The authors analyze whether political freedom and civil liberties help or hinder economic liberalization, using panel data from 25 post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union between 1992 and 1997. Building on arguments and counter-arguments put forth in...

The effect of the distribution of political rights on income inequality has been studied both theoretically and empirically. The authors review the existing literature and, in particular, the available empirical evidence. The literature suggests that formal exclusion from the political process...

Using data from the World Bank's Operations Evaluation Department, the authors examine the link between the performance of Bank-financed projects and various indicators of country governance. They find that: there is a strong statistical, and possibly casual, link between civil liberties and...

This study explores the relationship between mandating a nondiscrimination clause in hiring practices along gender lines and the employment of women versus men in 58 developing countries. The study finds a strong positive relationship between a nondiscrimination in hiring clause and women's...

This paper assesses the benefits, risks, and limitations of human rights based approaches to development, which can be catalogued on the basis of the institutional mechanisms they rely on: global compliance based on international and regional treaties; the policies and programming of donors and...

Little evidence is available on whether changing global rules so as to promote human rights can enhance development outcomes. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was almost universally ratified by the mid-1990s, but it is unclear whether treaty ratification was associated with better or...

This paper reviews the international legal framework applicable to the World Bank and member states on contemporary forms of slavery, in particular, trafficking. The Palermo trafficking protocol is specially analyzed. Moreover, the paper refers to the preventive framework constituted by human...

Human trafficking, as it is defined by international law, subsumes all forms of nonconsensual exploitation. That is, whenever people are forced or lured into exploitation no matter if movement of victims is involved it is considered human trafficking. There is, though, a large overlap with...

This report gives an overview of the social security status of non-citizens in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), describes measures and efforts to support labor mobility through enhanced social security protection of non-citizens in SADC, and makes recommendations as to how to...

This paper examines the causes and dynamics of the shift in the gender composition of migration, and more particularly, in the access of women to migration opportunities and decision making. The context of the analysis is Albania, a natural laboratory for studying migration developments given...