Getting the SDG Indicators Right
- Details
- Written by Casey Dunning
- Category: Articles
With the outcome document for the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) now submitted, the development community turns to the final piece of the SDG agenda: the indicators. While the goals and targets have endured unending negotiations, from the Open Working Group to all UN member states, the underlying indicators have largely remained a big question. It’s now time to turn to that question.
The work and inequality challenge of the digital revolution
- Details
- Written by Henning Meyer / Social Europe
- Category: Articles
After more than half a decade of debate dominated by the global financial crisis, 2014 saw a departure from this singular focus. Thomas Piketty started a global discussion about historical patterns of inequality and their negative repercussions. And looking to the future rather than back in time, The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed how the digital revolution is about to transform our economic and social lives. The key problem for policymaking is that these technology-driven developments are certain to further increase existing inequalities and to create new ones at a time when, as Piketty has shown, we have already returned to historically high levels
Read the article
UN Committee passes first ever debt restructuring principles
- Details
- Written by Bodo Ellmers / Eurodad
- Category: Articles
Just ten days after the UN’s International Conference on Financing for Development, and just in time for the endorsement of the new sustainable development agenda, a UN Committee has agreed on a set of principles to guide further sovereign debt restructuring processes. The new UN principles were inspired by the devastating bank bailouts in Greece, and by the vulture fund lawsuits that Argentina faced at US courts. They build on preparatory work done by an expert group convened by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and, subject to approval by the UN General Assembly (UN GA) in early September, will be the first step towards a new multilateral debt restructuring framework that aims to prevent future debt crises, or at least manage them better.
Read more: UN Committee passes first ever debt restructuring principles
UN Post-2015 Development Agenda adopted with closed-door deals
- Details
- Written by Bhumika Muchhala
- Category: Articles
At about a quarter to seven on the evening of Sunday, Aug. 2, the member states of the United Nations adopted the post-2015 development agenda outcome document, titled “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda.”
As governments endorsed the 29-page product resulting from almost two years of transparent and relatively democratic negotiations, the final 48 hours had witnessed a very different story, that of a sharp turn towards closed-door consultations and last-minute bargaining chips.
Read more: UN Post-2015 Development Agenda adopted with closed-door deals
Impact of investment agreements on Africa's sustainable development
- Details
- Written by Xavier Carim / South Center
- Category: Articles
This new report outlines the broad features of alternative policy approaches to foreign direct investment (FDI) and the policy perspectives embedded in IIAs. It provides a critique of IIAs with respect to their structure and core provisions, particularly investor-state dispute settlement provisions. The paper also provides an overview of the results of studies on the relationship between IIAs and FDI flows, underlining that most studies are unable to demonstrate a clear relationship between signing IIAs and receiving greater flows of FDI. At best, the relationship is ambiguous, and IIAs are neither necessary nor sufficient to attract FDI, according to the author.
Read the report
World Bank Peddling Private For-Profit Schools in Africa
- Details
- Written by Billy Briggs / Mint Press Service
- Category: Articles
Private, for-profit schools in Africa funded by the World Bank and U.S. venture capitalists have been criticized by more than 100 organizations who’ve signed a petition opposing the controversial educational venture.
A May statement addressed to Jim Kim, president of the World Bank, expressed deep concern over the global financial institution’s investment in a chain of private primary schools targeting poor families in Kenya and Uganda and called on the institution to support free universal education instead.
Read more: World Bank Peddling Private For-Profit Schools in Africa
Human Rights Hopes Frustrated at Addis Abeba Summit
- Details
- Written by Aldo Cagliari
- Category: Articles
On July 16th, governments adopted the Outcome of the Third Conference on Financing for Development, held in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), called the “Action Ababa Action Agenda” (AAAA or the “Outcome”).
The broad-based disappointment of civil society with an outcome document that has very little to welcome was evident in statement after statement, including the collective one issued by the hundreds of CSOs in the Financing for Development Group. A number of process failures – that some delegates confessed to have never seen in a UN process before — converged to reach the poor outcome.
Read more: Human Rights Hopes Frustrated at Addis Abeba Summit
OECD updates anti-tax evasion list
- Details
- Written by Eamon Quinn, Irish Examiner
- Category: Articles
The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax is a taskforce of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. It was given additional powers by the world’s leading powers following the global financial crisis.
Moves against tax havens and off-shore centres across the world had gone into abeyance for some time. But the new impetus meant many countries now aim to share information about their citizens and corporations.
Agreement on sustainable development agenda
- Details
- Written by Francine Mestrum
- Category: Articles
Member States of the UN reached agreement on the outcome document that will constitute the new sustainable development agenda, to be adopted at the UN Conference in New York end of September 2015.
The objective is to end poverty by 2030, to promote shared economic prosperity and to protect the environment.
The 'new Brazil' of Africa
- Details
- Written by Zahra Moloo / Pambazuka
- Category: Articles
On how development institutions are financing the land grabbing in the Democratic Republic of Congo
UN's Post-2015 Development Agenda under Fire
- Details
- Written by Thalif Deen / IPS
- Category: Articles
The U.N.’s highly ambitious post-2015 development agenda, which is expected to be finalised shortly, has come fire even before it could get off the ground.
A global network of civil society organisations (CSOs), under the banner United Nations Major Groups (UNMG), has warned that the agenda, which includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), “lacks urgency, a clear implementation strategy and accountability.”
“We hoped for a progressive and fair financing agreement that addressed the root causes of global economic inequality and its impact on women’s and girls’ lives. But that’s not what we got." -- Shannon Kowalski
