Mixed results in Busan
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- Written by Bodo Ellmers-Eurodad
- Category: Analysis
Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation: some progress, no clear commitments, no thanks to EU
The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) has come to a close, resulting in the new Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, which is a mixed bag in terms of the results that civil society was advocating for.
Some progress has been made on the core aid effectiveness agenda, with strengthened commitments on democratic ownership, using country systems and aid untying. Furthermore, China and other BRICs hesitantly moved under the new partnership’s umbrella.
Poverty and Inequality in Latin America
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- Written by ECLAC
- Category: Documents
The new Social Panorama for 2011 shows good results for Latin America: both poverty and inequality have diminished, thanks to the economic growth, better conditions foir labor en better social protection. However, extreme poverty has slightly worsened ...
Exposing the lost billions
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- Written by Eurodad
- Category: Analysis
A new and interesting Eurodad report on how transparancy and taxes matter for development.
Social alternatives
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- Category: Analysis
Slowly, progressive social movements start to see the need for concrete social alternatives to the dominant system and for going beyond poverty reduction.
Discourses on debt auditing, on financial transaction taxes, on public banks and/or on alternative currencies, are making their way and are becoming acceptable while maintaining their utopian dimension. This does not mean these ideas are on the verge of being put into practice, but they are ready to be implemented whenever the time is ripe. Because we know that there are alternatives and that another world is possible.
Why not have universal social protection and why not declare poverty illegal?
Who is paying for Jersey to be a tax haven?
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- Written by Richard Murphy
- Category: Analysis
The reason why places like Jersey became tax havens was to raise tax revenue from third parties. The tax revenues raised were, in effect, export earnings that kept their economies afloat.
Deputy Geoff Southern in Jersey has tabled an amendment to the current Jersey budget that shatters the myth that this is still the case. As his amendment says:
The G20s 'convention on fighting tax evasion'
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- Written by Martin Hearson/Action Aid
- Category: Analysis
The G20 announced that they had signed a ‘convention against tax evasion’ that the OECD says could raise £62 billion. The convention, which is not new but rather an update of an existing treaty, is being sold as a part of the G20’s development agenda, as the OECD’s top tax man Jeffrey Owens remarked to the Guardian: “Over the coming months we will be working with developing countries so that they will rapidly be in a position to sign the convention."
A global tax cooperation convention has been a key cornerstone of campaigners’ agenda for the G20 this year. Tax authorities in developing countries need a framework to exchange information on their taxpayers with other countries where those taxpayers have savings or other sources of income – for example if they have money stashed in an offshore account. They also need a legal instrument that allows them to discuss the tax affairs of multinational companies operating in more than one country, as African tax authorities reacting to ActionAid’s report on the beer company SABMiller recently found out.
So are development agencies bouncing up and down with excitement? Well, yes and no. There are three reasons to question whether this convention will be quite as effective as the OECD claims:
We are living on borrowed time ...
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- Written by Civil Society Reflection Group
- Category: Analysis
The civil society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives published a statement for the Rio+20 meeting:
... we are already living on borrowed time...
Final statement of the G20 leaders
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- Category: News
"... determined to strengthen the social dimension of globalization..." and new promises to fight shadow banking.
Next meeting to check on the new and old commitments: June 2012 in Mexico.
Innovation with Impact
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- Written by Bill Gates
- Category: Documents
The 'Gates Report' for the G20: Bill Gates wrote a report to the G20 on how to finance 21st century development. He now gets involved in agricultural development but keeps his unshaken confidence in free markets. And he is in favour of a Financial Transaction Tax, after all, why not, if it brings money to his foundation?
Human Development Report 2011
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- Written by UNDP
- Category: Documents
This Year's UNDP report on Humln Development concerns the environmental trends which threaten the global progress for the poor. The best way to solve the problems, according to the report: equity, that is good public services.
Civil Society Declaration to G20
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- Category: Documents
DECLARATION to the Heads of States and Governments of the G8/G20 Summit
Outside the G8/G20 Summit, we, civil society and social movements from the North and the South, meeting at the 2nd Development Forum in Paris on October 24th and 25th 2011, have explored, hand in hand, alternative development strategies and discussed urgent and interdependent issues such as unemployment and universal social protection, debt and innovative financing for development, climate change and food and water security.
