Qatar: UN Human Rights Rapporteur exposes truth on migrant workers and calls for ILO standards to be met
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- Written by ITUC
- Category: Analysis
International unions are calling on the Qatar authorities to give an immediate response to the request for urgent reforms for migrant workers following a ten-day UN investigation in the country.
Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation, welcomed the recommendations by Francois Crepeau, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, including the right to form and join trade unions, proper grievance procedures, a minimum wage and the abolishment of the kafala system.
Climate change is putting jobs at risk
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- Written by ITUC
- Category: Analysis
With a new round of the United Nations climate negotiations starting this Monday in Warsaw, Poland, the labour movement expressed its concerns on the impacts a low ambition climate deal would mean for jobs globally.
“Science is telling us that all sectors of the economy will be heavily impacted by climate change if we do not succeed to maintain temperature increase below 2°C”, said Sharan Burrow, the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation.
The Dark Side of Development
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- Written by Devex Editor/ Bretton Woods Project
- Category: Analysis
For the first time in over a decade, the World Bank is conducting an internal review of its Safeguard Policies, which aim to ensure that Bank projects do not cause social or environmental harm. Civil society groups are advocating for the Bank to bring these policies in line with international human rights and environmental standards and consistently apply them to all Bank operations. The Bank’s senior management, on the other hand, seems more concerned with making the Bank a more attractive lender that can compete with increasingly powerful state financiers, such as Brazil and China, by ensuring there are fewer strings attached to loans. However, this move would hurt the very people the Bank is supposed to help.
How Economic Growth Has Become Anti-Life
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- Written by Vandana Shiva
- Category: Analysis
An obsession with growth has eclipsed our concern for sustainability, justice and human dignity. But people are not disposable – the value of life lies outside economic development.
Limitless growth is the fantasy of economists, businesses and politicians. It is seen as a measure of progress. As a result, gross domestic product (GDP), which is supposed to measure the wealth of nations, has emerged as both the most powerful number and dominant concept in our times. However, economic growth hides the poverty it creates through the destruction of nature, which in turn leads to communities lacking the capacity to provide for themselves.
Europe can set the standard on anti-money laundering
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- Written by Koen Roovers
- Category: Analysis
Money launderers, corrupt politicians, tax dodgers and traffickers of all sorts rely on the same things to move their ill-gotten gains. They need legal structures that allow them to hide their identity.
Existing legal structures help hide transaction flows
This often happens through anonymous companies whose beneficial ownership is hidden. European leaders have a unique chance to curb these shell companies in the ongoing review of the European Union’s anti-money laundering rules.
Read more: Europe can set the standard on anti-money laundering
Financing for Development: Where is the UN Heading?
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- Written by Bodo Ellmers/Eurodad
- Category: Analysis
The United Nations' Sixth High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD) that took place in New York in early October shows a deep rift between developing and developed countries. This dialogue was mandated to look at the FfD Agenda's status of implementation and the tasks ahead. While the EU thinks it contributed at least its fair share, developing countries pointed to the major failures in implementation of aid, debt or trade commitments. The future of the FfD process remains unclear.
Read more: Financing for Development: Where is the UN Heading?
A tree born crooked will never straighten its trunk
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- Written by Pablo Solon/Focus on the Global South
- Category: Analysis
Why one cannot turn the WTO around
Since its establishment, there has always been a debate about the WTO amongst civil society organizations. Some saw it possible to reform the WTO and others saw no redeeming factor in it and wanted it dismantled. In a way, the slogan “WTO: Shrink or Sink” expressed the middle point in these two approaches. Now, after almost two decades of the WTO, the facts are clear.
Read the complete article
India pushes to change WTO subsidy rules so it can stockpile food
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- Written by Paige McClanahan/The Guardian
- Category: Analysis
India says paying farmers higher prices will help boost food security, but critics say it will hurt poor producers elsewhere
India is pushing hard for a change to global trade rules that would allow governments in developing countries more leeway to pay poor farmers above-market prices for food for national stockpiles. Critics warn, however, that such a policy shift – which India is pursuing in the name of food security – could end up hurting poor producers in other parts of the world.
Read more: India pushes to change WTO subsidy rules so it can stockpile food
Human Rights and Development
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- Written by Human Rights Reader / Claudio Schuftan
- Category: Analysis
HUMAN RIGHTS ARE BOTH PART-OF AND INSTRUMENTAL-TO THE OVERALL PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT. THE REALIZATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS AN END-GOAL OF DEVELOPMENT ITSELF.
-Development solutions of yesterday have literally become our problems of today. (S. Adjei)
-It is often wrongly assumed that improvements in societies’ conditions require constant velocity in straight lines forward, as if we were shooting arrows into the future. (G. Cannon)
Political Update on EU FTT
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- Written by Ricard Carr and Richard Gower
- Category: Analysis
Highlights
• The European Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) is happening, the debate now concerns finalising the details: which assets, what rates, date of introduction, size of revenue? The next twelve months will determine whether an ambitious FTT is achieved or the financial lobby succeed in watering it down.
Extreme poverty is too extreme
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- Written by Lant Pritchett
- Category: Analysis
The momentum seems to be building for a goal to “eradicate poverty by 2030.” Reducing poverty is a noble goal, one to which I fully subscribe. But the “eradicate poverty” campaign is actually only focused on “extreme” poverty which is an absurdly low and completely arbitrary definition of the poverty. I am for eradicating poverty, but real poverty, as experienced by billions of people in the world, not on the extremist vision of “dollar a day” poverty. There is no poverty line at a dollar a day (now really $1.25 in purchasing power parity currency units). A dollar a day global poverty line exists nowhere except in the minds of elite technocrats, advocates, and donors.
