Two new groups of ASAP volunteers — the Quick Response Team and Campaign Coordination Team — will work together to provide research, consultation, and other support services to Beyond 2015.

Beyond 2015 is a global coalition of more than 500 civil society organisations from over 80 countries calling for a strong and legitimate development framework to succeed the UN Millennium Development Goals, which are due to expire in 2015. Beyond 2015 is working closely with the UN to ensure that its work on the post-2015 development framework is inclusive, participatory, and responsive to the voices of people living in poverty. The High Level Panel appointed to advise the UN General Assembly regards Beyond 2015 as a key source of civil society input in the MDG replacement process.

ASAP is well placed to contribute research and consultation to Beyond 2015 because two ASAP projects, the Global Poverty Consensus Report and the Institutional Reform Goals, focus on co-ordinating academics\’ research and recommendations for the MDG successors. Beyond 2015 has recognised ASAP as a leading source of academic knowledge concerning poverty alleviation and other development goals.

In order to provide Beyond 2015 with the best academic input possible, ASAP has recruited volunteers from around the world to form the Quick Response Team and the Campaign Coordination Team.

The Quick Response Team consists of 25 academics who specialize in poverty alleviation from diverse disciplines, including philosophy, political science, social science, economics, international business, environmental management, medicine, and other fields. Team members are based in a wide range of countries, including Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. The diversity of the Quick Response Team leads to rich interdisciplinary analysis and research on questions concerning poverty alleviation. Specifically, the Quick Response Team offers the following services:

1. Providing research-informed responses to urgent questions from Beyond 2015.
2. Fact checking position papers written by Beyond 2015 member groups.
3. Translating Beyond 2015 materials into other languages.
4. Identifying academics who are conducting leading research on poverty alleviation and international development.

The Campaign Coordination Team consists of four members who are responsible for liaising between ASAP, the Quick Response Team, and Beyond 2015, and for coordinating the efforts of these groups. Specifically, the Campaign Coordination Team recruits academics from the Quick Response Team to contribute to Beyond 2015 policy briefs, delegates research tasks amongst the Quick Response Team, and synthesizes research findings.

To date, the Quick Response and Campaign Coordination Teams have worked together to provide substantive academic feedback on several Beyond 2015 policy briefs, spanning the themes of Health, Food Security and Nutrition, and Environmental Sustainability. The two teams are also collaborating to compile a list of potential contributors to the Global Poverty Consensus Report who represent a variety of nations and academic disciplines.

The development of the Quick Response and Campaign Coordination Teams marks a pivotal step for ASAP\’s work in facilitating discussion between civil society and academic researchers, and in providing an avenue for academics to engage in poverty-alleviation activism and contribute directly to the efforts to eradicate global poverty.

For more information on the Quick Response Team, please contact Brent Peterkin at brentpeterkin@gmail.com.

For more information on the Campaign Coordination Team, please contact Erin Schutte at erin.schutte@yale.edu or Monica Landy at monica.landy@yale.edu.

Some of the world\’s most prominent scholars of participatory governance and development have joined an ASAP team formed to help ensure an inclusive process in the development of replacement measures for the Millennium Development Goals.

The United Nations is holding a series of thematic consultations with academia, media, private sector, employers and trade unions, civil society and decision makers on the post-MDG development agenda. These meetings are likely to have a great impact on the new framework of international goals that will succeed the MDGs after 2015.

It is crucial that the voices of the global poor are well-represented in these consultations. Towards that end, ASAP, in collaboration with the Beyond 2015 coalition, has formed a team of experts on participatory consultation that will work to ensure that representatives of the global poor our meaningfully engaged in the upcoming UN meetings.

