The World Bank’s Diminishing Role in Africa
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- Written by Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills
- Category: Analysis
Two recent African events illustrate how much the landscape for development finance has changed — and what role the World Bank will play in the future.
In May, the bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, pledged $1 billion to help bring peace to the Great Lakes region. Mr. Kim’s pledge was made in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, on a trip in the company of the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, that also took in neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. Earmarked for financing health and education services, hydroelectric projects and cross-border trade, the loan is intended as an incentive to end Congo’s violence, despite the country’s endemically poor governance: The D.R.C. ranks behind only Somalia in Foreign Policy’s Failed States Index.
The end of European welfare states?
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- Written by Francine Mestrum
- Category: Research
Challenges for the European elections of 2014 on the eve of the European Council of 27 and 28 June 2013
At the end of June, as usual, a European Council meeting will be held in Brussels. Once again, economic governance is on the agenda, as well as the ‘social dimension’ of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). For those who might think this is a step in the direction of the so often claimed ‘social Europe’, disappointment will be inevitable. What can we expect, then, of this Council meeting?
FTT: Assessment of Goldman Sachs Research
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- Written by Stephan Schulmeister
- Category: Analysis
Impact of the FTT on the profitability of financial market
activities – the assessment of Goldman Sachs Research
In a recent research report Goldman Sachs tried to assess the impact of the FTT
proposal of the European Commission on the profitability of financial market activities
(Goldman Sachs, 2013).
FAQs on the FTT: how does it work?
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- Written by European Commission/Taxud
- Category: Analysis
1
This document is established by DG Taxation and Customs Union ('Taxud') on
the basis of the Commission proposal for a Council Directive implementing
enhanced cooperation in the area of financial transaction tax (COM(2013) 71).
Its purpose is to provide replies to question/examples based on submissions to the
Commission by Member States, stakeholders and the general public on the actual
application of the tax and other issues raised since the tabling of the proposal by
the Commission.
Social Protection Can Help Overcome Poverty and Hunger
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- Written by Jomo Kwame Sundaram (FAO)
- Category: Analysis
The growing consensus, momentum and commitment to eradicate world hunger may seem overly ambitious in view of the slow progress in reducing the number of hungry people in the world in recent decades.
After all, declining food prices in the second half of the 20th century, thanks to increasing production, were not enough to eliminate poverty and hunger in the world.
Read more: Social Protection Can Help Overcome Poverty and Hunger
Fian Rejects G8 Hunger Initiatives as False Solutions
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- Written by FIAN
- Category: Analysis
The initiative on transparency, which promotes an increase in the transparency of land transactions, among others, as well as the further expansion of the “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,” adopted at last year’s G8 summit, are rejected by FIAN as false and inadequate solutions to fight poverty and eradicate world hunger.
“These G8 initiatives lack democratic legitimacy and ignore States’ human rights obligations. They promote an agro-industrial model of production that results in the separation of peoples from their culturally-traditional eating patterns through land grabs, eviction, low wages, and food contamination, among others,” said Flavio Valente, Secretary General of FIAN International. “They further discriminate against the majority of small scale food producers, destroy their livelihoods, and will serve to perpetuate the structural causes of hunger and malnutrition rather than eradicating world hunger.”
Read more: Fian Rejects G8 Hunger Initiatives as False Solutions
Statement From The Financial Transparency Coalition: G8 Leaders Fail To Reach Financial Transparency Agreement
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- Written by Financial Transparency Coalition
- 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.
At this year’s summit, G8 leaders had an opportunity to pursue tax and transparency policies that would provide economic stability, root out systemic corruption and enhance the democratic process in rich and poor nations alike. Today G8 leaders largely failed to seize this opportunity.
Bono can't help Africans by stealing their voice
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- Written by Georges Monbiot
- Category: Analysis
Because the U2 frontman and others like him are seen as representatives of the poor, the poor are not invited to speak
It was bad enough in 2005. Then, at the G8 summit in Scotland, Bono and Bob Geldof heaped praise on Tony Blair and George Bush, who were still mired in the butchery they had initiated in Iraq. At one point Geldof appeared, literally and figuratively, to be sitting in Tony Blair's lap. African activists accused them of drowning out a campaign for global justice with a campaign for charity.
But this is worse. As the UK chairs the G8 summit again, a campaign that Bono founded, with which Geldof works closely, appears to be whitewashing the G8's policies in Africa.
Secrecy for Sale: More data from Offshore Leaks
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- Written by GFI
- Category: Analysis
Readers can use new interactive database to search information about the ownership of tens of thousands of offshore entities in tax havens
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists overnight published a database that, for the first time in history, will help begin to strip away the secrecy across 10 offshore jurisdictions.
Hunger is a taxing problem
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- Written by Olivier De Schutter
- Category: Analysis
The leaders of the G8 must acknowledge the vital financial and symbolic role that tax justice has to play in tackling hunger
To address hunger, the G8 must look beyond traditional tax havens such as Monaco.
On one hand, ending hunger involves getting agriculture and nutrition policies right. But it is also about social justice, good governance, and the broader set of conditions within which targeted food strategies can work durably and for the poorest.
IMF's failure in debt restructuring
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- Written by Bodo Ellmers/Eurodad
- Category: Analysis
As one moves rapidly towards alternative proposals to sovereign debt work-out, it seems that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not want to be sidelined on the issue. A ground-breaking new IMF study that has just been released acknowledges the failure of debt crisis management as we know it. Among the proposed solutions is a Fair and Transparent Arbitration Process, which Eurodad and our members have been campaigning for over many years.
