Equity Evaluation And International Cooperation

Is South-South Cooperation (SSC) any different from other international partnerships in practice? While straightforward, this question often gets lost in conventional scholarship on SSC and international cooperation, which privileges macro-level narratives of how cooperation mechanisms fit within geopolitical concerns and shape the outcomes of foreign aid. Equity, Evaluation, and International Cooperation instead offers an answer from the ground up. It highlights two main lessons from the close examination of the ecosystem of international cooperation projects in the urban water-and-sanitation sector in Maputo, Mozambique. First, the book shows that macro labels attributed to international cooperation reflect very little about how cooperation projects operate on the ground and the equity consequences of their work. Second, how projects are designed, implemented, and evaluated does matter to the quality of learning that emanates from partnerships. Beyond the geopolitical and technical proximities favored by the SSC discourse, this book argues that what matters in practice is whether hierarchy or heterarchy is institutionalized in the governance of cooperation projects; whether project partners are locally embedded in shared work spaces; and whether practitioners value flexibility and recognize the epistemic value of learning from all partners as peers. A strong evaluation culture within the international development industry, however, still subjugates such equity-based concerns and deep learning in projects to accountability, reinforcing orthodox power asymmetries in cooperation and sustaining epistemic and distributive injustice. This book instead provides a framework for how project evaluations, as a key narrative instrument of development, can instead promote distributive, procedural, and epistemic justice in international cooperation projects.

Is South-South Cooperation (SSC) any different from other international partnerships in practice? While straightforward, this question often gets lost in conventional scholarship on SSC and international cooperation, which privileges macro-level narratives of how cooperation mechanisms fit within geopolitical concerns and shape the outcomes of foreign aid. Equity, Evaluation, and International Cooperation instead offers an answer from the ground up. It highlights two main lessons from the close examination of the ecosystem of international cooperation projects in the urban water-and-sanitation sector in Maputo, Mozambique. First, the book shows that macro labels attributed to international cooperation reflect very little about how cooperation projects operate on the ground and the equity consequences of their work. Second, how projects are designed, implemented, and evaluated does matter to the quality of learning that emanates from partnerships. Beyond the geopolitical and technical proximities favored by the SSC discourse, this book argues that what matters in practice is whether hierarchy or heterarchy is institutionalized in the governance of cooperation projects; whether project partners are locally embedded in shared work spaces; and whether practitioners value flexibility and recognize the epistemic value of learning from all partners as peers. A strong evaluation culture within the international development industry, however, still subjugates such equity-based concerns and deep learning in projects to accountability, reinforcing orthodox power asymmetries in cooperation and sustaining epistemic and distributive injustice. This book instead provides a framework for how project evaluations, as a key narrative instrument of development, can instead promote distributive, procedural, and epistemic justice in international cooperation projects.

This book presents leading-edge analysis on the theory and practice of participatory evaluation around the world. With its instructive case studies from Bangladesh, El Salvador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, and St Vincent, the book is a guide to a community-based approach to evaluation that is at once a learning process, a means of taking action, and a catalyst for empowerment.Knowledge Shared is the most comprehensive book now available on participatory evaluation. It is intended primarily as a tool for practitioners and policymakers in all segments of development cooperatio.

We are living in a cyber society. Mobile devices, social media, the Internet, crime cameras, and other diverse sources can be pulled together to form massive datasets, known as big data, which make it possible to learn things we could not begin to comprehend otherwise. While private companies are using this macroscopic tool, policy-makers and evaluators have been slower to adopt big data to make and evaluate public policy. Cyber Society, Big Data, and Evaluation shows ways big data is now being used in policy evaluation and discusses how it will transform the role of evaluators in the future. Arguing that big data will play a permanent and growing role in policy evaluation, especially since results may be delivered almost in real time, the contributors declare that the evaluation community must rise to the challenge or risk being marginalized. This volume suggests that evaluators must redefine their tools in relation to big data, obtain competencies necessary to work with it, and collaborate with professionals already experienced in using big data. By adding evaluators’ expertise, for example, in theory- driven evaluation, using repositories, making value judgements, and applying findings, policy-makers and evaluators can come to make better-informed decisions and policies.

Efficiency, economy, and equity are policy goals pursued by governments around the world, but analysts and evaluators have devoted more effort to measuring and evaluating the first two. In Speaking Justice to Power, contributors examine the concept of equity, the role it plays, and its application in policy evaluation. Here some of the most valuable thinkers in the area of policy studies address key questions: How should evaluators develop criteria for measuring equity as they analyze both program and policy implementation as well as their impacts? What distinctions among people should be taken into account when measuring and valuing impacts? What sorts of data should be used to analyze processes and impacts in different settings? How might such data be validated? The contributors employ grounded-theory thinking as they translate key ethical principles into their work and draw important lessons from their experiences. The work discusses equity in interventions addressing a variety of social and environmental problems. This volume continues the fine tradition of Transaction's Comparative Policy Evaluation series.

This handbook will raise awareness about the importance of health and well-being of people with disabilities in the context of the global development agenda: Leaving No-one Behind. There has been a growing discussion on how people with disabilities should be included in the global health landscape. An estimated one billion people have some form of disability, 80% of whom live in low- and middle-income settings. People with disabilities are more likely to be poor, with restricted access to health and social services, education, rehabilitation and employment. Despite this, people with disabilities are often overlooked in global health and development efforts. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that unless systematically planned for and included in policies and programmes, people with disabilities remain at an increased risk of being adversely affected in times of humanitarian crisis and emergency disasters. Divided into eight sections: Disability and Health Frameworks Health Justice, Rights and Bioethics Gendering Disability Health Disability and Global Mental Health Disability and Access to Healthcare, Including Workforce Development Crises and Health Technology and Digital Health Disability, Ageing and Dementia Care This handbook covers the full range of topics pertaining to disability and global health including inclusive health; access to rehabilitation; global mental health and disability; medical training and disability; community based inclusive development for improving health and rehabilitation; maternal health and sexual reproduction; preventive care and health promotion for people with disabilities; health, disability and indigenous knowledges; bioethics and human rights; data protection; and health in the global south. It will be of interest to all scholars, students and professionals working in the fields of disability studies, health studies, nursing, medicine, allied health, development studies and sociology.

Social determinants of health – broadly defined as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, and people’s access to power, money and resources – have a powerful influence on health inequities. In 2021, the Seventy-fourth World Health Assembly adopted resolution WHA74.16 on addressing social determinants of health, which encouraged Member States to integrate social determinants of health into public policies and programmes and adopt multisectoral approaches. The resolution requested the Director-General to develop an “Operational framework ... for the measurement, assessment and addressing, from a cross-sectorial perspective, of the social determinants of health and health inequities”. This Operational framework for monitoring social determinants of health equity provides countries with critical guidance on monitoring the social determinants of health and actions addressing them, and using data for policy action across sectors to improve health equity. The publication is meant as a resource for national governments and their partners. It was drafted under the guidance of an expert group and with internal contributions across the three levels of WHO, as well as through formal consultation with Member States, and was endorsed at the Seventy-sixth World Health Assembly.