On Shifting Ground

The 2014 Human Development Report highlights the need for both promoting people's choices and protecting human development achievements. Although almost everyone is likely to feel vulnerable at some point in life, some individuals and groups are systematically worse off. Longer life spans and demographic transitions are having wide ranging effects on economies, societies and living arrangements. According to the report, vulnerability remains a major obstacle to human development and unless it is systematically addressed by changing policies and social norms, progress will be neither equitable nor sustainable.

The Human Development Reports have been commissioned and published by UNDP since 1990 as an intellectually independent, empirically grounded analysis of development issues, trends, progress and policies. The report's ultimate goal is to help advance human development, therefore it places as much emphasis on health, education, gender equity and the expansion human freedoms and abilities as on economic growth.

Khalid Malik, director of the UN Human Development Report, will share key findings of the new report, as well as discuss why a human development approach is incomplete unless it incorporates vulnerability and resilience into the analysis.

This program is presented in partnership with the Global Philanthropy Forum.

Speaker Khalid Malik is the Director of the Human Development Report Office at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The discussion will be moderated by William H. Draper, General Partner, Draper Richards.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/event/1327

Direct download: 08_19_14_Khalid_Malik.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 3:38pm PDT

After a period of relative quiet, Israel and Hamas found themselves in a summer rocket war that put the global spotlight once again on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thousands of rockets and missiles were fired. The Israeli military destroyed an underground tunnel network built by Hamas. Gaza is in shambles. More than 1,800 Palestinians and 60 Israelis are dead. The United States leveled some of its toughest criticism at Israel ever for the killing of Palestinian civilians. What happens now? With decades of troubled history on both sides and a rising death toll, the possibility of a long-term peace agreement seems even further out of reach. Janine Zacharia, former Jerusalem bureau chief of The Washington Post, now a visiting lecturer at Stanford, will share her insights on why this conflict erupted now, explore what the sides hoped to gain (and what they did or didn’t achieve) and what it all means for the future of peace negotiations and the alliance between Israel and the United States.

Speaker Janine Zacharia is the Carlos Kelly McClatchy Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Communications at Stanford University.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/event/1337

Direct download: 08_14_14_Janine_Zacharia.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 3:35pm PDT

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