Knowledge Centre : Economy : Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, & commentary : Page 2
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- Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs): A Rough Guide
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Bretton Woods Project, April 2003. In September 1999 the World Bank and the IMF approved the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers approach. At the time Bretton Woods Project published an "ABC to PRSPs". Since then 28 countries have completed a full Poverty Reduction Strategy document another 45 countries have produced an interim document. The aim of this short briefing is to provide information to a non-specialist audience on some key aspects of PRSPs. It does not cover all areas or provide detailed strategic insights.
http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/article.shtml?cmd[126]=x-126-16298
(Added: Thu Aug 26 2004 Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005 Hits: 395)
- Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A Poor Package for Poverty Reduction (PDF)
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Jenina Joy Chavez Malaluan and Shalmali Guttal, Focus on the Global South, January, 2003. In this paper, we contend that little has changed in the substance, form and process of World Bank and IMF programmes. "Poverty" is used as window dressing to peddle more or less the same Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) to low income countries that led them into a state of chronic economic crisis to begin with. Stringent policy conditionalities still rule supreme in Bank-Fund operations, the latest of which include an assortment of prescriptions loosely categorised as "good governance." Major international donors, however, appear to have blindly acquiesced to the Bank-Fund model of development, which is encapsulated in the PRSP and which has clearly failed over the past twenty years in numerous countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Countries as diverse as Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Bolivia, the Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Indonesia were all forced to apply the Bank-Fund development model at one time or another, and all have suffered from deep and shattering economic crises as a result of Bank-Fund policy prescriptions. And yet today, the same policies continue to be supported even more ardently than before by donors, in a new package called the PRSP.
http://www.focusweb.org/publications/2003/PRSP_2003.pdf
(Added: Mon Feb 10 2003 Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005 Hits: 405)
- Poverty Reduction: Are the strategies working? [PDF 499KB]
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Poverty reduction strategies (PRSPs) have the potential to expand poor people's opportunities to influence the government-donors relationships and to promote downward accountability. This should accordingly, increase the amount of donor resources that reach the poor and, even more importantly, the quality of these resources for poverty reduction. This World Vision report argues that fundamental improvements to PRSs are required, if they are to become the mechanism for poor people to both influence and hold the national poverty reduction processes,including donor-government relationships, accountable.
http://www.worldvision.org.uk/resources/wvuk+prs+report+july.pdf
(Added: Thu Dec 15 2005 Modified: Fri Dec 16 2005 Hits: 428)
- Pro-poor growth: what is it? [PDF]
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There is a growing consensus among development practitioners and thinkers that growth alone is not enough to reduce poverty. Instead, discussion now centres on the idea of "pro-poor growth": something that is indicative of a major conceptual move away from the trickle down theories of a few decades ago. However, as important as the shift in development thinking is, there is still much to be done in defining what pro-poor growth is, how it is assessed and measured and, more importantly, how the concept can be translated into effective policy. This brief paper from the UNDP's International Poverty Centre discusses the concept of pro-poor growth.
http://www.undp.org/povertycentre/newsletters/OnePager1.pdf
(Added: Tue Feb 28 2006 Hits: 392)
- PRSP: Beyond the Theory - Practical Experiences and Positions of Involved Civil Society Organisation
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Elaborated by Irene Knoke and Dr. Pedro Morazan, Südwind-Institute. Bread for the World/Brot für die Welt (2002). This report is has been produced with the intention of promoting changes in the areas where deficits in the application of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) can be observed. In order to elaborate the aspects indicated in this study, BFTW conducted interviews with Civil Society Organisations (CSO) among which counterparts of BFTW are represented. We placed four countries at the centre of our investigation: Cameroon, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mozambique. Where we considered it to be adequate, we included as well the experiences of other HIPC countries already investigated by other institutions of international cooperation. This is the case of Bolivia, Tanzania and Zambia, countries that have well-structured networks of grassroots organisations at their disposal for participation.
http://www.eurodad.org/uploadstore/cms/docs/suedwind_prsp_review.pdf
(Added: Thu Oct 10 2002 Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005 Hits: 255)
- PRSPS: Poverty Reduction or Poverty Reinforcement?