The team:

• Elizabeth Anderson, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Womens Studies at the University of Michigan
• Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Mayer Professor of Philosophy and Political Science and Director of the Program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University.
• Simon Burall, Director of Involve
• Lyn Carson, Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney, Australia
• John Dryzek, Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University and Australian Research Council Federation Fellow
• Meena Krishnamurthy, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba
• Charles Sabel, Maurice T. Moore Professor of Law and Social Science at Columbia Law School
• Gilad Tanay, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University
• Catarina Tully, Director of From Over Here
• Scott Wisor, Research Fellow in the Centre for Moral, Social, and Political Theory in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University

For more information about this project contact Gilad Tanay (gilad.tanay@yale.edu) or Meena Krishnamurthy (meena.krishnamurthy@gmail.com).

A special issue published by leading field journal Ethics & International Affairs focuses on ASAP\’s potential for promoting collaboration and impact on global poverty by academics worldwide.

In a linked series of six articles, leading political theorists, development specialists and NGO practitioners explore the need and potential for an organization such as ASAP. They also offer some cautionaries about method and aims.

Contributions:

• \”Outreach, Impact, Collaboration: Why Academics Should Join to Stand Against Poverty,\” by Thomas Pogge and Luis Cabrera. (A pre-publication version of this article is available)
• \”Global Poverty and the Limits of Academic Expertise,\” by Onora O’Neill
• \”Addressing Poverty and Climate Change: The Varieties of Social Engagement,\” by Simon Caney
• \”Navigating Between Extremes: Academics Helping to Eradicate Global Poverty,\” by Roger C. Riddell
• \”Beyond Charity: Helping NGOs Lead a Transformative New Public Discourse on Global Poverty and Social Justice,\” by Martin Kirk
• \”How Academics Can Help People Make Better Decisions Concerning Global Poverty,\” by Keith Horton

The contributors first presented their ideas on ASAP in a symposium hosted by the University of Notre Dame London Centre in October 2011.

Contributor Bios:

• Thomas Pogge is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University and Chair of the Board of Academics Stand Against Poverty.
• Baroness Onora O’Neill taught philosophy and served as Principal at Newnham College, Cambridge. She served as president of the British Academy from 2005 to 2009. She currently serves as a member of the UK House of Lords.
• Simon Caney is Professor in Political Theory, University Lecturer, and Fellow and Tutor in Politics, Magdalen College, University of Oxford.
• Roger Riddell is a Principal of the Policy Practice, which undertakes policy work in developing countries, and advises and trains governments, development agencies, civil society organisations and companies. From 1999-2004, he served as International Director of Christian Aid, one of the UK\’s largest relief and development organizations.
• Martin Kirk is Head of UK Campaigns for Oxfam UK. He also leads Oxfam work on development finance, health and education. Previously he served as Head of Global Advocacy for Save the Children UK.
• Keith Horton is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Wollongong, Australia and is a member of the ASAP Board.
• Luis Cabrera is Reader in Political Theory at the University of Birmingham (UK) and is also on the ASAP Board.

ASAP provided a background brief titled \”After 2015: What Do We Know? Where Do We Go From Here?\” to participants in a civil society dialogue on the MDG successors, held in London on November 1 and 2. The event was organized to allow civil society groups to present proposals the High Level of Eminent Persons, appointed to advise the United Nations General Assembly on the contents of the development framework that will succeed the MDGs in 2015. Prior to the meeting, the High Level Panel published a list of six discussion questions to guide the meeting, addressing themes like jobs and livelihoods, inequality, inclusive growth, and ecologically fragile areas. ASAP responded to these six questions and laid out four principles that should underlie the post-2015 framework.

ASAP\’s background brief is available for download.

Beyond 2015 is a coalition of 380+ CSOs which is seeking to create a civil society consensus around a minimum standard of legitimacy for a post-2015 framework, both in terms of the process and the framework itself.

ASAP has been invited to join Beyond 2015\’s committee developing a position paper on governance and accountability for the post-MDG consultation process. This paper will be presented at the UNDP\’s thematic consultation meeting on governance and accountability to take place in Johannesburg early next year.

Board member Gilad Tanay (Yale) will represent ASAP in the committee. For further information or to provide your input on the process contact Gilad Tanay at gilad.tanay@yale.edu.

For more details on ASAP\’s work on the post-MDG issue see the Global Poverty Consensus Report.

