Taking the public pulse on justice in Serbia

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Filed under: Anticorruption Governance Human rights Social inclusion

Focus group participants, Serbia

Gathering feedback to inform policies in the justice sector

I recently had the privilege of listening to legal professionals and representatives from women’s groups, people with disabilities and minorities, talk about issues related to justice in Serbia.

UNDP organized a series of focus group discussions to delve deeper into some of the issues that came out of a recently held crowdsourcing survey, where citizens were asked to share their experiences and opinions on judicial reform and access to justice in the country. (See: Serbia crowdsourcing policies on judicial reform and access to justice)

One of the main issues that arose in all focus groups was the need for judges to be accountable.

“Someone should judge judges. A system, and criteria for the accountability of judges needs to be established that will not be distorted due to political influences.”

Judge from the High Judicial Council

“Without a good judge there is neither fairness nor justice.”

Representative from a minority group

The participants of all focus groups said that legal uncertainty was caused by uneven judicial practice.

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Social marketing: Promoting social values in fYR Macedonia

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Filed under: Climate change Environment

What impresses me most about the whole concept of social marketing is how it applies the tried-and-tested techniques of commercial marketing to ‘sell’ social values in ways that have the potential to change our behaviour and improve society as a whole.

When you think about it, social marketing is not so different from other efforts to influence public behaviour.

People have different needs, of course, and form different groups in the community to resolve common issues that affect their lives. In short, they initiate different forms of association and make efforts to influence our behaviour: the same aim as that of social marketing campaigns.

Adopting a social marketing approach, we recently succeeded in ‘selling’ the benefits of saving energy to 1,600 young people from seven different municipalities (Gevgelija, Valandovo, Bogdanci, Kocani, Probistip, Kicevo and Oslomej ) who ‘bought’ into the idea of energy efficiency.

To ensure an effective social marketing campaign, we enlisted the help of the very people we were marketing to: young people.

Why? Because people are often more receptive to messages coming from people they perceive as their peers.

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Behavioural science and development: More practical examples

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Filed under: Development Social innovation

Taxes and pensions

Benjamin Franklin famously quipped that the only things certain in life are death and taxes.

Not yet sure about death :) , but British fiscal authorities have been at pains to collect taxes as many Britons apparently procrastinated about paying them on time (after all, J.M. Keynes once mentioned that the avoidance of taxes was the only intellectual pursuit that carried any reward :) ).

Upon advice from the Nudge Unit, British tax authorities employed several tools to influence human behaviour:

  • In one experiment, British Courts Service sent personalized text messages to remind people to pay their fines on time. As a result, bailiff interventions were reduced by 150,000 and £30 million was saved.
  • In another town, telling people that their neighbours had already paid their taxes resulted in a 15 percent rise in tax collection and another £30 million in extra revenue.
  • Collection of car taxes provides yet another eloquent example. The respective tax service sent a letter to non-payers containing a banner headline suggesting pay your tax or lose your car. This alone doubled the number of people paying the tax; when the letter was personalized with a photo of the car in question, it tripled.

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Can a mobile app help you be a responsible citizen?

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Filed under: Development 2.0 Governance

Citizens in Montenegro are now equipped with a new mobile app “Be Responsible,” to help them transform them into vigilant reporters, scanning the country for illegal waste dumps, misuse of official vehicles, irregular parking, roadblocks, and failure to comply with tax regulations.

The app was developed by several teachers, current and former students of the University of Montenegro’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering who teamed up to take part in Open Ideas for Montenegro (in Montenegrin), a social innovation project designed out of sheer belief in the transformative power of technology.

This May marked the finale of months-long efforts to empower citizens.

The experience of our colleagues’ work in Armenia and Ukraine and inspired us to engage citizens directly, going beyond the usual suspects and reaching those who tend to be left out of public consultations. Read more »

Shared Words: a peacebuilding game in Cyprus

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Filed under: Peace and security

Originally posted on the Peace Exchange blog

Image presenting the common origin of the word "dalga", which is related a desire and love in both Turkish and Greek languages. A couple kissing on the beach illustrate this explanation

Shared word between Greek and Turkish >> find more words

10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3 Yes we are indeed counting down to launch the Shared Words language learning game. Well, not just yet but we are almost there!

Shared Words project has been an interesting project and a starting point that has the potential to affect, motivate, and contribute to rapprochement between the two major communities of the island.

Shared Words project is not only about language learning through the use of common words between languages. It is the outcome of a peacebuilding philosophy that looks for common ground between different cultures, nations, or backgrounds.

The desired objective is not only to build communication with each other, but also to hopefully touch the hearts of people to relieve them from the grieves and hatred of the past, and from the doubt and fear of the future. Read more »

Smartup eurasia: connecting with YOU

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Filed under: Development 2.0 Social innovation

We created a map called smartup eurasia,* to provide a tool for sharing and learning about social innovation events across the region, including:

  • Hackathons
  • Social innovation labs
  • Open government conferences
  • Startup weekends

Smartup eurasia is a crowdmap, which means that it can be updated by anyone, including you!

