive freedom and adopted a matrix representation of the problem exploring quadruplicate possibilities. We have tried to understand implications of those and realised that different sections of mothers in Jordan with different background characteristics are exposed to different conditions and warrant different set of policies or attention. The study utilises data from Demographic Health Survey (DHS).



Research Proposal - Establishing a right to the land of slum dwellers of Dhaka city. [Members Only]
Bashir, Abu		Bangladesh is an Asian developing country. Dhaka is the capital city of Bangladesh and trying to touch mega city. The most of the poor people of this city are living in slum in the vacant lands of the government without proper legal documents and they are always being threatened for eviction from their living lands. These poor people come to this city in river erosion, poverty in rural area, etc. At present about 2.5 million people of Dhaka city live in slums (out of 10.3 million people). Due to poverty of the slum dwellers, they are unable to maintain standard of living. They are living in urban but deprived from water, gas, electricity, sanitation facility, health, education service, employment etc, But establishing a right to their living lands can solve or mitigate minimum half of their problems. In slum migration and floating are a common scenario. Establishing slum dwellers’ rights to the land can reduce crime in slum as there will be a record of ownership/ leasee. It will be helpful for Government and other law implementing agency to keep criminal records of any person in the city. This research will also try to reduce poverty in developing urban city of Dhaka and also can be a model of slum dwellers rights to the land. Right to the land may be established by two ways, i.e. (i) permanent settlement, & (ii) temporary settlement. Transferring ownership may be a form of permanent settlement. Ownership transfer is not an easy process and it will take time to completion the whole process. Moreover, giving permanent right to the land may occur Dhaka city a big slum in near future. However, giving lease for a certain tenure must be a good solution for the slum dwellers so that they can overcome their poverty and they will be no burden in future for a nation. Most of our human rights organization, NGO’s, Donor, international organization are crying for resettlement policy before demolishing slum in urban areas. But this research will find a model for establishing their rights to the land without any question of eviction.



The Evaluation of the Turkish Government Policy Paradigm on the Internally Displaced Kurdish Minorities in Turkey [Members Only]
Ajiki, Natsumi University of Maryland School



Wellbeing of adolescents living in rural areas in Uruguay [Members Only]
Alves, Guillermo Zerpa, Mariana Instituto de Economía – Universidad de la República UY		There is partial evidence that suggests that adolescents living in rural areas in Uruguay enjoy fewer opportunities than those living in urban areas. In this paper we aim to provide a wellbeing comparison of adolescents living in rural and urban areas in Uruguay. The analytical framework is based on the Capability Approach developed by Sen (1992) and Nussbaum (2001). We follow the methodological recommendations proposed by Robeyns (2003, 2005) for the selection of indicators and we build a multidimensional poverty index following the methodology proposed by Alkire & Foster (2007). In sharp contrast with the conclusions from the country’s official income-based poverty measure, which acknowledges lower poverty levels in rural areas, our results show that youngsters living in rural areas live in much worse conditions than urban ones.



Conditional Cash Transfers, Empowerment and Knowledge of Rights. Evidence from the Uruguayan PANES [Members Only]
Amarante, Verónica Vigorito, Andrea Instituto de Economía Universidad de la Republica UY		The aim of this paper is to understand to which extent conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) can contribute to empowerment and knowledge of civil, political and labor rights of their beneficiary populations. By discussing this issue we will able to contribute to the debate on which policy actions are consistent with the capability approach. We study the impact of PANES (Plan Nacional a la Emergencia Social), a temporary package of interventions that included a conditional cash transfer program implemented in Uruguay in 2005-2007, on empowerment and knowledge of rights among its beneficiaries. We carry out an impact evaluation based on quasi experimental methods. Fostering social networks and social participation and increasing awareness of a broad set of civil, labor and political rights were explicit goals of this intervention and specific actions were carried out in order to achieve these goals. As in most CCTs, PANES involved conditionalities such as child school assistance and health checkups as well as participation in social activities (Rutas de Salida) and a workfare program (Trabajo por Uruguay). These activities could potentially have exerted an effect on outcomes such as knowledge of rights and empowerment. The main findings of this paper show that trust, participation and access to networks were unchanged. The only effect that was found in relation to social refers to trust in the President and on MIDES among beneficiaries.



The Role of Civil Society in Actualizing Political Participation: (The Egyptian Case) [Members Only]
Amin, Nivien Zakaria The University of Jordan Amman JO		The aim of the present paper is to raise a central question concerning to what extent can Egyptian society be attributed as a civil society. This question will lead us to discuss the aspects of civil society and the main criteria that must be ascribed to any particular civic society. Having set that claim, this study is mainly concerned with political participation and its interrelated aspects. Therefore, it will be investigated the roles of Egyptian civil society associations in achieving political participation. This inquiry will consistently lead us to focus on some aspects of civic society associations such as NGOs, Press syndicates, and political parties particularly El Tagmu. This inquiry will lead us to a conclusion whether political participation, as practiced in Egyptian society, is real and genuine one or just fake and ingenuine and whether or not Egyptian society can be submitted currently under the real criteria of civil society or it needs more reforms and improvements in the field of civic rights needed to be achieved.



1 The Relationship between Development, Human Rights and International Trade in the Application of the World Trade Organization Enabling Clause [Members Only]
Anaya Vera, Esther



Decomposing changes in multidimensional poverty in 10 countries. [Members Only]
Apablaza, Mauricio Pablo Ocampo, Juan Yalonetzky, Gaston		Among the burgeoning literature on multidimensional poverty indices, the Alkire- Foster (AF) measure stands out for its resilience to identify the multidimensionally poor with cut-o¤ criteria that cover the spectrum from the union approach to the intersec- tion approach. The intuitive and easy applicability of the identi?cation and aggrega- tion methods used by the index are re?ected in ongoing adoption of the AF measure to di¤erent applications including topics related and unrelated to poverty measurement. This paper shows intuitive ways to monitor changes in multidimensional poverty across time using the AF measure for cross-sectional data. The empirical applications track changes in poverty for ten developing countries using DHS datasets. We ?nd that most countries experienced signi?cant reductions in multidimensional poverty. How- ever the relative contributions of reductions in the number of multidimensionally poor people vis-a-vis reduction in the average number of deprivations varies substantially by country.



Application of the capability approach to poverty in Nigeria: What can we learn from the missing dimensions of poverty? [Members Only]
John E., Ataguba William M., Fonta Hyacinth E., Ichoku		This paper compares the assessment of poverty/deprivation using various conceptions – the traditional money-metric measure, and different forms of multidimensional constructs. It also explores factors that predict deprivation and are associated with multiple counts of deprivation. The data comes from a survey of households in Nsukka. The counting and FGT methodologies were used in addition to probit and count models. Between 70% and 78% of the study population is poor. Poverty decomposition shows higher headcounts among rural population, individuals with little or no education and larger household sizes. Also, poor housing characteristics, education, employment, and health are associated with poverty. Recommendations include the use of an integrated approach understanding the inter-linkages in the factors associated with poverty.



Spatial Patterns and Geographic Determinants of Welfare and Poverty in Tunisia [Members Only]
Ayadi, Mohamed Amara, Mohamed		The aim of this paper is to consider the neighbourhood e®ects and the heterogeneity of households' behaviours in more disaggregated geographic units of Tunisia using speci¯c tools of spatial and geographical analysis. First, we conduct an Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA), based on a Geographical Information System (GIS) to visualise the local spatial structure of welfare. Second, to deal with both spatial autocorrelations and unobserved spatial heterogeneity of households' behaviours, we use a spatial autoregressive model (SAR) and a Geographically Weighted Re- gression (GWR) model respectively. Spatial and non-spatial models are compared according to their predictive performances. Results of this case study con¯rm that SAR and GWR spatial models are preferred to the traditional non-spatial regression model, and give a better approximation of the Tunisian poverty map.



Operationalising the Capability Approach for Child and Youth Care: Results of an International Research Project [Members Only]
Babic, Bernhard Graf, Gunter Germes Castro, Oscar		Operationalising the Capability Approach (CA) for alternative child and youth care is the task of the international research project “Approaching Capabilities with Children in Care”. It was carried out by SOS Children’s Villages International and the International Research Centre Salzburg (IFZ). The CA was in this context understood as “a broad normative framework for the evaluation of individual well-being and social arrangements, the design of policies and proposals about social change in society” (Robeyns 2003, 5). As such it needs careful empirical adaption before it can be applied to a specific field (see Babic, Germes Castro, Graf 2009; Babic forthcoming). This is according to Schokkaert last but not least necessary because “the translation of (...) abstract capabilities in implementable terms will depend on the specific social, cultural and economic context” (2008, 16). As a consequence, we conducted our own, mainly qualitative field studies to take all these aspects adequately into account instead of limiting ourselves to applying already existing lists of capabilities. In this context we were additionally following Sen (1999; 2004), and Alkire (2002), who suggest to involve those who are primarily affected by certain programmes in the definition of valuable capabilities that should be realised by according actions. Therefore we asked within qualitative interviews and focus groups children, youths, their caregivers, their parents (if available) and other relevant adult persons (e.g. school teachers) what kind of life should the young people placed in different forms of alternative care (provided by SOS Children’s Villages as well as by other organisations) be able to lead later on. These investigations were conducted in cooperation with our national associations as well as with local external scientists and accompanied by national advisory boards on four different locations in Nicaragua and Namibia. The field studies, which started in October 2009, were completed in February and March 2010. Although the analysis of the data is still work in progress, at first glance the results are very promising. Amongst others they confirm impressively that children can be involved successfully into the definition of valuable capabilities and that they are not generally “not mature enough to make decisions by themselves” as Saito (2003) assumes. Therefore we are not only able to report about the capabilities valued by the respondents but also about relevant findings concerning the operationalisation of the CA for alternative child and youth care.



Objective and Subjective Well-Being: evidence from rural Peru [Members Only]
Bellani, Luna De Los Rios, Carlos Instituto de Estudios Peruanos PE		In this paper we study the relationship between objectively measured multidimensional well-being and the individual's subjective perception of it. Subjective well-being has increasingly become a part of economic analysis. However, to the best of our knowl- edge, the links between objective deprivation and subjective perception of it have not been fully explored. In particular the present contribution aims at investigating em- pirically individual's multidimensional well-being in three domains (income, education and health) using a unique database. We use data from a survey recently conducted in rural Piura, a northern coastal region in Peru. In this survey, we could collect data on the variables of interest and also ask direct questions on the individuals' subjective perception of their economic condition.



Weights in Multidimensional Indices of Deprivation: Should Reference Groups Matter? [Members Only]
Bellani, Luna		There has recently been increasing agreement on the use of a multidimensional ap- proach to deprivation. The implementation of such an approach poses a number of conceptual and empirical questions; the choice of weights is among the most crucial. This paper builds on this literature by characterizing a deprivation index that weighs dierent dimensions according to their perceived importance by members of alterna- tive reference groups. This method is applied to European data. In the empirical section, we demonstrate that preferences over dimensions are dierentiated by social group, and taking this into consideration consistently increases on average the absolute value of the index, but not to the same extent among dierent group specications.



