Tonight, February 12, 2013, President Obama delivered his State of the Union address. He concluded with an emotional appeal for gun control, repeating a call for Congress to at least put the matter of gun control to a vote after referencing the Newtown, Ct., tragic massacre of 26 children and other recent acts of gun violence in the US. It was an emotional high point of his address, and a very moving moment.

But there was another reference in his speech that also addressed life and death matters, potentially impacting not 26 but hundreds of thousands of those other of America’s most vulnerable—our senior population.

Amidst growing new threats of potential conflicts over fast-dwindling water resources in the world's arid regions, the United Nations will commemorate 2013 as the International Year of Water Cooperation (IYWC).

But Maude Barlow, chairperson, Council of Canadians and a former senior advisor on water to the president of the U.N. General Assembly in 2008-2009, warns the U.N.'s water agenda is in danger of being hijacked by big business and water conglomerates.

"We don't need the United Nations to promote private sector participation under the guise of greater 'cooperation' when these same companies force their way into communities and make huge profits from the basic right to water and sanitation," Barlow told IPS.

As the deadline for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approaches, the UN is driving a global consultation around a new global development agenda post 2015. The People’s Health Movement (PHM) welcomes the prospect of a global compact which commits to sustainable and equitable development. However, the negotiators will need to go beyond the mere palliation of symptoms to confront the dynamics that are driving widening inequality, avoidable suffering and accelerated destabilization of the biosphere including global warming. The UN documents on a post 2015 development agenda are neither addressing the looming crisis of capitalism, accelerated by the ascendant ideology of neoliberalism nor the unequal global power relations which both reflect and deepen the crisis.

Finance-led globalisation has failed – which is our cue to forget about setting targets and adopt a development-led approach

Many familiar problems were raised at the Liberia meeting of the UN high-level panel tasked with drafting global post-2015 development goals: extreme poverty, lack of productive employment, environmental degradation and growing inequality. But these big questions are still being met with small answers, suggesting that the international community remains in the wrong frame of mind to meet such major challenges.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Wednesday applauded the upcoming entry into force of a key Protocol to an international treaty which will, for the first time, enable individual complaints on economic, social and cultural rights, thereby helping place all human rights on an equal footing.

Joint Statement:

Available online PDF [18p.] at: http://bit.ly/Xd6yGM

“…..The UN Platform on Social Determinants of Health is an informal mechanism to provide coordinated support to Member States with implementation of the Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health.

The Platform also advocates placing the social determinants of health highly on the global development agenda, and fostering coherent action on the social determinants of health. Currently, the platform involves staff from ILO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, WHO and UNAIDS.

Seventy per cent of countries leave the door open to waste and security threats as they lack the tools to prevent corruption in the defence sector, according to the first ever index measuring how governments prevent and counter corruption in defence, released by Transparency International UK’s Defence and Security Programme.


World map of the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, which measures “the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians”. High numbers (yellow) indicate less perception of corruption, whereas lower numbers (red) indicate higher perception of corruption

From 1 January until 30 June 2013, Ireland holds the EU Presidency and will thus chair many of the discussions and negotiations held at EU level. Ireland will have a strong input into the agenda and priorities of the EU, including the Development Agenda, and indicated that development cooperation is among the priorities for the Presidency. Minister of State for Trade and Development, Mr. Joe Costello, focused in his speech before the European Parliament Committee on Development on 22 January mainly on humanitarian aid and relief in crisis situations.

IN early December the coffee-shop chain Starbucks was all over the international media headlines. Citizens' movements in the UK found it unfair that their local coffee shop had to pay taxes while multinational Starbucks got away without any tax contributions. Following public campaigning, Starbucks agreed to pay 'a significant amount of tax' over the next two years.1

This case is a telling example of how rich corporations, with the help of good lawyers, accountants and complex company structures, can shift their profits to countries in which taxes are low or absent. Google and Amazon are other giant companies whose tax-dodging practices have made it to the headlines.

What is less covered by international media and public debate are the billions of dollars illicitly flowing from developing countries to the Global North every year. These lost billions are the result of the same tax-dodging mechanisms. It is paradoxical that while many European countries are struggling with tight budgets and cuts in essential services, the European Union is not showing enough political will to put in place regulations that would help uncover tax dodging and make companies pay their fair share of taxes in the countries where they operate - be it in Europe or in developing countries.

vailable online at: http://bit.ly/14p2f22

“……This paper summarizes the literature on the impact of state subsidized or social health insurance schemes that have been offered, mostly on a voluntary basis, to the informal sector in low- and middle-income countries. A substantial number of papers provide estimations of average treatment on the treated effect for insured persons.