UNDP's Development Futures Series Briefs and Working Papers

The compounding crises of the COVID-19 pandemic, unchecked climate change and the war in Ukraine have caused severe negative economic, social and environmental consequences across the globe. We are facing a risk of a sharply diverging world with inequalities widening between developed and developing countries and within developing countries themselves, between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, men and women. This is especially true for the African continent, which has already suffered a loss of almost a decade of development gains. But, consistent with the findings of the UN Secretary-General’s Task Force on Digital Financing ‘People’s Money: Harnessing Digitalization to Finance a Sustainable Future’, the pandemic has put a spotlight on the role of digital finance and its accelerated applications in response to the crisis. A key question in this regard is how to use digital finance to improve economic participation, agency and resilience of people, facilitate cross-border trade and support sustainable development while addressing the risks of the widening digital divide. This paper will present the emerging applications of cryptocurrency in Africa, examine the evolving regulatory landscape and key accompanying risks and suggest potential policy considerations for leveraging this nascent, innovative instrument towards the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the continent.

Small Island Development States’ (SIDS) natural features, relative isolation, typical dependence on external resources and limited domestic capacity to absorb shocks make many of them especially vulnerable to crises, including climate-change related environmental disasters and health emergencies. This policy brief argues that one such crisis, precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has amplified and perpetuated dynamics of gender inequality in Samoa, a Pacific SIDS. We posit that care and household work, the burden of which falls disproportionately on women, is a central nexus in these dynamics, which in turn affect Samoa’s ability to cope with and spring back from this crisis. Based on this Samoan experience, we argue that care and household work deserves special attention from policymakers, especially in SIDS, because of its potentially central importance for gender-equity as well as for crisis-resilience and recovery.

Impacts of crises on inequality and marginalization are more complex and layered in today’s interconnected world than they were in the past, often manifesting through exacerbation of various pre-existing vulnerabilities of disadvantaged groups. Recovery strategies and efforts to build resilience thus require more multidimensional lenses for addressing secondary impacts of shocks, particularly on the most vulnerable. This brief explores whether multidimensional approaches to addressing issues related to poverty and vulnerability are more helpful in crisis contexts. Towards that end, the brief analyzes primary data on beneficiaries of UNDP Bangladesh’s Livelihoods Improvement of Urban Poor Communities (LIUPC) project. The findings are expected to contribute to the conception, design and scaling-up of future initiatives and contextualized solutions to strengthen the resilience of urban poor communities in similar settings.

Small arms and gender are intrinsically linked. A rich body of research in South-East Europe has documented how gender norms and roles can, in a complex interplay with other factors, fuel demand for small arms and shape patterns of their misuse. Gender also conditions specific risks that women and men face with respect to small arms misuse, in particular the forms and extent of their exposure to armed violence. On the other hand, widespread availability and misuse of small arms exacerbate existing gender inequalities, both in conflict and non-conflict settings, and reinforce power imbalances between women and men, which is most evident in the context of violence against women. These patterns are remarkably stable and, until recently, policy and the operational response have been weak and have mostly failed to adequately address links between gender and small arms. However, institutions in the Western Balkans, with support from UNDP SEESAC, are increasingly making efforts to mainstream the gender perspective across arms control frameworks, providing a blueprint for more gender-responsive policy solutions and contributing to more resilient communities. Elaborating on such experiences, this brief provides an overview of key evidence which has shaped arms control debates in the region and facilitated making a case for mainstreaming gender in small arms control. The brief further outlines practical strategies for gender mainstreaming and highlights the importance of gender analysis in enhancing the gender responsiveness of arms control. Finally, it discusses policy implications of bringing gender perspectives into arms control policies as well as ways forward.

This paper explores new data on income inequality by the World Inequality Database, which corrects underreporting of income in the top deciles of the income distribution. We find that within all low- and middle-income countries, the bottom 40 income shares are much lower than we previously thought, while the top 10 income shares are much higher. Important for Sustainable Development Goal 10.1, the bottom 40 income shares have been growing at a much slower pace than estimated earlier and often at a lower rate than the top 10 shares. Demonstrating the value of improved datasets, this paper calls upon practitioners to have these enhanced data and metrics in their methodological toolbox.

As in many countries worldwide, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its containment measures aggravated poverty in Bangladesh. Poor and vulnerable population groups were among the hardest hit. This brief draws on key findings from a UNDP Bangladesh survey on COVID-19 impacts during the pandemic’s first wave in early 2020. It covered 2,500 UNDP beneficiary households (HHs) across the country. In addition to severe income shocks, analysis reveals that the crisis amplified existing multidimensional vulnerabilities among HHs. Existing social safety net (SSN) programmes were inadequate to address different vulnerabilities. Against this backdrop, this brief underscores the need for Bangladesh’s continued attention on reforming its social protection system to make it more employment-focused, shock-responsive and universal in line with national priorities and for COVID recovery.

COVID-19 broke out at a time when Latin America was already experiencing significant social unrest, fueled to a large extent by growing dissatisfaction with the state of politics and the social contract more broadly. Given this context, how has the pandemic impacted citizens’ views of the public sphere and opinions about democratic governance? This brief presents the results of a survey commissioned by UNDP in 10 Latin American countries in September 2020. Self-ascribed social class is used as a lens to explore differences in the perception and evaluation of state performance in the face of COVID-19 with a focus on ‘middle-class’ perspectives. Some considerations are then offered on the steps required to enhance long-term democratic resilience in the region.

The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened the livelihoods of the most vulnerable households in developing countries. In response, several countries have launched income support programs (ISPs). We evaluated the likely impact of these programs on the weekly growth rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths across 62 developing countries between January and December of 2020. Event study results suggest that implementation of ISPs reduced the weekly growth rate of cases and deaths. A heterogeneity analysis found that ISPs seemed effective in reducing the growth of cases and deaths related to COVID-19 in middle-income countries and the growth rate of cases in low-income countries as well as those countries with high informality in the labor market. Difference-in-difference estimates using the Callaway and Sant’Anna (2020) estimation strategy indicated that ISPs decreased the COVID-19 case growth rate by 12.1 percentage points and the death growth rate by 22.9 percentage points.

Solidarity has been a hallmark of the COVID-19 pandemic response in Paraguay. Many vulnerable communities have found ways to survive in the crisis context by mobilizing support from community and volunteer networks and civil society organizations, and also by accessing institutional forms of support, such as cash transfer programmes. How pervasive is collective action in vulnerable territories during the pandemic? Who engages in collective action, and to what end? And does it reduce vulnerability? This policy brief reports preliminary results of a survey on social capital in selected territories of Paraguay and its relationship with economic vulnerability during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data presented provide insights into how trust and social capital have enabled collective action in vulnerable territories of Paraguay during the pandemic. This evidence can inform policy debates on how to increase resiliency and reduce vulnerability and allow us to identify, design and evaluate interventions to increase access to formal and informal types of aid in vulnerable territories.