Well-being of Workers: Bodily health, Mental well-being and labour as Capabilities [Members Only]
Bizzotto, Giulia Dipartimento di Economia “S. Cognetti de Martiis”		This paper is focused on workers’ well-being and on the role of labour as dimension of individual well-being. The original contribution consists of defending the life-domain labour as capability in the meaning of Sen (1985; 1992; 1997) following Arendt’s (1958) reasoning on active life. The empirical application is inspired to the empirical works of Krishnakumar (2007), Di Tommaso (2007), Krishnakumar and Ballon (2008) and Di Tommaso et al. (2009) as interesting and innovative researches which allows modelling individual well-being in a capabilities perspective. This paper proposes a Structural Equation Model representing three of the relevant capabilities of workers. They are the capability bodily health, the capability mental well-being and the capability labour. The model allows capabilities being interdependent and in particular it focuses on the impact of labour on the other two dimensions of well-being. The results of the model confirm the interdependency of the different dimensions of well-being: deprivation in a capability leads to deprivation in the others. The capability labour turns out to be significantly related to the others. Non-standard employment forms result in depriving not only the capability of labour but also the capabilities bodily health and mental well-being because of the interaction among them. The only exception is the term time employment contract, which is an employment form that allows workers to match their working time with school timing of their children.



Towards measuring urban capabilities of children [Members Only]
Ble?i?, Ivan Cecchini, Arnaldo Talu, Valentina Laboratory of Analysis and Models for Planning Department of Architecture Design and Planning University of Sassari IT		In this paper we present the results of our ongoing effort to apply a capability approach (CA) for measuring urban quality of life in developed countries. Specifically, it is an attempt to apply a CA to urban environment, in order to measure individual urban capabilities, i.e. urban and spatial component of individual capabilities. Given that at the core of the CA is the contingency-dependent nature of the conversion of individual endowments into capabilities, our research programme appears legitimate insofar as it tries to explore the spatial and urban component of these contingencies. Indeed, if the sources of such contingencies can be distinguished in personal heterogeneities, diversities of the physical environment, variation in social climate and differences in relational perspectives (Sen 2009), then urban physical environment and its social context are undoubtedly relevant for the latter three. In the paper, we first discuss the approach, which we call “countabilistic”, adopted in many methodologies commonly used for measuring urban quality of life and we try to make the case for an alternative approach grounded on the CA, arguing its greater suitability and usefulness. Then we argue that very few explicit attempts have been undertaken to specifically analyse the urban context through CA spectacles. Subsequently we present the conceptual framework and the basic structure of our model based on the CA. Finally, we present some preliminary results of our first attempt to put into practice this model, through measuring the urban quality of life of children.



A Household-based, Distribution-Sensitive HDI: Empirical Application to Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru [Members Only]
Lopez-Calva, Luis F. Ortiz-Juarez, Eduardo UNDP, Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean		In the light of a growing interest in examining the concept of human development and the calculation of the HDI, one of the main concerns relate to the inclusion of inequality. This paper proposes a straightforward way to estimate a household-based distribution-sensitive HDI by applying generalized means based on the class of indices by Foster, et al. (2005). The empirical illustration shows that the loss in human development due to inequality can reach up to 22%, 29% and 57% at the national level in Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua, respectively. Among dimensions the loss in the income index can reach up 61% in Nicaragua, while the education index appears as the most sensitive in the case of Mexico and Peru, with a percentage of loss between 38% and 48%. Overall, the estimations evidence a higher sensitivity of the HDI to inequality, and therefore an important space for public action.



Is extreme poverty a violation of human rights? [Members Only]
SC Castilho, Leonardo		Extreme poverty is one of the most urgent challenges in the world today, both from a human rights and a development perspective. From the human rights perspective, a first conceptual discussion needs to be addressed: is extreme poverty a violation of human rights? This question, then, takes the discussion towards the definition of extreme poverty from a human rights perspective: how does international human rights law define extreme poverty? The two questions are both difficult and disputable but, if a solid definition of extreme poverty, based on international human rights law, is put forward, it should be possible to answer the question of whether extreme poverty is a violation of human rights.



Inequality in non-income dimensions and resource allocation rules [Members Only]
Chakraborty, Achin Institute of Development Studies, Calcutta University Calcutta IN		While inequality in per capita state domestic product in India has increased over time, state level indicators of human development show decreasing dispersion for the obvious reason that indicators of health or education are fundamentally different from income in one very important respect. As the average value of an indicator like literacy rate, mean years of schooling, or ‘average life span’ for the whole population increases, inequality among sub-groups of population decreases, simply because unlike income all these indicators have a natural upper limit. Does it then mean that instead of worrying about disparity in social indicators we should focus only on disparity in per capita income? We argue in this paper that there are relevant aspects of disparity across and within states as far as non-income dimensions of well-being are concerned. In the process we clarify several conceptual issues around equity and inequality in non-income dimensions. Even though at the abstract level the definitions of vertical and horizontal equity are well understood, in the specific context of resource allocation by a federal government among sub-national entities, the interpretation of equity can take a variety of forms depending on the way one seeks to capture empirically the equity consequences of an allocation mechanism. In this paper, we have examined two well-known allocation rules, viz. population-weighted utilitarianism and leximin, whose axiomatic properties are well-discussed in the social choice literature. The normative implications of these rules, we argue, are not the same across evaluative spaces. While population-weighted utilitarianism in the space of income is criticised for being insensitive to equity, the force of the criticism seems to be weak, for example, in the space of infant mortality. One could argue that saving infant lives would be valuable irrespective of where the infants are situated, and the boundaries between the states may not be morally too relevant. However, the counter-point to this argument may be based on fairness. We pursue this point through actual resource allocation for human development in India. Almost always disparities in health or education refer to inequality in outcomes. Yet, equalizing outcome can hardly be a practical goal of any egalitarian policy. An objective to attain equal health would raise problems in defining and comparing health levels as well as being exceedingly expensive to obtain. But equalizing marginal met need may be possible. Equal access for equal need might be one plausible alternative. If in region A the probability of remaining illiterate, for example, is the same as in region B, then it can be argued that both A and B should have the same level of resources. Alternatively, if in region A the probability of remaining illiterate is higher than in B, the allocation priorities should be such that the quality of primary school infrastructure in A should not be worse than in B. We checked this basic intuition of ours with the data provided by the District Information System for Education (DISE) of the Ministry of Human Resources, Government of India. We find that the distribution of school infrastructure is highly perverse, in the sense that areas that had high rates of illiteracy are the ones which have poorer infrastructure even in 2005-06, after several years of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, the massive intervention programme in elementary education.



Operationalizing Capability Approach (CA) for Evaluating Small Projects [Members Only]
Chandra Khanal, Ram Institute for Evaluation and Studies Kathmandu NP		This study aimed to devise Capability Approach (CA) based evaluation tools for development project management at local level. Two small development initiatives at local level were selected and examined in a rural community in Nepal by employing participatory appraisal methods such as focus group discussion, key informant survey, participatory ranking, and transect walk. Based on the review, an evaluation framework, comprises of six major evaluation aspects, was proposed to assess functioning, capability, freedoms and agency. Similarly, in order to incorporate normative aspect in evaluation, axiological and existential aspects, in tandem, were also reviewed, analysed and attempted to assess based on the contribution made by the selected development initiatives on people’s life and livelihoods. Some conceptual and operational challenges were encountered during the study. CA is still new area of application at project level so its operationalisation was constrained by inadequate conceptual clarity, and amorphous tools and techniques that can be used at project contexts. Application of axiological and existential stands added further complexity in analysis and ranking. Although, the study revealed the possibility of devising capability based evaluation systems for small projects, further analysis and probing is a must.



Ethnicity and gender inequalities in the Ecuadorean job market [Members Only]
Cuesta Zapata, Mauricio		Estimates from a regression model show evidence of a no-black-no-indigenous male worker premium on earnings. Earnings gaps are the greatest for indigenous, followed by females and blacks, in that order, whereas, discrimination increases from gender to blacks and indigenous worker. Females are the most discriminated group in the labor market while indigenous are in the other end of the acceptance (or no-acceptance in society) of the different. Their decomposition produces an odd result about differences of opportunities placing indigenous in the greatest inferiority of endowments. Average earnings gaps are 43%, 40% and 15% for indigenous, females and blacks, respectively. 72%, 67% and 24% of the gap is due to discrimination for females, blacks and indigenous, respectively. These results give way to 76%, 33%, and 28%, of the gap explained by endowment inferiority of indigenous, blacks, and females in relation to their respective reference group: no-indigenous, no-black and male worker. Being a female member of an ethnic minority increases the likelihood of being at the low end of the income distribution. Females, just for being, are discriminated in their payments. The average gap for females is 38%. Further, if the odds make this female indigenous, she receives an additional punishment of a wider gap in her payments (17%) with respect to the appropriate payment of the no-indigenous-no-black male payments for a total of 55% earnings gap. The earning differential in payments for being black and woman in the labor market is an additional 4% to the 38% female earnings gap.



A Case Study on Early Marriage Practice in Midda Woremo District, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia [Members Only]
Deribie Woldegies, Belete



Acting Justly [Members Only]
Drydyk, Jay Carleton University



Title: Determinants of Child Malnutrition in Cameroon: Evidence from the 2001 Cameroonian Household Consumption Survey [Members Only]
Fambon, Samuel Menjo Baye, Francis Faculty of Economics and Management University of Yaoundé II		This paper analyses the determinants of child anthropometrics using the data of a sample of children aged 0 to 36 months derived from the Cameroonian household survey (ECAMII). In particular, we assess the impact of household consumption on the nutritional status of children as measured by height-for-age (HAZ), weight-for- age (WAZ), and weight-for-height (WHZ) Z-scores, while controlling for other correlates. The methodology used in this study encompasses the ordinary least squares (OLS), 2-stage least squares (2SLS), and the control function approach The endogeneity of household consumption is taken into consideration through four different categories of instruments, including land ownership, educational level, the formal sector employment, and the dependence ratio. The control function approach stands out as the most appropriate estimation strategy as it purges the structural parameters of potential econometric problems such as the endogeneity and heterogeneity of unobservable variables. Household consumption expenditure is significantly and positively associated with nutritional status of children (HAZ, WAZ, and WHZ), which suggest that policies aiming to ensure adequate resource availability to households should figure high on the agenda of decision-makers. The significance of this impact varies by gender of the household head. Male headed households income seem to play a more decisive role in financing child health than their female counterparts. This result could be considered as including the unobservable income contributions of their spouses, given that this effect is likely to be the result of joint financing when it comes to child health care.



Expanding Collective and Strong Agency in Rural Indigenous Communities in Guatemala. A Case for el Almanario Approach [Members Only]
Fariñas, Sarai Peris, Jordi López, Estela Boni, Alejandra		The notion of agency has received increasing attention in development planning and development processes and is considered an essential aspect of Human Development as conceived through the capability approach. In addition, there is a growing trend to consider agency not from the perspective of the individual agent but emphasizing its collective dimension. Within this framework, this paper aims to explore how collective capabilities and agency are being expanded in rural indigenous Guatemala through small community-led development projects supported by United Nations Global Environment Fund. To this end, an analytical framework is defined from the capability approach perspective on the grounds of Ibrahim’s (2006) conception of collective capability and the notion of strong agency in Ballet et al (2007). Research has been carried out on the basis of a case study of six indigenous communities in Western Guatemala, currently being supported by the Small Grants Programme of the United Nations Global Environment Fund. These interventions have been implemented following El Almanario approach, an innovative approach aimed at empowering communities in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of their own projects.



