Amnesty International Report 2008. The State of the World’s Human Rights.

Amnesty International 

- Introduction

- The State of the World’s Human Rights 

Global - 2008

World Report 2008

Human Rights Watch

“Democracy legitimately comes in many varieties, including systems based on proportional representation and first-past-the-post models, those featuring a strong president and those centered around a powerful prime minister, those that entrust authority primarily to the executive branch and those that prefer a stronger legislature. But all democracies worthy of the name have certain common characteristics, including periodic competitive elections that are freely held as well as transparently and accurately tabulated, a meaningful array of political parties, independent media outlets, civil society organizations that give citizens—including minorities—a broad range of opportunities to band together with others to make their voices heard, and a legal system that ensures that no one—and especially no government official—is above the law.”

Global – 2008

Amnesty International Report 2007. The State of the World’s Human Rights.

Amnesty International

“The Amnesty International Report 2007 documents human rights issues of concern to Amnesty International (AI) during 2006. AI’s approach to tackling human rights abuses is informed by both the challenges and opportunities for change in a given country or region. The strategic goals that AI identifies in a country or region determine AI’s work. As a result, AI addresses particular issues in specific countries. Regional maps have been included in this report to indicate the location of countries and territories, and each individual country entry begins with some basic information about the country.”

Global – 2007

Equality at work: Tackling the challenges: Global Report under the follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

International Labour Office

“The Global Report describes major advances in the struggle against discrimination, including progress in ratification of related ILO Conventions, as well as improvements on the national legal and institutional fronts, and action plans and programmes to combat inequalities stemming from discrimination.It also identifies challenges such as weak law enforcement, lack of resources among bodies set up to fight discrimination, plans that are too narrow in scope and programes too short in duration, and the informal economy as one area where equality-enhancing policies face particular difficulties in making an impact.”

Global – 2007

Human Rights Monitoring

Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights

“This handbook is about the monitoring of classical human rights (meaning civil and political rights) in one´s home country. However, the techniques described here may also be applied to studies conducted in other fields, such as those involving social rights, environmental protection issues, etc. We treat monitoring as comprising one element of action taken in the public interest.”

Global – 2001  

Annual Report 2008 “Capacity development: Empowering People and Institutions”

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

This Report “outlines how UNDP is focusing its support in the four key areas of poverty reduction and achievement of the MDGs, democratic governance, crisis prevention and recovery, and environment and sustainable development. Through these and other activities, UNDP remains committed to supporting countries in their efforts to help build a better life for their people.” 

Global - 2008

Human Development Report 2007-2008

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

"Climate change is now a scientifically established fact. The exact impact of greenhouse gas emission is not easy to forecast and there is a lot of uncertainty in the science when it comes to predictive capability. But we now know enough to recognize that there are large risks, potentially catastrophic ones, including the melting of ice-sheets on Greenland and the West Antarctic (which would place many countries under water) and changes in the course of the Gulf Stream that would bring about drastic climatic changes."

Global – 2007-2008

Human Development Report 2006

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

This year’s Human Development Report looks at an issue that profoundly influences human potential and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. Throughout history human progress has depended on access to clean water and on the ability of societies to harness the potential of water as a productive resource. Water for life in the household and water for livelihoods through production are two of the foundations for human development. Yet for a large section of humanity these foundations are not in place.

Global - 2006

Human Development Report 2005

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

"The year 2005 will be remembered as a year of choice, when world leaders had the opportunity at the UN September Summit to turn pledges and promises into concrete actions to help eradicate extreme poverty in our world. It is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss if we are to bequeath a safer, more secure and more just world to our children and future generations."

Global - 2005

Human Development Report 2004

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

"This year’s Report builds on that analysis, by carefully examining—and rejecting—claims that cultural differences necessarily lead to social, economic and political conflict or that inherent cultural rights should supersede political and economic ones."

Global - 2004

Human Development Report 2003

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

"This Report is about a simple idea whose time has come: the Millennium Development Goals. Born of the historic Millennium Declaration adopted by 189 countries at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, these eight Goals— ranging from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS to enrolling all boys and girls everywhere in primary school by 2015—are transforming development. Governments, aid agencies and civil society organizations everywhere are reorienting their work around the Goals."

Global – 2003

Human Development Report 2002

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

"This Human Development Report is first and foremost about the idea that politics is as important to successful development as economics. Sustained poverty reduction requires equitable growth—but it also requires that poor people have political power. And the best way to achieve that in a manner consistent with human development objectives is by building strong and deep forms of democratic governance at all levels of society."

Global - 2002

Annual Report 2007

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

"As we review the activities of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) over the last year, it’s clear we face a double challenge. First, there is the overall coherence and “delivering as one” agenda, which is critical for the entire UN development system. The second challenge we face relates to UNDP itself. UNDP is a key partner in building capacity for human development focused around four areas: poverty reduction, democratic governance, crisis prevention and recovery, and environment and energy."

