Every conflict is unique. There is no universal recipe to avoid stepping into the “conflict-poverty trap”. Ultimately, peace and successful development depend on societal will and effective governance. Both must come from within. We may not have the knowledge or means to predict exactly how business can contribute to sustainable peace in a particular environment. [...]
Continue Reading →Sierra Leone’s devastating 11-year civil war destroyed much of its infrastructure, and left its economy in tatters. In 2004, two years after the end of the war, Sierra Leone asked the Investment Climate Advisory Services of the World Bank Group to help create a better business and investment climate that would lay a foundation for [...]
Continue Reading →The Business for Peace Foundation believes that what is required is a stronger focus on the trust-proposition between business and society, and that companies must examine their activities with this ethical element in the foreground. Scattershot CSR activities that seek to show good intent, apart from a company’s other activities, are not enough. As will [...]
Continue Reading →This publication contains a collection of articles produced by Abkhaz and Georgian experts on the subject of the political and economic dividends – or losses – that could be brought about by a regulation of economic relations across the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict divide.The publication is an outcome of an action research process that began in 2009 [...]
Continue Reading →American multinationals dominate the world stage, and their reach is growing. Ten years ago, almost none of Wal-Mart’s sales came from outside the United States; today, that figure is 14%. In the same period, GE’s foreign sales grew from 16% to 33%, and Procter & Gamble’s grew from under 40% to well over 50%. A [...]
Continue Reading →This publication is aimed at PSD practitioners and provides practical guidance on how to develop and evaluate PSD programming in conflict-affected environments (CAEs). It provides four main areas of guidance:Section 2 provides an overview of what PSD programming should seek to achieve in CAEs. It argues that, in the past PSD programming has seen its [...]
Continue Reading →The mining sector is increasingly attuned to the need for more effective management of conflict with communities around project sites. Leading companies are working to develop the necessary tools to deliver on this goal, but there are no easy or one-size-fits-all approaches. Effective grievance mechanisms are an important part of the equation. But, where they [...]
Continue Reading →This paper examines emerging practice to support the basic premise of social performance management – that business processes must be aligned with mission and, ultimately, deliver on the premise of client benefit. It then describes funder roles in promoting responsible finance and closes with observations about future implementation challenges.
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Responsible Finance: Putting [...]
Continue Reading →Access to safe drinking water is critical to human health and well-being. Providing safe,
reliable, piped water to every household would yield optimal health gains and contribute to the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets for poverty reduction, nutrition, childhood survival, school attendance, gender equity, and environmental sustainability. The World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and [...]
Drawing on evidence from Africa – especially Ethiopia and Uganda – the authors of this volume draw conclusions about economic policy in the aftermath of civil war. A sample of conclusions follows. Civil wars differ from international wars. They are informal, often have no clear beginning and end, weaken rather than strengthen the authority of [...]
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