Participation: From Tyranny to Human Development? Participatory Capabilities in Development Planning [Members Only]
Apsan Frediani, Alexandre Development Planning Unit University College London London GB		Participatory methods have been strongly criticised as being too context specific and localised; by being instrumental to predetermined objectives, rather than an end in themselves; by addressing manifestations of poverty rather than the underlying causes of deprivations; by reproducing local power relations, rather than challenging the nature of discrimination; by being a “tyranny” rather than a means for transformation (Cooke and Kothari, 2001). The critiques call for a theoretical framework that can safeguard the original radical roots of participatory methods (Hickey and Mohan, 2004). This article argues that Human Development can complement participatory methods by providing the theoretical underpinnings necessary to assess participation as an end in itself (Frediani, 2006). With the objective to assess this complementarities between Human Development and Participatory methods, this paper expands on the concept of “participatory capabilities” to unfold local residents’ choice, ability and opportunity to engage in different dimensions of participation. The paper proposes a framework for the application of participatory methods through a human development perspective in a way that unfolds its limitations and opportunities for transformative change.



The Effect of Conditional Cash Transfers on Educational Opportunities Experimental Evidence from Latin America [Members Only]
Ham González, Andrés		Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) provide income transfers to the poor in an effort to improve current welfare and promote investment in human and social capital to prevent future deprivation. So far, the impact evaluation literature has not undertaken the estimation of long-run or structural effects. This paper uses recent contributions in the measurement of opportunities to overcome this gap in the literature and to encourage discussion on the long-run effects of such interventions, mainly by their effect on social mobility. CCTs provide a unique framework for this assessment, which is exploited in order to obtain empirical estimates from three interventions in Latin America. The main findings indicate remarkable equalization in schooling outcomes and an increase in educational opportunities. However, these initial positive gains seem to be compensated by another effect, which restores the initial unequal setting.



Challenges in operationalising the Capability Approach for evaluating the contribution of the Cambodian ICT4D project, iREACH, to capabilities, empowerment and sustainability [Members Only]
Grunfeld, Helena Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University Melbourne AU		This paper explores whether and how the Cambodian information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) project, iREACH, has contributed to capabilities, empowerment and sustainability (CES) by summarising the two initial waves of a longitudinal study of this initiative. The research underpinning this paper tested the “CES virtuous spiral framework”, a research framework informed by the capability approach (CA). Other key features of the framework is that it considers the micro-, meso-, and macro- levels in understanding the role ICT can play in the development process, takes a longitudinal perspective, and requires a participatory methodology. While there were strong indications that iREACH had contributed to livelihoods and other aspects of well-being in diverse ways, primarily in education, health, and farming, informants also valued the project because of its contribution to empowerment, particularly gender empowerment as well for intrinsic reasons, such as feeling part of the world in general. There were several challenges in operationalising the CA for this research and this paper summarises these, which ranged from designing the research framework in a way that would capture the essence of the CA, to obtaining data that would be relevant for the objective of the evaluation and useful for policy-makers. For example, whereas the contributions we were looking for are in the area of socio-economic impacts, many participants in the focus groups and surveys were still very fixated on just using iREACH facilities, i.e. learning how to use computers, accessing the Internet, learn Khmer and English typing.



International Development NGOs: Increasingly Ineffective Partners in Promoting Human Rights [Members Only]
Hammock, John Guevarra, Ernest



The ongoing pathways of the right to education in Chile: the Penguins’ Revolution [Members Only]
Hernandez Santibañez, Ivette International Educational Development Institute of Education University of London London GB		In 2006 almost one million secondary students manifested in the streets their political voices to demand structural changes in the Chilean educational system where they claimed education is a right and not a privilege. Their social protest known later as the Penguins’ Revolution put on the table a national debate concerning the crisis of the Chilean education system. Through their mobilizations they were on one hand focussing on transforming an educational system that has been “consciously structured by social classes” (OECD, 2004) and highly “influenced by an ideology that gives undue weight to market mechanisms to improve teaching and learning” (OECD, 2004:266) and on the other they were challenging traditional forms of participation exercised by the Chilean post-dictatorship society by new ways of political and social participation. Therefore this paper aims at analyzing the political and social participation addressed by the Chilean secondary students. In order to understand their political arenas this paper describes in the first section the socio-historical matrix which delineates education from the middle of the 1980s. In describing education it is aiming at a better understanding the why of the Penguins’ political claim on education as an effective opportunity for getting social justice. The second section deals with the how of their collective action by highlighting, that it, as an exercise of collective agency, has been evolved as a self-organizing system able to be “autocatalytic and demonstrates autopoiesis” (Mason, 2008). In exploring the Penguins’ Revolution as a self-organizing system this paper is also addressing some common dimensions between previous social movements led by secondary students during the 1980s. Finally the third section deals with a discussion on all those political and social goals attached by secondary student’s mobilization in terms of re-defining education as a right. The latter is developed bearing in mind on one hand Melucci’s approach on social movements as a “sign or message for the rest of society” (Melucci, 1989) and on the other in analysing it from the perspective of tendencies followed by social movements in Latin America.



Inclusive growth, a new idea? [Members Only]
Huyghebaert, Patricia		The paper aims to explore whether the emerging notion of “inclusive growth” is just another new idea or an appropriate means to human development. It will argue that despite the various definitions provided by the World Bank, the United Nations, the Commission on Growth and Development, it may be an appropriate means to human development, coherent with the capability approach if in line with with a human-right based framework to development. The paper is an exploratory paper aiming to look at some of the public policies implications that the emerging notion of inclusive growth may lead to.



The Construction of women's identity based on Martha Nussbaum's “Capabilities Approach” [Members Only]
Ibarra, Diana Center for Advance Social Researchers Santiago de Querétaro MX



When the State is Absent, Can the Poor Step in? Accessing Basic Services through Collective Agency [Members Only]
Ibrahim, Solava BWPI and CPRC, The University of Manchester		The provision of basic services is a crucial means of reducing poverty. In reality, though, the state fails the poor in service provision through limited access and bad quality services. In this case, the poor have one of two choices: (1) either to strengthen the accountability mechanisms to pressure the state to provide these services; or (2) to step in and provide the missing services through their collective agency. This paper argues that in the absence of an efficient responsive state the poor use their collective agency indirectly as a means of calling the state to respect their rights to basic services (accountability model) or directly by providing these services through their coordinated collective action (self-provision model). The paper first explains the relationship between service delivery, capability building and poverty reduction and emphasizes the crucial importance of the ‘quality of capabilities’. This section presents a new theoretical framework that extends the analysis of capabilities to account for the level, quality and impact of the achieved functionings on the individual’s (and communal) well-being. Section 2 presents the ‘voices of the poor’ and their evaluation of two basic services in Egypt: education and health. It clarifies the defects of these two crucial services and their impact on the poor’s educational and health achievements. Section 3 examines the challenges and dilemmas of service delivery while section 4 explores how the poor seek to improve the quality of these services. It presents the case of quarry workers in Upper Egypt who adopted the accountability model by advocating for their rights and calling upon the state to respect their rights to basic health and social security services. This case study demonstrates how the workers succeeded through collective agency to gain their right to safe working conditions and to access health and social insurance. Section 4 also presents the ‘self-provision’ model of service delivery explaining how the poor can use their collective agency to provide services directly thus fulfilling the role of the ‘absent’ state. The paper concludes by comparing both models and explaining the crucial role of collective agency in both models and their implications for service delivery to and capability building of the poor.



Construction of a new indicator of development for the African countries [Members Only]
Ignace, Kamga Tchwaket Chomteu Kouam, Sorel Eloundou, Adolphe Freddy		Since the Second World War, the economic growth to characterize the development was dreaded by the international community through a certain number of indicators. And so the GDP was used for a long time as the reference but considering the fact that this indicator does not take into account certain aspects of the development such as the well-being and the sustainable development, the UNDP proposed another indicator, the Human Development Index (HDI). Africa, the poorest continent of the world presents certain number of peculiarities which are not totally taken into account by the various indicators of development which were elaborated until now. This report biases a little the vision of the development which we can have of Africa. So, according to the indicator GDP by head it would seem that in 2005, Equatorial Guinea is the country the most developed in Africa, in front of Libya, South Africa and Nigeria. The HDI came a little to improve the measure of the development in particular in Africa. However it does not take into account all the aspects relative to the development of the African continent. In fact, the HDI does not include a very important dimension which is the one of the insertion of the populations in the active life. So, leaving of this report we elaborated a new indicator of development for Africa. This indicator, which we named Human Development Indicator for Africa (HDIA) was obtained by adding to the HDI the dimension occupational integration which we measure with an indicator of insertion calculated from the widened unemployment rate. The results obtained by simulations on some African countries were very decisive. Certain countries as Lesotho, the Burkina Faso saw their HDIA decreasing with regard to the HDI because of an indicator of very low insertion. This report is very relevant because it allows to notice that there is numerous efforts of insertion to be made in the country to move on the path of the development. We also noticed that certain countries saw rather their HDIA increasing with regard to the HDI. It allows to notice that the country was on a good path of struggle against poverty, but efforts should be realized in connection with the level of the HDIA.



Measuring Poverty in Germany - A formal and empirical comparison of the relative deprivation and the capability approach [Members Only]
Jindra, Christoph		This paper gives an overview over the outline of a dissertation project. The focus of the thesis is the formal and empirical comparison of dierent poverty concepts and their application for an advanced capitalist society, namely Germany. The poverty concepts that will be compared are the income, the deprivation, and the capability approach. Additionally, the thesis is going to make a proposal on how to operationalise the capability perspective of the capability approach. By comparing the concepts for Germany and making a proposal on the operationalisation, the thesis will help to animate the discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of the capabilitiy approach as a base for poverty analyses in advanced societies.



A Human Rights-Based Approach to Development and Development Programming Based on Capacity Development [Members Only]
Jonsson, Urban		The relationships between human development and human rights are far from clear. In principle five possibilities exist (1) Human rights are a sub-set of human development: (2) Human development is a sub-set of human rights; (3) Human rights and human development are overlapping paradigms; (4) Human rights and human development are identical paradigms; and (5) Human rights and human development are totally different paradigms (incommensurable). Based on an analysis of the five options a conceptual framework for a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to development is presented in the paper. It is based on the fact that development, in whatever way it is defined, always requires the simultaneous achievement of a desirable outcome (e.g. a MDG) and the establishment of an adequate process to achieve and sustain that outcome. From a human rights perspective human rights standards can be seen as representing the minimum acceptable level of a desirable outcome, for example universal primary education, universal access to basic health services, social protection, and all MDGs, while human rights principles, including equality, participation, accountability etc., specify criteria for an acceptable process. Human rights standards and human rights principles taken together can thus contribute towards ensuring a sustainable development process leading to sustainable development outcomes. Using this conceptual framework a human rights-based approach to programming (HRBAP) is then constructed, reflecting the third recommendation of the UN Common Understanding on a Human Rights-Based Approach to Development Cooperation (2003), “Development cooperation should contribute to the development of capacities of ‘right-holders’ to claim their rights and of ‘duty-bearers’ to meet their obligations”. The proposed approach is therefore focusing on identifying claim-holders and duty-bearers, their capacity gaps and the intervention required to contribute to closing these gaps. Capacity is central to this approach and is defined in a broader sense, including responsibility/motivation/commitment; authority/power; access and control of economic. human and organisational resources; capability for rational decision-making and learning: and communication capability.



