Swiss Leaks lifts the Veil on a Secretive Banking System
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- Written by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
- Category: Analysis
Secret documents reveal that global banking giant HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers who channeled mortar bombs to child soldiers in Africa, bag men for Third World dictators, traffickers in blood diamonds and other international outlaws, a new International Consortium of Investigative Journalists investigation has found.
The leaked files, based on the inner workings of HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm, relate to accounts holding more than $100 billion.
Read more on Swissleaks and read more below
Read more: Swiss Leaks lifts the Veil on a Secretive Banking System
UN Financing for Development negotiations picking up speed
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- Written by Tove Ryding/Eurodad
- Category: Analysis
Despite snowstorm warnings and ice-cold temperatures in New York, the Financing for Development (FfD) negotiations managed to pick up speed when governments convened for the first drafting session at the end of January. They are currently negotiating the outcome of the upcoming Addis Ababa Conference on Financing for Development, which will take place on July 13-16 this year, and is planned as a key milestone ahead of the Post-2015 Summit and the UNFCCC Climate Conference later this year.
Read more: UN Financing for Development negotiations picking up speed
PRIVATE FINANCIAL INTERMEDIARIES CENTRAL TO WORLD BANK’S PLOT TO SIDELINE HUMAN RIGHTS
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- Written by Aldo Cagliari
- Category: Analysis
Human rights experts warned that World Bank plans to delegate responsibilities for environmental and social monitoring to private banking institutions sub-lending on its behalf will effectively weaken both the level of protection currently offered by environmental and social safeguards and the Bank’s accountability for their implementation.
The analysis was part of a letter to the World Bank President Mr. Jim Kim by 28 UN human rights thematic mandate-holders – an unprecedented number acting together on a single issue – conveying several concerns regarding the World Bank’s latest draft of its Social and Environmental Safeguards (“draft ESF”).
The Bank is embarked in a process to reform and streamline its Safeguard policies, process which Mr. Kim had earlier promised will not lead to their dilution.
Read more: PRIVATE FINANCIAL INTERMEDIARIES CENTRAL TO WORLD BANK’S PLOT TO SIDELINE HUMAN RIGHTS
The death of international development
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- Written by Jason Hickel
- Category: Analysis
The development industry needs an overhaul of strategy, not a change of language.
This crisis of confidence has become so acute that the development community is scrambling to respond. The Gates Foundation recently spearheaded a process called the Narrative Project with some of the world's biggest NGOs - Oxfam, Save the Children, One, etc. - in a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide of defection. They commissioned research to figure out what people thought about development, and their findings revealed a sea change in public attitudes. People are no longer moved by depictions of the poor as pitiable, voiceless "others" who need to be rescued by heroic white people - a racist narrative that has lost all its former currency; rather, they have come to see poverty as a matter of injustice.
Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the World Summit for Social Development
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- Written by UN DESA
- Category: Analysis
The third high-level event will commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the World Summit for Social Development held in Copenhagen, on 6-12 March 1995. The Summit’s outcome, the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, constituted an agreement to give social development goals the highest priority. It set an ambitious people-centred agenda aimed to promote social progress, justice and the betterment of the human condition, based on full participation by all.
Read more: Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the World Summit for Social Development
The final word on microfinance?
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- Written by Justin Sandefur
- Category: Analysis
Six newly published RCTs show limited impacts on poverty
Two influential movements within the development industry collided head-on this month: the microcredit movement and the movement to subject development policies to rigorous impact evaluation. As Rachel Glennerster, the director of MIT's Poverty Action Lab put it:
Will the Greek elections Strengthen the Hands of the Global South?
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- Written by Alexander O'Riordan/Pambazuka
- Category: Analysis
The endorsement of a leftist party is a vote against global lenders imposing governance prescriptions on countries in crisis. If Greece successfully pushes back against its lenders, it will open the door to countries of the Global South to restructure their relationships with lenders such as the World Bank and IMF.
Read more: Will the Greek elections Strengthen the Hands of the Global South?
Something Myth-ing? What they don't Tell us about African Agricultures
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- Written by Ian Fitzpatrick
- Category: Analysis
One of the myths outlined in the report The Poor Are Getting Richer and Other Dangerous Delusions that Global Justice Now (previously WDM) released last week to coincide with the Davos World Economic Forum, is that Africa needs our help. A variation of this myth, that African agriculture needs help from rich Western countries, is constantly spun out by the media, investors, agribusiness companies and other transnationals. It sometimes feels like we’re being forced to participate in a modified version of the BBC Radio 4 show The Unbelievable Truth where panellists have to give a lecture full of lies while smuggling a handful of truths past the other players. In the case of the ‘Africa needs our help’ narrative, the game is played so that a handful of truths are used to smuggle some hugely significant lies past unsuspecting governments, NGOs and civil society.
Read more: Something Myth-ing? What they don't Tell us about African Agricultures
Who controls the food system?
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- Written by Judith Hitchman
- Category: Analysis
In a world of globalised industry, where many States’ policy has increasingly been dictated
by private sector interests and transnational corporations, it is worth examining how the
Right to Food and the emergence of social movements that represent peoples’ local food
systems and food sovereignty are swaying the balance in their favour.
Tax Haven USA: The Vortex-Shaped Hole in Global Financial Transparency
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- Written by Nicholas Shaxson/TJN
- Category: Analysis
If people stash their wealth or earn income overseas, that is just fine — as long as their tax authorities get the information they need to tax that wealth or income according to the law, and as long as money laundering and financial crimes can be effectively tracked, and so on. Where there are cross-border barriers to legitimate tax collection, law enforcement and other instruments of democratic societies, then there is an offshore problem.
The only credible way to provide the necessary information is through so-called automatic information exchange (AIE), where governments make sure the necessary information is available across borders, as a matter of routine.
Read more: Tax Haven USA: The Vortex-Shaped Hole in Global Financial Transparency
TNI State of Power report
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- Written by TNI
- Category: Documents
The fourth edition of the annual TNI State of Power report, coinciding with the international meeting in Switzerland of what Susan George calls “the Davos class”. This series seeks to examine different dimensions of power, unmask the key holders of power in our globalised world, and identify sources of transformative counter-power.
