Executive Summary 'The purpose of the Guide to Rule of Law Country Analysis is to assist USAID Democracy and Governance (DG) officers in conducting a rule of law assessment and designing rule of law programs that have a direct impact on democratic development, with particular attention to empowering poor and vulnerable groups. Within USAID’s DG assessment framework, five elements comprise democracy: rule of law; consensus; competition; inclusion; and good governance. This guide presents a stra more...

'Although developing innovative agricultural technologies may prove crucial, to address the needs of poor farmers, the gap left by private sector neglect must be filled by the public sector. No single intervention can help them all. But reducing poverty, mitigating climate change, and building resilience to climatic and market shocks means empowering these farmers and their communities to identify the investments that will best meet their needs.'

Based on a new report released in June 2009 by Human Rights Watch, this article examines the steps taken in southern Africa to address cross-border provision of HIV-related services to migrants. It looks at the case of South Africa, where poor implementation of human rights legislation continues to prove a stumbling block to treatment access as well as highlights regional tensions with the SADC region.

'Neither the state-driven development strategy of import-substitution industrialisation from the late 1940s to the 1970s nor the neoliberal market-driven strategy since the 1980s has been able to resolve endemic problems of rural poverty in Latin America. This Development Viewpoint argues that the major reason is that the main causes of rural poverty are structural - related to an unequal distribution of land and political power. Hence, effectively tackling such causes will require a new develop more...

The key step in India’s long-overdue governance reforms is making the bureaucracy more Web-oriented.
Dr D.C.Misra, June 17, 2009

'Agricultural reforms were among the first elements of systemic transformation introduced in Romania in the early 1990s. By 2005 almost 95 percent of land was in private ownership, up from 9 percent in 1990. Collective farms were dismantled, land was restituted to owners based on records from the 1940s, and state farms were transformed into large corporate farms. However, these reforms resulted in land fragmentation. Many small and medium-sized farms were unable to benefit from economies of scal more...

Cyber law is gaining importance all over the World. China has become the latest country to adopt regulations pertaining to cyber law. A recent news report says that although the Western media has been awash with stories of Chinese hacking for years, cybercrime was until recently governed by three articles added to China's criminal code in 1997. The laws were out-of-date and 'failed to correlate proportionately with the tremendous social harm' caused by cybercrime, according to a recent paper on more...

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) announced today that the infocomm industry can look forward to more than 392 tenders worth a total of S$1.73 billion (US$1.18 billion) in financial year 2009.

A state in Northern India, Haryana, has decided to extend rebate to those using the online medium to fill requests for various kinds of processing to be done at estate offices. This rebate will encourage applicants to use the web, saving time for both applicants and the government agency.

'Croatia has a fairly common greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions profile for a transition economy. Whereas sharp production declines in the early 1990s due to economic restructuring and military conflict significantly reduced GHG emissions, these started to increase with economic recovery in 1995. In contrast to its pre-1990 emissions pattern, which reflected a predominance of industry over the service sector, Croatia now shows an emissions profile common to European Union (EU) member states, charact more...