An emerging picture on admissions, treatment and enforcement in developing and developed countries [Members Only]
Klugman, Jeni Medalho Pereira1, Isabel		This paper presents an internationally comparable assessment of several dimensions of migration policies as of early 2009. For a selected set of 28 countries, both developed and developing, we analyse the admission criteria, policies on integration and treatment of migrants, and efforts to enforce those policies. Irregular migration is a particular area of focus. The analysis distinguishes between different entry regimes, namely: labour migrants (high or low skilled, with a permanent or a temporary permit), those who move with a family-related visa, humanitarian migrants (asylum seekers and refugees), international visitors and international students. The data is drawn from an assessment by country experts as well as by desk-research of HDRO staff.



Educational Attainment and School-to-Work Conversion of Roma in Romania [Members Only]
Kosko, Stacy J. University of Maryland		The right to education is enshrined in numerous international declarations and treaties. It is also one of the surest ways for individuals to expand their own set of valuable capabilities and, as a source of dignity and even joy, can be inherently valuable. Unfortunately, for many Europeans, the promise of a rich education remains unrealized. This crisis is especially acute for Europe’s eight to ten million Roma, or “Gypsies”, a great many of whom never complete primary, let alone secondary, school. This lack of education is both a cause and a consequence of the severe social, economic and political marginalization many Roma face. However, few empirical studies have examined this issue. This paper calls into question the assumption that educational opportunity is something that all “have reason to value” if it does not bring clear benefits—for example future income—if at the same time it interrupts the pursuit of other valuable opportunities, such as those for present income. While perhaps not a silver bullet, education may be one of the most powerful weapons available to combat exclusion, poverty, and abuse. It is also crucial to developing the critical agency necessary to recognize and pursue the things in life that one values and has reason to value. Yet the opportunity to expand one’s capability set through education is enjoyed unevenly by Roma and non-Roma, not only because of differences in quality but because Roma “pursue” fewer years of education. Clearly, the severe imbalance between average years of education among Roma and non-Roma contributes to Roma poverty and marginalization. Thus, one important policy question is whether Roma are actually receiving less education than non-Roma once we account for factors such as poverty, or whether it is that the poor are receiving less education and that the Roma account for many of the poor. Either case represents a failure on the part of the government to meet its human rights obligations, but there is something particularly troubling about the wholesale educational marginalization of a particular ethnic group, poverty notwithstanding. There is also evidence that, even given the same number of years of schooling, Roma are still less able to convert that education into gainful employment. Given the value of education in expanding one’s real capability set, this dampened school-to-work conversion among Roma might be one source of so many Roma individuals’ “revealed preference” to consume less education. This paper explores two questions which aim to assist the Romanian government in identifying the most effective policies for increasing educational attainment among its most disadvantaged group. Relying on 2002 census data from Romania—the country with the largest Roma population in Europe—I first test whether Romanian Roma complete primary education at the same rate as non-Roma and find that being Roma reduces the odds of finishing eighth grade by 96 percent. Even when 2 important factors such as native language and income are accounted for, being Roma still reduces the odds of attaining primary education by a staggering 76.8 percent. Next, this study seeks to explain this difference: Do Roma simply not “value” education? I hypothesize that the high opportunity cost of education (due to the extreme poverty many Roma face) combined with perceptions of low returns to education (due to comparatively high unemployment levels and low average wages) decreases the incentive to stay in school and can result in a rational calculus to drop out. Put another way, Roma may have less reason to value education in the face of immediate deprivation. Logistic regressions reveal that the odds of being employed at all are 65 percent lower for Roma and remain 57 percent lower even when I control for a variety of factors including education. Roma also have two and a half times the odds of winding up in unskilled labor regardless of education level; that figure jumps to six times the odds if we remove the controls. I hypothesize that one omitted variable that could be driving these results might be discrimination in hiring. Another might be differences in the quality of education, with many Roma being sent to “special schools” for children with learning disabilities. This study reveals that not only are Roma completing fewer years of schooling than similarly situated non-Roma, they are less able to convert that education into gainful employment, a fact that compounds and perpetuates existing inequalities between groups. If the government wishes to increase educational attainment of Roma, it should take into account the problem of disrupted school-to-work conversion. Further, this evidence provides an alternative to the often heard explanation that Roma do not “value” education and instead forces us to ask whether the education they are receiving is something that they should “have reason to value” if it does not result in an expanded capability set, especially given the high opportunity cost of secondary schooling.



“What Needs?!”: Minority Rights and Group Rights, the Case of Dale Farm [Members Only]
Kosko, Stacy J.		Irish Travellers (“Gypsies”) are part of a traditionally nomadic group of Irish origin. The Dale Farm Traveller site in Southeast England, the most populous Traveller site in the UK, ignited a controversy in 2005 when the local council voted to evict 86 families. This paper will address the ongoing eviction crisis at Dale Farm and its significance with regard to the national and international debate surrounding group and minority rights. Brian Barry (2002) and others argue that many legal exceptions under the “group rights” rubric are harmful to social cohesion or at best unnecessary. Will Kymlicka, James Nickel and others disagree. Group security rights, in particular, “protect the existence and safety of minority groups as groups” (Nickel 2007, 164). The British government has come out strongly against the “existence” of group rights but has also repeatedly asserted that Travellers have certain rights that look an awful lot like group rights. Resolution of this debate has powerful implications for the human development of thousands of British citizens and possibly for the survival of Traveller culture as a whole. The profound levels of social exclusion suffered by many Travellers have not only exacerbated racial tensions but have also contributed to disproportionately low education and employment levels, life expectancy, and health quality, with extremely high infant and maternal mortality rates. The Council of Europe report by the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance found that “Roma/Gypsies and Travellers are among the most disadvantaged and discriminated against ethnic minority groups in the United Kingdom and experience among the most severe levels of hostility and prejudice from society in general” (European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance 2005). Experts have identified the lack of suitable “pitches”—legal places for Travellers to park their caravans and live for short or long periods—as a key contributing factor, with ramifications that cut across a variety of socio-economic indicators and exacerbate inter-group conflict, undermining the goals set out in Britain’s recent Race Relations Act (which include promotion of racial harmony) and damaging the country’s reputation as a stalwart supporter of human rights. Above and beyond the recognition—now enshrined in British law—that every single person residing in the United Kingdom is a bearer of human rights, the particular needs of Gypsies and Irish Travellers highlighted by this case also require protections that can only be afforded by certain minority rights. In the long run, explicit group rights may also be needed to adequately protect Gypsy and Traveller culture and traditions. Many philosophers, policy experts, and governments, however, have launched impassioned challenges to the legitimacy of group rights. 2 Brian Barry, with his powerful challenge to multiculturalism in Culture and Equality (2002), is among them. While he is right that many group-differentiated minority rights—including, in this case, those that apply to Gypsies and Travellers—are in fact applications of the universalizable equal-treatment-for-equal-needs principle (and are thus derived from and collapsible into individual human rights), he is wrong that the liberty and well-being of individual members of these communities always can be fully protected without any form of group rights. In this paper, I refer to the work of James Nickel (2007) to differentiate between individual, minority, and group rights. I then examine the case of Dale Farm, with particular reference to the acute problem of ensuring that every British citizen—including Gypsies and Travellers—has “a decent home.” Finally, I argue that both Brian Barry and the British government can have their cake and eat it too: the UK can provide the necessary protection for Gypsy and Traveller culture and traditions under a policy umbrella that essentially assumes group rights, while maintaining that it is seeking only to protect the individual (equal) liberty of all British citizens.



Sustainability and Rationality: Individual and Collective Responsibility in the CA [Members Only]
Leßmann, Ortrud		he definition of sustainability as given by the Brundtland commission reads as follows: “Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable – to make sure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (UN WCED 1987) It is still the most widely used definition and supports a broad view of the issue. Sustainable development according to the Brundtland commission is about extending to all “the opportunity to satisfy their aspirations for a better life”. The connection to the opportunity focused view of the Capability Approach (CA) is most obvious and it seems like a small change when Amartya Sen suggests changing the definition to read: meeting the “capabilities of people in the present without compromising the capabilities of people in the future”. This amounts roughly to replacing the term “needs” in the Brundtland definition with the term “capabilities”. Yet, Sen (2004, 2005) argues that sustaining freedoms goes beyond the original definition in some important ways. In particular, Sen claims to broaden the view of humanity by including the pursuit of interests other than one?s own living standard. As an “illustration” he refers to “our sense of responsibility towards the future of other species that are threatened with destruction” (Sen 2009). In either version the definition of sustainable development indicates only a general understanding of the term. The Brundtland definition gives rise to the question to which needs it refers. Sen?s definition leads to the question what is meant by capabilities. In the paper I outline first the basic concepts of the CA. I then proceed to look at the special challenge that arises from the social and global character of sustainable development. Anand and Sen (2000) write that “the obligation of sustainability cannot be left entirely to the market” and conclude that “the state should serve as a trustee for the interests of future generations”. Hence, they acknowledge that sustainable development entails an obligation which is not confined to individuals. Their solution to propose the state as a trustee, however, seems ad hoc and does not go well with the emphasis on public deliberation of the CA. It rather points to a tension between the alleged individualistic character of the CA (Stewart/Deneulin 2002, Robeyns 2005: 107–110, Alkire 2008: 34–41) and demands which go beyond the individual level like that of sustainable development. I will argue that the distinction between the goal of well-being and other goals that go beyond the individual living standard provides the basis in Sen?s CA for meeting the social and global character of sustainable development. When he speaks of “other goals” going beyond the individual living standard, Sen refers to the distinction between well-being and agency (Sen 1985). Well-being is linked to sympathy as the major motivation whereas agency is linked to commitment (Sen 1977, 1987). Thus, when we act because we care for others our behaviour is driven by self-interest while commitment is according to Sen “a clear departure from self-interested behaviour.” Clarifying the concepts Sen notes that agency roles related to fulfilling obligations “can quite possibly have a negative impact on the person?s well-being”. Further, he points out that well-being goals are specific whereas agency goals are not tied to one type of aim. Sustainability as a goal is not entirely driven by sympathy. As mentioned above Sen has used it as an illustration for goals that go beyond the pursuit of self-interest and alluded to sustainability as an obligation. Thus, it is an agency goal mainly driven by commitment. As an agency goal sustainability is but one of many aims. It is up to the individual to choose to act in accordance with this goal. Despite this diversity of people and their agency goals Sen holds first of all that human beings are to be seen as responsible agents and that, secondly, they derive their identity from being a part of various groups each sharing a commitment. Because each person belongs to more than one group Sen (1985, 1999b, 2006) speaks of plural identities among which a person can choose in any one situation. This is how Sen draws a link between social and personal identity. John Davis (2002, 2003, 2004) suggests to use collective intentionality analysis for understanding Sen?s concept since both look at distinct individuals who interact with one another and form a group with shared intentions. I will propose and investigate this route for reconciling the individualistic character of the CA with global moral demands such as sustainability. The core idea is that people have reasons to care for future generations and persons in other parts of the world. Sen?s project to “make room for a wider concept of human nature” aims at a broad understanding of rationality. On the individual level sustainable behaviour may not seem rational, yet, it can be said to be reasonable (Sen 2009).