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(Kabissa) By Demba Moussa Dembele, Pambazuka News 136, 12 Dec 2003. The PRSPs, we are told, represent a "major departure" from SAPs, in that they are "nationally-owned" and aim at "reducing poverty", according to the two institutions. But what is the reality behind the rhetoric?
http://lists.kabissa.org/pipermail/pha-exchange/msg01115.html
(Added: Thu Dec 18 2003 Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005 Hits: 443)
- Quality Participation in Poverty Reduction Strategies
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August 2002. The processes to produce poverty reduction strategies papers (PRSPs) present opportunities for people to be involved directly in policy-making for national development. Christian Aid has commissioned research in Bolivia, Malawi and Rwanda to assess the quality of participation in the poverty reduction strategy (PRS) process.
http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/0208qual/quality.htm
(Added: Fri Nov 08 2002 Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005 Hits: 151)
- Reducing poverty: is the World Bank's strategy working?
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(2002) After 3 years what progress, if any, has the PRS made? For over 70 countries producing a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), approved by the World Bank and IMF, is either a condition for getting debt relief, or a condition for receiving concessional loans and some aid. This Panos report examines the progress made so far after 3 years of the Bank and IMFs Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) and looks at the arguments about whether it can succeed. The report is critical of the World Bank and IMF, and governments for not allowing debate and alternative views on these fundamental questions of economic policy. The participation in economic policy-making to which civil society is being invited in the PRSP process is strictly limited. The report draws on specially commissioned research from Lesotho, Ethiopia and Uganda.(Eldis)
http://www.eldis.org/static/doc10306.htm
(Added: Tue Sep 24 2002 Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005 Hits: 223)
- Rethinking Participation
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An ActionAid USA/ActionAid Uganda Discussion Paper; April 2004. (pdf) This ActionAid USA/ActionAid Uganda Discussion Paper is designed to elicit debate and discussion among ActionAid country programs and other civil society organizations (CSOs) which participate in public consultations for Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). While acknowledging the benefits of CSO engagement in public PRSP consultations, the paper raises important questions for CSOs about the limitations and constraints of the consultations that have been documented over the previous four years of experience. Based on this historical record, the paper suggests that CSOs consider the benefits of also participating in alternative public forums as supplementary or complimentary methods of civic mobilization around questions of development policy.
(Added: Wed Aug 11 2004 Modified: Fri Aug 25 2006 Hits: 106)
- Structural Adjustment Participatory Review
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SAPRIN is a global network established to expand and legitimize the role of civil society in economic policymaking and to strengthen the organized challenge to structural adjustment programs by citizens around the globe. The network is working with a broad range of citizens' groups in various countries on four continents to organize public processes to assess the real impact of World Bank and IMF-supported economic-reform programs and to chart a new course for the future. SAPRIN and its local affiliates have engaged the World Bank and governments in eight countries -- Bangladesh, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Hungary, Mali, Uganda and Zimbabwe -- as part of the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI). In Mexico and the Philippines, as well as in Canada, citizens' groups organized under SAPRIN are collaborating with parliamentarians and other institutions as part of the Citizens' Assessment of Structural Adjustment (CASA). In Argentina and the Central America region, SAPRIN is working with broad citizens' alliances to build alternatives to current economic policies.
(Added: Fri Nov 11 2005 Hits: 105)
- The ABC of the PRSP
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by Angela Wood, Bretton Woods Projects. An introduction to the new Bank and Fund Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.
http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/topic/adjustment/abcprsp.html
(Added: Mon Mar 31 2003 Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005 Hits: 159)
- Understanding urban poverty: What the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers tell us
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Written by Diana Mitlin (Human Settlements Programme of the International Institute for Environment and Development). This paper reviews 23 Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to consider how they define and measure urban poverty and thereby assess the extent to which they consider urban poverty. Nearly all PRSPs have a strong emphasis on the relative importance of rural poverty. However, many appear concerned that their poverty estimates do not fully represent the situation with respect to urban poverty. Their narrative texts complement their quantitative estimates in a number of ways, suggesting that there may be serious "pockets of poverty" within urban areas, that urban poverty may be increasing and that inequality may be higher in urban areas than in rural areas.
(Added: Thu Aug 11 2005 Modified: Fri Sep 29 2006 Hits: 76)
- Unemployment Assistance and Transition to Employment in Argentina
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In 2001-02, Argentina experienced a wrenching economic crisis. Plan Jefes, implemented in May 2002, was Argentina's institutional response to the increases in unemployment and poverty triggered by the crisis. This paper examines the effect of participating in Plan Jefes on the probability of exiting from unemployment.(Iturriza, Bedi & Sparrow, 2007)
http://www.eudnet.net/download/wp/EUDN2007_02.pdf
(Added: Thu Dec 20 2007 Hits: 46)
