The HE Corpus contains 1,000 occurrences of Leave No One Behind, including variants like leave no-one behind and leaving no one behind.

The HE Corpus contains some explicit definitions for Leave No One Behind. However, there does not seem to be a common understanding of the concept. This will be covered in the Debates & Controversies section.

Definitions

With varying degrees of explicitness, a group of 40 definitions for Leave No One Behind was extracted. Definitions are built on a parent concept and an intension (i.e. what the concept entails).

In the HE Corpus, the first definition for Leave No One Behind is found in a OECD document published in 2013.

Leave no-one behind: no person should be denied universal human rights and basic economic opportunities, no matter where a person lives or to which social group he or she belongs.

The following extract summarises the origin of Leave No One Behind in the context of the UN and within the framework of the SDGs.

What does Leave No One Behind entail?

Reaching the poorest, more vulnerable and marginalised, first

• reaching those that are the furthest, first

• reaching everyone in situations of conflict, disaster, vulnerability and risk

• we must reach the most disadvantaged, vulnerable and excluded children – every boy and every girl, in every society

• reaching the ''furthest behind first'' provides a framework for our development cooperation into the future

• a question of prioritising and fast-tracking every form of action for the poorest and most disadvantaged

• entails prioritising the progress of the most marginalised

• ensuring that no country is left behind including middle-income countries and other more advanced developing countries where development co-operation policies can target poor people and vulnerable groups

• places a new obligation on us all to reach those in situations of conflict, disaster, vulnerability and risk first so that they benefit from and contribute to sustainable long-term development

• particular attention be given to the poorest and most vulnerable people, which was also an important issue at the World Humanitarian Summit

• more inclusive and evidence-based approaches to account for the voices of marginalised communities and groups at the local level

Transforming the current aid system for inclusion, equality and development

• a call for an inclusive transformation

• a break with exclusionary business as usual

• a generalised shift towards development that requires transformation of deeply rooted systems – economic and political systems, governance structures and business models – that are often based on unequal distributions of wealth and of decision-making power"

• a substantive shift in the narrative on sustainable development in all countries to consider and include the people who are not benefiting from progress for often-intersecting political, social, economic, environmental, cultural and structural reasons through inclusive, equitable and sustainable development in developing countries

• entails transforming policies and approaches, so that they assess how those left behind (or at risk) can be reached, monitor progress for these people and enable equality of opportunities

• letting go so that it can complement and focus where most needed; more tightly redrawing the boundaries of international humanitarian assistance, and more clearly supporting and demanding that government and development policies address the risks and needs of the people most vulnerable to crises

• urges us to address the structural causes of inequality and marginalisation that affect them, so they can unfold their potential

• a broad concept of inclusion that includes, for the first time, a commitment to reduce all forms of inequality within countries, whether between individuals or households (vertical inequalities) or between groups with common characteristics (horizontal inequalities)

• embedded in the vision of a just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world in which the needs of the most vulnerable are met

• an anti-poverty as well as anti-discrimination agenda that recognises the naivety of expecting progress to trickle down the socio-economic scale

• going beyond income and consumption policy: health, education and standard of living must also be monitored

• promote an enabling environment for civil society that includes greater investment in subnational initiatives and a power shift towards the poorest of the poor

Collecting more disaggregated data to identify marginalised people

• requires greater investment in data

• requires creating incentives for closing global data gaps and collecting new data to help achieve a transformative and universal agenda

• increasing disaggregation of data, drawing in particular on subnational data

• invest in and use timely, disaggregated data to support costing, co-ordination and coherence and to guide evidence-based policy

• requires that monitoring and tracking of the SDGs be disaggregated "where relevant, by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographic location, or other characteristics, in accordance with the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics"

• a new approach to costing, with an emphasis on counting people, and on collecting data that are sufficiently disaggregated to identify groups and individuals who are marginalised

• data contributions of communities and volunteers must receive official recognition

• requires resources, partnerships, building capacity and securing political commitment from a data perspective

Developing reporting and monitoring schemes with measurable indicators

• requires that stakeholders make measurable commitments, take action, and report on them

• requires the development of results indicators and monitoring and evaluation systems that can measure the distance to stated objectives and how effective development interventions are in pursuing these objectives.

