This study addresses political participation rights from the perspective of a social movement. We focus on the case of the NO movement which emerged in Costa Rica in 2007 in the run-up to the Referendum on ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The study explores some...

This paper raises two questions to take a first step in developing a research agenda to assess the developmental relevance of responsible production, which includes both Fair Trade and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. The first question is: How likely is it that responsible...

Pakistan's Vision 2025 connects a policy commitment to greater gender equality with inclusive growth. It prioritises a "good quality of life and high living standard for all citizens across regions, gender" and to "achieve an annual average growth rate of 7 to 8 per cent that is inclusive and...

The essay proposes to re-orient feminist debates on epistemology towards the care-security nexus as a pathway that can plausibly provide an integral understanding of a human-centred and eco-minded security. Seeing "gender" in binary terms tends to produce an understanding of "care" as "female"...

Views on poverty are deeply rooted in cultural frameworks about the human condition shaped by histories. In the debate on modernity, perspectives on poverty oscillate between: a) making the poor -- their "morals" and "culture" -- responsible for their own situation and b) positioning the causes...

This report discusses concerns raised by participants of Thematic Area 4 (Force, Fraud and Coercion) of the International Forum on Intercountry Adoption and Global Surrogacy held in August 2014. There has been a significant body of research on intercountry adoption practices over the past 30...

The world is said to be confronted with complex issues working against the long term well-being of people and planet that can only be effectively addressed through (hyper) collective effort. How necessary collaboration comes about and progresses shows numerous approaches, professional...

This study provides a preliminary theoretical and empirical exploration into how ‘competing sovereignties’ are shaping the political construction of food sovereignty—broadly defined as ‘the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound...

The paper presents a comparative analysis of five cross country composite gender indices. Although there is a relatively high correlation between the indices, the overlap of underlying indicators is low. Country rankings, both at the top and at the bottom have parallels but are quite distinct....

Development practitioners worldwide increasingly recognize the importance of informal institutions -- such as norms of cooperation, non-discrimination, or the role of community oversight in the management of investment activities -- in affecting well-being, poverty, and even economic growth....