Assess well-being: a question of access [Members Only]
Leyle, David University of Bordeaux FR		Built from an experience in a research-action program in Coastal Guinea, the present work highlights the need to update, thanks to Sen’s capability approach, the classic and macroeconomic measures of human development, on which the development policies base their actions led in African rural areas. Here, we can observe a contemporary acceleration of geographical, economic, political and social changes: the connection of studied societies to a globalized world increases with the monetarization of exchanges and so their vulnerability in front of the prices instability. On a local scale, among villages, the lack of well-being (poverty) and the increase of the economic disparities show that the households do not work in a satisfactory way in the everyday life: their access to the resources, the markets and the public services are recurring problems. The construction of “autochtonous” indicators of accessibility, based on qualitative and quantitative methods, allows reporting difficulties of access for the households and the village communities they belong to in order to achieve their functioning. On the one hand, these indicators concern the implementation of the necessary mobilities and thus the construction of circulation spaces in several scales. On the other hand, they underline a low access to resources which is insufficient to improve their level, their living conditions and their social functioning. Finally, all these indicators of accessibility represent good indicators to report well-being, economic and social changes, as well as disparities and social functioning.



Beyond the index of GDP in HDI: New measures of economic power of nations [Members Only]
Majumder, Amlan Kusago, Takayoshi		The objective of the paper is to compute new measures of economic power of nations according to average and total principles. Even though a considerable amount of theoretical and methodological advancements took place in studies on measurement of wellbeing at individual level, such measures are not to reflect macroeconomic state of affairs, as the methodology intuitively no longer focuses on income today, but on what income does to human beings. Moreover, we understand that the concept of economic well-being is a theoretical construct, which initiates welfare analysis at individual level only. Still individual level (average) well-being conditions are often translated into those of the nations. We also observe that the index of GDP in HDI for developing countries may not always reflect true pictures. We try to bridge the gaps by computing the proposed new measures as mentioned above. While computing the measures we have made some advancements in methodology in regard to discounting income with respect to a defined threshold level making adjustments for economic inequality. The study utilises data from Human Development Reports 2007/2008 and 2009.



Ensuring Universal Access to Water Resources: Potentials and Limits of Decentralized Cooperation [Members Only]
Makkaoui, Raoudha Dubois, Jean-Luc		Water issues are presently at the heart of the international community concerns, particularly the policy makers in developing countries who face high population growth, rapid urbanization and uncontrolled development of irrigated agriculture. The last World Water Forum, held in Istanbul in March 2009, emphasized the seriousness of the issue explaining that social consequences on people’s health and life expectation may be considerable. The UN report on water (2009) showed that 20 percent of the world's population has no access to drinking water and that 40 percent do not have any sanitation base. Consequently, more than five million people die each year from various diseases caused by water inappropriate for human consumption, among which 90 percent are children less than five years. To address this alarming situation, the international community pledged to halve, between 2000 and 2015, the proportion of people without access to drinking water. It encourages all kind of actions and new governance that could improve the access to drinking water and sanitation. In France, a legal and regulatory framework was set up in 1992 to allow local authorities, at the level of the towns and regions, to promote their own cooperative relationships with communities in developing countries. These programs are currently denominated under the label "decentralized cooperation". Decentralized cooperation refers to any form of partnership set up between actors from the French civil society and communities from developing country. Corresponding decentralized programs are based on participatory actions and aim at developing the synergy between the actors of both civil societies. Actors who are involved in the definition and the implementation of focused projects. This vision provides a new impetus to the international cooperation as it allows overcoming the usual limits of conventional bilateral and multilateral cooperation between North and South. This paper discusses this issue of “decentralized cooperation” in the field of water management. To ensure the "access to safe drinking water for all", cooperation between decentralized entities now constitutes a preferred water governance option in many places. In a first part, we will provide an overview of people’s difficulties to access to water in developing countries, showing the current deficiencies in rights and entitlements. Then we will review the various forms of water management, with their potential and limits, emphasizing the new role played by civil society in the definition and implementation of water projects. In a second part, we will address the particular case of Seine-Saint-Denis General Council, in Paris’ area, France, which is presently conducting such type of “decentralized cooperation” in partnership with the city of Figuig in Morocco. We will consider the values and limits of such a process that focuses on people’s capabilities, at both individual and collective levels. This participatory approach, which considers intergenerational equity in the access to water, leads to a more accountable and equitable vision of human development, in both social and ecological terms.



The Impact of Poverty on the Lives and Education of Young Carers in India: THE Value of Gilligan’s Voice-Centered Approach for Policy Research [Members Only]
Pande, Manasi		Like many countries India has affirmed its commitment to achieving EFA goals by 2015. Nevertheless millions of children are still denied access to schooling and even larger numbers leave prematurely, dropping out before gaining appropriate skills. In much published work on child labour and school dropouts in India, young people have been denied an independent voice. This paper used a youth centred approach to study the role and significance of schooling in the lives of a particular group of disadvantaged children, called young carers. Young carers aged, 11-16 years, living in poverty, frequently drop out of school to support their families. They take on responsibilities usually carried out by their parents, including providing care to other children. Voice centred relational method of data analysis helps measure various capabilities that young carers develop or get constrained through their care, domestic work and employment. It explores how they derive a sense of agency from their work despite deep dependencies and value schooling with a hope of getting another chance to be educated. The paper concludes by highlighting the contribution of this method for policy research; that if educational programmes are to appeal to young carers living in poverty, policymakers need to understand the relational and cultural complexity of their gendered lives through such a voice centred approach, which otherwise go unnoticed.



Human rights, capabilities and the Education for All movement [Members Only]
McCowan, Tristan Institute of Education, University of London London GB



Measuring Child Undernutrition in India and Assessing Socio-Economic Inequality in it Using the Mean of Squared Deprivation Gaps [Members Only]
		Drawing on the literature on poverty measurement, we suggest the application of the mean of squared deprivation gaps (MSDG), which captures the dimensions of level, depth and severity, as an alternative index of undernutrition. However, the intuitive interpretation of the index substantially differs when it is applied to measure nutritional deprivation. While in the context of poverty it captures the feeling of relative deprivation of the poor, with respect to undernutrition it is justified by the greater physiological risks associated with higher levels of undernutrition. Applying the subgroup consistency feature of the MSDG, we have used the relative share of each wealth quintile in total MSDG to calculate the concentration index of undernutrition among children in each of the major states of India. We find that states perform differently with respect to socioeconomic inequality in the level of nutritional status and that in the multidimensional notion of undernutrition. It may so happen that socioeconomic inequality in the level of undernutrition is abated but that in undernutrition as a multidimensional concept (bringing into consideration its depth and severity as well) increases. The scenario of child underweight in Karnataka, Gujarat, Haryana and Chhattisgarh depict such a situation.



Gender Sensitive Budgeting and HIV/AIDS Policies in India: Some Reflections for the application of Capability Approach and Human Rights Paradigm for Social Policy (Working Paper) [Members Only]
Nakray, Keerty School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast IE		This research is based on insights from qualitative in-depth interviews conducted with sixty-three women living with HIV/AIDS in the Indian cities of Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and semi-rural Thane district. The research applied the gender budgeting framework to HIV/AIDS policies in India to examine the question ‘how do HIV/AIDS policies address the gender concerns?’ The research examines the catchphrase of ‘feminisation of HIV/AIDS’ which is often utilised to denote women’s risk situations in the context of HIV/AIDS. However, on the basis of analysis of policies and also interviews with women living with HIV/AIDS and policy informants the research concludes that the existing HIV/AIDS policies in India are gender blind and also suggests the way forward for gender sensitisation of HIV/AIDS budgets. The debates on capability approach and human rights paradigm have been applied for developing the normative framework for HIV/AIDS policies in India. The main contention is that Capability Approach and Human Rights paradigm mutually strengthen each other and can be utilised to develop a normative framework for gender –sensitive HIV/AIDS policies in India.



Development Outcomes of Internet and Mobile Phones Use in Kenya: The Households’ Perspectives. [Members Only]
Nyambura Ndung’u, Margaret Waema, Timothy M.		Usage of Internet and mobile phones referred to as the “new technologies” in the paper, have promoted and sometimes hindered various aspects of development bringing radical changes to Kenyan’s households in the last couple of years. RIA (2007) established that households with as little as Ksh. 774 (US$10.32) monthly income owned a mobile phone or had an active SIM card. Those who had an average income of Ksh. 12,823 (US$ 171) had access to Internet from homes. With the rapid spread of mobile broadband, Internet usage at the household level is expected to have increased and to have led to some development outcomes. This paper makes use of the Capability Approach model as the research framework and focuses on the social, economic and knowledge development outcomes of Internet and mobile phone use at the household level, using the RIA (2007) data and qualitative data from a Preliminary survey (2010). It notes that the social, economic and knowledge status of individuals, coupled with the choices they make determines the extent to which use of these technologies results to development outcomes. The paper will establish the development outcomes associated with the rapid spread and usage of the Internet and mobile phones at the household level and explore if the wide usage is expanding or shrinking the capabilities of the households’. The paper makes some recommendations on further research on the effects of new technologies on quality of life.



Fighting Poverty at the Limits of Law and Human Rights [Members Only]
		This Law degree final paper examines how Law and Human Rights emerge from Peruvian extreme poverty contexts where “Juntos” Peruvian government program is implemented. Following an inductive and qualitative methodology, I conducted a 5 month fieldwork in Totora, a poor village of Peruvian Andes. As an activist of an Italian humanitarian organisation, I participated and observed the dynamics of local poverty and local development as well as the impact of Juntos program on them. Phenomenological analysis based in the review of Legal Anthropology and Human Rights literature revealed that Juntos program isn’t really relating poverty, law and human rights within a humanizing perspective because it fails to promote social and legal status of poor people and development through the engagement of social and law practitioners with vulnerable people, ultimately through the construction of a humanized Law where ideal and reality converge. This paper is divided in three chapters. In the first one, it tackles poverty as a multidimensional and local problem as well as poverty in Peru. Next, it describes Totora population basic needs verified through my experience as well as “Juntos programme” as a Peruvian government response to these needs. The second chapter is devoted to explain how Law and Human Rights appeared in this context. Presents some ideological deformations: poverty as a social stigma, poverty as an absolute denial of Human Rights, Law as a complete and efficient system and Law as an unilateral demand, this part of the paper argues that, in poverty context, Law emerge as a local and autonomous normative practice and Human Rights as the efforts of many Totota inhabitants who struggle for better living conditions. Finally, the paper concludes that Juntos program isn’t really relating poverty, Law and Human Rights within a humanizing perspective, neglecting some development policy goals: to humanize the legal status of poor people and to promote equality and development through the engagement of law practitioners with vulnerable people. Further, research on crusade against poverty, requires Law and Human Rights definitions where ideal and reality converge.