Global - 2007

Annual Report 2006

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

"2005 was an important year for the development agenda, with the international community reaffirming its commitment to the MDGs. In 2007, we will be mid-way towards the 2015 deadline. UNDP remains committed to doing its part to translate the ambitious new partnership for development launched in 2000 into better policies, stronger institutions and greater resources more effectively deployed, all with the aim of achieving concrete improvements in the lives of those who need and deserve our strong support."

Global 2006

Annual Report 2004

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

" We also are aware that we have to operate in a global environment that is ever more dangerous and uncertain. From continued conflict in the Middle East and Iraq to the resurgence of crisis in Liberia, from growing political instability in parts of Latin America and central Asia to the relentless spread of HIV/AIDS beyond its African epicentre to South Asia and Eastern Europe, the range of development challenges only seems to grow."

Global - 2004

Annual Report 2002

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

"As this report sets out, the new UNDP is succeeding by combining the unique trust and convening power that derives from our UN character, history and mandate with our greater ability to give countries access to resources, expertise and experience through our global network and broad circle of partners."

Global - 2002

Annual Report 2001

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 

" Last year put the issue of development firmly at the top of the global agenda. The world leaders who gathered in New York for the historic United Nations Millennium Summit not only committed themselves to crafting a more inclusive globalization, but endorsed a clear set of targets to measure and benchmark progress in addressing poverty, disease, hunger, and other key development challenges. And the Millennium Declaration that contained those goals also set out a broad vision of how to achieve them: through a new focus on human rights, good governance and democracy that can help give poor people the voice, protections and opportunities to build a better life for themselves and their families."

Global - 2001

Global Monitoring Report 2008

World Bank (WB)

"The Global Monitoring Report 2008 comes at an important time. This year marks the halfway point in the effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. This is also an important year to work toward a consensus on how the world is going to respond to the challenge of climate change, building on the foundation laid at the conference in Bali in December 2007."

Global - 2008

The Millenium Development Goals Report 2008

United Nations (UN)

“The single most important success to date has been the unprecedented breadth and depth of the commitment to the MDGs a global collective effort that is unsurpassed in 50 years of development experience.

This global collective effort is yielding results. Adding more recent data to those contained in earlier Reports largely confirms the patterns identified previously. There has been sound progress in some MDG areas, even in some of the more challenging regions, and a number of targets are expected to be reached by their target dates, mostly 2015”.

Global, 2008

The Millenium Development Goals Report 2007

United Nations (UN)

" With support from the United Nations, many developing countries – particularly in Africa – have advanced in preparing strategies to achieve the MDGs. As of mid-2007, 41 countries in sub-Saharan Africa had started the process of preparing national development strategies aligned with the MDGs and other development goals agreed upon through the United Nations. During this mid-point year, the international community needs to support the preparation of these strategies and to accelerate implementation of the MDGs."

Global - 2007

The middle class and the development process

Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)

“Stable, higher income democracies often have both a strong middle class and relatively low levels of inequality. In contrast, lower and middle income countries with highly unequal patterns of income distribution and stratified social structures often have a weak middle class, more social conflict and a tendency to populist and/or authoritarian politics. This paper investigates, for a sample of more than 120 countries, some empirical correlations between the size of the middle class and the following set of variables: the level of per capita income and wealth, the degree of inequality of per capita income and wealth, the level and composition of public expenditure, the share of small and medium size enterprises in employment and output and an indicator of democracy.”

Regional – 2008

What Works Best in Reducing Child Poverty: A Benefit or Work Strategy?

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

"This paper assesses the extent to which child poverty is associated with the work status of parents. It is found that in nearly all OECD countries child poverty rates are significantly higher for jobless families than for families with at least one parent in employment, and are also higher in single-earner families than in two-earner families, and in sole-parent households compared to two-parent households. While jobless families are nearly everywhere the most disadvantaged among the poor, the analysis finds, however, that on average across OECD countries only around one-third of poor families with children are jobless, although this ratio varies widely – from less than 20% (Austria, Greece, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Portugal, Turkey and the United States) to 60% or more (Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany and Norway)."

Global - 2007

What Works Best in Reducing Child Poverty: A Benefit or Work Strategy?

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

“This paper assesses the extent to which child poverty is associated with the work status of parents. It is found that in nearly all OECD countries child poverty rates are significantly higher for jobless families than for families with at least one parent in employment, and are also higher in single-earner families than in two-earner families, and in sole-parent households compared to two-parent households.”

Global - 2007

Eradication of poverty and hunger

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

“It is unacceptable that 843 million people in developing and transition countries continue to suffer from hunger and that more than 1 billion still live on less than 1 dollar a day. Effective action against hunger and poverty has been impeded by a lack of political will to tackle the problem and, consequently, to provide the required resources.”

