Financing for Development: Common but Differentiated Responsibilities?
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- Written by Jean Laetitia Saldanha/CIDSE
- Category: Analysis
Jean Letitia Saldanha (CIDSE), participated in the a side-event by the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the UN, CIDSE and Social Watch on Thursday, January 29, 2015 in the UN Conference Building, New York. Dealing with responsibilities in a financing sustainable development context, this event generated discussion on conceptual challenges such as an evenhanded approach to the three pillars of sustainable development, adapting a framework like the Financing for Development process to the universal agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals without denaturalizing and decontextualizing it and how to incorporate important principles agreed at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
Read more: Financing for Development: Common but Differentiated Responsibilities?
Will the Pope ban poverty?
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- Category: Analysis
One week before the International Council of the World Social Forum organised its meeting in Tunis, Pope Francis organised his own social forum in Rome: a World Meeting of Popular Movements!
A large number of social movements from all over the world gathered in the Vatican, some of them ‘faith-based’, though not all catholic, others not even religious. There were landless farmers, informal sector workers, waste pickers, homeless people …
Change is coming to the World Bank ... or is it?
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- Written by Michael Igoe/Devex
- Category: Analysis
Employees are anxiously awaiting what happens next as President Jim Yong Kim’s World Bank reform agenda moves from a flurry of proposals down an uncertain path toward implementation.
Already, 43 reform proposals submitted by staff working groups have caused internal message boards to light up with anonymous comments that run the gamut from enthusiastic support to deep skepticism. The rampant speculation is testing the leadership’s ability to manage employee expectations.
Trade-Curreny Link: a new wave of trade protection?
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- Written by Martin Khor/South Center
- Category: Analysis
Two bills introduced in the United States Congress last week could lead to a new kind of trade measure that in the short run may wreck the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and in the longer run could cause havoc in the global trading system.
The sponsors of the bills aimed at preventing “currency manipulation” claim to have majority support among Republicans and Democrats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Moreover the bills’ sponsors and supporters intend to link passage of the legislation to the adoption of fast-track authority for the President and to approval of the TPPA.
Read more: Trade-Curreny Link: a new wave of trade protection?
18 February: Defend the Right to Strike
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- Written by Walton Pantland/Union Solidarité
- Category: Analysis
While inequality is rising, employers’ groups around the world are trying to undermine the right to strike at national and international level. These attacks come at a time when employers and governments implement austerity measures, the growth of precarious jobs is rampant and social protests are criminalized, with the intent to silence workers and their demands for decent jobs and social protection. Without the right to strike, collective bargaining is nothing more than begging.
Think Big, World Bank: Time for a Public Health Safeguard
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- Written by Richard Seifman et al./The Lancet
- Category: Analysis
Sometimes great changes result from small actions. Technical advances might grab headlines, but changes to administrative processes can potentially have an equally important effect on how public health actions are carried out on the ground. In the past six decades, the World Bank's increasingly diverse portfolio has grown to include more than US$1 billion in annual commitments for health, nutrition, and population activities—about a quarter of all its projects.1 That is why it is so essential that the global community pays attention to the discussion and any proposed decisions about safeguards against any unintended social and environmental effects of World Bank policies and investments.
Read more: Think Big, World Bank: Time for a Public Health Safeguard
Beyond the market-state: decentralizing power in a sharing society
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- Written by Rajesh Makwana/Sharing the World's Resources
- Category: Analysis
At a time when governments are failing abysmally to mitigate climate change, reduce inequality or end poverty, the key to creating a more equal and sustainable world is establishing participative forms of political engagement at all levels of society – from the local to the global.
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Junk the phrase 'human capital'
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- Written by Branco Milanovic/Al Jazeerz
- Category: Analysis
Among many services both great and small that Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century” has rendered to economics is his skeptical view of the terminology of human capital. That coinage was one of the biggest mistakes in economic nomenclature in the last 50 years. It was ideologically motivated and has contributed to conceptual confusion.
The Battle to Curb Vulture Funds
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- Written by South Center
- Category: Analysis
More countries are now facing a worsening debt situation and if they embark on debt restructuring, they may face a challenge from “vulture funds”, as Argentina recently did.
This issue of the South Bulletin focuses on the battle to curb the vulture funds, and the effects these funds have had on developing countries and on global financial stability. These articles are the following:
Battle hots up to curb ‘vulture funds’
The Human Rights Council condemns vulture funds
Argentina’s vulture fund crisis – global implications
A long history of predatory practices by vulture funds against developing countries
Why we need to counter the threat from vulture funds, statement by Ambassador Alberto Pedro D’Alotto of Argentina
Other articles in the bulletin include:
Comment on IPCC’s Final Climate Report
The Heat is on: Via Campesina and Allies Challenge Climate Capitalism
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- Written by Salena Tramel
- Category: Analysis
A new report by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indisputably confirms what many scientists had predicted: 2014 is officially the hottest year on record. And this past year is not an anomaly -- the previous 10 hottest years on the books have all occurred since 1998. This announcement adds to the urgency expressed just last month in Lima, where political leaders and business tycoons from around the world met for the 20th yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 20) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The gathering in Peru was historic in that it was the last time the decision-making body would meet before COP 21 in Paris next December, where an international and legally binding agreement on climate will be signed.
Read more: The Heat is on: Via Campesina and Allies Challenge Climate Capitalism
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is too Big to Ignore the Politics of Poverty
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- Written by Graham K. Brown
- Category: Analysis
The killing of polio workers in Pakistan by the Taliban is a tragic illustration of why no development program can ignore the political problems associated with poverty.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s 2015 annual letter outlines their vision for global development and poverty reduction. The letter outlines four areas where they expect breakthroughs over the next 15 years to transform the lives of the world’s poor for the better.
However, critics accuse them of being complicit in a “tyranny of experts”, which reduces development assistance to quick-fix solutions that do nothing to resolve the political problems that are seen as the main underlying cause of poverty.
Read more: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is too Big to Ignore the Politics of Poverty
