MDGs to SDGs: Have we lost the plot?
- Details
- Written by Charles Kenny .CGD
- Category: Articles
In September this year, world leaders will meet in New York at the United Nations General Assembly. Top of the agenda will be the passage of a resolution laying out global development goals for the 15 years to 2030, covering progress in areas from poverty reduction to forestry preservation. They will follow on from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which have become a common yardstick of global progress over the past decade and a half.
The MDGs, born out of the Millennium Declaration agreed to at the UN General Assembly in 2000, are widely seen as a considerable success of the international system. And they may well have played a role in speeding global progress toward better health and education outcomes over the last few years. That alone might justify coming up with a new set of global goals for the post-2015 period.
The power of the original MDGs to motivate was in their simplicity and clarity.
A people's social agenda for ASEAN
- Details
- Written by Asian social movements
- Category: Articles
|
I |
nequality and poverty levels remain high in ASEAN, with Gini coefficients ranging from 35.6 to 46.2.[1] In some countries in the region, inequality and poverty levels are escalating despite economic growth. And while in some ASEAN countries a smaller proportion of the workforce is now living in poor households (i.e. living on less than $2 per day), their absolute numbers have risen[2].
Inequality is eroding the economic gains from market integration and economic progress.“Inequality may lead to the misallocation of capital and hamper poverty reduction and growth, possibly eroding social cohesion, and institutional stability. It also runs counter to the AEC’s [ASEAN Economic Community] overarching goal of equitable growth with reduced development gaps between and within Member States.”[3]
Yet, the commitments of governments of the ASEAN Member States to the social dimension of regional and global integration remain lukewarm. But the people of ASEAN aspire for and demand a Social ASEAN. Therefore, the people of ASEAN and their organizations collectively took the initiative to frame an Agenda for a Social ASEAN.
The Agenda for a Social ASEAN is the condensation of the aspirations and demands of the people of ASEAN for a strong social dimension in the current process of integration in the region.[4]It is an instrument that embodies the necessary components of an alternative regional development paradigm that seeks to construct a truly caring and sharing ASEAN community. The Agenda for a Social ASEAN –
The Hypocrisy World Cup: FIFA sponsors must tell Qatar to respect human rights
- Details
- Written by ITUC
- Category: Articles
62 workers may lose their lives for each game played during Qatar’s 2022 World Cup, a tournament likely to be sponsored by FIFA partner companies Coke, VISA, McDonald’s, Adidas, Kia and Hyundai. Without sponsorship, this multi-billion dollar tournament couldn’t take place.
Most sponsors commit themselves to respecting the UN Declaration of Human Rights – which guarantees the right to join a union - and have specific policies banning forced labour and slavery in their supply chains. However, none of them seem to have considered that paying FIFA to host a tournament built on slave labour goes against everything they claim to believe in.
As a customer or potential customer of these multinational companies, can you help us pressure them to live up to their own ethical standards in how they spend their sponsorship funding?
We know money talks in FIFA. If one of these sponsors were to speak up it would be hugely influential in guiding FIFA and Qatar into ensuring that labour standards for people preparing the country to host the World Cup meet international standards of safety, decency and human rights.
Click here to send a message.
To learn more about this issue, click here.
To watch the video, click here.
Why it would be good for the IMF if Greece stopped repaying its IMF loans
- Details
- Written by Bodo Ellmers/Eurodad
- Category: Articles
The creditor community has another shock and awe moment this week, as more and more influential actors argue that Greece should stop repaying the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and rather use scarce public resources to tackle its economic and humanitarian crisis. While Prime Minister Tsipras still tries to ease the creditors, the idea is here to stay. And it is a good one: Greece should not just postpone loan repayments but default on them – stopping payments to the IMF for good. This would help to finally reform the IMF from the political puppet that it is now into a real and effective crisis response instrument.