Tensions between the Feminist and Cultural Relativist Challenges to Human Rights: Implications on Human Rights of Women in India [Members Only]
Nupur, Ray



Developing Indigenous human rights-based instruments and mechanisms for observation and evaluation of child welfare policies within the context of family violence among Aboriginal Australian communiti [Members Only]
Nziou, Yolande Grace



Welfare, inequality and financial consequences of a multi-pillar pension system. A reform in Peru [Members Only]
Olivera, Javier		The distributional impact of the structural pension reform in Latin American countries has been largely absent in the economic debate. However, this reform may widen inequality in old-age and reduce welfare. In this paper we study the consequences of implementing a multi-pillar system in one of these countries. We take advantage of available administrative records for Peruvian workers to estimate inequality in pensions, pension debt and welfare. Overall, our results show that the pension debt and inequality can be substantially reduced without welfare losses.



Cooperation for Capabilities Over-determined Responsibility and Twofold Fairness [Members Only]
		Martha Nussbaum, in Frontiers of Justice (2006), updated her view on human capabilities and put forward ten principles that are intended to guide the corresponding socio-economic reform of the global structure. The very first of these principles emphasizes the overdetermination of responsibility for capabilities in the sense that the richer and the poorer nations are together responsible for providing a world-wide social minimum in terms of human capabilities. Over-determination of responsibility, however, also leads to complex questions about fairness as these responsibilities are to be allocated. In the current paper, the author will first calls attention to the idea of fair cooperation in capabilities promotion and then moves on to analyze how this abstract idea could be specified. He begins by showing how the distinction between symmetrical and asymmetrical fairness can be used to addess some nagging questions about ideal and non-ideal approaches to fair cooperation. He then moves on to identify another eleven distinctions about the concept of responsibility, beginning with the distinction between moral and non-moral responsibility and ending up with that between accountable and unaccountable responsibility. Finally, he spells out what these distinctions, which together form so called fair responsibilities for capabilities (FRC) framework, could mean in terms of responsibilities for education.



Capabilities, Values and Education [Members Only]
Peppin Vaughan, Rosie Walker, Melanie		Recent theorising on capabilities in relation to education has led to the clarification of a number of points: the role of education in human flourishing; how education can diminish capabilities; education lists; and the distinction between capability to participate in education and capabilities gained through education (Walker and Unterhalter, 2007; Vaughan, 2007; Terzi, 2008). This paper is concerned with the centrality of individual values to a capability set, and how education should be understood in relation to this and as such is related to capabilities gained through education. Recently, scholars have called for a focus on how values are formed; it is necessary to provide ‘an analysis of the dynamics of value formation’ (Deneulin forthcoming: 14; Burchardt 2009). In this article, we argue that this is a particularly pertinent theoretical problem for capability theorists working in the domain of education policy. The paper argues that there is a key obstacle to evaluating education policy using the capability approach – the role of values in determining and shaping an individual’s capability set – and proposes a possible solution by conceptualising education as something which may enable an individual to realise and develop their core values and agency goals, rather than something which transmits or reproduces particular values.



Development Dynamics in Cyprus: Engaging Youth in Civic Participation [Members Only]
Peristianis, Nicos Bosio, Elisa University of Nicosia CY		Young Cypriots are at a crossroads. Amid political uncertainty they are struggling with their transition from childhood to adulthood in a world that is increasingly competitive, challenging and confusing. Their pursuit of education, decent jobs, friends and relationships is taking place against the background noise of the Cyprus Problem. This paper begins by presenting an overview of the first Human Development Report for Cyprus, which explored key human development dynamics in Cypriot society through focusing on perhaps of the most critical stakeholder in the future of the island, namely youth. More specifically, the Report brought to the fore the voices of young Cypriots through a research study, which for the first time mapped the aspirations of youth in both the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities; it was largely based on the results of a comprehensive, island-wide Youth Aspiration Survey administered to over 1,600 young Cypriots across the island. Based on these sources, this paper will present the aspirations and perceptions of youth in a variety of areas, including relationships with their families and views on education. Attitudes towards national identity interaction with individuals from the other community, and young peoples’ opinions on building peace in Cyprus are also explored. The paper then examines how Cypriot youth grow to become entrenched in the Cyprus Problem, feeling unable to contribute to its resolution. From an early age, the development of Cypriot youth is affected by the typically overprotective relationships that form between them and their families. The other side of the ‘safety’ provided by their families is dependence and feelings of powerlessness – which can potentially result in problems that spill over into all domains of the lives of Cypriot youth, such as education and socio-political participation. The paper explores how the relationship between Cypriot youth and their families and, consequently, the impact that this may have on the development of Cypriot youth, may be explicated through Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. The paper concludes that, ultimately, youth development needs to be geared towards ensuring that all young people have the tools and skills to thrive in the communities and countries in which they live.



Believing in opportunities, trusting institutions in Latin America: the role of Government Effectiveness, Control of Corruption, Political Stability, and Voice & Accountability [Members Only]
Picon, Mario Development Research Group, The World Bank Washington US		The paper attempts to shed light on how both individual circumstance and context shape individual perspectives of upper mobility, and, more generally, the individual’s faith in the opportunities created by the system, roughly defined as the institutional arrangements that facilitate individual progress and social cohesion. While previous research has used either GDP per capita or inequality measures such as the Gini as explanatory of trust in institutions or even the democratic system of government, here I assess how different governance dimensions, together with individual traits, affect the respondent’s expectations. This first version of the paper uses the Latinobarometro data for urban centers in 17 countries of Latin America, with the idea of expanding the analysis to other regions (particularly, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East) using the Gallup World Poll data. The analysis shows that a general optimism on individual mobility coexists with widespread skepticism about the fairness of the system. More importantly, the paper shows how in countries where corruption and effectiveness of the government rank low, improvements in the past ten years have to be very high to actually have an effect on citizen’s faith in the system. While the perspective of upper mobility is closely linked to voice and accountability scores for the country, believing in the opportunity for a poor person to get out of poverty is linked to the government effectiveness rankings.



An essay to measure poverty through multidimensional approach The case of Manarintsoa’s community- MADAGASCAR [Members Only]
Rabevohitra, Bako Nirina Rajaona Daka, Karen



Enforcing Rights and Correcting Wrongs: Overcoming Gender Barriers in Legal Systems [Members Only]
Rajivan, Anuradha Cheema, Hasna Human Development Report Unit (HDRU) UNDP Asia Pacific Regional Centre		The aims of this paper are two-fold: to uncover barriers to equality in legal systems that restrict human rights along gender lines–patent and latent; and to propose possible ways to redress legal discrimination for accelerating human development. The focus of evidence is from countries of Asia-Pacific. However, given widespread gender-linked gaps in justice systems, and similarities of legal challenges posed, the paper is expected to be relevant for other similarly placed countries as well. Asia-Pacific has some extreme forms of discrimination and violence, not seen elsewhere, that prosperity has not been able to eliminate. Despite being one of the world’s most economically dynamic regions with broad policy consensus around ‘inclusiveness’, exclusion on the basis of gender has continued to persist not just in fact, but also in law. The motivation of the paper draws from a conviction that all human beings are equally valuable, and that gender by itself is not a legitimate basis for legal discrimination. It is based on the premise that men and women must be able experience substantive equality in justice systems; mechanical equality is not adequate. Women, much more than men, are excluded from the rule of law. Barriers operate, one, in the content of laws and legal practices; and two, in restricted access to justice systems. The substantive content of laws itself can be a source of discrimination. Laws may be discriminatory, have gaps or be contradictory. Women’s access to formal and customary justice systems remains restricted and inadequate enforcement mechanisms continue to be of serious concern. Specific barriers, rooted in gender, prevent women from getting to courts or finding fair judgments once there. The paper explores three strategic avenues for simultaneous action. One, fixing institutions – laws, legal practices and modes of access; two, changing attitudes of those who create, uphold, and use laws; and three establishing ongoing assessments to reveal inequalities and monitor progress.



Sen on Transcendental Theories of Justice [Members Only]
Robeyns, Ingrid		This is a short version of the paper which I’ll read at the 2010 HDCA Conference in Amman, September 21-23. The following text is a contribution to a book symposium on Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice, which is forthcoming (with additional contributions by Fabienne Peter and Constanze Binder, and a Reply by Sen) in The Journal of Economic Methodology. I’m hoping that Sen’s Reply will be available a little while before the HDCA Conference, which would allow me to further engage with his arguments. The full paper which I will read in Amman will be available a few days before the HDCA conference, and I’ll be more than happy to send anyone interested a copy by e-mail.



How do policies of citizenship in sending countries affect the process of female labour migration and the protection of their labour rights? [Members Only]




Multiple Politics of the Governed: State-Poor Encounters in Calcutta, India Shruti Majumdar [Members Only]
Majdumar, S



Human-Intensive Innovations in Welfare Sector – The Capability Approach [Members Only]
Sarlio-Siintola, Sari



The Capability Approach and Fair Trade: The Case of Women in Business Development Incorporated in Samoa [Members Only]
Schischka, John



How the caDoes Individual’s Achievement Depend on Capability, Effort or Family Background? New Evidence on Inequality of Opportunity in India [Members Only]
Singh, Ashish		What part of an individual’s achievement is due to unequal circumstances, rather than due to differences in individual capabilities, efforts or luck? Drawing on the distinction between ‘circumstance’ and ‘effort’ variables in the recent work on equality of opportunity, inequality of opportunities is associated with outcome differences that can be accounted to morally irrelevant pre-determined circumstances which lie beyond the control of an individual, such as parental education, parental occupation, caste, religion, place of birth etc. This paper estimates the opportunity share of inequality in per capita household earnings as well as per capita household consumption expenditure for India, for different age based cohorts for the year 2004-05. The results indicate that a significant part of earnings inequality can be attributed to difference in circumstances rather than individual capabilities or efforts and call for compensation (in terms of redistributive policies) to those who suffer from inferior circumstances beyond their control.



The Agriculture of Poverty. Excluding Policies and local alternatives from Indigenous Communities. The agency of men and women of Chimborazo – Ecuador [Members Only]
Madrid Tamayo, Andrea		Agrarian reforms and agrarian development laws are edicts which regulate the agricultural sector in Ecuador and have influenced the current situation of paramo peasants ("“parameros”"). Since the enforcement of these policies, the introduction of technological packages has been strengthen outlined by the “Green Revolution,” causing detriment in the agricultural knowledge of indigenous sectors and their ecosystem. In this way, in Chimborazo, an organization called COPROBICH, is stimulating the implementation of traditional, organic crops which are exported under the certification of BCS (Bio Control System) as part of a project which intends to recover agricultural ancestral knowledge. In this context, the present research reflects upon the proposal implemented by COPROBICH and whether it has changed the quality of life of the peasants who recommenced a traditional agricultural production, or it is merely a utopia based on “romantic” principles about ancestry. Through this conference I want to emphasize the important role of the agency of men and women in to recover their agricultural ancestral knowledge. Indigenous people with their values and cultural principles of “well-being”, in words of Sen: “… their determination and the consequences of it are related with many of the fundamentals aspects of their development process”.



