TPP Risks and TTIP Opportunities
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- Written by Kimberley Ann Elliot / CGD
- Category: Articles
The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, if completed and implemented, will cover a large portion of global trade and investment, but they will exclude the majority of developing countries. American and European negotiators also want these deals to be “gold standard” agreements that establish the new rules of trade for a new century. The biggest concern arising from these mega-regional agreements is that they will undermine the rules-based multilateral trading system. More immediately, preferential trade arrangements divert trade from outsiders and the new or expanded rules that US and EU negotiators want to establish as precedents for the global system will not always be optimal for poorer countries.
Role of the West in African Corruption
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- Written by Times of Zambia
- Category: Articles
They say it takes two to tango and yet the Western world has exonerated itself in the role it plays concerning corruption in Africa.
Together with war and poverty, 'corrupt Africa' has become a favourite cliché of Western writers when describing the desperation of the continent.
Even lauded organisations like Transparency International (TI) which publishes the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is usually silent on the role the Western world plays in corruption in Africa.
Despite TI publishing the CPIs since 1995 ranking countries by their perceived levels of corruption as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys, very little is said about countries that keep looted money from Africa.
TI also publishes the Global Corruption Barometer, which ranks countries by corruption levels using direct surveys instead of perceived expert opinions.
Understandably, though a lean choir of critics find corruption to be a serious ill in developing countries, they feel this pardonable sin compares to failure to lump the connivance of countries like Switzerland.
The silence to condemn Western countries that connive with looters in Africa can be likened to Western countries' earlier support of the apartheid regime and slavery.
Brazen Heist of Millions puts Focus on the Philippines
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- Written by Floyd Whaley and Neil Gough / NYT
- Category: Articles
It is a financial whodunit for the digital era: More than $80 million of Bangladesh’s money vanished last month after it was electronically transferred out of that country’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
As officials around the world search for the money and place blame, the caper is highlighting what looks like a weak point in the global financial system that allowed the money to get by regulators: the murky banking system of the Philippines.
Read more: Brazen Heist of Millions puts Focus on the Philippines
Make it count: why and how to track aid for domestic resource mobilisation
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- Written by Tim Strawson / Development Initiatives
- Category: Articles
Domestic revenue – the funds that governments raise through tax and other finance streams – will be a key driving force behind implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet many of the countries facing the greatest challenge in meeting the SDGs are those where domestic revenues are lowest (see chapter 3 of our 2015 Investments to End Poverty report). Some of the key issues the international community has been discussing are how best to support countries to increase their revenue mobilisation in progressive and sustainable ways and the role of aid for domestic revenue mobilisation (aid for DRM).
Read more: Make it count: why and how to track aid for domestic resource mobilisation
Production and Commons:on the political potential of a commons approach for production and protection and the shaping of a better world
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- Written by Francine Mestrum
- Category: Research
The world of work is changing. The European Union already has a very high unemployment rate, especially for its young people (respectively around 10 and 20 %). Moreover, the new technological revolution probably will destroy millions of jobs in the near future and consequently destabilize society. With the development of ‘on demand labour’ a general precarization is in the making.
The only answer so far given to these negative developments, is the emergence of new forms ow production and work: cooperatives, collaborative and sharing economy, self-managed enterprises, P2P, etc. coupled with a demise of social protection and the introduction of a basic income for all. While it is far from clear that these new modes of production and protection can mean a real alternative to the existing world of work, progressive forces should carefully examine their potential for the construction of ‘another world’.
The Assets of the Ultrarich come closer to Earth
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- Written by James B. Stewart / Common Sense
- Category: Articles
After years of dizzying appreciation, the values of luxury assets are plateauing and in some cases plunging.
Last year, a Manhattan penthouse sold for $100 million and another went into contract for $200 million. Christie’s auctioned Picasso’s “Women of Algiers” for $179 million, and Sotheby’s sold the 12-carat Blue Moon of Josephine diamond for $48.4 million. A vintage Jaguar sold for $13.2 million.
For the ultrawealthy, 2015 was an embarrassment of riches.
But after years of dizzying appreciation, the values of luxury assets are plateauing and in some cases plunging. Volumes have shrunk, prices are being cut and some auction lots are going unsold.
2030 Agenda and SDG Indicators
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- Written by Barbara Adams and Karen Judds
- Category: Articles
On 11 March 2016 the UN Statistical Commission agreed “as a practical starting point” with the proposed global indicator framework by which to measure progress towards the 17 goals and 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It recognized that the development of a robust and high quality indicator framework is a process that will need to continue over time and authorized the Interagency and Expert Group for Sustainable Development Goals (IAEG-SDGs) to continue its work, including:
◾to take into account the specific proposals for refinements of the global indicators made by Member States;
◾to report on progress made on developing and improving the global indicators, and provide its proposals and a plan for regular reviews of the indicator framework, including mechanisms for approval;
◾to report on plans to develop methodologies for those indicators for which definitions and standards have yet to be developed.
Six questions for African policy makers
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- Written by Okonjo Iweala
- Category: Articles
UN report on Greece's debt
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- Written by Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky
- Category: Articles
I would like to share with you the official report on my mission to Greece which I presented at the United Nations Human Rights Council last week. My report finds that after several years of adjustment policies, more than one million persons in Greece have fallen below income levels indicating extreme poverty. Unemployment, in particular youth unemployment has remained at unacceptable high levels. Unfortunately human rights obligations of Greece and its international lenders towards rights holders within the country continue to be sidelined, both in the design of adjustment policies and in the implementation of much needed structural reforms.
Extractive industries: more reporting, but more is needed
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- Written by Heather Lowe & Juan Cruz Vieyra
- Category: Articles
For over a decade now, various global initiatives have promoted the design and implementation of international standards for governments and companies in the extractive sector to publish detailed information about their output and revenues. In 2002, after major corruption scandals emerged in Angola, Publish What You Pay (PWYP; a global coalition of civil society organizations) demanded oil, gas and mining companies to publish what they paid governments.
From this global call for action, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)—a voluntary reporting regime—was launched in 2002 by then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Read more: Extractive industries: more reporting, but more is needed
'What about Monsanto?' Reflections on the future of work, transformative social protection and systemic change
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- Written by Francine Mestrum
- Category: Research
The world of work is changing very rapidly. In the European Union, 11 million people are out of work, including 4.6 million young people.[1] World-wide, the ILO speaks of almost 200 million unemployed people and almost half of the total workforce, or 1.5 billion people are in vulnerable employment.[2] Governments are all in austerity mode and claim to have no other possibility than try and believe better skills and flexible labour markets will bring solutions.
Chances are minimal they will ever succeed.
