Publications

“The good Latin-American citizen, a friend of freedom,” enthused President George W. Bush on a state visit to Chile, November 21st, 2004 (El Mercurio, 22-11-2004). “Chile is an incredible country – the Chileans are a people of good heart that treasure freedom and democracy and understand the importance of economic freedom.” Bush’s message was remarkably similar to that of his father, George H.W. Bush, who fourteen years earlier, also on visit to Chile as President of the United States, had called Chile “an economic model for countries of the region and in the world” and “an example of how the transition to democracy ought to take place” (El Mercurio, 7-12-1990).

Where farm record-keeping exists to calculate farm-household income, it commonly considers only financial accounts. Awareness of resource degradation or improvement calls urgently for a better understanding of the interrelations between environmental and socio-economic aspects in decision-making. Integrating calculations on resources deterioration/restitution in the financial accounts will help to determine differentiated productivity and efficiency of farming activities according to the applied technologies. Extended production cost and benefit calculations permit the formulation of technical recommendations that integrate economic and environmental factors in a clear and simple way for use by decision-makers and agricultural producers. Such recommendations should provide insights to farmers on how to improve, or at least to maintain resource availability and capability, making their livelihoods sustainable.

Nigeria is in the grip of a growing HIV/AIDS epidemic with Benue State recording one of the highest State level infection rates: 13.5% in 2001, which will have a devastating impact on individual lives and livelihoods.

HIV/AIDS is not the only crisis that rural people have to deal with. The downturn in the Nigerian economy is also hitting Benue State. Public investment in infrastructure, water, health, and education facilities is limited, resulting in poor basic service delivery. The economy in Benue mostly depends on agriculture, spin-off activities such as processing, trading and casual labour, and migration. Farming is under stress due to worsening terms of trade, and input markets that are not functioning well. Over the past decade, farming has actually become more labour-intensive per unit of harvest, a development that increases the vulnerability to shocks

Over the past years, poverty reduction has been explicitly driving the development agenda. In 1999, World Bank and the IMF agreed that nationally owned participatory poverty reduction strategies should provide the basis for all concessional lending and for debt relief under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The Poverty Reducation Strategy Papers (PRSPs) put this approach into effect and describe a country’s macroeconomic, structural, and social policies and programs to promote economic growth and poverty

Abstract: Sexual torture constitutes any act of sexual violence which qualifies as torture. Public awareness of the widespread use of sexual torture as a weapon of war greatly increased after the war in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Sexual torture has serious mental, physical and sexual health consequences. Attention to date has focused more on the sexual torture of women than of men, partly due to gender stereotypes. This paper describes the circumstances in which sexual torture occurs, its causes and consequences, and the development of international law addressing it. It presents data from a study in 2000 in Croatia, where the number of men who were sexually tortured appears to have been substantial. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 health professionals and data from the medical records of three centres providing care to refugees and victims of torture, the study found evidence of rape and other forced sexual acts, full or partial
castration, genital beatings and electroshock. Few men admit being sexually tortured or seek help, and professionals may fail to recognise cases. Few perpetrators have been prosecuted, mainly due to lack of political will. The silence that envelopes sexual torture of men in the aftermath of the war in Croatia stands in strange contrast to the public nature of the crimes themselves

“For example, when I hear that countries are choosing to comply with medium-term expenditure ceilings at the expense of adequate funding of AIDS programs, it strikes me that someone isn’t looking hard enough for sound alternatives. And I recognize that such principles of fiscal discipline are in place for good reason, but surely there must be means of accommodating vast new inflows without stirring economic demons.“
Peter Piot

In 1992, the government of Mali decided on a policy of reforming the management of public affairs on the basis of decentralisation. Various reasons lay behind this policy option of devolving powers and resources to local government authorities, including the need to deepen the ongoing democratisation process, tackle the problems of local development in a different way, recast the role of the State and promote security and peace. Decentralisation became a reality in 1999, following the organization of the local elections, and resulted in a profound change in the relationship between the State and citizens, while bringing public services closer to the community

This article is about taking stock of experiences of mainstreaming gender. It addresses two related concerns. First, that after three decades of feminist activism in the field of development – both at the level of theory and practice – most development institutions have still to be constantly reminded of the need for gender analysis in their work, policymakers have to be lobbied to “include” the “g” word and even our own colleagues need convincing that integrating a gender analysis makes a qualitative difference. Second, by constantly critiquing their own strategies, feminist advocates have changed their approaches, but institutional change continues to be elusive (except in a few corners).

This paper explores human resources constraints in health service delivery, especially with regards to specific disease control and provides an inventory of strategies that can be used to overcome constraints. This paper is the edited version of the report on the meeting of the Working Group “Priority Diseases” which is one of the seven working groups of the Joint Learning Initiative currently exploring strategies to address the human resources constraints in health services delivery

In developing countries, medicines may account for 30–40% of health expenditure. Many of these payments are made by individuals purchasing medicines for selfmedication and only rarely on prescription. Understanding how and why consumers make the choices they do is the critical fi rst step to intervening to ensure that these precious resources are spent as safely and productively as possible. This manual is a successor to the 1992 WHO publication, How to Investigate Drug Use in Communities, a small but important book that has been reprinted eight times. A year later came How to Investigate Drug Use in Health Facilities. Since then numerous courses have been held and many studies undertaken, with valuable experience gained in understanding the use of medicines in health facilities and communities. This manual’s authors have been leaders in the movement to better understand and improve medicines use in the community

In 2001 UNAIDS initiated the development of a toolkit with techniques and practices for AIDS competence in consultation with the UNAIDS Secretariat, with the UN Theme Groups in different countries and members of the UNAIDS Technical Network on Local Responses to HIV/AIDS. The toolkit aims to further strengthen the capacity and competence of different actors to address HIV/AIDS at local level. Experiences worldwide contributed to the identification and selection of practices and techniques for the toolkit and they meant for all with an interest in furthering local responses to HIV/AIDS. The Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in the Netherlands manages the project for UNAIDS.