Children’s Good and the Limits of Pluralism Luara Ferracioli and Rosa Terlazzo [Members Only]




Sustainable Human Development at grassroots – different contexts, similar ingredients? [Members Only]
Tiwari, Meera Ibrahim, Solava



Why development is failing Afghanistan: An analysis of basic capabilities, self-?perception and social participation [Members Only]
Trani, Jean-?François Rolland, Cécile Bakhshi, Parul		In a statement called Grounding International Engagement in Afghan Realities, released on the occasion of the London and Kabul Conferences on Afghanistan in 2010, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) cautions that “the trust and support that most Afghans initially held for international intervention are fading. Many of the problems that the international community faces in Afghanistan arise from their own hastily-?made decisions and short-?term planning, driven by political expediency”. Moving beyond simplistic and sometimes generic views of very complex conflict situations, this paper attempts to present an analysis of the situation from the people’s realities. In Afghanistan, the regaining conflict, increasing insecurity and weakening democratic processes, compel us to deeply question some of the assumptions that development programmes are founded on. Analysing the findings from a national survey designed to identify the needs expressed by vulnerable groups at the grass root level, this paper explores the links between Afghans’ self-?perception, social participation and well-?being using Sen’s capability approach. Taking into consideration the reality of a conflict affected fragile state and the limitation that it poses to the country development process, we attempt to better understand the individual coping strategies and collective functioning that remain the cornerstones of life in the country but are not sufficiently taken into consideration within a context where “policy has often been driven by ideology or assumption rather than evidence” (AREU 2010). Using data from a national survey, we argue that very vulnerable groups maintain positive self-?perception by referring to collective values and practices. We use basic capabilities, gender and ethnic origins to constitute an analysis lens to better understand self-?perception and social participation mechanisms that are inherent to Afghan functioning today. In the first part or our paper, we aim to provide keys for our discussion. To do this we briefly review the literature related to the capability approach, and present the key concepts that are relevant to understand the perception of the situation by the people and highlight some characteristics of Afghan society that are particularly relevant to illustrate our findings. In the second part we explain the statistical tools that allowed us to structure the results and describe the findings. Finally, in the discussion we attempt to shed light on differences observed in our data and identify hypotheses that will need further investigation. Firstly, our conclusions suggest that the deprivation of basic capabilities does not systematically lead to negative self-?perception. However, these remain crucial in order to ensure that social norms and expectations cease to constitute constraints and become a factor on which agency and empowerment can be enhanced. Secondly our results point to the danger of tackling gender and ethnic inequality concerns by designing policies that target individuals isolated from the group. Finally we argue for an urgent need to define spaces for conceiving programmes that look at collective concerns alongside the individual and allow a space to develop collective capabilities that are a pre-?requisite to setting into action the wheels of effective and sustainable participation, this time at the political and national levels, at not just within local programmes. In line with the capabilities approach and in view of our findings, we argue that self-?perception, social participation and access to basic capabilities are intertwined. However, the link is not simple and one-?dimensional. Various socio economic characteristics combine to define a particular capability set. Moreover, in the traditional setting like the Afghan society, individual capabilities are socially based and are profoundly imbedded in cultural norms and religious beliefs (Sen, 1999). These beliefs become even more crucial in situations of conflict where other reference systems such as the state have been nonexistent. We strongly argue for the importance of taking into account community values and giving a collective dimension to policies and programming in a conflict affected fragile state such as Afghanistan. Not only is this paramount in order to ensure that measures taken are relevant, meaningful and coherent with beliefs that constitute the core of Afghan society, but also it is a way to ensure that social change is effective and sustainable. International efforts in the country have largely been based on the human rights framework. Our discussion in this paper strongly advocates for a need to reflect on how this framework is made operational in complex conflict and post-?conflict contexts. This need to adapt frameworks to local realities Paper submitted for the HDCA Conference – Amman September 2010 2 is paramount at the national political level as well as at the time when the democratic process is challenged. “Decisions that are blind to (Afghan) realities, and driven by the short-?term political convenience of international leaders, are likely to fail both in their stated objectives of development, and in providing a foundation to counter terrorist threats” (AREU 2010).



Extending the Equality Measurement Framework: Selecting the Indicators for Children and Young People [Members Only]
Tsang, Tiffany Vizard, Polly		This paper provides a briefing on a recent project that has been undertaken to extend the Equality Measurement Framework (EMF) to cover children and young people. ? Section 1 provides an overview of the EMF; ? Section 2 discusses the extension of the EMF to cover children and young people; ? Section 3 summarizes the process for developing and agreeing a short-list of indicators for children and young people (the Specialist Consultation on the Selection of Indicators for Children and Young People). The capability list for children and young people that has been developed as a basis for the project is presented in Appendix 1, and a provisional shortlist of indicators that has been drawn up as a result of the project is presented in Appendix 2. Full details of the project will be published in Autumn 2010 (Holder, Tsang and Vizard forthcoming) and will be available on the Equality and Human Rights Commission website (http://www.equalityhumanrights.com).



Challenging Structural Causes of Human Rights Violations: Is the Capability Approach a Feasible Option to Advance This Goal? [Members Only]
Valencia, Areli



A Capability-Oriented View of Human Rights: A Case Study of The Mining Community of La Oroya-Peru [Members Only]
Valencia, Areli		This paper introduces my dissertation proposal to obtain a doctoral degree in Law and Society at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria - Canada. It is based on the study of the mining community of La Oroya -Peru. La Oroya is an Andean community that has 88 years of mining tradition. This history has deeply transformed peoples’ lives and social relationships. Over the last 10 years, medical research has revealed a high level of environmental toxicity in La Oroya and the potential long-term effects on people’s health, especially in children. Despite this fact, many citizens of La Oroya tend to place gainful employment over the protection of community health. My dissertation seeks to provide a holistic understanding of this tension by examining the historical and socio-economic factors inherent in the community that have placed people in the difficult position of prioritizing work and sacrificing their long-term community health. This creates unfortunate trade-offs between these two essential aspects of human well-being: the protection of health vs. securing their livelihood. The theoretical framework of my dissertation bridges the discourses of human rights and capabilities in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of root causes, processes and outcomes in terms of human rights’ violations. My goal is to design a ‘capability-oriented view of the human rights’ framework that is appropriately suited to explaining the current tension between the right to work and the right to health in La Oroya. In methodological terms, this framework proposes to use the “voices” of the people as a direct window into local knowledge, experience and the identification of valuable capabilities for this community.



Development, Rights, and Indigenous Australians – A Critique of Australian Government Policy Using the Capability Approach [Members Only]
Vaughan, Donna		The United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development (UN RTD) 1986 requires the State to ensure equal access and opportunity to participate in the economic, social, cultural and political domains and distributional equity in the allocation of State resources. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN DRIP) 2007 lays down the rights of Indigenous people to maintain, protect and develop their own political, economic and social systems (Article 20), to the improvement of their economic and social conditions without discrimination (Article 21), and to set development priorities and strategies for exercising their right to development (Article 23). The previous Australian Government in office until 2007 did not support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people when it was first proclaimed in September 2007 however this position was reversed by the new (current) Government elected in late 2007 who eventually announced its support for the Declaration in April 2009. The position of the previous Government was based on a concern that its policies might not be construed as compliant with the declaration, even though it considered them to be consistent with a human rights based approach and consistent with the obligations of the State to accord these rights to all people without discrimination. In this paper I begin by comparing current Government policy to the UN DRIP with reference to the situation of Australian Indigenous people. I conclude that policy remains unchanged from the previous Government and is focused on developing Indigenous communities in line with Government priorities based on a uniform service delivery, welfare and economic model as applied to the rest of the population and country. I then examine concepts of Indigenous well-being from Government, civil society and the literature, and a subjective community view taken from my own fieldwork. While Government limits itself to measurable and quantifiable social and economic development outcomes the literature argues for a broader set of well-being objectives specifically for Indigenous people. The subjective community view, taken from my own field research, is anchored in a very different paradigm to that of Government, that is, one based on their traditional connection to country. In the final part of the paper I attempt to illustrate how the capability approach as a focus for policy would result in a better alignment with the intent of the UN DRIP. Acknowledging that the imperative for Government to ‘close the gap’ on severe Indigenous disadvantage in access to resources and services is overwhelming, I propose a parallel strategy to the current policy approach to enable Indigenous Australians to progressively take charge of their own development in line with the UN DRIP and their particular aspirations for well-being. This paper draws on a Doctoral research project currently nearing completion which uses the capability approach to evaluate Government policy on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for development as it relates to communities and also to evaluate community ICT initiatives for their contribution to well-being as defined by the community. The research has been conducted in Sri Lanka and in four remote Indigenous communities in Cape York Australia.



Childhood and Capability Deprivation in Germany [Members Only]
Volkert, Jürgen Wüst, Kirsten		Child poverty is widely discussed in Germany after the publication of the third official Poverty and Wealth Report of the German government in 2008 which – inter alia – focused on the situation of children and families. However, child poverty is not only caused by low household incomes and impacts of child poverty are not restricted to financial consequences. The Capability Approach takes account of this multidimensionality of well-being and poverty of children. The Capability Approach conceptualizes human well-being as not only depending on financial means but gives at least the same importance to the personal and social conversion factors which determine how far financial means can be converted into personal well-being. Until 2008 the Capability Approach had only been applied to the well-being of adults in Germany, but not specifically to the well-being of children. There are several reasons why a capability analysis for children will differ from a capability analysis for adults. Adults’ capability sets comprise dimensions, that are not or at least less relevant for small children. These include social conversion factors like economic facilities, elements of social protection such as access to social security, political freedoms and transparency guarantees (no corruption and limited bureaucracy). Although these adult-specific dimensions of capabilities may not be directly relevant for children, they can indirectly affect the well-being in early childhood in manifold ways. For instance, unemployment of parents does affect the whole family including scarce material means but can also have non-material consequences as income poverty has been shown to have an impact on the parents’ educational style and the relationship of parents and children. Childhood is a very important stage in life. From a capability perspective it is especially important because functionings achieved in this early phase of life substantially determine future capabilities. This stage of life is also very particular as – more than in other stages of life – it depends very much on parents and other care-takers whether a young child has most important capabilities and can develop a number of important functionings. Furthermore, the wish to care adequately for a child depends on the goals of the parents and caretakers which are driven by the question of how important the well-being of the children is for them but may also be restricted by shortages of e.g. their own education, time, child care facilities and income. In this paper we analyze how functionings and capability deprivation in childhood are influenced by parents’ personal goals and willingness to achieve well-being of their children as well as by parents’ income and personal and social conversion factors. We use a new database based on German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP) data that allows assessing characteristics and interdependencies of major determinants of capabilities in early childhood. In our current paper we build upon our former results for two to three year-old children using a further extension of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) added in 2008 with data for children aged five to six years. We assess the situation of 237 children aged five to six years in 2008. Besides income poverty we analyze opportunities like early childhood encouragement as well as activities outside and whether watching television on its own is not an exception for the child. For his or her social participation we differentiated between social participation which is exempt from charges and which charges fees. For the five to six years old, for the first time, functionings could be measured as personality traits of the child i.e. whether it is e.g. respectful to others, shares things with other children, is hyperactive and so on were assessed. While a deprivation in social participation which charges fees is highly correlated with income poverty and with a child’s television habits our findings based on logistic regression analyses suggest that this is not the case neither for the deprivation in free-of-charge social participation nor for a child’s early childhood encouragement. Children of income-poor families are, on the other hand, less affected by a deprivation in outdoor activities. The analyzed social conversion factors of the child have a high impact on the child’s capabilities and their functionings which can be measured: we see that children who are deprived of childhood encouragement are less helpful to others. Children who watch television regularly on their own treat others with less respect, lack concentration, feel unhappy more often and are more often mobbed by other children.