Global – 2005  

Worldwide Prevalence of Anaemia 1993-2005

World Health Organization (WHO) 

In this report, the prevalence of anaemia is presented by country and by WHO regions. Because these prevalence data may be used to identify programme needs by other United Nations agencies, we have presented the estimates classified by United Nations regions in the annexes. 

Global - 2008

The State of Africa’s Children 2008

UNICEF

The State of Africa’s Children 2008 highlights the need to position child survival at the heart of Africa’s development and human rights agenda. It begins by examining the state of child survival and progress towards the health-related MDGs for children and mothers in each of the continent’s five main subregions: Eastern, Central, North, Southern and West Africa. Although much of the report concentrates on Africa south of the Sahara, cases and analysis from North Africa are examined as well.

Regional - 2008

The State of the Asia-Pacific’s Children 2008

UNICEF 

The report begins by examining broad trends in child and maternal survival and health for the Asia-Pacific region as a whole, and setting out the main challenges for both countries and subregions in the run up to 2015. It then explores trends in child health and primary health-care provision in Asia-Pacific’s four main subregions: Eastern Asia, South Asia, South- Eastern Asia and the Pacific. While Eastern Asia, and to a lesser extent, South-Eastern Asia, are on track to meet most of the health-related MDGs, including MDG 4, which seeks to reduce under-five mortality rates by two thirds between 1990 and 2015, South Asia and the Pacific have much to do to achieve the goals.

Regional - 2008

The State of Latin American and Caribbean Children 2008

UNICEF

A particular focus is on the three priority countries – Brazil, Haiti and Mexico – that have the highest rates or highest numbers of child deaths in the region.

The report outlines broad priorities that are required to accelerate progress on child and maternal health in general, and to reduce inequality in health-care provision and health outcomes in particular.

Regional - 2008

Report 2008: The State of the World’s Children 2008. Child Survival.

UNICEF

“The State of the World’s Children 2008 assesses the state of child survival and primary health care for mothers, newborns and children today. These issues serve as sensitive barometers of a country’s development and wellbeing and as evidence of its priorities and values. Investing in the health of children and their mothers is a human rights imperative and one of the surest ways for a country to set its course towards a better future.”

Global – 2008 

Report 2007: The State of the World’s Children 2007. Women and Children. The Double Dividend of Gender Equality.

UNICEF

“The State of the World’s Children 2007 examines the discrimination and disempowerment women face throughout their lives – and outlines what must be done to eliminate gender discrimination and empower women and girls. It looks at the status of women today, discusses how gender equality will move all the Millennium Development Goals forward, and shows how investment in women’s rights will ultimately produce a double dividend: advancing the rights of both women and children.”

Global – 2007 

Report 2006: The State of the World’s Children 2006. Excluded and Invisible

UNICEF

“Children report focuses on excluded and invisible children who have no access to essential services, protection and participation.”

Global – 2006 

Report 2005: The State of the World’s Children 2005. Childhood Under Threat.

UNICEF

“The gap between the reality and the ideal of childhood is the focus of this year’s report on The State of the World’s Children: what childhood means for children, what childhood means for countries, and what must be done if the rights of all children are to be protected, if the Millennium Development Goals are to be met, and if we are to be successful in building a world fit for children and for all of us.”

Global – 2005

Report 2006: Annual Report 2004.

UNICEF

“The UNICEF Annual Report 2004 highlights our work with partners in 157 countries worldwide. It puts the spotlight on key achievements in each of our priority areas: girls’ education, early childhood development, immunization plus, HIV/AIDS and child protection; also addressed are the threats to children brought on by some of the natural and man-made emergencies that unfolded in 2004, as well as UNICEF’s response.”

Global – 2004

Moving young contents: State of the world population

UNFPA

“This report explores the lives of young women and young men who have ventured into new lands to chase their dreams or to escape oppression, war, poverty or misfortune. It profiles the lives of young women and men from ten countries – Burkina Faso, Colombia, India, Kenya, Liberia, Moldova, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Suriname and Zambia. Some have never migrated, but their lives are marked by the experiences of spouses or relatives who have moved abroad."

Global - 2006

Framework for action on adolescents & youth

UNFPA

“This document is based on the Fund’s commitment to invest in adolescents and youth and help them gain access to opportunities. For countries experiencing or about to experience the demographic transition and for countries showing a significant youth bulge, social investments in young people can help to achieve a healthy, socio-economically productive and povertyfree society. This document’s primary focus is on translating the Fund’s commitment to action. It is based on UNFPA’s extensive experience of working for more than thirty years in the area of adolescents and youth. It does not provide all the answers, but it charts a roadmap for positioning UNFPA for action”.

Save the Children Annual Report 2006.

Save the Children

Global - 2006