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> Posted by Elisabeth Rhyne, Managing Director, CFI
The following post was originally published on the Huffington Post World Blog.
The High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, led by David Cameron, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has released its recommendations for the next round of world development goals. This document launches what is sure to be a lively debate that will take place in the coming months, as the United Nations considers this report and prepares for the Secretary General to announce the official U.N. recommendations later this fall.
The Eminent Persons panel put forward twelve illustrative goals, ranging from 1) End Poverty to 12) Create a Global Enabling Environment, and touching in between on health, education, water, energy, and other priorities.
For those in my line of work, the immediate question is: How does the report position financial inclusion?
In recent months, when the subject of financial inclusion and the Post -2015 Global Development Goals (GDGs) comes up, someone is sure to say, “Financial services aren’t development goals; they’re enablers.” And this is the crux of a dilemma. The importance of financial inclusion is increasingly recognized. But if financial services are seen through an “enabler” lens, they would not appear in the top tier of GDGs, which revolve around outcomes of intrinsic value to people and nations. What is the role of an enabler like financial inclusion in a development framework that focuses on outcomes?
It looks like the Eminent Persons recognized this dilemma, and as a result, they had a hard time finding the right place for financial inclusion. They did address it, finally, by tucking it under proposed goal 8) Create Jobs, Sustainable Livelihoods, and Equitable Growth. Specifically, sub-goal 8c says, “Strengthen productive capacity by providing universal access to financial services and infrastructure such as transportation and ICT.” They put it into a section that is mainly about job creation, and then linked it to physical and communications infrastructure. Another sub-goal (2c) calls for equal rights for women to open bank accounts (along with the right to own property and sign contracts), implying that financial services are a necessary part of an economic identity.
> Posted by Michael Stein
Michael Stein
On Thursday September 3, at the United Nations in New York, the Harvard Law School Project on Disability co-sponsored a side session at the Second Conference of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the first human rights treaty of the twenty first century. The side session was focused on raising awareness and creating a forum to discuss possible avenues for making the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) disability-inclusive.
Although the MDGs relate to disability by referencing poverty, education, health care provision, and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has publicly stated that the MDGs cannot achieve their goal without including person with disabilities, to date they do not expressly reference disability. This absence is especially problematic given that persons with disabilities suffer severe poverty at a higher rate than those without disabilities. For example, although 10% of the world’s population has a disability, 20% of those living below the dollar a day standard have a disability.
Microfinance provides one option to States Parties to the CRPD in their duties to provide an adequate standard of living to their citizens with disabilities Read the rest of this entry »
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