Analysis

Details: Written by Center of Concern; Created: 24 April 2012

"The human rights movement faces an unprecedented opportunity for revisiting and revitalizing the struggle for economic and social rights by demanding accountability for failures to protect human rights through economic policy. The establishment of a Financial Transaction Tax would be an important step in that human rights direction," argues in its third publication the initiative “A bottom up approach to righting financial regulation”, a consortium of civil society networks and organizations, including Social Watch and some of its members.

Details: Written by Paul Krugman; Created: 22 April 2012

Can policy make a difference to inequality? In particular, can governments reduce inequality without killing the economy? As part of class prep, I’ve been looking at a story that has received very little discussion here, as far as I can tell, but is very interesting, to say the least: the remarkable decline in inequality that has taken place in Latin America.

Details: Written by OECD; Created: 17 April 2012

Major donors’ aid to developing countries fell by nearly 3% in 2011, breaking a long trend of annual increases. Disregarding years of exceptional debt relief, this was the first drop since 1997. Continuing tight budgets in OECD countries will put pressure on aid levels in coming years.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría encouraged donors to meet their commitments, “The fall of ODA is a source of great concern, coming at a time when developing countries have been hit by the knock-on effect of the crisis and need it most. Aid is only a fraction of total flows to low income countries, but these hard economic times also mean lower investment and lower exports. I commend the countries that are keeping their commitments in spite of tough fiscal consolidation plans. They show that the crisis should not be used as an excuse to reduce development cooperation contributions.”

The number of microinsurance schemes worldwide has increased substantially over the past five years and now reaches an estimated 500 million worldwide, according to the Microinsurance Innovation Facility of the International Labour Organization and the Munich Re Foundation. Microinsurance aims to protect poor people against risks - such as accidents, illnesses, death in the family, natural disasters and property losses - in exchange for insurance premium payments tailored to their preferences and capacity to pay.

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Details: Written by Bretton Woods Project; Created: 11 April 2012

An unprecedented competition for the Bank presidency, with two experienced developing country candidates nominated in addition to the US candidate, has raised demands for reform of the Bank's approach to middle-income countries, human rights, environmental issues and the private sector, among others.

On 23 March the Bank board closed nominations for the successor to Robert Zoellick, who had announced his intention to stand down at the end of his first term in June. Three candidates were put forward: the US government nominated Dartmouth College president and American national Jim Yong Kim; South Africa, Nigeria and Angola nominated Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; and Brazil nominated former Colombian finance minister José Antonio Ocampo. Although American professor Jeffrey Sachs, from Columbia University in the US, had publicly campaigned for the job, he withdrew when Kim was nominated.

(from Global Financial Integrity)

Latindadd and other civil society organisations recently sent their contributions to the UK parliamentary inquiry into tax in developing countries. In its call, the International Development Committee of the UK parliament highlighted that “developing countries lose an estimated $ 160 billion each year through tax avoidance by multinational companies (including those based in the UK)” and the important role of the extractive industries, “where payments to governments are often not disclosed and may not contribute to development or poverty reduction.”

The Committee used Zambia as a case study due to its aid dependence (18% of the Government’s budget), high poverty levels (64% of the Zambian population live below the poverty line) and the large mining sector.

Details: Written by Earth Institute; Created: 07 April 2012

http://bit.ly/H7LRqG for the full report

“……it is not just wealth that makes people happy: Political freedom, strong social networks and an absence of corruption are together more important than income in explaining well-being differences between the top and bottom countries. At the individual level, good mental and physical health, someone to count on, job security and stable families are crucial.