New issues of Southern Voice Occasional Papers

Southern Voice Occasional Paper 13:
Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers and Gender Sensitive Education Financing

By Prof. Dr. Khalida Ghaus and Muhammad Sabir

This paper used an empirical model based on a micro-theoretic foundation to estimate the impact of intergovernmental transfers on education sector. The results show that increasing the amount of resources to provincial governments through intergovernmental fiscal transfers and grants constituted through NFC awards leads to marginal increase in the provincial expenditure on education. Project lending and gender sensitive programs have greater positive impact on education financing.

Southern Voice Occasional Paper 14:
Measuring of Progress of Decent Work to Support the MDGs and Post-MDGs

By Luis Linares and Julio Prado 

This paper engages with the concepts of sustainable development, human development and decent work according to the human rights approach and the findings illuminate aspects such as the impacts caused by the high levels of informal work and poverty in the country, and point to valuable conclusions for the ongoing dialogue on the post-2015 development framework.

Southern Voice Occasional Paper 15:
Ensuring Good Governance and Effective Institutions: Can We Afford to Ignore Capacity Issues

By Subrat Das

This paper presents an assessment of the formulation of the illustrative goal “ensure good governance and effective institutions” put forward by the United Nations High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. It explores the significance of capacity of governance with reference to the experience of public policies and their implementation in India over the past decade.   It also suggests that the post-2015 development framework could incorporate policy directions to encourage developing and less developed countries to pursue fiscal policies that would create enabling environments for good governance and effective institutions

  • Southern Voice Chair Speaks at UN HLPF on Sustainable Development at UN head quarter in New York on 30th June, 2014

Chair of the Southern Voice on Post-MDGs addressed the opening plenary of the United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) at UN head quarter in New York on 30th June, 2014. The theme of the HLPF meeting was “Achieving the Millennium Development Goals and charting the way for an ambitious post-2015 development agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals”. The High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development was created at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June 2012, to provide political leadership, technical guidance and policy recommendations towards adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a apart of the post-2015 international development agenda.

In his speech he emphasized the need to mobilise additional public finance, particularly domestic revenue resources and concessional foreign assistance to endow the ambitious goals of post-2015 international development agenda. For this, he pointed out that the global development community has to look beyond financial resources and generate efficiency gains by concluding international negotiations in a number of areas. These areas include multilateral trade, climate change, technology transfer, international tax agenda and financial architecture. Dr Debapriya urged for strengthened and effective global development cooperation for improving the global governance and institutions so that low income countries can accelerate their national efforts to reduce poverty, inequality and discrimination in their respective countries.

The other panelists of the session were H.E. Mr. Csaba Kőrösi, Ambassador of Hungary and Co-Chair of the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, H.E. Mr. Antonio de Aguliar Patriota, Ambassador of Brazil, and H.E. Ms. Bénédicte Frankinet, Ambassador of Belgium. The President of UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Ambassador Martin Sajdik of Austria chaired the session, which was moderated by Dr. Manish Bapna, Executive Vice President of the World Resource Institute.

  • Data  Revolution Expert Workshop in London on 10-11 July 2014

A number of Southern Voice members participated in the Fourth Biennial High-level Meeting of the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) at the UN headquarters in New York on 10 – 11 July 2014. As part of DCF activities, CIVICUSSocial Watch, and NSI have organized a side event where a range of stakeholders will have the opportunity to participate in an open dialogue on the future of development cooperation in the post-2015 development agenda.

The first session of the workshop titled “The Data Revolution: Long-term objectives, challenges and opportunities” was about setting the right course for the data revolution to 2030. The participants discussed on the actions, relationships and institutions need to be in place and the different challenges to be overcome and objectives to be realised by 2030. The primary objective of the session was to explore the opportunities and risks of the ‘data revolution’ and how new technologies and innovative forms of citizen reporting could enhance national and global monitoring and accountability in the post-2015 framework. To contribute to this discussion, members of SV present initial findings from the Post-2015 Data Test.

  • Post-2015 Data Test: Progress Note

The country level studies of Post-2015 Data Test have been going on ceaselessly. Team Turkey prepared and published a progress note about their current status of the ongoing country study.  By the end of June, 2015 Sierra Leone and Tanzania teams have published their Inception Workshop Reports. Post-2015 Data Test team has published their Methodology and Implementation Guide in July, 2014.