This is the first volume on the subject of the alleviation of world suffering. At the same time it is also the first book framing the fields of global socio-economic development, world health, human rights, peace studies, sustainability, and poverty within the challenge of alleviating suffering and improving quality of life. Both international studies and global development have become specialized and fragmented, whereas this work assembles all of these development fragments together in order to determine whether common ground exists to make headway in reducing global suffering. Leading experts in these various fields of development and suffering have been recruited worldwide to give scholarly assessments of the major human problems and how they can be successfully tackled.

"This book is a valuable addition to the research on human and global suffering. ? important for policy makers, government agency and bureau heads/leadership as well as community advocates and leaders seeking large-scale systems change to complex social problems. ? It is a tool as well as a resource to understand the past, make sense of the present and plan for the future. The book benchmarks suffering alleviation and in that regard makes this book a landmark in the field." (Patsy Kraeger, Applied Research in Quality of Life, Vol. 16, 2021)