International Center for Development and Decent Work

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International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD)

Founded	2009 (2009)
Type	Non-profit
Focus	Ending hunger and poverty, food security, agriculture, political economy
Location	Kassel, Germany
Area served	Global
Method	Social and agricultural sciences research
Key people	Christoph Scherrer, Director
Website	www.icdd.uni-kassel.de

The International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD) is a global multidisciplinary network of eight partner universities on four continents with its head office at the University of Kassel. The center cooperates closely with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and various non-governmental organizations. The main mission of ICDD is to contribute to the global fight against malnutrition and poverty through research and education on Sustainable Development Goal 8 with a special focus on the over 800 million people facing grave food insecurity, especially in rural areas. Since 2009, the ICDD has created substantial research and knowledge in the fields of the Decent Work Agenda, sustainable development and employment for all people. The ICDD generates and transfers knowledge in a transcontinental and transdisciplinary way. The centre has established an interdisciplinary graduate school, the Ela Bhatt Visiting Professorship, an Alumni Applied Research School (AARS), several transcontinental and transdisciplinary research projects, and new teaching offers, such as massive open online courses (MOOCs). Additionally, the center launched a ICDD working papers series which contains over 30 volumes and the book series Labor and Globalization, consisting of over 20 volumes.

Partners and cooperation

The ICDD is an interdisciplinary network and think tank that brings together partner universities from around the world.

• Egerton University (EGU), Kenya
• Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), India
• Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY), Mexico
• Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil
• University of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF), Pakistan
• University of Cape Coast (UCC), Ghana
• University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), South Africa
• Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India

The network has expanded over the years by including new members, such as the University of Cape Coast (2012) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (2020). Various civil society partners support the work of the ICDD, among them the German Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture (DITSL) and the Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS). The ICDD also cooperates closely with the Global Labour University (GLU). The GLU network includes trade unions, universities, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) as well as the International Labour Organization (ILO). It delivers high-level qualification programmes and offers master's courses in five different countries on trade unions, sustainable development, social justice, international labour standards, multinational companies, economic policies and global institutions. It also promotes research collaboration on global labour issues.

ICDD's partnerships involve various activities including a transdisciplinary, international graduate school for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, new study programmes, student and faculty exchange, research collaboration, conferences, and workshops. Interdisciplinary collaboration has intensified ever since the ICDD was brought into being, mainly between the social sciences and the agricultural sciences, but also involving other disciplines, such as economics and engineering. The collaboration has raised awareness of the challenges to decent work in rural areas, not only in the agricultural sciences but also in the social sciences, which have traditionally been more focused on urban labour.

Research

In 2009, the University of Kassel, six partner universities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as well as the International Labour Organization (ILO) created the ICDD with the aim of generating new knowledge towards achieving the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal 1: ‘Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’, Target 2: ‘Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people’. The ICDD acquired funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) via the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and its ‘Higher Education Excellence in Development Cooperation’ (‘exceed’) programme, initially for a five-year period (2009–2014).

Research projects 2009–2014

Research collaboration among the ICDD network partners encompasses various disciplines, among them agricultural sciences, political sciences, sociology, and economics. The ICDD is strongly committed to promoting multidisciplinary research approaches to specific decent work issues. In the first phase of the ICDD (2009 –14), the centre focused on three research clusters and related research projects:

1. Sustainable Value Creation for Decent Work

• Biodiversity and Variation in Nutritional Properties of Pakistani Dates: Implications for Sustainable Value Chain and Decent Living
• Agrodiversity, Labour Migration, Decent Work, and Agricultural Development in Yucatán, Mexico
• Supply Chain Management at the Base of the Pyramid
• Remittances for Decent Work
• Coupling Plant and Animal Production Systems for Poverty Alleviation in Cholistan (Pakistan) and Rajasthan (India)
• Adding Value to Agricultural Products Using Solar Energy

2. Instruments for Promoting Decent Work

• On the Political Economy of Labor Market and Social Reforms in Latin America
• The Governance of the Financial Sector and its Impact on the Decent Work Agenda
• Creation of Decent Work Employment in Rural Areas of Laikipia (Kenya) through Eco-tourism, with a Special Focus on Village Communities
• The Employment Challenge: Towards a Trade and Currency Regime for Decent Work
• Strategies for Overcoming Economic Inequality
• Transnational Trade Union Cooperation in Labour Migrant Sending and Receiving Countries as a Strategy to Promote Decent Work

