The capabilities approach has consistently promoted literacy as an important social entitlement, a key determinant of well-being and a goal of human development. This significance of literacy is reflected in the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Reports. Nevertheless, as...

Denis Goulet (1931-2006) was a pioneer of human development theory and a founder of work on 'development ethics' as a self-conscious field that treats the ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning, and practice. The present paper looks at aspects of Goulet's work in...

Both the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) represent a “false start” in measuring gender equality. This is because they do not measure gender (in)equality as such, but an odd combination of absolute welfare levels and gender equality that is not...

The label 'human security' has attracted much attention since the 1994 Human Development Report, but there are numerous conflicting definitions and agendas, and widespread scepticism. The Ogata-Sen Commission report Human Security Now has proposed a unified yet flexible definition and agenda....

Calls for a comprehensive income security policy are common in South Africa, frequently in the form of a basic income grant. These arguments tend to draw on two broad sets of literature that, although arguing to the same ends, are not usually combined or interrelated. First, there are analyses...

Like many cities in developing countries, Sao Paulo, Brazil, is characterized by major intra-urban inequalities with respect to human development. The center-periphery spatial regimes are the most obvious spatial manifestation of this phenomenon. In this paper we apply confirmatory spatial data...

"Quand les riches se font la guerre ce sont les pauvres qui meurent' Jean-Paul Sartre Le Diable et le Bon Dieu (1951) This paper reviews the effect of armed conflicts on development and, in particular, on the prospects of achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It explores the economic...

Sen has suggested that it is a person's overall freedom that influences their opportunity to have valuable outcomes to their lives, and that this proves important to the whole society's development. It is also a “principal determinant of individual initiative and social effectiveness”. This...

The Human Development Index (HDI) improves upon per-capita Gross Domestic Product as an indicator of development by incorporating information on health and education. However, like its predecessor, it fails to account for the inequality with which the benefits of development are distributed...