The United Nations Development Programme is holding a series of thematic consultations on the post-MDG framework with academia, media, private sector, employers and trade unions, civil society and decision makers. These consultations will focus on 9 key areas:

• Inequalities (across all dimensions, including gender)
• Health (including issues covered by MDGs 4, 5, 6, plus non communicable diseases)
• Education (primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational)
• Growth and employment (including investment in productive capacities, decent employment, and social protection)
• Environmental sustainability (including access to energy, biodiversity, climate change)
• Food security and nutrition
• Governance (at all levels)
• Conflict and fragility (including post-conflict countries, and those prone to natural disasters)
• Population dynamics (including ageing, international and internal migration, and urbanization)

In addition, the UNDP is convening 50 inclusive national consultations led by the UN\’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) on behalf of the General Assembly (GA).

Beyond 2015, a coalition of 380+ CSOs is coordinating a campaign to generate and present inclusive inputs from civil society into the consultations in order to influence the official UN process and to help build a civil society position on the content of a post-2015 framework.

The GPCR project and ASAP as a whole are urgently mobilizing resources to produce the right kind of outputs from academia to support the civil society effort to impact the consultation process and to do so in time to make a difference.

We will continue to update on the progress of the consultation process on this website. We would also recommend Beyond 2015\’s website as an excellent source of relevant and up-to-date information on the process.

For more information contact Gilad Tanay gilad.tanay@yale.edu

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One of the  areas of agreement that have already emerged through the Global Poverty Consensus Report dialogue process is that the post-MDG framework should include goals for reforming the structure of international institutions.

In response, ASAP is launching a new set of projects aimed at promoting the accountability agenda in the post-MDG framework by developing and advocating concrete and feasible goal that:

• Focus on state agents rather than aid recipients.
• Have outcomes that are defined in terms of changes to the structure of institutionalized practices and rules on the global level.
• Promote those institutional reforms that would have the most significant positive effect on human rights fulfillment and poverty alleviation globally.
• Are grounded in a \”do not harm\” principle, that is, are aimed at ensuring that these practices and rules to not contribute to the persistence or exacerbation of global poverty.

We identify six main areas in which institutional reform goals could have a major impact on human rights fulfillment and poverty alleviation:

• Illicit financial flows
• Labor standards
• Trade protectionism
• Resource and borrowing privileges
• Intellectual property law
• Environmental degradation

Over the next year, in tandem with the UNDP\’s consultation process, ASAP will execute a series of impact projects focusing on illicit financial flows and at least one more of these six issues. Each project will aim to:

• Produce a research-based policy paper articulating and arguing for a set of politically feasible development goals.
• Build a broad coalition of academics, CSOs and corporations supporting them.
• Present and promote them in the upcoming UNDP thematic consultations on the post-MDG framework.

ASAP will carry out each of these projects in collaboration with partner organizations that have relevant expertise and resources.

Parallel to executing these projects, ASAP will continue to develop the Global Poverty Consensus Report (GPCR). The GPCR project aims to build an inclusive consensus among academics from different disciplines, approaches and world-regions on global poverty alleviation and articulating it in a way that is accessible to policy makers and suitable for framing and directly feeding into the MDG replacement process.

For more information contact Gilad Tanay at gilad.tanay@yale.edu

Over the last months we have been interviewing leading experts from different disciplines, approaches and places on their views on what should replace the MDGs.

In the next November these interviews will be published together with an analysis of what they reflect on the state of agreement and disagreement among experts on what should replace the MDGs.

In this featured article, Utsa Patnaik, Professor of Economics (Retired) at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, argues that the Indian government massively undercounts the poor because the consumption standard against which poverty is measured has itself been allowed to fall over time. If the original definition of poverty line is used then three-quarters of India’s population today are poor. China also would see a dramatic increase, and the World Bank’s global poverty numbers would be revised far upward.

We are happy to announce that ASAP and the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) have agreed to launch a collaborative effort to jointly execute the GPCR project over the next years. CROP is a program of the International Social Science Council (ISSC), hosted by the University of Bergen.