Analysis
India pushes to change WTO subsidy rules so it can stockpile food
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- Written by Paige McClanahan/The Guardian
India says paying farmers higher prices will help boost food security, but critics say it will hurt poor producers elsewhere
India is pushing hard for a change to global trade rules that would allow governments in developing countries more leeway to pay poor farmers above-market prices for food for national stockpiles. Critics warn, however, that such a policy shift – which India is pursuing in the name of food security – could end up hurting poor producers in other parts of the world.
Read more: India pushes to change WTO subsidy rules so it can stockpile food
Human Rights and Development
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- Written by Human Rights Reader / Claudio Schuftan
HUMAN RIGHTS ARE BOTH PART-OF AND INSTRUMENTAL-TO THE OVERALL PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT. THE REALIZATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS AN END-GOAL OF DEVELOPMENT ITSELF.
-Development solutions of yesterday have literally become our problems of today. (S. Adjei)
-It is often wrongly assumed that improvements in societies’ conditions require constant velocity in straight lines forward, as if we were shooting arrows into the future. (G. Cannon)
Political Update on EU FTT
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- Written by Ricard Carr and Richard Gower
Highlights
• The European Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) is happening, the debate now concerns finalising the details: which assets, what rates, date of introduction, size of revenue? The next twelve months will determine whether an ambitious FTT is achieved or the financial lobby succeed in watering it down.
Extreme poverty is too extreme
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- Written by Lant Pritchett
The momentum seems to be building for a goal to “eradicate poverty by 2030.” Reducing poverty is a noble goal, one to which I fully subscribe. But the “eradicate poverty” campaign is actually only focused on “extreme” poverty which is an absurdly low and completely arbitrary definition of the poverty. I am for eradicating poverty, but real poverty, as experienced by billions of people in the world, not on the extremist vision of “dollar a day” poverty. There is no poverty line at a dollar a day (now really $1.25 in purchasing power parity currency units). A dollar a day global poverty line exists nowhere except in the minds of elite technocrats, advocates, and donors.
Human Rights, Tax Evasion and our moral imperatives
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- Written by Ann Hollingshead/GFI
Tom Cardamone, Managing Director of Global Financial Integrity, recently published a piece in Reuters on the connections between human rights and tax evasion. He references a recent report Tax Abuses, Poverty, and Human Rights, published by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) Task Force on Illicit Financial Flows, Poverty, and Human Rights. The report finds that the evasion of taxes “has considerable negative impacts on the enjoyment of human rights.”
Read more: Human Rights, Tax Evasion and our moral imperatives
Africa’s poor get poorer, but continent now has 55 billionaires
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- Written by Issa Sikiti Da Silva
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This statement no longer applies to the Western capitalist world. It has long crossed the Atlantic and settled in Africa, the world’s poorest continent, which is fast becoming a nest for billionaires.
The ‘dark continent’ now boasts 55 billionaires from 10 countries with an average net worth of $2.6 billion, UK’s Telegraph newspaper reported this week on its digital edition.
Read more: Africa’s poor get poorer, but continent now has 55 billionaires
WB/IMF Annual Meeting: was anything actually achieved?
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- Written by Eurodad
The World Bank and IMF annual meetings – which concluded in Washington on 13 October – saw a new strategy approved for the World Bank. As Eurodad previously noted, this has problematic elements, including a failure to target inequality properly, and a controversial approach to private sector issues. The IMF meetings, meanwhile, were overshadowed by the US budget crisis, and nothing concrete was agreed on the very real problem of capital flow volatility leading to new financial stability risks in emerging markets.
Read more: WB/IMF Annual Meeting: was anything actually achieved?
Less Hunger, but not good enough
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- Written by José Graziano da Silva, K.F. Nwanze and E. Cousin
- Every year, we take a snapshot of world progress in the fight against chronic hunger. This year, the picture is looking better, but it’s still not good enough.
Some 842 million people are estimated to have been suffering from chronic hunger in 2011-2013, according to The State of Food Insecurity in the World, a report released jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP).
This figure is down from 868 million during 2010-2012, and represents a decline of 17 percent since 1990-1992. Significant as this progress may be, it cannot disguise the harsh reality: roughly one person in eight suffers from hunger.
GFI Calls on World Bank to Prioritize Curtailing Illicit Financial Flows
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- Written by Clark Gascoigne/ GFI
As central bank governors, finance ministers, and global leaders gather in Washington ahead of the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) this weekend, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) calls on the World Bank to prioritize the issue of illicit financial flows from developing countries on its agenda.
“The World Bank is the largest development institution in the world, and for too long it has ignored the largest development challenge facing poor countries – the illegal outflow of trillions of dollars resulting from crime, corruption, and tax evasion,” said GFI President Raymond Baker. “Our rigorous economic research finds that nearly $1 trillion flows illicitly out of developing countries each year, exacerbating poverty, fueling inequality, and undercutting global development.”
Read more: GFI Calls on World Bank to Prioritize Curtailing Illicit Financial Flows
Trading on Hunger
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- Written by The Hindu
Roberto Azevêdo’s observation that India’s food security law may violate its commitments to the World Trade Organization should not take New Delhi by surprise. If anything, the government should be thankful the Director-General — who seems apprised of India’s legitimate demand for ensuring food security — has recommended an interim solution until the WTO Ministerial Conference in December deliberates this issue.