Read more: Why it would be good for the IMF if Greece stopped repaying its IMF loans
Development Finance with Chinese Characteristics
- Details
- Written by Richard Kozul-Right & Daniel Poon
- Category: Articles
After a late flurry of additions to the founding membership of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, attention now turns to setting the China-led AIIB’s rules and regulations. But important questions remain – most important, whether the AIIB is a potential rival or a welcome complement to existing multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank.
Since China and 20 mostly Asian countries signed the AIIB’s initial memorandum of understanding last October, 36 other countries – including Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom – have joined as founding members.
Workers address global systemic issues
- Details
- Written by Social Watch
- Category: Articles
The FfD agenda is an important reference point for discussions on development finance, and serves as a unique space where governments, in particular from the South, are able to debate important issues like trade and foreign direct investment as well as systemic issues like the international financial architecture and financial regulation. These are the global economic issues that were absent in the origin and overall framework of the Millennium Development Goals and remain piecemeal in the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework.
Why the basic income idea cannot be leftwing
- Details
- Written by Francine Mestrum
- Category: Articles
Many advocates of a basic income – an amount of money paid to all members of society, rich and poor – claim that their idea is neither left nor right. It is not always clear how we have to understand this. Today, there are political movements who do not want to call themselves left or right – the Spanish Podemos for example – though their proposals are clearly leftwing.
And for sure, there is a difference between the right and the left. The idea of a basic income is indeed being promoted by leftwing as well as rightwing forces, though it remains problematic.
In this article I want to argue that in fact, a basic income cannot be a leftwing idea.
Human Rights?
- Details
- Written by Francine Mestrum
- Category: Articles
“Throughout history, people have migrated from one place to another. People try to reach European shores for different reasons and through different channels. They look for legal pathways, but they also risk their lives, to escape from political oppression, war and poverty, as well as to find family reunification, entrepreneurship, knowledge and education. Every person’s migration tells its own story.”
“an agenda which reflects our common values and provides an answer to our citizens’ worries about unacceptable human suffering.”
Today, it seems the ‘values’ of the European Union refer precisely to this ‘unacceptable human suffering’. A very modest proposal from the European Commission (quotes) is rejected by the meeting of our national governments. Whereas thousands of refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean and thousands are harassed in Libya or on their way through Macedonia. Are these people able to sleep at night? ‘Wir haben es nicht gewusst’?
Income inequality at record highs
- Details
- Written by OECD
- Category: Articles
A new report from OECD: Income inequality has reached record highs in most OECD countries and remains at even higher levels in many emerging economies. The richest 10 per cent of the population in the OECD now earn 9.6 times the income of the poorest 10 per cent, up from 7:1 in the 1980s and 9:1 in the 2000s.
World Bank: let some sunlight in ...
- Details
- Written by Nezir Sinani/ Huffington Post
- Category: Articles
For the past several months, numerous high profile and damaging stories have made their way out of World Bank Headquarters and into mainstream popular news. While this has happened before -- and no doubt will happen again -- these stories seem to be especially engaging, focused, researched and damning. From a disastrous coal-fired power plant in India to massive forced resettlement and refugee crises all across the globe, the World Bank seems to be slow marching from one disaster to the next. The question becomes, therefore, how can the bank avoid these public relations fiascos in the future? The easy answer, of course, is to not create 3.4 million new refugees worldwide. Until that is the case, the bank could at least loosen up the press restrictions and preemptively let some sunlight in. Unauthorized disclosures cannot and do not occur within an open, transparent and honest global organization.
The dark side of Development: Eviction and Displacement in World Bank Projects
- Details
- Written by Theo Wilson / New Security Beat
- Category: Articles
With the help of international aid, foreign land grabs in the Gambella region of Ethiopia have resulted in environmental degradation, more severe economic and social inequality, and human rights abuses, according to a new study by the Oakland Institute. We Say The Land Is Not Yours collects testimony from victims of “villagization,” a policy of forced displacement started under the military Derg dictatorship and, according to many, continued to this day under the guise of land investment. The ultimate aim, according to the report, is to resettle up to 1.5 million people.
Read more: The dark side of Development: Eviction and Displacement in World Bank Projects