It is based on the Ushahidi platform, which allows you to submit and share information in just a couple of easy steps.

Why this map?

We’ve all been there. We all went to at least one event that stood out.

And when we look back, it is the people that we met there and the way they shaped what was happening that we remember the most.**

In other words, it is the people you gather that can transform your event from neat to game-changing. Read more »

Behavioural science and development: How about some practical examples?

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Filed under: Development Health Social innovation

Book display, all about brains

This is the third in a series of blog posts dedicated to behavioural science for development.
Part II: Behavioural science and development: A reading list
Part I: Behavioural science and development: the beginning of our journey

I told you about our foray into behavioural economics and invited you to join – and I even gave you some homework. Now I want to offer some examples of what behavioural economics looks like in practice, in the hope of starting to think about how we can apply it to our work. (Keeping in mind that there is some criticism of the approach too.)

Energy saving

Many governments have put forward a series of monetary incentives (tariffs and subsidies) to drive down private energy consumption. Behavioural economics shows certain progress can be achieved without price-incentives. Here are two examples.

  1. In one case, a community of around 80,000 households received monthly and quarterly letters that compared the energy use of their neighbours. The programme resulted in a two percent decrease in energy consumption compared to the baseline. This progress demonstrates influence of “social norms” at work: we tend to follow others – we do what others are already doing. Thus, those who saw that they consumed above average reduced their consumption. To eliminate the risk that those with little consumption would “strive” to the average, a “happy” face was added to convey social approval (pdf). :)
  2. The Danish Nudging Network conducted an experiment placing reminder signs next to light switches to prompt students to turn off the lights when they leave their rooms. Reportedly, the signs resulted in a 20 to 26 percent reduction of lights being left on. This example outlines the influence of “salience”: our attention is drawn to what is novel and seems relevant to us.

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Twitter influence map: Tell me who you’re following and I’ll tell you who you are

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Filed under: Development 2.0

We tend to use Twitter as a source of real time or, at least, close to real time news update channel. You might have seen, or even participated in, live tweeting sessions, following colleagues or friends, reading news from newspapers without actually buying them and so on and so forth.

Fortunately, all these interactions are captured and stored in Twitter and are freely available via API – Twitter is quite an open system.

Assumption: If a group of Twitter users are following the same account, it means this Twitter account has an influence over the group. And it is as big as the number of users who are following it.

For example: if all members of a particular government are reading the same newspaper via Twitter (no conspiracy, it could just be National Geographic) it means that messages sent from that newspaper are being at least read by them, and therefore are somewhat influencing their thinking.

Probe: I created a visualization of Twitter group connections. By default it displays the group of UNDP accounts collected and processed so far (around 100 individual and institutional Twitter accounts as of 14 May, 2013).

Findings: The following are results of a quick look into the visualization. They are definitely not 100 percent bulletproof – and to be scientific, we have to include many more Twitter handles into respective groups, but some trends are pretty obvious: Read more »

Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh LIVE on 23 May: human security and development

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Filed under: Development Governance Peace and security


Freedom from fear and freedom from want has become a central topic in global consultations of the post 2015 development agenda.

Increasing people’s security is necessary to advance security, and only people-centred security policies can support development.

What then does human security mean? How can it be assured and measured?

Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, a US-Iranian leading global expert in the field of human security, will address these and other questions at her Kapuscinski Development Lecture on 23 May in Riga.

You can watch the lecture live at 12:00 pm GMT / 13:00 pm CET (see times around the world) and join the conversation on Twitter @kapulectures. Use #kdl in your tweets!

Feel free to send questions to Tadjbakhsh.

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A chat about transgender issues, human rights and living in a kinder world

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Filed under: Gender equality Governance Health HIV Human rights Social inclusion

Today, on the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, I would like to introduce you to Kirill Sabir, head of the FtM Phoenix Group and supporter and former board member of the Eurasian Coalition on Male Health (Follow them on Twitter: @ECOM_MSM)

I had the privilege to talk to Kirill, an activist and advocate for transgender rights in Russia and the ex Soviet bloc – especially rights related to health care:

A chat about transgender issues, human rights and living in a kinder world by B1ythe

>> Take action and cast your MY World vote against discrimination and persecution

Transcript:

Q: What are the specific issues that transgender people face in this part of the world?

Kirill Sabir: For us, the main issue is that we’re somewhere in the middle. We can’t say that we have a very bad situation as in some countries for example where they criminalize homosexual relationships, and this causes difficulties for all [lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender] (LGBT) community, and at the same time, we are not that advanced as in the United States, where LGBT rights are recognized.

So, for transgender people in particular, the main obstacle is that our legislation is mostly incomplete, which means that we have the legislative possibility to change sex, to undergo sex reassignment, we have diagnosis and doctors, but there is no specific procedure in most CIS countries.

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