Sarah Cook, in “Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change,
Social Policy and Politics,” highlights some of the main messages from
the UNRISD Report of the same title. Cook points that poverty
reduction requires growth and structural change that generate
productive employment, as well as comprehensive social policies.
Social policy, as a transformative instrument against poverty and
inequality, must transcend its residual role of safety nets and engage
with broad public policy issues of distribution, protection,
production and reproduction. Most countries that have successfully
reduced poverty adopted heterodox policies that reflected their
national conditions, rather than fully embracing market-conforming
prescriptions. Countries and peoples must be allowed the policy
space to adopt different models of development where aspects of
livelihood and food security, land reform, cultural rights, gender
equity, social policy and associative democracy figure prominently.
She explains why it is essential to take politics and power relations
into account in order to reduce poverty and inequality.
Sir Richard Jolly, in “UNICEF, Economists and Economic Policy:
Bringing children into development strategies,” explains the transformation
occurred in UNICEF since earlier times. From as early as 1947,
UNICEF recognized the importance of economic policy for
children and has sought the help of development economists in
mapping out what this might involve. UNICEF was about to be
transformed from a UN emergency agency for children to one
dealing with children’s long-term needs, questioning how the needs
of children and youth can be integrated into the general objectives
of development. In his account of UNICEF’s intellectual history,
he explains how addressing economic development for children
became even more acute in the adjustment period of the 1980s. The
legacy of “Adjustment with a Human Face” turned into
“Development with a Human Face” in later years. UNICEF
developed the concept of First Call for Children, which means
essentially that in bad times as in good, countries should ensure that