3. Strategies of Empowerment for Decent Work

• Strategies of Empowerment for (Migrant) Domestic Workers
• Work, Livelihood Strategies and Economic Security in the Twenty-first Century
• Working Conditions along Agricultural Value Chains
• Decent Work or Decent Life? The Quest for an Economics of "Happiness"
• Organising Vulnerable Workers – Comparisons between India, South Africa, and Ghana

Unlike other Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the goal of full employment and decent work for all was unfortunately missed by a large margin in 2015 according to the ILO. Poor employment is one of the main defining features of poverty, especially for those without access to land or the ability to grow their own food. In light of this, after an in-depth evaluation and based on the achievements of the ICDD and the other ‘exceed’ centres, the BMZ decided to prolong the ‘exceed’ programme for another five-year period (2015–2019).

Research projects 2015–2019

In response to the United Nation's post-MDG agenda and particularly the Sustainable Development Goal 8 ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’, the ICDD modified and widened its research focus to five thematic areas in the period 2015–2019:

• Decent Work along Agricultural Value Chains
• Organizing the Informal Economy
• Extractivism and Rural Welfare
• Rural-Urban Linkages: Transformation Processes
• Livelihoods and Social Protection
• Rethinking Development Cooperation

Since 2020, the ICDD is an exceed transfer center and thereby seeks to support new exceed centers by sharing expertise and organizational know-how. In this capacity, it closely collaborates with the Global Partnership Network (GPN) at Kassel University.

Other scientific activities

ICDD Graduate School

ICDD's core programme for knowledge generation is its Graduate School of Socio-Ecological Research for Development. In the period from 2010 to 2019 it offered a multidisciplinary research and education environment for more than 80 PhD and postdoc researchers, with PhD and postdoc projects being either rooted in the social or agricultural sciences and primarily pursuing actor- and problem-oriented approaches on sustainable human-environmental relationships and decent livelihoods.

Annual Thematic Conference (ATC)

The Annual Thematic Conference (ATC) was an international conference organized within the framework of the ICDD to discuss and formulate strategies for building capacity and supporting research on topics related to decent work and development.

Visiting lecturers and researchers

The ICDD promotes academic exchange. This includes inviting visiting scientists and lecturers to enrich teaching and student supervision, as well as engaging staff and student exchange with international partner universities. The Ela Bhatt Visiting Professorship is awarded to candidates with a proven record of academic excellence and substantial contributions to the field of decent work at universities or research institutions in developing countries. The professorship was named after Ela Ramesh Bhatt, founder of India's Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA). The Ela Bhatt Visiting Professorship contributed to research and training in various fields related to decent work in the Graduate School and MA/MSc programmes at the University of Kassel. Over 20 Ela Bhatt Professorships were awarded since 2009.

MA programmes and scholarships

All ICDD-affiliated universities have their own MA / MSc programmes feeding into the ICDD approach to foster relevant capacities in the field of development cooperation. At the University of Kassel, the ICDD offers scholarships for MA and MSc degrees to students from developing countries within the following programmes: ‘Global Political Economy and Development (GPED)’ (MA), ‘Labour Policies and Globalisation’ (LPG) (MA), and ‘Sustainable International Agriculture’ (MSc).

New curricula

In total, since 2015, more than 80 new teaching and study courses have been devised within the ICDD network. In addition to regular study programmes at the MA / MSc level, the ICDD has hosted a number of short-term training for professionals.

Massive open online courses

The new teaching format of massive open online courses deserves special attention and was jointly employed by ICDD and the Global Labour University partners, in close collaboration with trade union officials, experts from academia, and labour organizations. The Global Labour University MOOCs provide users from across the world with an opportunity to learn more about labour issues, combining theoretical knowledge and practical skills.

Alumni Applied Research School (AARS)

The Alumni Applied Research School (AARS) allows alumni to share their experience and to work on ICDD topics after receiving their MA / MSc degrees. It takes place every year over several days with the aim of bringing together current students, researchers, and graduates, many of whom have joined trade unions or NGOs in their professional lives. The aim of the summer school is to strengthen Global Labour University (GLU) and ICDD network links and to explore options for future research collaboration.

Publications

In addition to generating knowledge on decent work topics, an important function of the ICDD and the ICDD network is to share knowledge as a means of raising public awareness and influencing policy decisions. This has resulted in a considerable number of publications over the years since 2009, including the in-house ICDD Working Papers as well as the ‘Labor and Globalization’ book series edited by ICDD Executive Director Prof. Dr. Christoph Scherrer.

External links

• International Center for Development and Decent Work
• DAAD - Leave no one behind in economic progress

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