More political will and more investment

• a moral and political duty, and requires political will

• requires that greater political, financial and operational investments be made to ensure that immediate humanitarian needs are met, but also that humanitarian needs, risk and vulnerability are reduced over time.

• demands financial resources

Developing flexible programming that adapts to different contexts

• requires development actors to cast aside their hubris and better understand what inclusive governance might entail in practice and the conditions under which it could effectively be accomplished, across a diverse range of country contexts

• requires that development programming adapt to a variety of political and socio-economic environments

• requires flexible and adaptive approaches

Taking a long-term sustained approach

• needs engaging with fragile contexts in a holistic, long-term perspective

• sustained action across all management areas

Ending specific problems

Include migrants in response plans to end human trafficking

• requires that Member States and their partners create more legal pathways for migration, provide humanitarian visas and protection, more effectively integrate migrants into response plans, and cooperate to combat human trafficking and migrant smuggling

Eradicate malnutrition taking specific needs into account

• So ending malnutrition in all its forms, ensuring everyone is included in progress and everyone is counted.

• requires that food security and nutrition policies and programmes take into consideration the specific needs and priorities of men, women, boys and girls, and target interventions in a gender-responsive way

Climate action and environmental sustainability

• entails managing the transition in a manner that supports stranded workers and communities, as economies shift away from fossil fuels, so as to make sure that everyone benefits from the transition to low-emission, climate-resilient economies

• means ensuring access to sustainable energy for all

Implicit Parent Concepts

While definitions are a good source to understand how Leave No One Behind is explicitly conceptualised, other language structures also provide data on how it is implicitly conceptualised. Explicit parent concepts are those found in definitions, whereas implicit ones are those found in phrases and less explicit structures. Compare example 1 (implicit) with examples 2 and 3 (explicit).

1. "Leave no one behind" is a principle

2. The principle of "leave no one behind"

3. The "leave no one behind" principle

The following visualisation represents all implicit parent concepts of Leave No One Behind extracted from a set of 227 contexts. Hover over each concept for the number of occurrences and a sample context.

A total of 22 implicit parent concepts was detected. In terms of occurrences, Leave No One Behind is primarily conceptualised as a commitment, a pledge, a principle, an agenda, an approach and a promise.

Related Concepts

The same method to detect implicit parent concepts can be used to identify other related concepts.

The following visualisation represents a total of 38 closely related concepts identified in a set of 78 contexts. Hover over each concept for the number of occurrences and a sample context.

Analysing related concepts revealed that humanitarians discuss about integrating Leave No One Behind into programming. Other relevant related concepts include action, data, diagnostic and perspective.

Frequent words that accompany a term are known as collocates. A given term and its collocates form collocations. These can be extracted automatically based on statistics and curated manually to explore interactions with concepts.

Comparisons over time between organisation types with the greatest number of hits (IGO, NGO, NGO_Fed, Net and State organisations) prove to be meaningful. Below is an histogram for the top yearly collocation for each of the five organisations with the greatest contribution as well as across all organisation types.

Occurrences of Leave No One Behind were highest in 2016, which coincides with highest relative frequency recorded (574%).

Europe generated the greatest number of occurrences, raking first in terms of relative frequency (133%).

The top 5 organisation types with the highest relative frequency of Leave No One Behind are WHS, Project, IGO, Net and State.

General documents provide most occurrences of Leave No One Behind, as well as obtaining the highest relative frequency with 295%.

This section contains a summary of debates and controversies on issues concerning Leave No One Behind. It was abstracted from a total of 36 contexts. These issues were then categorised into 8 topical categories, namely:

• no commonly agreed definition;

• critiques;

• data collection and disaggregation;

• mainstreaming and challenges;

• funding;

• civil society;

• climate change; and

• benefits.

No commonly agreed definition

Critiques

Data collection and disaggregation

Mainstreaming & Challenges