BOX | Definitions of Development Aid

The End of Development?

BOX | Definitions of Development Aid

Development

The term “development” as used in the concept of development aid is far from having a universally accepted definition. A consensual definition considers that the concept of development refers to the set of technical, social, territorial, demographic, and cultural transformations accompanying the growth of material production or the improvement of human living conditions. It reflects the structural and qualitative aspects of growth and can be associated with the idea of economic and social progress. For Gilbert Rist, nevertheless, development is not an objective or universal process, but a collective belief, a “Western myth” that serves to legitimise the intervention of Northern countries in Southern societies. He defines it as a modern ideology, based on the idea of progress, which masks relations of domination and perpetuates forms of dependency.

Official Development Assistance (ODA)

Official development assistance (ODA) — or Aide publique au développement (APD) in French — is government aid that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries. ODA has been the main source of financing for development aid since it was adopted by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) as the “gold standard” of foreign aid in 1969. The DAC sets eligibility criteria, statistical rules, and principles of cooperation.

Human Development

Human development grew out of global discussions on the links between economic growth and development during the second half of the 20th century. By the early 1960s there were increasingly loud calls to “dethrone” GDP: economic growth had emerged as both a leading objective, and indicator, of national progress in many countries, even though GDP was never intended to be used as a measure of wellbeing. In the 1970s and 80s, development debate considered using alternative focuses to go beyond GDP, including putting greater emphasis on employment, followed by redistribution with growth, and then whether people had their basic needs met. These ideas helped pave the way for the human development approach, which is about expanding the richness of human life, rather than simply the richness of the economy in which human beings live. It is an approach that is focused on creating fair opportunities and choices for all people.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”, a quote from Gro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway (1987). In 1992, the Earth Summit in Rio, held under the auspices of the United Nations, formalised the concept of sustainable development and its three pillars (economic, ecological, and social): development that is economically efficient, socially equitable, and ecologically sustainable.

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals adopted in 2000 in New York (United States) as part of the United Nations Millennium Declaration by 193 member states of the UN and at least 23 international organisations, which agreed to achieve them by 2015. These goals address major humanitarian challenges: reducing extreme poverty and child mortality, combating several epidemics including AIDS, ensuring access to education, promoting gender equality, and advancing sustainable development. In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were published, succeeding these goals.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

The term “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) is commonly used to refer to the 17 goals established by the member states of the United Nations and set forth in the 2030 Agenda. This agenda, adopted by the United Nations in September 2015 following two years of negotiations involving both governments and civil society, sets out 169 targets to be achieved by 2030, common to all participating countries and divided into 17 SDGs.

Research Office – Geneva Graduate Institute

Other Issues

Special Issue no. 1 | June 2020

Politics of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Global Challenges

Special Issue no. 1 | June 2020

Politics of the Coronavirus Pandemic

A pandemic is not just a medical emergency – it is also a political, economic, and social crisis. It implies new challenges for democratic institutions and practices, for citizenship rights and human rights as some of the restrictions on civil liberties put in place by liberal and illiberal democracies may well outlive the coronavirus. This special issue explores some tensions and dilemmas of democracies faced with the current crisis. “Politics of the Coronavirus Pandemics” addresses questions like: Can we speak of a decline in politics during the pandemic? While states have been using the full gamut of their sovereign prerogatives, has the political (temporarily) faded in the face of, for example, “expertise”? What will be the lasting impact of the rule by administrative fiat, and of emergency powers put in place in many countries? What kinds of agenda and instruments of civic activism are likely to emerge given that courts are rarely in session and public protest not permitted due to distancing rules? What are the likely consequences of these reconfigurations for democracy, governance, and welfare systems in the global South and North?

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Issue no. 9 | March 2021

The Moving Fault Lines of Inequality

Global Challenges

Issue no. 9 | March 2021

The Moving Fault Lines of Inequality

While poverty has been diminishing in absolute terms and relative income has been growing on a global scale for over two centuries, inequality – as measured by instruments such as the Gini coefficient – has been increasing steadily since the early 1980s. With the financial crisis of 2007, the growing digitalisation of the economy and the current pandemic, global inequality has further worsened, seeing the fortunes of the superrich attaining unprecedented levels and revenue concentrating in the top percentiles of societies.

Concurrently to the aggravation of the social fracture, additional fault lines have been opening or hardening along logics of race, gender, ethnicity and religion. Identarian revendications and logics of difference and exclusion have come to complement, compete with or supersede more traditional struggles for equality in a postmodern and neoliberal context that has normalised inequality, homogenised societies and done away with earlier grand narratives and collective agendas.

The consequences of inequality(ies) are dramatic, as reflected in the polarisation and fragmentation of societies, worsening health and mortality indicators, political tensions and violence, a decline in democracy, and mistrust in state institutions. The objective of the current issue of Global Challenges is therefore – by reverting to the analytical tools of social science – to reflect on the causes behind the multifaceted growth of inequality(ies), anticipate their noxious fallouts and explore potential remedies.

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Issue no. 5 | April 2019

New Grammars of War:
Conflict and Violence in the 21st Century

Global Challenges

Issue no. 5 | April 2019

New Grammars of War: Conflict and Violence in the 21st Century

The Dossier aims to explore new trends and expressions of violence in armed conflict in the 21st century. Taking as a starting point the changing paradigm of armed conflict – from conventional wars with clear contours towards more non-linear, fragmented and protracted types of civil and international conflict — it adopts a broad approach to portray changing forms of violence across different types of armed conflicts (including terrorism, international/civil wars or urban warfare). In the context of a fragmenting international order, with increasingly blurred lines between state and non-state, combatant and civilian, domestic and international, the number of actors involved in conflicts and concurrent strategies of violence have multiplied. In face of the ubiquity of violent conflict — despite an overall decline in interstate conflict and global number of casualties — the Dossier aims to shed light on new or changing forms of violence, their contexts, actors and victims. It explores the novelty, heterogeneity, scales and vectors of violent practices in contemporary conflicts by investigating the impact of a series of factors such as new military technologies (drones, robots), new communication tools (social media), gender, migration, or the subcontracting of security to private actors.

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The End of Development?

BOX | Definitions of Development Aid

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