Mediterranean Tragedy
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- Written by Francine Mestrum
- Category: Articles
Our thoughts are with the thousands of victims that continue to perish in the Mediterranean, year after year. The only dream these people had was to reach the shores of the European Union with the promise of a better life and a future for themselves and their children.
However, the ‘European values’ do not cross borders. They are strictly reserved for European populations and are denied to people coming from elsewhere. Basic human rights, as if they could be different in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe…
‘Fortress Europe’ is killing people. But let us not forget that ‘Fortress Europe’ is made by the governments of the European Union’s member-states. And let us not forget that these governments have always refused to define a common European policy on immigration and asylum.
This is the tragedy. In the same way as the Greek people are forced to pay for the debts made by their banks and governments, African people pay the price for the lack of political courage of 28 national governments.
WB/IMF should make stronger push against jobs deficit and inequality
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- Written by ITUC
- Category: Articles
ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow stated: “The IFIs should use the opportunity of lower world oil prices to encourage the adoption of carbon taxes whose revenue could finance energy-efficient infrastructures and essential public services. This would help reduce the jobs deficit and also set the global economy on a more environmentally sustainable footing.” The recommendation is included in a statement for the IFI meetings produced by the ITUC and its Global Unions partners.
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How to Reform the IMF Now?
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- Written by Nogueira Batista & Torres/Project Syndicate
- Category: Articles
More than four years have passed since an overwhelming majority of the membership of the International Monetary Fund agreed to a package of reforms that would double the organization’s resources and reorganize its governing structure in favor of developing countries. But adopting the reforms requires approval by the IMF’s member countries; and, though the United States was among those that voted in favor of the measure, President Barack Obama has been unable to secure Congressional approval. The time has come to consider alternative methods for moving the reforms forward.
The delay by the US represents a huge setback for the IMF. It stands in the way of a restructuring of its decision-making process that would better reflect developing countries’ growing importance and dynamism. Furthermore, with the reforms in limbo, the IMF has been forced to depend largely on loans from its members, rather than the permanent resources called for by the new measures. These loans, meant as a temporary bridge before the reforms entered into effect, need to be reaffirmed every six months.
Slow Growth, Greek crisis and Ebola on menu of Spring Meetings of IMF/WB
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- Written by Economic Times
- Category: Articles
A sluggish global economy, the Greek debt crisis and continuing fallout of the Ebola epidemic will take focus beginning Thursday when top finance officials gather for the World Bank and IMF Spring meetings.
With high unemployment festering in advanced economies, and emerging countries entering their fifth straight year of slowing growth, how to fire up output and demand is the primary order of business for the world's central bankers and finance ministers in Washington.
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Is 'Financing for Development' Being Outsourced to the Private Sector?
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- Written by Adams & Luchsinger/Social Watch
- Category: Articles
Getting the right balance between public and private sector roles and responsibilities in the Financing for Development and Post-2015 process will be fundamental to prospects for sustainable, inclusive development. Yet early evidence suggests this balance is already awry, skewed far in favour of private interests. Are we seeing a process of outsourcing the international agenda?
There’s no question that businesses around the world are sources of growth and employment. But they are also the source of the most serious threats to sustainable development—from pollution to illicit financial flows that undermine prospects for public resources.
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Financing for Development: A Hot Button Issue
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- Written by Eva Schassmann/Alliance Sud
- Category: Articles
It is clear that traditional official development assistance will not be enough to finance the SDGs. It will continue to play a key role in the poorest countries and in countries destabilized by strife and conflicts. Alliance Sud is therefore calling for at least half the development budgets of donor countries to go towards the poorest countries. Should development aid budgets remain just as big – or small – as hitherto, greater concentration on the poorest countries would nonetheless create big losers as well. In middle-income countries, current development assistance programmes and projects would have to be abandoned. Total expenditure would need to be increased substantially if this is to be avoided. The old demand for 0.7 per cent of gross national income to be allocated to development aid has therefore lost none of its urgency.
Access to medicines and the right to health and life: South Centre View
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- Written by Martin Khor
- Category: Articles
Below is a statement presented by Martin Khor, Executive Director of the South Centre, during the 2015 Social Forum of the United Nations Human Rights Council which took place from 18 to 20 February 2015 in the Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland.
The 2015 Social Forum was held in accordance with paragraph 6 of Human Rights Council resolution 26/28 entitled “The Social Forum”. It focused on "access to medicines in the context of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including best practices in this regard ".
Access to medicines, even if a person is too poor to afford it, is a cornerstone to the realization of the right to health and life. There has been significant progress in new and better medicines. However prices of the medicines are often priced so high so as to be out of reach of the poor or even the middle classes in many countries, not only in developing but also in developed countries.
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Post-2015: Measuring the (real) scope of ambition
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- Written by Barbara Adams & Gretchen Luchsinger
- Category: Articles
The post-2015 development agenda aspires to global transformation. Its content so far, including the set of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) agreed in last year’s Open Working Group, affirms that aim through an unprecedented commitment to inclusion, sustainability and universality. This suggests that the world might finally move beyond current imbalanced patterns of consumption and production that have left wide swathes of human deprivation and pushed the limits of planetary boundaries.
Yet the main question, after the most recent intergovernmental negotiations on the agenda in March in New York, is: will the political process live up to the agenda’s promise? It is still early days in forging global consensus, but given the stakes at hand, momentum is critical. Will governments and all other actors exercise the kind of visionary leadership and risk-taking that transformation demands? Or will they fall back on protecting familiar vested interests and avoid risk by seeking easier, quicker agreement? Does the calculation of political risk overwhelm the very urgent imperative to take serious action on urgent issues—namely, the long-term survival of people and the planet?
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Is the IMF Heading for a Governance Crisis?
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- Written by Jesse Griffith/Eurodad
- Category: Articles
It appears that IMF governance reform is heading towards a near certain crisis. 2015 should mark the completion of the Fifteenth review of IMF quotas, which affect the voting share of IMF members. However, the Fourteenth Review has not yet been ratified, as the US Congress has blocked it – the US’s 16.85% voting share gives it a de facto veto on any decisions requiring an 85% majority of votes. It seems highly unlikely that anything will change to alter this scenario, and 2015 will end with the Fourteenth review unratified.
Can a new quota reform with any credibility really be agreed in this environment? We should also remember that quota reforms have traditionally been highly political affairs with states taking positions on the basis of how changes will affect their voting shares. Even if a reform is agreed, is there any likelihood that it will be ratified?
Land Seizures Speed Up, Leaving Africans Homeless and Landless
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- Written by Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
- Category: Articles
There is a new scramble for Africa, with ordinary people facing displacement by the affluent and the powerful as huge tracts of land on the continent are grabbed by a minority, rights activists here say.
“Our forefathers cried foul during colonialism when their land was grabbed by colonialists more than a century ago, but today history repeats itself, with our own political leaders and wealthy countrymen looting land,” Claris Madhuku, director of the Platform for Youth Development (PYD), a democracy lobby group in Zimbabwe, told IPS.
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Tax Justice to end Inequality
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- Written by Eurodad
- Category: Articles
Declaration published at the World Social forum in Tunis:
The declaration calls for binding tax and transparency rules that ensure multinational corporations pay their fair share of taxes, and contends that global decision-making on tax should be taken out of the hands of the exclusive OECD and handed to a UN body that ensures developing countries have an equal seat at the table. It also calls for tax laws to incorporate the rights of women and redress the gender imbalances that run through many tax systems.