Realising the Right to Development for Indigenous communities: the Case of Home Ownership in Mapoon [Members Only]
Holden, Jane Walker, David



Findings of the 2008 Egypt Human Development Report Civil Society in Egypt: Vital Partners in Development [Members Only]




Designing the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index (HDI) [Members Only]
Alkire, Sabina Foster, James Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) Oxford GB		This paper proposes a method for adjusting the HDI to reflect the distribution of human development achievements across the population, and across dimensions, using an inequality measure from the Atkinson family. We begin with a discussion of the proposed indices in an idealized setting where variables and their scales have been identified and the data are available. We then address the practical issues that arise when applying these methods to real data. The final section presents and evaluates another related approach.



Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries [Members Only]
Alkire, Sabina Santos, Maria Emma Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) Oxford GB		This paper presents a new Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for 104 developing countries. It is the first time multidimensional poverty is estimated using micro datasets (household surveys) for such a large number of countries which cover about 78 percent of the world´s population. The MPI has the mathematical structure of one of the Alkire and Foster poverty multidimensional measures and it is composed of ten indicators corresponding to same three dimensions as the Human Development Index: Education, Health and Standard of Living. The MPI captures a set of direct deprivations that batter a person at the same time. This tool could be used to target the poorest, track the Millennium Development Goals, and design policies that directly address the interlocking deprivations poor people experience. This paper presents the methodology and components in the MPI, describes main results, and shares basic robustness tests.



Poverty as Lack of Opportunity: A Comparison Between John Roemer and Amartya Sen [Members Only]
Chiappero-Martinetti, Enrica		In the last decade, the debate on egalitarian justice has increasingly shifted from inequality of outcome to equality of opportunity. This latter paid greater attention to social and economic circumstances which hinder individuals from competing at the same starting level, and to the real opportunities people have to pursue their own life plans and objectives. Amartya Sen and John Roemer are considered the authors who made a significant contribution to the debate, even though they started from different premises, and reached rather different conclusions. In this paper, I will compare and contrast two approaches – equality of opportunity of John Roemer and equality of capability of Amartya Sen - pointing out analogies and differences between these two views.



Sen’s Ideas of Justice and Democracy [Members Only]
Crocker, David A. University of Maryland		This paper aims to analyze and evaluate Sen’s ideas of justice and democracy—and their relations—as formulated in his new book The Idea of Justice. In this volume Sen offers a very different sort of theory of justice than those typically on offer and argues for his theory’s superiority over what he calls “transcendental institutionalism, ” the effort to identify and defend the ideal of a perfectly just society. My interest is less in Sen’s critique of this “transcendentalism,” the topic of other papers in this symposium, and more in Sen’s “constructive” alternative, which he calls the “comparative perspective” (xi). More specifically, my focus is on the roles of the ideals of individual and collective agency and democracy in Sen’s effort to recast the theory and practice of justice. I also shall address the question of whether in this new volume Sen makes progress in clarifying, developing, and defending his earlier views that democracy is crucial to the theory and practice of justice and ethically-based development.



State Density and Capabilities Approach: Conceptual, Methodological and Empirical Issues [Members Only]
Gonzales de Olarte, Efraín Iguíñiz Echeverría, Javier M.		The core of the paper analyses the State functionings in the process of providing basic social services (education, health, identity documents, etc.) in the provinces of Peru. The concept “Density of the State” is designed to elaborate an index (SDI) to quantify State´s territorial presence. Since such activity is not a one-sided affair, the paper analyses the elements involved in the complex interaction between State and society. A summary of the main statistical results at the provincial level is provided and also a contrast between the SDI and the HDI. The paper is a summary and conceptual extension of the UNDP-Peru Human Development Report 2010 where the authors participated as part of the consulting team that elaborated it.



The Indivisibility, Interdependence and Interrelation of Fundamental Rights and the Capability Theory (Capability Approach). [Members Only]
Figueiredo, Ivanilda



The impact of Oportunidades on Inequality of Opportunity in rural and urban areas in Mexico [Members Only]
Krishnakumar, Jaya Wendelspiess Chavez Juarez, Florian		The analysis of inequality of opportunity has become an important issue in recent economic literature, especially in Latin America. This study proposes a link to the capability approach and analyzes the performance of the Mexican conditional cash transfer program Oportunidades in terms of inequality of opportunity. A MIMIC framework is used to estimate children's latent development capabilities and their dependence on family background variables. The results suggest that Oportunidades increases overall capabilities and is able to reduce signicantly the dependence of capabilities on circumstances, mostly family background variables, hence reducing inequality of opportunity. The ndings of this study suggest that the use of conditional cash transfer programs might be a very useful tool to reduce inequality of opportunity.



The Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty and Intertemporal Poverty: Same Toolkit? [Members Only]
Santos, Maria Emma Seth, Suman Oxford University Oxford GB		The measurement of poverty in a single dimension usually income or over a single period of time is increasingly recognized inadequate as it provides only a nar- row portrayal of what poverty truly is. Over the past few decades, the measurement of poverty has evolved in two directions. One direction has evolved by incorporating more than one dimension of well-being, known as multidimensional poverty measure- ment. The other has evolved by considering a single dimension of well-being over more than one period of time, known as intertemporal poverty measurement. However, the progress in these two branches of measurement has been made independently, without properly acknowledging the common challenges faced. This paper aims at connecting these two branches, addressing the commonalities and di¤erences, and intends to pro- vide a framework that encompasses both. We analyze two main approaches to identify the poor, based on two essentially di¤erent focus axioms. We also revise the motivation and meaning of weights in each context, we explore the types of transfer axioms, issues of substitutability versus complementarity between dimensions or incomes across di¤er- ent time periods, and the existence of intermediate groups under certain identi?cation criteria.



Enhancing social justice through adult education in Sudan: a capabilities perspective [Members Only]
Fean, Paul University of Sussex GB



Mobile Phones, Capabilities and Human Development [Members Only]
Spence, W. R.



Discussions on the Role of Civil Society in Securing the “Right to the City” [Members Only]
Lourdes Suárez, Ana Mitchell, Ann Lépore, Eduardo Macció and Silvia Lépore, Jimena



Cooperation for Capabilities Over-determined Responsibility and Twofold Fairness [Members Only]
		Martha Nussbaum, in Frontiers of Justice (2006), updated her view on human capabilities and put forward ten principles that are intended to guide the corresponding socio-economic reform of the global structure. The very first of these principles emphasizes the overdetermination of responsibility for capabilities in the sense that the richer and the poorer nations are together responsible for providing a world-wide social minimum in terms of human capabilities. Over-determination of responsibility, however, also leads to complex questions about fairness as these responsibilities are to be allocated. In the current paper, the author will first calls attention to the idea of fair cooperation in capabilities promotion and then moves on to analyze how this abstract idea could be specified. He begins by showing how the distinction between symmetrical and asymmetrical fairness can be used to addess some nagging questions about ideal and non-ideal approaches to fair cooperation. He then moves on to identify another eleven distinctions about the concept of responsibility, beginning with the distinction between moral and non-moral responsibility and ending up with that between accountable and unaccountable responsibility. Finally, he spells out what these distinctions, which together form so called fair responsibilities for capabilities (FRC) framework, could mean in terms of responsibilities for education.



Foreign Aid and Legitimacy [Members Only]
Greene, Amanda Stanford University



Axiomatic and Robust Multidimensional Poverty Measurements in five South Mediterranean Countries [Members Only]
Berenger, Valerie Bresson, Florent



“Collective action” related to the status in employment as a means of enforcing economic human rights: Elements of an institutional framework with an international focus [Members Only]
Fossati, Ela Callorda Université Bordeaux IV Montesquieu



Structured Youthfulness – Dimensions of Social Inequality for Young People [Members Only]




Insiders vs. Outsiders: Who Should Decide the Issue of Huaorani Education? [Members Only]
Cross, Karie



A Sensitivity Assessment of Multidimensional Poverty to various sets of Missing Dimensions’ Indicators: The Chilean Case [Members Only]
De Los Rios, Carlos De Los Rios, Jessica Instituto de Estudios Peruanos



Having It Both Ways: How Can we Develop Quality and Quantity in Education Without Compromising Human Flourishing? [Members Only]
Sarojini Hart, Caroline University of Cambridge



Defining Environmentally Sustainable Human Development: Should we value ecosystem capacity or services? [Members Only]
Holland, Breena Lehigh University



Reliable Access to Wellbeing: An Alternative Conception of Capability [Members Only]
Johnstone, Justine University of Sussex



How do gender inequalities in land entitlements lead to inequality in the capability to answer to family needs for food? [Members Only]
Randriamiandrisoa, Jossie Droy, Isabelle		This article aims at exploring the link between entitlement and capability by focusing on the entitlements of individuals to a particular asset, which is land, and by making the link with a specific capability, that is to answer to the family needs for food. In Madagascar, particularly in rural areas, the attachment to family land, regarded as a legacy of the ancestors is very marked. Access to land may differ depending on age, sex, rank among siblings, etc... As a result, some groups may be further harmed. Focusing on the ‘capability to provide the family food needs’, in a comparative approach between women headed households and men headed households, seems an appropriate approach to analyze the effects of gender inequalities in land entitlements. To explore these questions, we will mobilize the database of the Rural Observatories Network (ROR) related to the observatories of Manakara and Farafangana, which are located in southeast Madagascar; households headed by women account for about one quarter of the population of these observatories and gender inequalities in the access to land are presently quite serious, especially in the region of Manakara.



How the capability approach is applied to high-income OECD countries [Members Only]
Schneider, Friedrich Volkert, Jürgen		The principal goal of this paper is to provide a first step of an overview of empirical Capability Approach (CA) applications for high-income OECD countries. It shall provide a basis of mutual exchange on relevant CA issues among researchers analyzing well-being in affluent countries. In this first step, we focus on CA applications related to general well-being, inequalities, poverty and human development in affluent countries. Abundant literature on group specific issues (women and gender issues, children and young people, disabled, unemployed , old people) and specific aspects such as health, education and CA based policy debates had to be excluded here in order to not substantially exceed the scope of a conference paper – but will be provided in Schneider & Volkert (2010). Based on our literature survey and an illustration of procedures and challenges of selecting relevant dimensions and referring to ongoing projects commissioned by the German and British government, we conclude that that stronger emphasis should be on assessing capabilitites, autonomy, agency and responsibility. We call for refraining from a data driven choice of relevant dimensions and of research topics and for strengthening the role of deliberative participation. We argue that these are pre-requisites to maintain a central comparative advantage of the CA for applications in affluent countries and to successfully investigate topics that may deserve more attention in the future.



A Capability Approach fit for Children [Members Only]
Sadlowski, Iris

The HDCA is on:
	Facebook	Flickr	LinkedIN