Trading Away Human Rights
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- Written by O. De Schutter & K. Cordes
- Category: Analysis
Trade negotiators in Singapore recently failed to finalize a deal on the long-awaited Trans-Pacific Partnership; they will soon have another chance to complete what would be the world’s largest regional free-trade agreement. But, given serious concerns that the TPP will fail to consider important human-rights implications, that is no cause for celebration.
Human Rights and The World Bank
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- Written by G.A. Sarfaty & J. Winegar
- Category: Analysis
Established in 1944, the World Bank has become the largest lender to developing countries, lending more than $20 billion per year. The Bank is probably the most well-known symbol of economic globalization, capitalism and Western imperialism. Its more than ten thousand employees are engaged in the Bank’s official mission of poverty reduction, which it carries out primarily through development lending. Its legitimacy depends on fulfillment of the mission, which is inextricably linked to human rights.
A new way to look at the climate crisis
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- Written by Kjell Kuehne
- Category: Analysis
We are all trying to find a way out of the climate crisis. But we seem to be trapped in a fossil world where burning fossil fuels is good and economic growth is the measure of things. I would like to propose a simple goal for our climate movement:
Let's shut down all coal mines, oil and gas wells in our lifetimes, and guarantee the right to life.
That is the one responsibility that we, as a climate movement have. You can call it "ending the fossil age", "putting fossil technologies into the museum", "the global energy transition", "zero emissions" or "leaving it in the ground". But I find it helpful to focus on shutting down the mines and wells that we have in our countries and that feed our countries.
Critics target World Bank poverty projects
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- Written by Global Post
- Category: Analysis
Watchdog groups question the bank’s new plan to give the private sector a central role.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has set some very ambitious, specific goals for his institution: He aims to promote income growth among the bottom 40 percent of the world's population and reduce extreme poverty to 3 percent by 2030.
To achieve that, he’s expanding the role of the bank’s private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, or IFC, as set out in a new long-term strategy approved in October.
The private sector has a key role in the fight to end extreme poverty, Kim argues.
Talkin' 'bout a global revolution
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- Written by Adam Parsons/Sharing the World's Resources
- Category: Analysis
As the global financial crisis now enters its seventh year, it is time to start asking difficult questions about the right priorities for popular protest if we want to realise a truly united voice of the world’s people. There can be no genuine revolution in a moral or global sense until the critical needs of the extreme poor are prioritised and upheld, which will require mass mobilisations in the streets like we have never seen before.
At the onset of 2014, many people are now anticipating the prospect of a ‘global revolution’. The intense revolutionary fervour of 2011 may have dissipated in North America and much of Western Europe in the past couple of years, but a new geography of protest continues to shift and transmute in different countries and world regions - the million people on the streets of Brazil in June last year; the earlier defence of the commons in Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park; the indigenous uprising and student protests across Canada; the Ukraine demonstrations that are still under way.
World Protests 2006-2013
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- Written by I. Ortiz, S. Burke, M. Berrada, H. Cortès
- Category: Analysis
Mapping exercise of hundreds of social protests all over the world, covering 87 countries and looking at movements' grievances, achievements and repression. Impressive.
Measuring OECD Responses to Illicit Financial Flows from developing countries
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- Category: Analysis
Fascinating report on how rich countries are failing to effectively tackle illicit financial flows ...
Developing Countries Are Being Undermined By Rich Nations’ Greed
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- Written by Financial Transparency Coalition/Cardamone/Gascoigne
- Category: Analysis
The Financial Transparency Coalition addresses the inequalities in the global financial system that penalize billions of people, advocates for greatly improved transparency and accountability.
Given impressive developments in the realm of financial transparency by the G20 in 2013, it would make sense to be optimistic for 2014. But perhaps this year’s G20 host, Australia, has yet to read the memo?
According to a recent study Measuring OECD Responses to Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries, of the eight Financial Action Task Force recommendations related to customer due diligence and record-keeping by banks, Australia actually comes out worst of all OECD member countries, failing to comply with six of eight recommendations – and only partially complying with the other two!
Read more: Developing Countries Are Being Undermined By Rich Nations’ Greed
Reflections on 2013
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- Category: Analysis
Dear friends,
Internet technicalities do not allow me to send a newsletter at this moment. Allow me to give you some reflections on the past year and send you my best wishes for 2014.
Global Social Justice has been doing rather well. We were at the World Social Forum in Tunis in March, where we also co-organised a Social Forum on Health and Social Protection. We were at different conferences on social protection and on poverty, in Europe, Africa and Asia. We also were at the WTO social movements gathering in Bali.
Our website gets more and more visitors and also positive feedback. Feedback is particularly important since we can only survive if we offer something that people want and want to read. What is still lacking, is contributions from our members.
We are convinced that Global Social Justice can play an important role in this very difficult period. Social protection is now on the international agenda, everywhere, but however positive this may be, it is not the social protection we want. We need policies that go beyond the Washington Consensus, we need policies that give real protection, economic and social security to people and societies.
Three major tragedies of 2013 convince us that we have to work in another direction:
The working poor in Europe
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- Written by EAPN
- Category: Analysis
See this new report from EAPN on in-work poverty in the EU, presented at the Annual Convention of the European Platform against poverty and social exclusion. 'In-work poverty' is now part of the indicators of the 'social dimension' of the EMU scoreboard.
Global Income Distribution: from the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession
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- Written by Milanovic & Lakner
- Category: Analysis
New report from the World Bank from Branco Milanovic: always a must
